The National Football League (NFL) has long been criticized for its approach to brain injuries and concussions. I’ve covered this issue and my thoughts about solving it in greatdetail. The league was very, very bad on the subject for a long time. It denied that concussions were a major problem. It funded compromised scientific studies to counteract the many legitimate ones which were gradually showing just how damaging brain injury is to current and retired football players. It didn’t provide sufficient health care and other benefits to retired players suffering from the effects of brain injury until forced to by a legal settlement. And on the field, the NFL’s attempts to make the game safer were met with skepticism. How can the NFL punish players for making hits they had been taught were good for their entire lives? Was it even possible to avoid hitting someone in the head in such a chaotic environment. How could the league expect to protect players who so steadfastly refused to bow down to the danger of brain injuries? That last criticism was one that rang true to me. To make it to a professional level in football – one of the world’s most team-oriented sports – you basically have to be someone who will put the success of a team before their own success. Selfish football players do not make it to the NFL. Self-sacrifice is so selected for, that it’s insane to think an NFL player won’t try to play through a brain injury to help their team, even if they know the potential danger of doing so. It felt like an intractable problem until this year, when the NFL made some changes that actually seem to be working! Here’s what they’ve done.
During each game, there are independent certified athletic trainers who are employed to watch and look for any potential head injuries. When they see one, they are empowered to stop the game in order to assess the player. If their suspicion is confirmed and the player does seem symptomatic of having had a brain injury, that player is removed from the game and (although I’m not sure this is a rule — it is the reality) does not return to play that day. Once a player has suffered a concussion, they need to go through a five step process of assessment and escalating activity before they can return to the field. That final decision is no longer in the player or team’s hands, but is controlled by an independent neurologist. Steps like this have been taken before, but they’ve never been as dramatic nor have they ever seemed to work the way this round of changes has. Players this year are staying out longer — something which is essential because of the increased risk one has of suffering a second and more damaging concussion soon after a first.
Football is still easy to criticize when it comes to player safety. Football players, especially young ones, are still dying at unacceptable levels. None of the reforms have addressed what might be the most pernicious aspect of football on its players’ brains – the near-constant sub-concussive blows that linemen experience on every play. Still, the progress I’ve seen this year is more than I expected. Not only do I think players are better protected and cared for than they have been in the past, but it’s also great to see football as a role-model among sports for once. The National Hockey League (NHL) has followed suit and given concussion spotters the ability to stop games during the season which starts tonight. Soccer authorities, (once they are bailed out of prison), should do the same.
My friends told me that the clock stops in an NFL game when a player with the ball goes out of bounds. Now, I’m fairly new to watching football, but I’m pretty sure they’re wrong. I was watching a game this weekend and clearly saw the clock running before the next play after the ball carrier went out of bounds. Am I crazy or are they wrong? What actually happens to the clock in the NFL when a ball carrier goes out of bounds?
Thanks,
Vincent
Dear Vincent,
You’re not crazy, you’re observant. This is one of the most common misconceptions about football. 95% of football fans will say the clock stops when the ball goes out of bounds, just like your friends did. It’s not true. They are either avoiding a complex answer or they’ve never even noticed that it’s not true! Avoiding complexity is a good policy when it comes to explaining something to a beginner, but never if it results in saying something that’s not true. In this post, I’ll clear up this misconception about the NFL game clock and going out of bounds. In case you want to check the NFL rules themselves, the ones that apply to this question are here.
There are three main possibilities for how the game clock is dealt with after a play ends.
It continues to run
It stops until the ref places the ball on the ground in the spot where the next play should begin
It stops until the next play begins
We can apply some basic rules to when each of these options applies in an NFL game.
As a default, the game clock continues to run.
When it may take a little while for the players and refs to untangle themselves from the result of the previous play and get back in place to start a new one, the game clock pauses until the ref gets the ball in place.
When it’s likely that each second of game time is at a premium, the NFL, because it wants games to be as exciting as possible (this is an entertainment industry, after all), has created ways for smart teams to get the clock to stop after some types of plays.
Once you understand those as the three options, you can start making sense out of what seemed like an almost infinite set of possibilities, each with their own specific treatment. Here is how these principles apply to a ball-carrier going out of bounds.
If a ball carrier goes out of bounds with the ball, the game clock temporarily stops. For most of the game, the game clock restarts when the ref places the ball on the ground where the next play will begin. (Option 2) Exceptions to this are: during the last two minutes of the first half and the last five minutes of the second half. During these times, the game clock is not restarted until the next play begins. (Option 3) In case you were wondering, a regular season overtime period is treated like the second half of a game, while playoff overtime periods are treated as though a new game is beginning and the first overtime period is the first quarter.
The rules that apply to the NFL game clock and going out of bounds are often simplified to, “the clock stops when the ball carrier goes out of bounds.” This misleading simplification works most of the time because it is true for most of time that fans pay attention to the clock. If it’s not in the last two minutes of the first half or the last five minutes of the second, barely anyone is paying attention to the clock at all. This is how a rule that is in place for 53 of a game’s 60 minutes can be completely missed by even the most knowledgeable football fans.
On August 5, 2014, the San Antonio Spurs became the first National Basketball Association (NBA) team to hire a woman as a full-time coach by hiring Becky Hammon as one of their assistant coaches. On July 27, 2015, the Arizona Cardinals, a National Football League (NFL) team made similar headlines by hiring Jenn Welter to their coaching staff. Just recently, the Oakland Athletics, a team in Major League Baseball (MLB) made their mark by hiring Justine Siegal to their coaching staff. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the glass ceiling preventing women entering professional coaching as equals is breaking all over the place — across the country and across many sports. Alas, it’s not true. The hiring of Welter and Siegal by the Cardinals and Athletics are vastly different acts than that of the Spurs in hiring Hammon. They’re not comparable in any way. If anything, these lesser hirings should show us just how radical, brave, and smart the Spurs are.
