Tag: nfl

What’s the Plot of Super Bowl LVI?

tl:dr

The Super Bowl is between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals.

The Rams have been a winning team for the last five years, driven by their young, dynamic coach Sean McVay and a penchant for acquiring excellent veteran players from other teams. They’ve made the playoffs in four of the last five years and made it to the Super Bowl in 2018/2019 only to lose to the Patriots (ha!). Basically, they are where they should be and no one is surprised. 

The Bengals are quite the opposite. Two years ago they were the worst team in the league. Their reward for that was to get first pick in that year’s draft where they selected a quarterback from Ohio, Joe Burrow, who had just had one of the best college seasons of all time, winning a national championship and the award for best player. Burrow’s rookie season last year was cut short when he tore his ACL, MCL, and a bunch of other stuff in his knee, but he returned this year and has been integral in Cincinnati’s Cinderella story of a year. Basically, they are where they should maybe be in a few years and everyone is surprised.

Here’s why you should root for the Rams:

 You know how when you watch a soccer game and both teams spend most of the time passing the ball backwards and you wonder what would happen if just once a team threw caution to the wind and just tried to run straight forward and score? That’s the Rams. They’ve thrown everything reasonable at winning the Super Bowl and more. They’ve entirely mortgaged their future to win NOW in a way that no team has ever really tried before. They’ve assembled a group of star players worthy of one of those holiday ensemble movies by giving other teams basically all of their draft picks. It’s a high risk, high reward strategy. It’s admirable, in a way because it’s a strategy that takes winning a championship as seriously as football fans do, but in another way it feels kind of cheesy because poaching other teams’ best players to assemble your team doesn’t feel as virtuous as developing them yourself. It’s also a strategy that has not traditionally been thought to work as well in football as in other sports because of the relatively smaller impact a single player can have on a team game with 25+ players in important roles.

Here’s why you should root for the Bengals:

It’s never as hard to make a case for rooting for an underdog as an overdog. Rooting for the Bengals is rooting for an unlikely outcome – a team that goes from worst to first in two years while uniting a long-suffering fan base and overlooked city. A Bengals Super Bowl win would reinforce the overwhelming importance of the quarterback in football — it’s probably the only place where they might have an advantage over the Rams. It would also probably be more fun. The Rams will be a disappointment if they don’t win and relieved if they do. The Bengals will think, “we’ll get them next year” if they lose, but if they win, they’ll be jumping on top of stuff screaming in euphoria while smoking victory cigars and laughing hysterically.

Who are the characters?

The Rams constellation of stars:

  • Quarterback Matt Stafford was the first overall player chosen in 2009 and then spent 12 years playing for the Detroit Lions — an obstacle to success that some of the best players in football history have not been able to overcome — before being traded to the Rams this summer. He’s a clear improvement to the quarterback the Rams had before, but the question of whether he is moderately overrated or was just stuck in a terrible situation is still an open one.
  • Wide Receivers Cooper Kupp and Odell Beckham Jr.. Cooper Kupp is one of the Rams’ two big exceptions to their rule of acquiring their best players from other teams. He has played for the Rams his whole career but has never been better than this year when he led the league in every important wide receiver metric. He’s white, which is very unusual for top-level wide receivers, and some of the sports podcasts I listen to have been wondering how much of his success is at least partially because opposing players and coaches just don’t really believe he can beat them the way he is. Odell Beckham Jr. got extremely famous as a rookie when he impersonated Spider Man and caught a ball with just his pinkie while falling backwards and simultaneously sprinting at full speed. His old team, the New York Giants, doesn’t do very well with big personalities, particularly if they are young, brash, Black ones, which Beckham is, so they sent him to Cleveland, a fate second only to Detroit in its grossness. He was so unpopular there that they actually cut him in the middle of this year and the Rams snapped him up. Since then he’s been… very good.
  • Aaron Donald, the other of the Rams enormous homegrown stars has been widely thought of as the best player in the NFL for his entire eight year career. The reason you might not have heard of him (aside from him being a football player) is that he plays defensive tackle, one of the most nondescript positions on most teams. The defensive tackle lines up opposite the center (the guy who snaps the ball to the quarterback) and depending on the way the defense is set up, either is a giant dude who mostly just acts as a boulder and tries not to let the offensive linemen move him or tries to tackle the quarterback but isn’t ever really expected to get there. Donald is the exception. From this interior position, he’s had as many sacks (tackling the quarterback with the ball) as anyone else in the league, even the players who play in positions more advantageous for this position. He’s also very much in the minds of opposing players and coaches. I heard an interview with a guy who had played against him on the offensive line (guarding the quarterback from people like Donald) and he said that his team and others adopt a “four hands on Donald” approach. That’s right, every time the ball is snapped, the offensive team feels like it’s worth it to sacrifice two players just to try to stop Donald… and they still often fail.
  • Jalen Ramsey is the other big star on the Rams defense. He plays defensive back but in a way that is creative and unique enough that internally the Rams say that he plays the “star” position. One of the subplots of the game will be whether the Rams choose to have Ramsey shadow the Bengals best wide receiver or just have him play his normal role.

