Tag: nfl

Cue Cards 12-30-13: NFL One Liners

clapperboardCue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

On Mondays during in the fall, the conversation is so dominated by NFL football that the expression “Monday morning quarterback” has entered the vernacular. The phrase is defined by google as “a person who passes judgment on and criticizes something after the event.” With the popularity of fantasy football, we now have Monday morning quarterbacks talking about football from two different perspectives. We want you to be able to participate in this great tradition, so all fall we’ll be running NFL One Liners in our cue cards series on Monday. Use these tiny synopses throughout the day:

NFL One Liners

The last week of the regular season!

Cincinnati 34, Baltimore 17 — In what was a bit of a recurring theme for today, the Ravens needed to win this game to qualify for the playoffs and they seemed almost hamstrung by needing it so badly. The Bengals beat them soundly.

Pittsburgh 20, Cleveland 7 — The Steelers were the longest of the four teams in the AFC that had a chance to get the last playoff spot. They needed to win and have Baltimore, Miami, and San Diego lose. They came, so, so close.

Atlanta 20, Carolina 21 — This is the kind of game that illustrates how the NFL has more parity than any other league. The not-so-good Falcons gave the very-good Panthers a run for their money.

Minnesota 14, Detroit 13 — Having been eliminated from playoff contention last week in ignominious fashion, this was the cherry on top of the poop for Lions fans.

Tennessee 16, Houston 10 — By losing this game, the Texans clinched possession of the number one draft pick in next year’s NFL draft which goes to the team with the worst record. At least now Texans fans have something interesting to think about.

Indianapolis 30, Jacksonville 10 — Recently Super Bowls have been won by teams, like Baltimore last year, that haven’t been dominant during the regular season. The Colts have a little bit of that feel to them… but they could also just lose in the first round next weekend. Who knows?

Miami 7, New York Jets 20 — Miami was the worst of the teams that needed to win and just couldn’t do it. The Jets, despite seeming awful for most of the year, end on a high note by eliminating their rivals from the playoffs.

New York Giants 20, Washington 6 — This adds fuel to the fire of people claiming that Redskins coach Mike Shanahan is trying to get fired.

New England 34, Buffalo 20 — Ho hum, Tom Brady, Bill Bellichick, and the New England Patriots have their 13th winning season in a row. The next longest streak in the NFL is four.

Chicago 28, Green Bay 33 — This was one of two de-facto playoff games where the winner of the game would make the playoffs and the loser would be out. It was a great game with lots of drama and lead-changes, and it came down to some last minute heroics by star Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers who came back this weekend after missing seven weeks with a broken collar bone.

Oakland 14, Denver 34 — The Broncos and their quarterback Peyton Manning finished their record breaking season by breaking all kinds of records. The Raiders… not so much.

San Diego 27, Kansas City 24 — This was probably the weirdest game of the day. This game meant literally nothing to the Chiefs, who couldn’t move up or down in playoff seeding, and everything to the Chargers who knew they just needed to win to make the playoffs. The Chiefs benched almost all of their starters and still almost beat the Chargers in overtime. Fans in San Diego and Pittsburgh (which would have made the playoffs if the Chargers had lost) spent three and a half hours in agony.

New Orleans 42, Tampa Bay 17 — The Saints had to win to ensure a playoff spot and they certainly were convincing.

Arizona 20, San Francisco 23 — It must have been tough for the Cardinals players to concentrate knowing that they needed to win and have the Saints lose to make the playoffs. The Cardinals have the unwanted mantle of best team to miss the playoffs.

Seattle 27, St. Louis 9 — Last week I wrote that for some reason I still don’t think the Seahawks are very good. I still don’t. I will continue to write this until after they win the Super Bow.

Dallas 22, Philadelphia 24 — This was the second win-or-go-home game of the day and, like the Bears vs. Packers, it was an exciting game. The Cowboys continued their soap-opera-ish ways by losing their starting quarterback, Tony Romo, to back surgery in the week preceding this game. They still almost had enough to sneak by the Eagles and make the playoffs.

Why are Bowl Games Called Bowl Games?

Dear Sports Fan,

Why are college football bowl games called bowl games? Is it because of the Super Bowl?

Thanks,
Bill

— — —

Dear Bill,

College bowl games actually pre-date the Super Bowl by many years so if one was named after the other, it was the Super Bowl that was named after college football bowl games. Why college bowl games are named bowl games is another question entirely. The simple answer is that they are called bowl games because they are the biggest and most festive football games of the year, and as such are played in the biggest and most festive stadiums — which have historically almost all been shaped like bowls.