Welter was hired by the Cardinals to be an “assistant coaching intern for training camp and the preseason to work with inside linebackers.” She was one of four people to work with the team’s linebackers – who are a group of around eight to 15 on teams of 53 to 90 people. Come the regular season, and Welter was gone, having served her time. Siegal is likely to have a similar experience with the Oakland As. She was hired as “a guest instructor with [the As] Instructional League team.” The Instructional League is a place for very young prospects and injured or over-the-hill veterans to play. Its season lasts only for September and October, and is separate from the core minor league system. In other words, she wasn’t hired to coach the major league Athletics nor any of their seven full-time minor league teams.
Hammon, on the other hand, is one of six full-time assistant coaches on the San Antonio Spurs bench. She has already spent a full season with the team and is entering her second year. During the summer, she was asked to head coach the Spurs Summer League team, an honor typically given to a team’s top assistant coach. She led that team to the Summer League title. As premature as this sounds, there are already speculative articles being written about Hammon’s prospects as a head coach. Given the Spurs well-established record of stability, my guess is that she’ll stay with the team for at least a few more years. The speculation isn’t unwarranted though. As you can see in this chart, four former assistant coaches under Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich and an additional three players who played for him have become head coaches in the league. If Hammon continues on the path she seems to be on, she will become a good candidate for a head coaching position.
The problem is – will anyone team have the guts to hire her? As sad as this sounds, my guess is that her only reasonable chance is to stay in San Antonio and aim to be hired as Popovich’s heir when he decides to retire. Other teams just don’t seem to be up to it. Don’t be fooled by the other high profile female hirings in sports. Any movement toward equality is a good one, but it’s important to understand that they have been small head-fakes toward equality, while the Spurs move was a full-on slam dunk.
Sports talk is frequently used as a common language but it’s far from universal. If you’re someone who doesn’t follow or even understand sports, you can find yourself at a disadvantage in common small-talk situations like in an elevator, waiting for a bus, sitting at a bar, or around the proverbial water cooler at work. Even if you are a sports fan, it’s impossible to watch everything and know everything. To help in these situations, we provide lines to use when engaged in a conversation about all of the high profile sporting events of the day, plus explanations of what they mean.
What it means: Joe Philbin is the Miami Dolphins head coach. Although by the time you’re reading this, he could be their former coach. Rumors were flying last week that if the Dolphins lost their game in London against the Jets, the team may fire Philbin. They lost. Fans are watching to see if he gets fired.
What it means: When the Buffalo Bills got off to a hot start this season, new head coach Rex Ryan got a lot of the credit. He’s known for being a defensive mastermind and someone who players absolutely love playing for. His teams are also known for getting a little too amped up, which sometimes — maybe always — leads them into taking too many penalties and making other mistakes. That was the story today in the Bills game against the Giants. In the last two weeks, they’ve taken 31 penalties for 275 yards. Eeek.
Line: Pump the breaks on crowning the undefeated Panthers. Their opponents are a combined 3-12.
What it means: After four wins in the first four games of the season, Panthers fans are feeling pretty good about their team. As they should. But it’s not like they’ve played a very difficult schedule. The four teams they’ve played so far this year have won only three games combined and lost 12. So, perhaps we should wait and see for a few more weeks before we declare the Panthers to be a great team.
What it means: Bears fans weren’t expecting very much from their team this year, but after starting the season with three losses in three weeks, they were nearing a catatonic state. To have been beaten at home by the up-and-coming-but-still-lowly Oakland Raiders might have pushed some Bears fans over the edge. The Bears victory doesn’t suggest any sort of reawakening in Chicago, not even of a salvaging type, but it will provide some momentary solace.
Line: Okay, now I’m convinced — Andy Dalton has turned the corner.
What it means: Bengals quarterback, Andy Dalton, has been known for playing well in the regular season and then terribly in the playoffs. That dichotomy is the primary factor in his being dismissed from any conversation about the best quarterbacks, or even the very, very good quarterbacks in the league. He won’t truly get a chance to change his reputation until he wins in the playoffs but his superb play in the first four games of this season, leading his team to an undefeated record, should make some impact.
Line: This never would have happened if J.J. Watt was alive.
What it means: J.J. Watt, the phenomenal Texans defensive lineman is, of course, alive. But it’s hard to believe that his team allowed 48 points, even to a high-powered offensive team like the Falcons. This game wasn’t even as close as the score suggests. The Texans scored all 21 of their points in the fourth quarter, when the game was already basically over.
Line: 40 year-old Matt Hasselbeck lead the Colts to an overtime victory. There’s hope for us yet!
What it means: Colts fans could have been forgiven for feeling frightened by the prospect of playing a game without their star quarterback Andrew Luck. They shouldn’t have worried. 40 year-old backup quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, who most people probably thought had been out of the league for a handful of years already, started the game and played well enough for the team to win in overtime.
Line: The whole NFC East is a mess. What a disaster.
What it means: The NFC East with these two teams, the New York Giants, and Dallas Cowboys, is the most famous and infamous division in football. With all four teams in major cities (and television markets) they draw the biggest audiences and attract the most attention. That’s why it’s a little funny and maybe a little schadenfreude-esque when the division is bad. This year, all four teams seem bad.
What it means: The Browns are the hard-luck story of the NFL. No matter what they do right, they seem to do something bigger and more important wrong. Today, it was an offside penalty in the last second that gave the Chargers a second chance to kick a game winning field goal after their first attempt missed. That’s real Cleveland Browns football!
Line: These might be the two best defenses in the league.