The Bengals don’t have the star power of the Rams, but they are driven by a trio of young players who will certainly become superstars if they win this game:

  • Quarterback Joe Burrow, who I mentioned in the tl;dr is the driver of the train or some such metaphor. He’s, I dunno, really really good. He also has all the confidence of the young but somehow manages not to be gross about it. He smokes cigars to celebrate his victories. When asked whether the diamonds in his chain were real, he replied that of course they were, he gets paid too much for them to be anything but real. He’s a bit of a throwback quarterback because he’s not capable of running with the ball very much, he just gets the ball and throws the ball. 
  • Wide Receivers Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins are Burrow’s main pass catchers. When the Bengals drafted Chase near the top of this year’s draft, most commentators said they had made a mistake because the Bengals seemed to need someone on the offensive line to protect Chase more than they needed another good wide receiver. Well, so far, that seems wrong. Chase and Burrow, who were teammates in college, have picked up right where they left off. Like Burrow, Chase isn’t the tallest, fastest, or most outstanding athlete, he just seems to play football better than everyone else. Higgins, a second year player who was friends in high school with Sonja’s cousin, has all of the physical qualities that Chase lacks. He is the tallest, fastest, and most outstanding athlete, and he makes an enormously overqualified secondary target for the Bengals. 
  • Oh, I should also probably mention Evan McPherson, the Bengals rookie kicker, who has made every kick he’s attempted in the playoffs this year and had the temerity to say to a teammate as he was going out on the field to kick a potentially game winning field goal in the divisional round, “well, it looks like we’re going to the Championship game.” Gah, so annoying, so confident, so… good?

What to watch for or how we’ll know who is going to win:

Well, the Rams should win, but because football is played with an oblong ball, who knows. Conventional wisdom says that the most important area to watch will be the battle between Aaron Donald and his quarterback mauling sidekicks against the Bengals offensive line. This is the Rams’ greatest strength against the Bengals weakest unit. And the same conventional wisdom would tell you that no quarterback is good enough to succeed when he’s on his back or being pummeled into Bolivia. (Then again, in their second playoff game this year, the Bengals gave up an all-time NFL record number of sacks and Burrow was still able to lead them to victory, so who knows?) Donald in particular is capable of wrecking all of the Bengals plans – he’s number 99 and as much as is possible given that the camera follows the ball, I’ll just be watching him when he’s on the field.

When the Rams are on offense, I’ll be watching to see how many of the Bengals defenders try to get to the quarterback and how many drop back to cover the pass catchers. In beating the Chiefs (the team most people thought would be in the Super Bowl), the Bengals defense frustrated Patrick Mahomes (most people think he’s the best quarterback in the universe) by putting eight players in coverage and only rushing him with three. This is one more/less than normal and it was oddly effective. Hindsight being 20/20, the Chiefs probably should have counteracted this move by running the ball instead of continuing to try to throw it. The Rams, one would think, will not make the same mistake. They like running the football and only hubris would keep them from responding to this defensive approach by doing the simple, effective thing over and over again.

Why do NFL players kneel during the National Anthem?

Dear Sports Fan,

Please tell us why NFL players want to kneel during the National Anthem. And explain what, if anything, this has to do with respect or disrespect for the U.S. military.

Thanks,
RKR

— — —

Dear RKR,

The experience of seeing NFL football players kneeling during the National Anthem before a game has become a common one of the past couple of years as has the experience of having their act become a subject of political controversy. As the players’ acts of protest have become more controversial, their intent has become increasingly hidden by claims from outside observers. This makes developing an opinion about whether to support the protests and relatedly, whether the protests are disrespectful toward the American Flag much more tricky. Explanations for the reasoning behind the protest are all over the place. For example, here is the start of the Wikipedia entry on the U.S. National Anthem Protests:

Since August 2016, some U.S. athletes have silently protested against “systematic oppression”,[2] “equality and social injustice”,[3] “racism and injustice in our criminal system”,[4] “oppression of people of color in the United States”,[5] and to not “show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color”[6] during the playing of the U.S. national anthem.[7] Many players since 2017 have started to protest against the policies of President Donald Trump.[8]*

*It’s worth noting that the sources for those claims are, in order: [2] Sporting News, [3] USA Today, [4] Fox News, [5] SB Nation, [6] NFL.com, [7] Fox News, [8] Fox News. 

As someone who follows sports news and political news quite actively, I am sure that I carry my own share of bias into this answer, so I’m going to do my best to answer your question without editorializing.

The first NFL player to protest during the National Anthem was Colin Kaepernick. On August 14, 2016, the San Francisco 49ers — the NFL team that employed Kaepernick at the time — played the Houston Texans in a preseason game. Kaepernick sat on a team bench during the playing of the National Anthem. He did the same thing the following week during the 49ers preseason game against the Denver Broncos. He did the same thing once more in the 49ers next preseason game against the Green Bay Packers on August 26, 2016. This time, a few reporters noticed and asked him questions about it after the game.

This got the story going but it didn’t truly explode until three days later, on August 29, when then presidential candidate Donald Trump was asked about it in a KIRO radio interview by Dori Monson and responded by saying, “I have followed it and I think it’s personally not a good thing, I think it’s a terrible thing. And maybe he should find a country that works better for him, let him try. It won’t happen.” From that moment on, the story of the protests have become increasingly calcified as an “us vs. them” fight with, generally speaking, protesting NFL players and liberals on one side and the NFL commissioner, (most) NFL owners, President Trump, and conservatives on the other. In order to get the clearest possible picture of why, let’s go back to that brief period between August 26 and 29, 2016 after the protest had been noticed but before they had become a controversy.

The day after that August 26 preseason game, the New York Times and NFL.com each ran stories about Kaepernick’s protest. With the benefit of hindsight, they are noticeably balanced in their portrayal. According to Christine Hauser of the New York Times, Kaepernick’s protest was “a statement against racial oppression.” The NFL.com’s article on the same day by Steve Wyche attributed Kaepernick’s protest to, “what he deems are wrongdoings against African Americans and minorities in the United States.” Both stories carried a quote from Kaepernick’s post-game interview: 

“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

Both the New York Times and NFL.com seem to have done a fair job of summarizing Kaepernick’s intent, although neither of them provide the specific context of police violence against people of color that is so obvviously present in Kaepernick’s last sentence. The following week, in the final preseason game the 49ers played that year, Kaepernick was joined in his protest by teammate Eric Reid. This time, both players knelt during the National Anthem instead of sitting. A year after this, Reid wrote an op-ed in the New York Times explaining his reasoning for joining Kaepernick. Reid wrote, “In early 2016, I began paying attention to reports about the incredible number of unarmed black people being killed by the police… A few weeks later, during preseason, my teammate Colin Kaepernick chose to sit on the bench during the national anthem to protest police brutality.”