According to Wikipedia, the “history of the bowl game” began in 1902 when the “Tournament of Roses Association” sponsored a football game on New Year’s Day that was supposed to match the best college football team from the Eastern half of the country against the best in the West. As would become a tradition for this type of game, it didn’t quite match expectations. The game was a joke with Michigan beating Stanford 49-0 before Stanford quit with eight minutes left! Its lack of competitiveness left an impression on the organizers though and “for the next 13 years, the Tournament of Roses officials ran chariot races, ostrich races, and other various events instead of football.” They brought back football in 1916 and by 1921 it was so popular that a new stadium was commissioned that could hold the 40,000 plus spectators. Architect Myron Hunt copied his design from that of the Yale football stadium called the Yale Bowl because of its distinctive smooth, continuous, bowl-like shape. (A quick aside — the word bowl goes all the way back to Proto-Indo-European when it meant “rounded or swollen.”) The stadium was complete by 1923 and the Tournament of the Roses game that year between Penn State and USC was the first to be called the Rose Bowl.

The Rose Bowl stood alone for many years until the mid-thirties when four southern cities decided to emulate the successful tourist attraction by creating their own bowl games. The Sugar, Cotton, Orange, and Sun bowls sprouted between 1935 and 1937. This number has continued to grow throughout the years with a total of eight in 1950, 11 in 1970, 15 in 1980, 19 in 1990, 25 in 2000, and 35 today. The increasing number has created a dispersal of the interest and reverence felt for the original bowl games. It’s just not that big of a deal when 70 of the 120 college football teams play in a bowl game. Even the names of the bowl games feel less important now than they used to. It’s hard to blame the organizers of these games for selling the naming rights to them but one wishes the sponsors would be a little less parochial: San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia bowl, Franklin American Mortgage Music City bowl, BBVA Compass bowl. It’s little wonder that the clever website sellingout.com recommends selling the phrase “bowl game” short in the imaginary stock market of words.

 Using the word “bowl” to describe a sporting event has spread far and wide. As you noted in your question, the championship game of the NFL is called the Super Bowl. Other professional American Football leagues have used the moniker. The European Football League calls their championship game the Eurobowl. There is a Mermaid Bowl in Denmark and a Maple Bowl in Finland. In Canada there is the Banjo Bowl which is not a championship game but instead is used to label a rivalry game between the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Other rivalry games, even American college football games, have bowl names, like the Iron Bowl between Auburn and Alabama or the amusingly named Egg Bowl between Mississippi State and Ole Miss. Sometimes the word bowl will be used to retroactively refer to a notable game like the Ice Bowl played in Green Bay, Wisconsin at -15 degrees Fahrenheit. 

A historical theme that I find interesting is the transition from having the word “bowl” convey a sense of exhibition (and therefore inconclusiveness if not unimportance in terms of league standings) to almost the exact opposite meaning where “bowl” conveys that a game is of the utmost importance to standings. In todayifoundout.com’s post, Why Championship Football Games are Called Bowls, Daven Hiskey writes that the NFL first stole the word “bowl” for its end-of-year all-star exhibition game, the Pro Bowl. This suggests the earlier, tourist attraction, exhibition meaning. Years later, after the NFL had merged with the AFL, and now had a championship game to name, the league chose to copy Major League Baseball and name it the “World Championship Game.” Nonetheless, the phrase Super Bowl soon overtook World Championship, and by the second or third year of the league, was the de facto name for the final game, and soon after became official.

That’s probably more than you reckoned for about bowls! Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

Cue Cards 12-23-13: NFL One Liners

clapperboardCue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

On Mondays during in the fall, the conversation is so dominated by NFL football that the expression “Monday morning quarterback” has entered the vernacular. The phrase is defined by google as “a person who passes judgment on and criticizes something after the event.” With the popularity of fantasy football, we now have Monday morning quarterbacks talking about football from two different perspectives. We want you to be able to participate in this great tradition, so all fall we’ll be running NFL One Liners in our cue cards series on Monday. Use these tiny synopses throughout the day:

NFL One Liners

At this point in the season, the plot of most games has to do with whether the teams in it will make the playoffs.

Miami 0, Buffalo 19 — By losing to the bottom feeding Bills, the Dolphins need to win next week and hope that Baltimore loses or (oddly) San Diego wins.

Minnesota 14, Cincinnati 42 — The Bengals officially clinched a playoff spot by beating the Vikings but there wasn’t much drama here — the Vikings were out and the Bengals all but surely in before the game even started.

Indianapolis 23, Kansas City 7 — Both these teams are going to make the playoffs; the wrinkle in this game is that they might play each other again in two weeks during the first round of the playoffs. Did the Colts “send a message” to the Chiefs? Or were the Chiefs not showing the Colts their best stuff to lull them into a false sense of security?

Tampa Bay 13, St. Louis 23 — Two bad teams that might both be good next year or the year after. The Rams have a bunch of good players and extra draft picks from a trade with the Redskins. The Buccaneers look like they have some great young players too.