What it means: Let everyone else talk about offensive stars like Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning and Vikings running back Adrian Peterson. You can show yourself to be a true football fan by pointing out that the Vikings defense intercepted Peyton Manning twice and the Broncos defense sacked Vikings quarterback Teddy Bridgewater seven (that’s an absurdly high number of sacks) times!
Line: If the Rams could play half as well against everyone else as they do within their division, they’d be a playoff team.
What it means: The Rams have a funny habit of playing much better against the other three teams in their division – the Cardinals, Seattle Seahawks, and San Francisco 49ers – than anyone else. So far this year, they’re 2-0 against the Seahawks and Cardinals – both of which are more well-regarded than the Rams – and 0-2 against everyone else. It’s a small sample size, but it continues a pattern from previous seasons.
Line: Brandon Weeden looked like Tony Romo but Drew Brees looked like Drew Brees. Advantage, Saints.
What it means: The Dallas Cowboys starting quarterback, Tony Romo, is out for the next month with a broken collarbone. Backup quarterback Brandon Weeden played so well at times in this game that you’d be forgiven for thinking he actually was Tony Romo. Alas for Cowboys fans, Saints quarterback Drew Brees, whose play this year had so far been below his own standards and who was suffering from a bruised rotator cuff, looked like his old self. This was an exciting game and it went into overtime where a long pass from Brees to running back C.J. Spiller, ended it decisively in favor of the Saints.
Hello everyone and welcome to America’s favorite game show that… has never actually happened before and no one has heard of it… it’s Pitch That Game!
Here’s how it works. As your host, I have one minute to pitch a sporting event to someone who is not a sports fan. If, after my pitch, they’re interested in watching, I get a point! That’s it! Why would we play such a game? Well, it’s a good way to quickly learn about a set of games to see if you’re interested in following any of them. It’s also a great way for me to learn from you about what may or may not make a sport interesting to a layperson.
In this episode, I pitch you, the listener, all 14 of the NFL games this weekend, on Sunday October 4 and Monday October 5. If you want to know which games will be available on your TV this weekend, check out 506 Sports NFL. If you need help figuring out how to make sense out of what you see there, use my explanation of how to use 506 Sports NFL here.
This game is novel just for its location and time. It’s in London and because of that, it starts at 9:30 a.m. ET. This makes a very civilized way to start the day if you’re on the East Coast. Sit down with your breakfast and morning paper or head out for bottomless Bloody Marys and brunch! Either way, it’s kind of fun to watch football in the morning. Of course, if you’re on the West Coast, this game becomes something else entirely. If you wake up at 6 a.m. to watch the Jets play the Dolphins, you’ve got a serious problem. As for the game itself, no team has been more disappointing this year than the Dolphins. The word trickling through cyberspace is that the players don’t like their coach, Joe Philbin. If the team loses today, he could get fired on Monday.
Bills fans and even just generally pro-Bills observers are waiting to exhale once they get a sign that these promising Bills are different from other years. The Bills often get off to fast starts only to wilt. This year seems different. This team beat the Colts and Dolphins, two teams we thought were good but that have not played well yet this season. The Bills only loss was to the Patriots, who seem like they might not lose a game this year. If this version of the Bills is really good, they’ll beat the Giants and you’ll hear a lot of exhalations of relief around the country.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Jameis Winston is probably hoping his career will turn into the kind of redemption story that Cam Newton’s has. Both were maligned for “character flaws” coming into the league. The difference is — Cam Newton’s character flaws were over whether he and his family had been paid for his college football career. Winston’s? Winston’s are over the likely sexual assault in his past. Different stories with, I hope, different endings. It may not make you want to watch the game, but I’m going to keep bringing it up and rooting for the Buccaneers to lose until Winston is out of the league.
Similar to the Giants vs. Bills game, this game should provide final confirmation of an up-and-coming team’s legitimacy. The problem with the Raiders seeking legitimacy from beating the Bears is that the Bears may actually be too bad to provide any feedback at all. The Chicago Bears are such a mess this year that their general manager started trading players to other teams for future draft picks. That kind of thing happens frequently in other sports but almost never in the NFL, especially not after three weeks. This puts the Raiders in an awkward position. No one will pat them on the back if they beat Chicago but people will certainly make fun of them if they don’t.
Kansas City has been enjoying a minor sports renaissance over the past few years. For the Chiefs, it started with the arrival of coach Andy Reid from Philadelphia and quarterback Alex Smith from San Francisco. It may be over. Last week’s loss to the Green Bay Packers had all the signs of a team that’s about to cycle through a vicious cycle of blame. The way that works in football is that the quarterback gets blamed first and then the coach and then the general manager. Quarterback Alex Smith will be the first to go and perhaps he should be. His play last week had people scrambling to their computers to see who the team’s backup quarterback was. Another clunker this week and we might all get to know Chase Daniel, college star at Missouri and long-time New Orleans Saints backup, very very well.
The plot of this game should be all about the matchup between the incredible Falcons offense and the impenetrable Texans defense. Those units are certainly where the star power on both sides is. Alas, the Texans defense haven’t really shown much impenetrability this year as the team’s 1-2 record reflects. It’s probably safe to assume the Falcons, who have been great on offense, will score some points on the Texans. That pushes the pivotal element of the story over to the other side of the ball where a struggling Houston offense that may improve with the return of their leading rusher, Arian Foster, faces a young Falcons defense that is likely to improve as the season goes on.
This game could be the most meaningful game of the weekend. The Jaguars are a relatively new franchise, only about 20 years old, and for almost all of their existence they’ve been tortured by the Indianapolis Colts. First the Colts had Peyton Manning, a near unbeatable quarterback, and then, as soon as he left, they got Andrew Luck, another near unbeatable quarterback. In that time, the Jaguars have cycled through many, many quarterbacks, most of whom turned out to be… uh… eminently beatable. The Jaguars franchise, except for a brief blip in the late 1990s, have been a laughingstock — an example of futility. Well, this year, they have been showing signs of earning respectability at least. If the Jaguars could beat the Colts, which seems unlikely but possible to me, it would be a potentially franchise changing win, at least in how people view the Jaguars.