In terms of why they switched from sitting to kneeling, here’s what Reid wrote, “After hours of careful consideration, and even a visit from Nate Boyer, a retired Green Beret and former N.F.L. player, we came to the conclusion that we should kneel, rather than sit, the next day during the anthem as a peaceful protest. We chose to kneel because it’s a respectful gesture. I remember thinking our posture was like a flag flown at half-mast to mark a tragedy.”

It seems clear that the protest was generally about the oppression of people of color in the United States and specifically about police brutality. Whether you believe it is disrespectful is a more complicated question. I am reminded of a long rambling car-ride conversation on the subject of disrespect I had with a childhood friend who is now a philosophy professor. We were debating whether an act is disrespectful because of the intent of the person doing it or based on how the person on the receiving end perceives it. If you believe it’s based on the intent of the actor, then you may have enough information now to make up your own mind. If, however, (and this was my side of the argument,) you believe that whether something is disrespectful is based on how the other person perceived it, then… well… the question you’re left with is this: who gets to decide whether the National Anthem or the United States Flag feels disrespected? Who speaks for the country? And isn’t that the underlying political question of our time?

It’s not going to be solved here but thanks for reading anyway,
Ezra Fischer

Why does the NFL have preseason games?

Dear Sports Fan,

Why does the NFL have preseson games? What’s the point? As far as I can tell, no one watches them and they don’t count for anything!

Thanks,
Guillermo

— — —

Dear Guillermo,

Before I go off on a long, embroidered explanation about who is interested in the NFL preseason and why, I do want to say that I am a big fan of NFL football and I don’t think I’ve ever watched a full preseason game. So far this year, I’ve glanced at one in a bar while having dinner and that’s it. Lots of people — NFL football fans or not — fall somewhere on the scale from ignoring to despising the preseason. There are three categories of people I can think of who find the preseason to be very important: coaches and some players, gamblers/fantasy football experts, and super-fans.

Why NFL coaches (and some players) care about the NFL preseason

For NFL coaches, the preseason is a chance to see players in an environment as close to real NFL games as possible. Of course, preseason games don’t look, from a fan’s perspective, very much like regular season NFL games. The play is scattered, the drama is missing, and the players are not the ones we’re used to; at least not for very long. Starters tend to play for less than a quarter in most preseason games.

During most of each preseason game, the players on the field whose names you may not recognize are playing for jobs. This is because the number of players an NFL team is allowed to “carry” or have on their team shrinks dramatically at the end of the preseason. During the preseason, teams are allowed to carry 90 players. At the start of the regular season, this number drops to 53. Although there are still some ways for teams to hold on to players and for players to hold on to jobs beyond the 53 during the season, making the 53-player roster is a big deal.

Preseason games are the highest stakes moment in a very high stakes tryout for players who are right on the edge of making it or not in the NFL. Make it, and you and your family stands to gain a lot financially (as long as you stay healthy and productive). Miss it and your path to a career as a professional football player takes a major hit. If you’re interested in what that is like, Charles Siebert wrote an amazing article in the New York Times about a linebacker trying to make the Atlanta Falcons.

While their players are concerned with making the team, coaches are equally focused on choosing the right 53 players to start the season with. While a decision about whether to hire one backup right guard or another may not seem like a big deal to outside observers, NFL coaches famously focused on details. They have to be because there are a very limited number of jobs available for head coaches (32) and it’s a lot easier for teams to fire a coach when things aren’t going well than it is to trade star players.

Preseason games also seem like a good time for coaches to try out new tactics to see if they are going to work in the regular season. While I’m sure that coaches do this a bit on the margins, on the whole they tend not to. They are aware of how closely examined everything they do will be by their competitors and they don’t want to reveal any truly new innovations.

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What do I need to know about football and Super Bowl 50?

Who, when, how?

Super Bowl 50 between the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers is at 6:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, February 7. It will be televised on CBS and streamed for free on CBS.com. For background on the Denver Broncos history, read this post. For background on the history of the Carolina Panthers franchise, read this post.

What’s the plot of Super Bowl 50?

Virtually everyone you talk to thinks that the Carolina Panthers are going to win and win easily. Why is that? What makes people so sure that the Broncos won’t be able to do much when they have the ball? How can anyone be so confident that the Broncos defense, which has been the best in the league all year, won’t be able to stymie the Carolina offense so completely as to win the game themselves? Is the conventional wisdom right this time? Find out in our plot post.

Who are the key characters of Super Bowl 50 on the Carolina Panthers?

Read about quarterback Cam Newton and the issues of race that have plagued, surrounded, and elevated him throughout his career. Then read about how head coach Ron Rivera’s reputation changed from a boring failure to a radical success. Meet some key members of the Panthers extraordinary defense including a defensive lineman who grew up in Tonga, a linebacker who will be playing two weeks after breaking his arm, and the newest star in the league, defensive back Josh Norman.

Who are the key characters of Super Bowl 50 on the Denver Broncos?

Learn about legendary quarterback Peyton Manning and how close his story is to mimicking that of former Broncos quarterback and now team president, John Elway. The Broncos’ connections to the past continue in our examination of head coach Gary Kubiak, who spent his entire playing career as a backup quarterback in Denver. Meet some key members of the (perhaps) even more extraordinary defense on the Broncos including a colossal defensive lineman, a swashbuckling linebacker, and a bruising defensive back.