Cleveland 13, New York Jets 24 — The future is a little less clearly bright for these two mediocre teams. Sorry Jets fans!

Dallas 24, Washington 23 — The soap opera of the NFC East (the division with these two teams plus the Giants and Eagles) continues. Star tragic hero and Cowboys quarterback, Tony Romo, threw a touchdown pass on fourth and goal (last chance!!) with a minute left in the game to go up by one point. The drama will conclude next week when the Cowboys play the Eagles Sunday night and whoever wins that game will qualify for the playoffs.

New Orleans 13, Carolina 17 — Another game between division rivals, albeit with a higher quality of play. By winning this game, the Panthers put themselves in a position where if they win next week, they get one of the top two positions in their conference playoffs which means they can take the first week of the playoffs off to rest and prepare. The Saints are likely to make the playoffs anyway.

Tennessee 20, Jacksonville 16 — This game didn’t mean anything for the playoffs. Not even a little bit.

Denver 37, Houston 13 — Broncos quarterback, Peyton Manning, broke the all-time NFL record for touchdown passes in a season by throwing his 51st of the year. Houston is 24th in the league with 19 touchdown passes for the year. Yikes.

New York Giants 23, Detroit 20 — The Lions cement their reputation as a talented but ultimately dumb and unsuccessful team by losing in over-time to the hapless Giants. The Lions are eliminated from the playoffs with this loss and their coach will surely be fired.

Arizona 17, Seattle 10 — The Cardinals did what no team has done since 2011 — travel to Seattle and win. This keeps the Cardinals playoff hopes alive and makes me happy because for some reason, despite several straight seasons of excellence, I still refuse to believe the Seahawks are good.

Pittsburgh 38, Green Bay 31 — The scenic game of the day, played in the snow in Green Bay, went down to the last two minutes when the Steelers scored to win it. This win keeps the Steelers playoff hopes alive (though barely) and means that the Packers game against the Bears next week will decide which of those two teams makes the playoffs.

Oakland 13, San Diego 26 — The Chargers are alive. The Raiders are not.

New England 41, Baltimore 7 — This was an odd result from a game that the Ravens needed to win for playoff positioning far more than the Patriots did. The Ravens aren’t eliminated but they need to win next week and have either the Chargers or Dolphins lose to get in.

Chicago 11, Philadelphia 54 — Maybe there’s a pattern here — the Bears, like the Ravens, needed to win this game far more than the Eagles did, and instead of that helping them, it seemed to hurt. There’s probably a life lesson in there somewhere, but I want to find it so badly that…

Do Not Watch This Football Game: Jacksonville vs Houston

no-football
Image from http://bit.ly/18mWCRL

On Thursday, December 5, at 8:25 ET, an NFL football game between Jacksonville and Houston will be televised on the NFL network. Do not watch this football game! This is a blog about sports, written by a sports fan for non-sports fans, but today, I’m writing to all the sports fans out there. If you are a regular non-sports fan reader pass this along to the sports fans in your life! Unless they are from Jacksonville or Houston, there’s no reason for them to watch this football game and there are plenty of good reasons not to. Here are some of the reasons:

1. Do not watch this football game because the teams playing are horrible

The Jacksonville Jaguars have three wins and nine losses so far this year. They are last in the league in total points scored per game and third to last in total points allowed. Their average game sees them giving up 29.3 points and scoring only 14.5 points. (Football scoring can be complicated, but even it cannot produce decimals — these are just averages.) They have been blown out of many of the games they’ve played this year. Beyond being bad, they’re also uninteresting. Early in the season, Jaguars fans held a rally to urge their team to sign popular but probably incompetent quarterback Tim Tebow. Even this was ineffective at driving interest in the team. Almost no one showed up. Tebow, despite fake rumors of the contrary from eyeofthetiber.com, remains unsigned.[1]

If it’s possible, the Houston Texans are an even more depressing team. Their record, two wins and ten losses, is worse than the Jaguars. The Texans are fourth worst in the league in terms of points scored (19.2) and sixth worst in points allowed (26.9). Unlike Jaguars fans, fans of the Texans were not prepared for this type of season.  The previous two years, the Texans were 10-6 and 12-4 and won their division both times. There were no real hints that things were going to go so badly this year, but they did. Their starting quarterback caught a bad case of the yips (according to Wikipedia, “the apparent loss of fine motor skills without apparent explanation, in one of a number of different sports”) and threw interceptions that were returned for defensive touchdowns in four straight games before getting injured and subsequently benched. Their star running back, Arian Foster, is out for the rest of the year after back surgery. Their best defensive player, Brian Cushing, is also out for the year with a torn ligament in his knee and a broken leg. To add injury to injury, their head coach suffered a “warning stroke” at halftime of a game.