This game has a variety of interesting sub-plots. First – Philadelphia’s coach, Chip Kelly, and their press department, seem to have decided this week not to refer to the Washington Redskins by their name. This is a hot-button issue because many people, including a majority of Redskins fans, I believe, think the name is racist and should be changed. Washington’s team owner disagrees and so far has refused to consider it. Second – there may be a hurricane hitting the East Coast just as this game begins. Football prognosticators often warn that bad weather doesn’t change a game as much as one would think but I don’t think a hurricane fits into that description. From my perspective, there’s nothing better than watching football in bad weather… from my couch. As for the stakes of the game, they’re pretty big. With the other two teams in the Eagles and Redskins’ division struggling, it seems like an 8-8 record might get a team into the playoff. When you’re expecting so few wins in a division, it magnifies every victory, especially one like this where a victory for you means a defeat for another team in the division.
One of the greatest fallacies in sports is that the better the teams involved, the better the game will be. It’s simply not true. Sometimes you have two great teams that play each other and it’s completely boring. That won’t be a problem in this game. These two teams are bad. But they’re interestingly bad. The Chargers have a very good quarterback in Phillip Rivers but literally four of their starting five offensive linemen didn’t practice on Friday because they’re all injured. A great quarterback can be made to look pedestrian if he plays behind a bad offensive line. Rivers might just look like he’s scrambling for his life. The Browns on the other hand… well, basically their entire team reportedly isn’t happy with their coaches decision to go with the, perhaps more competent, but certainly less exciting quarterback on their roster, Josh McCown instead of Johhny Manziel. As long as McCown is in the game, the Browns are aiming for a solid B-. With Manziel, they’ll either get an A or an F with no in between. Who knows, perhaps Manziel will get a shot in this game — it will certainly be interesting to watch if he does.
The Broncos defense, one of the best, if not the best in the league, will present Vikings sophomore quarterback Teddy Bridgewater with his biggest test yet. I enjoyed watching Bridgewater in college — he has a calm, in control way about him that’s easy to root for, so I hope he passes the test with flying colors. As for the Broncos side of the ball, this is the fourth time we get to see quarterback Peyton Manning play for coach Gary Kubiak. Manning has spent most of his career in charge of every element of what his offense is doing. That’s unique in today’s NFL. This season, he’s had to adjust to a coach who wants to do their own thing on offense and has the support of management to make it happen. It’s been totally fascinating to watch the offense evolve each week as the theoretically collaborative power struggle between coach and quarterback continues. My guess is that they’ll find a happy and winning middle ground.
If you want to see evidence of the great influence a coach has in the NFL, look no farther than the dramatic change in the plot of a matchup between these two teams. Just a few years ago, the 49ers were the team that frustrated the Packers like no other. The 49ers traveled to Lambeau Field in Green Bay and knocked the Packers out of the playoffs. 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick was the next big thing – a player with limitless potential. Now the 49ers are 1-2 and people are openly wondering whether the team will bother to pick up Kaepernick’s option for next season. Meanwhile, the Packers remain one of the most stable and successful teams in the league. There’s very little doubt about the outcome of this game but very little doesn’t mean none. It’ll be worth watching, even just for the visual spectacle of seeing the 49ers traditional red and gold opposite the Packers even more traditional green and yellow.
Virtually no one thinks the Rams have much of a shot in this game. The Cardinals have burst out of the gate this season and look like one of the best three teams in the league. They’re undefeated and tough to play at home in Arizona. The Rams, on the other hand, are 1-2 and looking classically shabby, like the Rams often do. I won’t deny any of that… but I just have a feeling that we could be missing the boat on this one. The Rams often play well in divisional games, which this one is, no matter how bad they are and how good their divisional opponent is. For evidence, we need look no farther than their Week One victory over the Seattle Seahawks. The Rams are also best at exploiting what the Cardinals are worst at. The Rams have a scarily good defensive line and the Cardinals are ever so slightly questionable on offensive line. The Cardinals would never do this, but if I were them, I’d be tempted to pull injury plagued and essential quarterback Carson Palmer out of the game at the least provocation.
This is not what the NFL schedulers had in mind when they put this game on national television. They couldn’t imagine that the Cowboys would be without their best two players on offense or that the Saints would be winless on the year. On the other hand those losses amplify the importance of this game. It’s virtually a playoff game for the Saints and in Week Four, that is actually about as compelling as a scheduler could imagine. Talk about tripping into success. Nice job NFL schedulers!
This game seems like a tough sell. An 0-3 team playing a 1-2 team? Ugh. Forget about the records though and it has all the component needed for an exciting game. The Detroit Lions have one of the most fantastic offensive players in NFL history in wide receiver Calvin Johnson. 6’5″ tall and as fast as a gazelle, he’s a potent weapon. Standing across from him on virtually every play will be Richard Sherman, the leader of a daunting Seattle Seahawks defense, and himself one of the most smotheringly frustrating-to-play against defensive players in the league. That one on one matchup, best against best, will be worth the price of admission. Okay, just looked at StubHub and the cheapest seats available are around $160. So, maybe not worth that, but worth turning your TV on and watching, for sure.
Each fall, football colonizes the minds and hearts of sports fans around the country. Football is simultaneously one of the most compelling and confusing sports. It has so many different layers – the player experience, the coaching experience, the television or in person viewer experience, the gambler’s experience, the fantasy football experience, and more. Today we’re featuring three stories that peel away a few layers of football and examine one in great and exciting detail.