How can I quickly study up on football in time for the Super Bowl?

We have a ton of content on Dear Sports Fan for learning football. Some of it is available in a couple email correspondence courses, Football 101 an Football 201: Positions. I encourage you to sign up for those, but they won’t help very much if you’ve got a Super Bowl party to go to today. Instead, you can read up on some of the basics right now!

I also wrote an epic series on brain injuries in football a year ago, culminating with my suggestion on how to fix the game. You can find my suggestion, with links to all the previous posts here.

However you choose to enjoy the game today, do it with curiosity and kindness,
Ezra Fischer

Super Bowl 50 – What's the plot? Who is going to win?

The Super Bowl is one of the biggest sporting events in the world. It’s certainly the biggest sporting event in the United States. This year, the game is between the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers and will be held at 6:30 on Sunday, February 7 and televised on CBS. Watching any football game is more fun if you understand who the key characters are and what compelling plots and sub-plots there are. It also helps to know some of the basic rules of how football works. Dear Sports Fan is here to help you with both! For learning the basics of football, start with Football 101 and work up to Football 201. To learn about the characters and plot, read on and stay tuned for more posts throughout the week.

What’s the plot of Super Bowl 50?

The Panthers are expected to win. For a Super Bowl which matches the top seeds in each conference or half of the NFL, and therefore should be a relatively even match-up, this belief is remarkably widely held. One way of telling this is to look at the line Vegas set for the game and what happened to it. If you’re not someone who understands football betting, this post provides good background. The line opened (was first set) with Carolina as a three point favorite, suggesting that Vegas thought Carolina was three points better than Denver. Over the two weeks between when this line was set and now, so many people bet so much money on Carolina, that they actually moved the line so that Carolina was favored by five or five and a half points. Remember that the goal of a line-setter is to get half the money on each team so that no matter who wins, the bookies can basically pay the winners on one side with money from the losers on the other and pocket the transaction fees from both sides. When too much money comes in on one side, like it did for Carolina, Vegas will move the line so that it’s more favorable to bet on the team getting fewer bets. Even if you think Carolina is going to win the game, it’s much more attractive to bet on them when they only have to win by four points (Carolina by three means they need to win by four for a bet on them to pay out) than when they have to win by six points for you to win. The line moving so far is a sure sign that most people think that Carolina is going to win fairly easily. So, why are people so sure? We’ll examine the game in two phases — when Denver has the ball and when Carolina does — and try to explain the challenges Denver faces on both sides.

Denver’s offense is likely to struggle against Carolina for one main reason: their quarterback, Peyton Manning, is a shell of his former self. Manning is 39 years old, near-ancient for a football player, and he had neck surgery a few years ago. This has left him with a severely under-powered arm (for an NFL quarterback, for a normal person, he’s still a super hero,) and with little to no feeling in the fingers of his throwing arm. That he’s able to play at all is incredible but it doesn’t change the fact that his shortcomings will become his team’s shortcomings. Manning finds it difficult to throw deep down the field to his wide receivers. Alas, that’s the strength of one of his top two receivers, Demarius Thomas who is now less effective. More importantly, opposing defenses know Manning is less effective throwing downfield than he used to be, and they set themselves up accordingly. The Panthers, who also have one of the best one-on-one defenders in the league, won’t waste too many players defending deep passes. This leaves them free to concentrate on stopping or limiting the effectiveness of the two other things an offense can do: run and pass short. Carolina’s defense is hell on offenses trying to do these things at the best of times, but they’ll be downright Cerberus-like against a team they know can only do these things. Carolina has two excellent giant defensive tackles who will disrupt the Broncos running game, mostly by making it impossible for Denver’s offensive line to create clear areas for their running back to sneak through. When a running back does sneak through or when the Broncos circumvent the Panthers linemen by completing a short pass, the ball-carrier is unlikely to get far because of the Panthers swift linebackers who will flow toward the ball-carrier during this game with a ferocity and speed matched only by you or me headed toward the chip and dip at our Super Bowl parties. It’s hard to imagine Denver scoring many points on offense because it’s hard to imagine how they’ll find ways to gain more than five to seven yards on any single play.

Denver has made up for their deficits on offense all year by having the best defense in the league. Alas for Denver supporters, it seems like Carolina was designed specifically to thwart everything Denver is best at on defense. Denver excels at attacking their opposition’s quarterback. They’ve been able to hit, tackle, sack, and fluster almost every quarterback they’ve come across. They haven’t played anyone like Carolina’s quarterback Cam Newton though. Newton is not only enormous (6’5″ 245 lbs) but he’s also a normally unflappable person on the best streak of his career. If that weren’t enough, he is also an expert executor of the “read-option” offense. This tactic looks like a normal running play but gives the quarterback the option to look at how the defenders are reacting (read them) and then decide (because they have the option) to hand the ball off to the running back or keep it himself and run or throw it. At best, this tactic slows down opposing defenders. At worst, it leaves them bewildered and frozen in their tracks. Having the read-option in their back pocket and a physical, unflappable quarterback to run it, will make Carolina resistant to Denver’s defensive edge rushers. Denver has also been able to shut down opposing wide receivers all year with their combination of great defensive backs. Unfortunately, Carolina’s best pass-catcher is not a wide receiver, but a tight end — Greg Olsen. Denver did a great job on New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski in their last game but it is an area they’ve been (relatively) vulnerable to all year. Denver still has a great defense that will find ways to make life hard for Carolina, but because of how Carolina’s offense works, they will be less affected than nearly any other team would be.

Who is going to win?