The breaking of Joe Theismann’s leg, which happened during a nationally televised football game 30 years ago, is one of the most famous sports injuries ever. This oral history covers not just the ordinary gruesome fascination but also some behind-the-scenes and after-the-fact areas that are completely new.
“From the day I got hurt, people have always come up to me and asked me about the injury. All the time. They ask, ‘How’s the leg?’ And I say, ‘It’s a little crooked, it’s a little short, but I’m able to use it.’ And whenever someone suffers a severe leg injury in sports, I always get phone calls from reporters to discuss it… What the injury did for me, it basically became my identity. I’m basically the godfather of broken legs. “If somebody breaks a leg, I usually get a phone call from the media. And by remaining relevant in this way, it gives me a chance to hopefully help people through a very difficult time. Doctors will clear you when your body is physically ready to go, but then you have to clear yourself through the mental hurdles. And that’s really where I try to offer assistance if I can.
Dawidoff spent a year researching his book on one of the least accessible layers of football – the one coaches obsess over, which virtually only they have access to. He gives us a tiny fascinating hint of it in this article.
Football on television is an entity unto itself: the comprehensive illusion of football, far from the full picture. As a result, there may be no activity that draws closer public scrutiny that the public knows less about.
To see the full truth of a football game, you’d have to enter an N.F.L. facility on Monday morning and watch the game film along with the coaches. Coaching film has no audio and is shot from end zone and sideline angles at sufficient depth that coaches can see what all twenty-two players are doing. Football involves large, fast men navigating a limited patch of land over and over again, with a map designed for each one of these brief excursions. The coaches have made the maps, and they spend their film sessions scrutinizing every player’s every movement, assessing what worked, what didn’t, and why.
I’ve written a lot about fantasy football and I hope I’ve been able to make it more understandable but I imagine it’s still a subject of curiosity for most non-fantasy football owners. In this article, Jason Gay, a long-time sports columnist, describes his first experience with fantasy football with humor and a great deal of insight.
And see this is another thing: Fantasy Football makes you do crazy stuff. You now have a stake in meaningless contests you’d never consider watching in the past. That Vikings-Niners game was about as entertaining as watching a goat take a nap. And yet there I was, as the clock pushed midnight, because it suddenly mattered. Sort of. Even worse, I am irrationally mad at Torrey Smith for giving me no fantasy points Monday night. Until now I had no beef with Torrey Smith. Sorry Torrey!
(Fantasy has also lent clarity to a lot of NFL coverage. In the past, I didn’t realize why things like Dez Bryant’s busted foot got covered like a mission to the Moon. But now I know: because there are a bazillion fantasy players who want to know exactly how Dez Bryant’s injury impacts their fantasy team—if they, you know, need to swing a deal for Jerry Lee Pasadena. One week on fantasy has lent great clarity as to why Adam Schefter is now more powerful in this country than the Supreme Court.)
The Green Bay Packers won their game last night against the Kansas City Chiefs 38 to 28. A 10 point victory is not considered a blow-out in the NFL but this game in particular was more conclusive than most 10 point wins. It was the way that the Packers beat the Chiefs that was so impressive. It looked like they were playing football an a whole other level than the Chiefs were — almost like they were playing a different game. They were. Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is playing at such a high level that it sometimes seems like he’s playing at a different level than everyone else. While everyone else is playing football, he’s playing meta-football. There were three plays, when the Packers were on offense, that stuck out as examples of this.
One thing is a series of posts that examine a small part of a sporting event to explain and explore its meaning in a way that’s accessible to sports fans and laypeople alike.
Two of the three meta-plays from last night were offensive plays that resulted in penalties called on the Chiefs for having too many men on the field when the ball was snapped. When the offense snaps the ball, signaling the start of that play, each team is only allowed to have 11 players on the field. This is rarely a problem. Football players are pretty good at counting! The fact that it happened twice yesterday isn’t due to any deficiency on the part of the Chiefs but rather an intentional act of trickery by Rodgers. When the defense makes a substitution, one player runs onto the field while another player runs off to their team’s sideline. This isn’t an inconsiderable distance, especially when the play is starting on the far side of the field from where the defensive team’s bench is. Defensive players have been doing this for most of their lives though, and they have a good internal clock which tells them how much time they have to exit the field before the snap. What they’re not accounting for is Rodgers’ meta game. Rodgers notices when an opposing defensive player, particularly a bigger, slower lineman is substituting, and then rushes his team to the line and tries to snap the ball immediately. He speeds up the offensive process so that he can start the play before that defensive player makes it off the field.
This benefits his team in three ways: one straightforward, one sneaky, and one demoralizing. The straightforward advantage is that the refs will call a penalty on the defensive team, in this case the Chiefs. The penalty moves the ball five yards down the field, after which the Packers get to start their offensive play again. The penalty doesn’t automatically give the Packers a first down, but if moving those five yards would have otherwise, the penalty yardage will. The sneaky benefit is that this foul call doesn’t take effect immediately. The play will continue and at the end of it, the Packers get to choose whether they want the five yard penalty or the result of the play. Because Rodgers knows he can retroactively make that choice, he’s going to use the “free play” to try to advance the ball as far as possible in one play. It gives him the freedom to take a risk he might not ordinarily take, like throwing the ball into the end zone even if his targeted receiver is well covered, because he knows that if the other team does something great, like intercept the ball, the Packers can just choose to accept the penalty and the other team’s great play will be wiped away. (For advanced readers, note that 12 men on the field IS a reviewable call, so even if the refs miss it, the Packers will still have a good chance of backing the play out if they need to.) The third and lasting benefit is to frustrate and demoralize the opposing team. It’s hard enough to play against a team that’s as great as the Packers but it’s even harder to play against a quarterback who is masterfully manipulating the rules of football against you.
The other meta play from last night’s game is a similar trick that Rodgers plays. In this one, he tricks the opposing defense to come across the line of scrimmage before the center snaps the ball. Called “drawing the other team offside,” this is a common tactic that quarterbacks try but few are as good at it as Rodgers is. Check out the video of a touchdown that the Packers scored on the “free play” resulting from Rodgers’ tricky meta-game. The player to watch is number 91 in white and red. His name is Tamba Hali and a he’s one of the most fearsome pass rushers in the league. When he jumps offside, he not only gives the Packers a free play, with which Rodgers is liberated to throw the ball into the end-zone with no possible negative consequences, but, when he realizes he’s been caught offside and bamboozled, he stops briefly. This natural human reaction adds to the benefit of the play to the Packers. Not only do they have a consequence-free play but they get to run it with a half-ineffective Tamba Hali!
Thanks for reading. I’ll keep my eye out for more interesting plays to write about. Ezra Fischer
What are the rules for an onside kick? When do teams try them? What are they trying to gain from it? How does an onside kick work in football?
Thanks,
Jacky
Dear Jacky,
Onside kicks are chaotic, happen rarely, and are often quite confusing, even to football fans. The first step in understanding and making sense out of the onside kick is to categorize it as a tactic, not a special type of play that has special rules. The onside kick is a tactical option during any kickoff play for the team kicking off. A team that chooses to execute an onside kick is hoping to retain (or regain) possession of the ball instead of giving it to the other team as is normal on a kickoff.
A kickoff happens at the start of the game, the start of the second half, and after any scoring play — although touchdowns are followed by an extra point or two-point conversion attempt and then a kickoff. All kickoffs have the same rules. The team kicking off must line up with no less than four players on either side of the ball and with all its players behind or even with the ball when it is kicked. The receiving team must line up on their side of where the ball is. Once the ball is kicked, it is free for either team to take possession of once it has traveled 10 yards down the field OR been touched by a member of the receiving team. If the ball goes out of bounds on the sidelines, the receiving team automatically takes possession of the ball at their own 30 yard line or wherever the ball went out of bounds; whichever is best for the receiving team. If the ball goes out the back of the end zone or is taken by a player on the receiving team in the end zone who subsequently kneels, this is called a touchback and the receiving team gets the ball on its own 20 yard line.
An onside kick is a tactic that tries to manipulate the situation of the kickoff so that the team kicking the ball ends up with possession of the ball. The most common approach to an onside kick is for the kicker to try to kick the ball to one side of the field so that it’s about eight feet above the ground and ten to twelve yards down the field from where it was kicked at exactly the time that six players on the kicking team who are sprinting up the field reach that spot. If all that happens as planned, the sprinting players on the kicking team can leap into the air and try to catch the ball or smash into the receiving team’s players and hope to cause enough fear, uncertainty, and doubt that one of them tries to catch the ball but isn’t able to secure it. This can be a spectacularly violent play with players throwing themselves at each other and at the ball. A more subtle approach is to kick the ball on the ground either at a receiving player with the hope that it might bounce off of them and be free for the kicking team to corral or at an empty spot between receiving players with the hope that a quick player on the kicking team can reach that spot before the receiving team responds.
The kicking team only successfully regained the ball on only 36% of attempts in the NFL in 2014. The reason why we don’t see them happen more frequently is that when the kicking team doesn’t get the ball back, the receiving team gets to start their offensive possession wherever they got the ball, which, since onside kicks generally only travel about 10 to 15 yards, is quite advantageous to the receiving team. A 36% chance of getting the ball back simply isn’t worth a 64% chance of giving the other team the ball on your side of the field. At least, an onside kick isn’t worth it most of the time. At the end of games, when one team is trailing, it could be quite worth it, in fact, it’s often the only chance a trailing team has. The reason why the logic tilts so much is that once a team has possession of the ball, it is able to run time off the game clock by running plays (or kneeling, which is kind of a simulation of a play) that keep the clock moving. It’s often the case that a trailing team knows that it will lose if the leading team gets possession of the ball. In this case, since it doesn’t matter where the other team gets the ball, trying an onside kick becomes an obvious choice.
The downside of attempting to retain the ball on a kickoff in that situation is that the other team knows what’s coming. The receiving team reacts by putting a “hands team” of players out there, all of whom practice receiving onside kicks as a unit. The rate of success for onside kicks when the other team knows its coming is less than 20%. The overall success rate of 36% includes times when a team decides to try an onside kick in a non-obvious situation. These surprise onside kicks – executed at a time when the other team is not expecting it and does not have their hands team on the field – are successful 60% of the time! It’s a high-risk, high-reward strategy that’s most often used by teams that feel they are out-matched and need to find some edge to get ahead.
Sports talk is frequently used as a common language but it’s far from universal. If you’re someone who doesn’t follow or even understand sports, you can find yourself at a disadvantage in common small-talk situations like in an elevator, waiting for a bus, sitting at a bar, or around the proverbial water cooler at work. Even if you are a sports fan, it’s impossible to watch everything and know everything. To help in these situations, we provide lines to use when engaged in a conversation about all of the high profile sporting events of the day, plus explanations of what they mean.
What it means: The Baltimore Ravens were actually named after Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, The Raven. This may not completely excuse your mangling of Poe for the purpose of rubbing a little salt in your Baltimore fan friend’s wounds after the Ravens lost their third game in a row, but do it anyway. At 0-3, the playoffs seem like an unlikely possibility at this point for the Ravens, particularly because this most recent loss came at the hands of their divisional opponent, the Cincinnati Bengals, who are 3-0.
Line: The Saints almost did it without Brees, but they didn’t quite have enough.
What it means: The New Orleans Saints were one of several teams facing an 0-3 start and one of a few teams playing without their starting quarterback. Virtually no one expected them to be able to play competitively with the Carolina Panthers, much less win, but they were surprisingly good. In the end, the Panthers, with their start quarterback Cam Newton who played extremely well, were too much for the Saints to contend with.