Usually there’s more suspense at this point in the post (and the football season,) but given the thrust of this article, it’s hard to generate much. The Carolina Panthers are going to win. I just hope the Broncos can put up enough of a fight to make the game interesting! I think they will. Their formidable defense will find ways to frustrate Carolina’s offense, who it must be admitted, have not faced much adversity so far this year. Given a few lucky bounces and perhaps a lucky injury or two, the Broncos could just sneak through and find a way to win in a low scoring game… but they won’t. Panthers 22, Broncos 16.

Super Bowl 50 – Meet the Carolina Panthers defense

The Super Bowl is one of the biggest sporting events in the world. It’s certainly the biggest sporting event in the United States. This year, the game is between the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers and will be held at 6:30 on Sunday, February 7 and televised on CBS. Watching any football game is more fun if you understand who the key characters are and what compelling plots and sub-plots there are. It also helps to know some of the basic rules of how football works. Dear Sports Fan is here to help you with both! For learning the basics of football, start with Football 101 and work up to Football 201. To learn about the characters and plot, read on and stay tuned for more posts throughout the week.

There’s a cliche in football that “defense wins championships.” This year, it will definitely be true. No matter whether Carolina or Denver wins the Super Bowl, many will point to the defensive side of the ball as the reason for their victory. Football Outsiders, a website that produces innovative and trustworthy football statistics concludes that Denver had the best defense this year and that Carolina had the second best defense. To get a better appreciation for the defensive side of the ball, let’s explore some of the most important players. We already looked at Denver, now let’s focus on Carolina.

 

 

What’s the story with the defensive linemen on the Carolina Panthers?

Star Lotulelei and Kawann Short – The heart of the Panthers defense are their two young defensive tackles, Lotulelei and Short. Lotulelei and Short came into the league together, both drafted by the Panthers in the 2013 NFL draft. They share some similarities, both having been shockingly disregarded by major football powerhouse colleges before becoming stars on smaller teams — Purdue for Short and Utah for Lotulelei. Then, they both missed their chance to optimize their draft status, Lotulelei because of a virus that caused his heart to show as concerning on a pre-combine medical screen, and Short because of a hamstring injury. They’re not the same people by any means, Lotulelei spent the first nine years of his life in Tonga, Short was a two-sport star growing up in Chicago, where he wowed people by dunking despite his 300 lbs bulk. This year, both players have become (almost) household names thanks to their great play. Although both are capable of playing each other’s role, Lotulelei tends to occupy offensive linemen and target running backs while Short uses his overpowering strength or underhanded trickiness to get to opposing quarterbacks.

What’s the story with the linebackers on the Carolina Panthers?

Luke Kuechly – Middle linebacker, Luke Kuechly is literally at the center of the Panthers defense and he’s figuratively its heart. He’ll be wearing the green dot on his helmet which signifies that he is the only defensive player who gets the play calls radioed in from the coach and it’s his job to communicate them out to the rest of his teammates. Experiment for a few plays and just watch him — he wears number 59 — and marvel at how quickly he figures out what the offense is going to do and gets himself into a position to help stop them from doing it.

Thomas Davis – Davis is that guy you loved to hate in high school. Actually, check that — your high school had no one like Thomas Davis in it. But you would have hated him if he had been there. In high school, Davis played basketball, baseball, football, and ran track. He was great at everything. He played college football in his home state at the University of Georgia before being drafted in the first round of the NFL draft by Carolina in 2005. His first three years in the league were a flash of potential and budding greatness. Then in 2010, he tore the ACL in his right knee. Then he did it again. Then, amazingly, he did it again. Same knee. No one had ever come back from three ACL injuries on the same knee, but Davis was determined to be the first. Amazingly, he’s back and playing as well and seemingly as fast as he ever has. It seemed for a minute like his story this year would have a sad coda to it when he broke his forearm in the NFC championship game two weeks ago but Davis, thanks to a 3D printed brace, doesn’t plan to let that stop him from playing in the Super Bowl.

What’s the story with the defensive backs on the Carolina Panthers?

Josh Norman – If you had surveyed a group of football fans a year ago today about who corner back Josh Norman was, you would probably have gotten a lot of blank stares. Now, after the season he had this year, he’s a household name. Norman is one of the rarest commodities in football, a shutdown corner. He will line up opposite a team’s best wide receiver and basically erase him from the game. Quarterbacks have learned that throwing to a player guarded by Norman is close to a no-win situation and it can be a giant loss if Norman gets his hands on the ball. Especially with Peyton Manning as diminished as he is, I would expect him to simply ignore the player that Norman is guarding. This will probably be frustrating for Norman, who likes to make plays, but it will be extraordinarily helpful to the Panthers, who get to focus their attention elsewhere, safe in the knowledge that Norman can take care of himself.

 

Super Bowl 50 – Meet the Denver Broncos defense

The Super Bowl is one of the biggest sporting events in the world. It’s certainly the biggest sporting event in the United States. This year, the game is between the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers and will be held at 6:30 on Sunday, February 7 and televised on CBS. Watching any football game is more fun if you understand who the key characters are and what compelling plots and sub-plots there are. It also helps to know some of the basic rules of how football works. Dear Sports Fan is here to help you with both! For learning the basics of football, start with Football 101 and work up to Football 201. To learn about the characters and plot, read on and stay tuned for more posts throughout the week.

There’s a cliche in football that “defense wins championships.” This year, it will definitely be true. No matter whether Carolina or Denver wins the Super Bowl, many will point to the defensive side of the ball as the reason for their victory. Football Outsiders, a website that produces innovative and trustworthy football statistics concludes that Denver had the best defense this year and that Carolina had the second best defense. To get a better appreciation for the defensive side of the ball, let’s explore some of the most important players. First, we’ll look at Denver.

What’s the story with the defensive linemen on the Denver Broncos?