Line: Let’s hold up on the parade for the Raiders – their wins have come against the 0-3 Ravens and 1-2 Browns.
What it means: Oakland Raiders fans and unaffiliated football observers might get excited by the Raiders first two-game win streak in more than three seasons. Although it’s never wrong to celebrate, it might be wrong to conclude that the Raiders are a good football team, because their two wins have come against teams that seem not to be very good themselves. With the pitiful Chicago Bears coming up for the Raiders next week, it might be another couple weeks before we find out more about how good the Raiders actually are.
Line: Don’t think the lesson is that the Cowboys can score with Weeden. The lesson is that the Falcons can’t stop anyone.
What it means: After losing starting quarterback Tony Romo, to a broken collarbone last week, the Dallas Cowboys have been forced to go with backup quarterback Brandon Weeden this week and for the forceable future. Without Romo (and star wide receiver Dez Bryant) many feared the Cowboys wouldn’t have enough skill on offense to play competitively. Some Cowboys fans might be comforted by having watched the team score 28 points in today’s losing effort, but I think that’s more of a reflection of how bad the Falcons defense is than anything about the Cowboys offense with Weeden.
Line: Neither of these teams is going anywhere this season but the Bucs are traveling nowhere faster.
What it means: In honor of Yogi Berra, who died this week, that’s my best Berra-esque comment about this game. The Buccaneers are worse than the Texans but both teams are bad enough that casual fans can stop paying them any attention.
Line: I wonder how much of the Charger’s issue this year is Los Angeles hanging over their heads?
What it means: The San Diego Chargers are one of a few teams that are rumored to be candidates for relocation to Los Angeles after this season. A move could be distracting to any team, but particularly one whose veteran quarterback has vocally opposed the move in the press. Connecting the team’s slow start to the relocation issue is not obvious, so get some football knowledge points by suggesting its possibility.
Line: The way the Patriots are playing, bye week can’t come soon enough for the rest of the league.
What it means: During an NFL season, each team gets one week off. That week, called a bye week, is next week for the New England Patriots. This will come as a relief to the other teams in the league, because the Patriots have been unbelievably good so far this year, winning their first three games easily and scoring 119 points (which is a lot!)
Line: This game is the classic lesson about jumping to conclusions after the first two weeks.
What it means: Coming into this game, the Philadelphia Eagles were 0-2 and people were already talking about firing the coach. The New York Jets were 2-0 and some of their fans might have quietly Googled this year’s Super Bowl, just to see where it was… just in case. After today’s game, both sides are quietly moderating their early conclusions about their teams.
What it means: The Pittsburgh Steelers lost their quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger (nicknamed Big Ben after because of his stature and the existence of the British clock, Big Ben), to a knee injury during this game. The injury happened when a defensive player tripped and slid into Roethlisberger’s legs. There was immediate speculation that Roethlisberger could have a serious injury, which might force him to miss the rest of the season. Although the next round of rumors was more positive, we won’t know for sure until the results of the inevitable MRI are leaked/shared tomorrow.
Line: Eh. I’m not impressed. Win or not, needing heroics to beat the Titans does not show the Colts in a positive light.
What it means: The Indianapolis Colts have been one of the biggest disappointments so far this year. They avoided a 0-3 start by beating the Tennessee Titans, but if quarterback Andrew Luck and the rest of his team want to restore confidence of their being a clear playoff team, they’ll have to beat a stronger team than the Titans. As disheartening as this weekend’s loss must be for the Titans, this season is all about the development of rookie quarterback Marcus Mariota, and he continued his promising start in this game.
Line: We have our answer now, the 49ers are terrible.
What it means: The San Francisco 49ers were expected to be awful this year. Then they won their first game in convincing fashion. That confused most people’s ideas about what kind of team they were going to be this year. Even after a loss last week, people weren’t sure. Now, they are. The 49ers are bad, bad, bad.
Line: Is there a more disappointing free agent signing than Ndamukong Suh?
What it means: Coming off a promising season last year, the Miami Dolphins made one of the biggest splashes during the offseason by agreeing to a contract with Ndamukong Suh, the controversial but undeniably talented defensive lineman. So far this season, he’s been a bust in Miami. The Dolphins can’t seem to stop anyone on defense, certainly not the Bills today.
Line: Oh well. I was cracking up when it was 3-0 halfway through the second quarter, but eventually all good things must come to an end.
What it means: Unless you are a Seattle Seahawks fan, the prospect of a 0-2 Chicago Bears team, playing without their starting quarterback and best wide receiver, coming into Seattle and defeating the desperate 0-2 Seahawks was a hysterically funny one. The Seahawks are a brash bunch whose success over the past few seasons has engendered a lot of envy, so the longer it seemed possible they would fall to 0-3 at the hands of the hapless Bears, the funnier it was.
Line: It may not be pretty, but so far it’s working for the Broncos.
What it means: The Denver Broncos may be the most criticized 3-0 team ever. The problem so far has been that their legendary but ancient quarterback, Peyton Manning, has not looked half as good as he has for the entirety of his career. Despite much hemming and hawing about his age and health, my theory is that this has more to do with he and his new coach, Gary Kubiak, feeling each other out. In this game, the Broncos played most of their offensive plays from a formation called the pistol, which was new to both Manning and Kubiak. As the result shows, their experimentation seems to be leading somewhere good.
Hello everyone and welcome to America’s favorite game show that… has never actually happened before and no one has heard of it… it’s Pitch That Game!
Here’s how it works. As your host, I have one minute to pitch a sporting event to someone who is not a sports fan. If, after my pitch, they’re interested in watching, I get a point! That’s it! Why would we play such a game? Well, it’s a good way to quickly learn about a set of games to see if you’re interested in following any of them. It’s also a great way for me to learn from you about what may or may not make a sport interesting to a layperson.
Our guest for this episode is Corinne Boet-Whitaker, a farmer and instrument and furniture maker. I pitched the five NFL football games available to people in the Boston area during the second weekend of the NFL season on Sunday September 20 and Monday September 21. For my thoughts on the other games, read on below the audio player.
Even though the two quarterbacks in this game, Phillip Rivers for the Chargers and Teddy Bridgewater for the Vikings, are on opposite sides of their careers, they’ve played quite similarly so far this year. Each has thrown the majority of their passes quite close to the line of scrimmage. Shorter passes are safer passes. The interpretation for Bridgewater, who is near the start of his career, has been that his coaches are sheltering him from the risks that he’ll learn to take as he grows into the job. Rivers, on the other hand, has spent most of his career slinging the ball all over the place, so this newfound conservatism is puzzling. It doesn’t seem like he’s lost any arm-strength, so maybe it’s simply a tactic that he or the coaches decided would work. I’ll be watching to see which quarterback, if any, gets more aggressive in this game.
Fans of the Raiders and the Browns have been watching their team’s anxiously for the past decade, looking for any signs that they might soon climb out of the NFL’s cellar, where they’ve been stuck for so long. The Raiders are coming off a big win last week over the Baltimore Ravens. The Browns are coming off an equally convincing victory over the Tennessee Titans. One of these teams will take a second step up the basement stairs this weekend. The other will hit their head on the ceiling and fall back down.
The Ravens are one of several playoff teams from last year that have started this season with two losses. Of those teams, the Ravens are the one that have engendered the least worry among fans and prognosticators. This is because they started with two road games and they have such a stable recent history of winning that it seems inevitable for them to turn things around. All that may be true, but a loss in this game to Cincinnati would really get those alarm bells ringing in Baltimore. A Bengals win is not so far-fetched. The Bengals have played like an elite team so far this year. They have a solid defense, two excellent running backs, and a couple of great pass-catchers in wide receiver A. J. Green and tight end Tyler Eifert. Even their long-mocked quarterback, Andy Dalton, has played like an all-star this season. The Ravens will have to play their best to beat the Bengals.
A loss to the Panthers this weekend could signal the end of an era for the New Orleans Saints. The long-time partnership between coach Sean Payton and quarterback Drew Brees seems like it’s on its last legs. Brees has been battered and ineffective so far this season. He’s suffering from a seriously bruised rotator cuff and is questionable to even play in this game. Payton just doesn’t seem like the same kind of innovative coach that he did five years ago. A Saints loss would drop the team to 0-3 and severely damage their chances of salvaging this season. Carolina is always a tough place for the Saints to play — it’s outside and the Panthers have a brutally efficient defense — but it will be even tougher this weekend because Panthers fans and players would like nothing more than to be the camel that broke the football team’s back.
The Cowboys and Falcons are both 2-0 heading into this game, but the Cowboys seem to have made some kind of deal with the devil for their victories. Each win has come with a long-term injury to one of their best offensive players. Wide receiver Dez Bryant broke his foot in the team’s first victory and quarterback Tony Romo broke his collarbone in the second. If I were a superstitious Cowboys player, I might think twice about trying to win this game. I mean, really, at what cost? All jokes aside, it will be very difficult for the Cowboys to keep winning without their two best offensive players. If any offense could do it, it might be Dallas’ though, since it’s built around one of the strongest offensive lines in football. Even a relatively bad backup quarterback like Brandon Weeden should be able to complete throws if his line can keep all the defenders away from him.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers rookie quarterback and probable rapist Jameis Winston said this week that he was looking forward to playing against Houston Texans fearsome defensive force of nature J. J. Watt. I am looking forward to watching Watt destroy Winston and make him look foolish.
The Indianapolis Colts are another 0-2 team that was in the playoffs last year. They’ve been physically dominated in their first two games by the Buffalo Bills and New York Jets. It’s unclear whether Tennessee has the oomph and the athletes to do the same to them, but if they do, they have a clear blue print to follow. My guess is that the Colts win big in this game but there’s just enough suspense and certainly enough interest for me to want to watch and see how it turns out.
This might be my favorite game this weekend. The Pittsburgh Steelers have looked like one of the best teams in the league this year, thanks to their balanced and dynamic offense. They’ve scored 71 points so far this season!! They’re one of the best teams in the league so far at running the ball and they might be even better passing. The only thing that can slow down their type of offense is exactly where the St. Louis Rams are best — an overwhelming defensive line. The Rams have a trio of defensive linemen, Robert Quinn, Chris Long, and Aaron Donald that basically all need to be double-teamed in order to keep them from tackling the opponent’s quarterback or running back. I am truly looking forward to seeing if the chaos caused by the Rams defense is enough to throw the Steelers off their game.
If you judged teams by the number of words written about them during the offseason, the Eagles would be on their way to the Super Bowl and the Jets would be winless. In fact, it looks a little bit like the opposite is true. The Jets have surprised everyone and won their first two games in solid fashion. The Eagles have barely been able to get anything started on defense and have been profoundly vulnerable on offense. The vultures have already started circling around Philidelphia coach, Chip Kelly, and a loss this weekend could conceivably cost him his job.
Yikes. The winless, desperate, and generally pissed off Seattle Seahawks get to host the dysfunctional Chicago Bears. To make things worse for the Bears, their starting quarterback is out with an injured hamstring, so backup Jimmy Clausen will start the game against the Seahawks stellar defense. I guess the benefit of watching this game is that it will probably be decided conclusively in the first five minutes and then you can switch to another game? I will say, if the Bears can keep the game close, each minute that goes by will increase the pressure on the Seahawks tenfold.