Derek Wolfe – Wolfe is a gargantuan defensive lineman. He’s listed as being 6’5″ tall and 285 lbs. Even in a sport like football, where giants are a run-of-the-mill sight, Wolfe sticks out. As a 3-4 defensive end (if you don’t know what that means and want to, read the article on defensive linemen linked above,) Wolfe is expected to play a hybrid game, half attacking the quarterback, half being the first line of defense against the run. Wolfe provides both of those services to his team spectacularly. In fact, he has been so spectacular this year compared to his first few years in the league, that a neutral observer is forced to wonder how he improved so much. Add that wonder to the four game suspension he served at the start of the year for breaking the NFL substance policy (he claimed he took a medicine he didn’t know was against the rules) and you’ve probably got your answer. The truth is, most football fans don’t actually care very much if professional players are taking drugs to stay on top, they just enjoy watching them play.

What’s the story with the linebackers on the Denver Broncos?

Von Miller – Von Miller is a swashbuckling linebacker. He lives to sack quarterbacks. And he is great at it, potentially historically great. At the start of this season, he became the third fastest player to reach the 50 sack mark, behind only Reggie White and Derrick Thomas, both retired hall of fame players. Although Miller has his own unfortunate past (a six game performance enhancing drug suspension, several speeding tickets, an arrest for failure to pay the speeding tickets…) he’s also an enjoyably colorful character. He’s the only one in the game who could inspire this paragraph in a Boston Globe article: “Chicken farming is just one of his many odd passions. He wears thick, plastic-rimmed “geek chic” glasses, wears a giant Russian fur trapper hat and eccentric cowboy boots, and covered his body in random tattoos, including one of a chicken, or “Chicken Fred,” on his leg. He was the only rookie to put his name on the NFL Players Association’s lawsuit against the NFL in the 2011 lockout. His sack dances and celebrations are worthy of “Amercia’s Best Dance Crew.”

DeMarcus Ware – DeMarcus Ware is a savvy veteran still capable of making explosive plays. He played nine years for the Dallas Cowboys and was the team’s defensive leader. Because the Cowboys are simultaneously the most loved and most hated team in the league, this made him a very well-known player. Even the most ardent Cowboys haters developed a grudging respect for Ware, particularly because during his time with the team, they never won very much or succeeded in the playoffs, despite Ware’s efforts. He left the team in 2014 and signed with the Broncos. He has flourished there, despite his age, and provided both mentorship and high quality performances on the field.

What’s the story with the defensive backs on the Denver Broncos?

Aquib Talib – Cornerback Talib is a perfect example of how contextual success in the NFL can be. As a highly respected player in college, Talib was drafted in the first round of the NFL draft. That guarantees a player an enviable first contract but it’s no guarantee of success. Success is much more multi-factored than that and perhaps the biggest factor is which team a player is drafted by. Talib was taken by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who were just entering a dysfunctional phase that has lasted until today. Talib never quite lived up to his billing there. Then, in 2012, he signed as a free agent with the New England Patriots, one of the most ruthlessly functional teams in the league. He was a star. From the Patriots, he moved to the Broncos, another high functioning organization, and has continued to be an excellent player. Context matters. Talib is a big, physical corner who is as likely to knock a receiver off their timing at the line of scrimmage (contact with a receiver is allowed for the first five yards from the line of scrimmage) as he is to drop back and try to run with him.

 

Super Bowl 50 – Who is Carolina Panthers coach Ron Rivera?

The Super Bowl is one of the biggest sporting events in the world. It’s certainly the biggest sporting event in the United States. This year, the game is between the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers and will be held at 6:30 on Sunday, February 7 and televised on CBS. Watching any football game is more fun if you understand who the key characters are and what compelling plots and sub-plots there are. It also helps to know some of the basic rules of how football works. Dear Sports Fan is here to help you with both! For learning the basics of football, start with Football 101 and work up to Football 201. To learn about the characters and plot, read on and stay tuned for more posts throughout the week.

Head coach of an NFL football team is an enormously important and high profile job populated mostly by even more enormously self-important men who never miss an opportunity to raise their profile. As such, it’s actually surprising how little press the two Super Bowl coaches this year are receiving. Both Carolina head coach Ron Rivera and Denver head coach Gary Kubiak are the exceptions that prove the rule. Despite their teams making the Super Bowl, neither one is the center of attention. The plot of this game does not revolve around either of them. They aren’t groundbreaking “geniuses.” Nor is this a redemptive journey for either of them. That doesn’t mean that either of them is uninteresting or has a boring back story though, so without further ado, let’s explore who they are and how they got here.

What’s Carolina Panthers coach Ron Rivera’s story?

This is not coach Ron Rivera’s first trip to the Super Bowl. He played linebacker on the legendary 1985 Chicago Bears team, often brought up as having had one the best defenses of all time. Rivera played linebacker for the Bears for nine years before retiring and moving first into the booth as a TV football analyst and then into the coaching fraternity. Until he was hired in 2011 as head coach of the Carolina Panthers, he had always been a defensive coach — either coaching the linebackers on the team or the entire defense.

The best way to illustrate Ron Rivera’s story as a coach in the NFL is to examine his nickname — Riverboat Ron. Riverboat Ron refers to the gambling done on riverboat.

— quick historical diversion: This gambling has had two waves — during the 19th century, when riverboats were a primary form of transportation, professional gamblers used them as an easy way to find bored rich people with nothing to do, swiftly separate them from some of their money, and just as swiftly exit their presence. Once steamboats were superseded by other modes of travel, this habit died down. It was resurrected in the late 1980s when a clever Iowan figured out that a casino, located in a traveling riverboat, would not be under the same gambling prohibitions that a static, land-based casino would be. This trick turned into a trend, and so the second great era of riverboat gambling started. Now-a-days, many of the riverboat casinos are either “boats in moats” that never travel anywhere or even simply buildings built on stilts over water. end diversion — 

Rivera got his nickname during the 2013 season. He started the year on shaky ground, having gone an uninspiring 13-19 in his first two seasons. He was particularly under fire among fans and in the media for being overly conservative. His decisions to do things that were widely perceived as safe but misguided, mostly preferring to punt or kick field goals on fourth down instead of “going for it” were blamed for his team’s poor record in close games. This pattern continued for the first two games of the 2013 season. In the third game, it reversed. In the third game, Rivera made the “aggressive” choice and it helped his team win the next game. He cemented this change of tactics by making a similar choice in each of the next five games. That was enough of a sample to seem like he had changed, not just his tactics, but his personality as well. Riverboat Ron had earned his nickname.

According to Wikipedia, Rivera is not the biggest fan of his nickname. He prefers to think of what he does as “calculated risk taking” not gambling. Many football fans would disagree even with that. Just before the time Rivera made his “transformation,” football thought went through its own transition in how it thought about those decisions. Statisticians who descended toward football from other sports, like baseball which had an earlier statistical revolution, made it clear that almost all coaches had been doing their teams a disservice by being far too conservative. This gave rise to clever gags like the New York Times Fourth Down Bot which analyzes fourth down situations and comes up with the statistically correct answer. Seen through the eyes of macro football history, Rivera did not transform from a conservative to a radical coach, he simply adjusted to the new conservatism.

Whatever he has done as a coach has been greatly assisted by the remarkably talented players he has on offense and even more so on defense. These days, Rivera is looked at as a very good leader who delegates well to clever assistant coaches and creates a wonderful environment for his many talented and quirky players to thrive.

Super Bowl 50 – Who is Denver Broncos coach Gary Kubiak?

The Super Bowl is one of the biggest sporting events in the world. It’s certainly the biggest sporting event in the United States. This year, the game is between the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers and will be held at 6:30 on Sunday, February 7 and televised on CBS. Watching any football game is more fun if you understand who the key characters are and what compelling plots and sub-plots there are. It also helps to know some of the basic rules of how football works. Dear Sports Fan is here to help you with both! For learning the basics of football, start with Football 101 and work up to Football 201. To learn about the characters and plot, read on and stay tuned for more posts throughout the week.

Head coach of an NFL football team is an enormously important and high profile job populated mostly by even more enormously self-important men who never miss an opportunity to raise their profile. As such, it’s actually surprising how little press the two Super Bowl coaches this year are receiving. Both Carolina head coach Ron Rivera and Denver head coach Gary Kubiak are the exceptions that prove the rule. Despite their teams making the Super Bowl, neither one is the center of attention. The plot of this game does not revolve around either of them. They aren’t groundbreaking “geniuses.” Nor is this a redemptive journey for either of them. That doesn’t mean that either of them is uninteresting or has a boring back story though, so without further ado, let’s explore who they are and how they got here.

What’s Denver Broncos coach Gary Kubiak’s story?

Gary Kubiak has been connected in some way with the Denver Broncos for most of his adult life. He was drafted as a quarterback by the team in the eighth round of the 1983 NFL draft. This was the same draft in which the team acquired quarterback John Elway, the number one overall draft pick that year, in a trade. So, Kubiak was not drafted to start, but rather to be the backup quarterback — the break glass in case of emergency option. He remained with the Broncos, playing only when Elway was injured, for his entire nine year career. After he retired, he went almost immediately into coaching. His first job as a coach was for the Texas A&M’s college team, where he served as their running backs coach. This is somewhat remarkable — a former player who wants to get into coaching almost always coaches his own position first. The fact that Kubiak’s first job was a cross-positional job says a lot about who he was as a player (observant, interested in what was going on around him even if it wasn’t directly his responsibility, etc.) and a lot about who he was going to become as a coach. From Texas A&M, Kubiak moved into the NFL as an assistant coach, first for the San Francisco 49ers and then for the Denver Broncos, before getting his first shot at a head coaching job for the Houston Texans in 2006.

In Houston, where he coached for eight seasons, Kubiak became a known quantity. He coaches like an ideal backup quarterback plays the position: steadily, unspectacularly, and reliably. He gets the job done. Look at his seasonal records in Houston, where he inherited an unsteady team:

  • 2006 – 6-10
  • 2007 – 8-8
  • 2008 – 8-8
  • 2009 – 9-7
  • 2010 – 6-10
  • 2011 – 10-6
  • 2012 – 12-4
  • 2013 – 2-11 (fired mid-season)

Until that last season, it’s hard to imagine a more mundane but functionally successful coaching record. As was foreshadowed by his first job as a coach, Kubiak is known for leading offenses that excel at running the ball and whose quarterbacks succeed through being an unremarkable cog in the system. Kubiak doesn’t draw a lot of attention to himself on the sidelines. He doesn’t throw temper-tantrums at refs or scream at his players. The only time he ever became the story was when he collapsed on the sideline in 2013 and had to be taken to a hospital. He had suffered the precursor to a stroke but was thankfully able to avoid any long-term harm.

After a year as offensive coordinator of the Baltimore Ravens, Kubiak was hired to become head coach of the Denver Broncos this season by none other than John Elway, Kubiak’s old quarterback buddy from his playing career. This creates an interesting dynamic. After backing up Elway for nine years as a player, Kubiak is back in a subordinate position to him. That’s one way of looking at it, but although team presidents and general managers like Elway can hire and fire coaches, the failure of a head coach is also the primary reason why presidents/general managers lose their jobs. It’s a much more symbiotic relationship than you would expect.

The more interesting plot with Kubiak as coach this year has been his interactions with quarterback Peyton Manning. For most of his amazing career, Peyton Manning has been de-facto offensive coordinator as well as quarterback, designing the offense and calling the shots. Kubiak, as we now know, wants a quarterback to fit into his system, not the other way around. This season could easily be characterized as a struggle between Manning and Kubiak over control of the offense. Because they both have the same goal in mind — winning the Super Bowl — it would be more accurate to say it’s been a collaborative struggle to find a blended approach that works for both men and wins football games. Finally, in the last couple games, they seem to have found it. Kubiak calls plays that put Manning in positions he is comfortable with and Manning executes them in a typically Kubiakian conservative way. It’s gotten them to the Super Bowl. We’ll find out on Sunday if it’s good enough to win.

Super Bowl 50 – Cam Newton and race in football

The Super Bowl is one of the biggest sporting events in the world. It’s certainly the biggest sporting event in the United States. This year, the game is between the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers and will be held at 6:30 on Sunday, February 7 and televised on CBS. Watching any football game is more fun if you understand who the key characters are and what compelling plots and sub-plots there are. It also helps to know some of the basic rules of how football works. Dear Sports Fan is here to help you with both! For learning the basics of football, start with Football 101 and work up to Football 201. To learn about the characters and plot, read on and stay tuned for more posts throughout the week.

As is true of most American institutions, especially those with histories that go back 100 years or more, professional football has a complex, coded, and cruel history of racism. Although we have undoubtedly made giant strides toward correcting many of the racial issues in society and sports, many remain. The racial issues that remain are almost never talked about openly on television. Instead, they are referred to with a delicate coded language that you have to be on the inside of sports culture in order to catch. As surely as it is my goal on Dear Sports Fan to help people understand the basic terms of football, it is my responsibility to try to help sports outsiders understand the racist history and coded language of football. Super Bowl 50 provides a great opportunity to do this, particularly through the character of Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton.

In my previews of the last two Carolina Panthers playoff games, here’s how I’ve described Newton: “Quarterback Cam Newton is, and always has been a lightning rod for controversy. In college, he won a national championship with Auburn, and it was an even more open secret than with most high-profile college players that he had taken fairly large sums of money under the table for playing there. In the NFL, he’s been the subject of years of criticism for being too self-impressed, too brash, both criticisms that have suspiciously racial overtones. From a strictly football standpoint, he’s been an amazing success. He’s a combination of one of the top ten pure passers in the league with a top ten running back in a single body. Newton ran for over 600 yards and 10 touchdowns this season. This makes him an unusual double-threat for opposing defenses to fret about, especially when the Panthers get close to the goal line.”

For a long time in football, even after the sport had been integrated, African-Americans were barred from playing quarterback either directly or because of unconscious bias on the part of coaches who thought quarterbacks required too much intelligence or leadership to be played well by Black athletes, who they felt were lacking in those qualities. Black players were pointed toward positions like running back, wide receiver, and any defensive role, all of which were thought to reward people with great “athleticism” or “natural talent” — both phrases used to describe African-Americans. The “athleticism” stereotype claims that African-Americans were either bred by slave-owners to be more physical than White people or are somehow genetically superior to White people (which offers an excuse to believe that the reverse could be true morally or intellectually). The “natural talent” descriptor is a subtle way of building on that idea while adding the insulting suggestion that Black athletes don’t practice, train, and study their craft as much as White athletes (who are often described as having “great motors” or as being “hard workers.”

As the cultural ban on African-American quarterbacks receded in the 1990s and 2000s, it was replaced by a new bias. Black people could be quarterbacks, but they wouldn’t do it the same way as White people had. The phrase “Black Quarterback” became synonymous with “running” or “scrambling” quarterback — a player who leveraged his athletic ability and improvisational skill to threaten a defense through passing or by running with the ball himself. Never mind that there had been plenty of White quarterbacks who had played with this style before, and some examples of African-American quarterbacks who did not play with this style (although most African-American quarterbacks have been scramblers… perhaps another example of bias in coaches who accepted Black quarterbacks only if they conformed to a single idea of how someone who looked like one way would play the position). The term “Black quarterback” also offered another way of attaching a derogatory association to African-Americans, because the accepted wisdom is that a scrambling quarterback will generally have a shorter and less successful career than a pocket passing quarterback.

Finally, in the 2010s, the NFL and football culture is beginning to accept that African-American quarterbacks can play the position with all different approaches. What remains of the bias, however, is a desire to control or judge Black quarterbacks on how their non football-related behavior on and off the field. Although the culture seems to be accepting that a Black quarterback may stand in the pocket and pass the ball instead of running himself, it’s still slow to accept that player’s personal expression through his clothing, public comments, and on-field behavior including celebrating with or remonstrating his teammates. This, then, is the final frontier for racial acceptance in football.

Cam Newton is, as I wrote before, almost the perfect lightning rod for all of this racially loaded history and emotion. He is a traditional so-called “Black quarterback” because of his power and proficiency running with the ball, but his equal success throwing the ball defies expectations. He also refuses to adhere to traditional notions of how a quarterback is expected to speak and behave. As a rookie, he famously stated that he wanted to be, not just a football player, but an “entertainer and icon.” This broke an unwritten rule, enforced more stringently, I would imagine, for African-Americans than White players, that players should focus only and obsessively on their sport. (Never mind that his opposite in this game, Peyton Manning, has hosted Saturday Night Live a half-dozen times and seems to be on every third television commercial.) On the field, he celebrates openly, joyously, and if you listen to some of his critics, notoriously. Again, this breach in football-decorum seems to be more noticed and criticized when a Black player breaches it than when a White one does.

If you’re looking for a positive ending to all of this, there is one. In sports, winning seems to wipe away almost all biases. Just by making the Super Bowl, Cam Newton has already silenced and even turned most of his critics. What’s more, the Panthers are favored to win this game, so there’s a good chance that Newton’s impact on race in football is just getting started.