2. Do not watch this football game because it will be bad for your social life

Here’s the deal. It’s getting late in the season. Your friends, family, and significant others have lived through thirteen weeks of football so far and you KNOW that you’re going to want to watch a bunch more football because now it’s the fantasy football playoffs (more on that later) and the real playoffs will follow shortly after that. Last week was Thanksgiving, so there were not one, not two, but three football games on Thursday and though we argued for the inclusion of football in Thanksgiving celebrations, it’s an accommodation that your non-sports fan friends and family made for you. Don’t push it. Make dinner, go to a movie, play a card game, studiously avoid decorating the festivus pole.  Do anything, but do not watch this football game.

3. Do not watch this football game because it doesn’t even have any fantasy implications

I know, I know, it’s not a good game, it’s not an important game, but it’s the fantasy football playoffs! In most fantasy leagues, the playoffs begin this week and normally this would drive people to pay close attention to even the most mundane football game. Seriously though, if you have been counting on a player from one of these teams, it’s unlikely your team has qualified for the fantasy playoffs. There’s really not too many players in this game who should be starting on your fantasy team this week anyway. Sure, wide receiver Andre Johnson and running backs Ben Tate and Maurice Jones-Drew are decent plays most weeks, but it’s a reasonably well-studied fact that players perform worse during Thursday games. I say, don’t count on any of these players, do not watch the game, and thank me later.

4. Do not watch this game because watching it is bad for football and terrible for football players

This is the most interesting and most compelling argument for why you should not watch this game. Playing a game on Thursday night, just four days after the previous Sunday’s game, is absolutely brutal. MMQB.com ran a wonderful article about this by Robert Klemko, which initially inspired this post. In it, Klemko quotes Texans offensive lineman, Duane Brown:

“That Friday, everything was hurting; knees, hands, shoulders,” he remembers. “I didn’t get out of bed until that night. I didn’t leave the house at all. You talk about player safety, but you want to extend the season and add Thursday games? It’s talking out of both sides of your mouth.”

“Knees, hands, shoulders” are one thing but heads are another entirely. We’re still learning about concussions but a few things are reasonably clear. Players will hide concussions from their teams and try to play despite them. The most dangerous thing that can happen to a player who is concussed is to get concussed again and this is more likely the less rest they have after their first concussions. Playing games with less than six days of rest is painful and dangerous.

If we give the NFL the benefit of the doubt (which I’m not positive we should) about being sincerely concerned for player safety, how can we rationalize their expansion of the NFL schedule to include more and more Thursday games? Klemko writes that the value of those games to the league is enormous — estimated at over $700 million dollars per year on top of making the NFL network (which televises most of the Thursday night games) a viable network. And it’s our viewing, particularly of bad match-ups like this one, that drives that value. Klemko writes:

Putting aside for a moment the injury concerns, who would actually want to watch these 14 games featuring fatigued players, often pitting bad teams against good ones, or worse, the 2-10 Texans vs. the 3-9 Jaguars (8:25 PM ET, Thursday, NFL Network)?

Answer: EVERYBODY.

“You have Houston and Jacksonville, which no one is looking forward to,” Ourand says, “but even that game is going to win the night on cable within the male demographics everybody sells, and it will be one of the top 5 or 10 shows on TV. The power of the NFL and why they want to go to Thursday is more evident in this game than in any other.”

So far at least, that seems to be true. Fans, including myself, have watched the Thursday games faithfully. I can’t say I’m completely happy about it though. I think it seriously dilutes the NFL experience. There’s something special about isolating all of the games on Sunday (and Monday night.) It makes every Sunday an anticipated event; a miniature holiday of the football denomination. I am particularly frustrated about the Thursday game’s impact on my enjoyment of fantasy football. Part of the fun of fantasy football is approaching a Sunday full of football knowing that, like in each game that day, you start 0-0 and anything could happen. The Thursday game almost always means that instead of that “anything could happen” feeling, you have a “oh, I’m ahead, I should win this” feeling or a “oh man, I’m definitely not going to win” feeling. It’s a lot less fun that way.

For this Thursday, at least, let’s do our part for the players, for our relationships, for our sanity, and not watch the football game.

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)

  1. Thanks Dad for passing me this delightful article↵

Cue Cards 12-2-13: NFL One Liners

clapperboardCue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

On Mondays during in the fall, the conversation is so dominated by NFL football that the expression “Monday morning quarterback” has entered the vernacular. The phrase is defined by google as “a person who passes judgment on and criticizes something after the event.” With the popularity of fantasy football, we now have Monday morning quarterbacks talking about football from two different perspectives. We want you to be able to participate in this great tradition, so all fall we’ll be running NFL One Liners in our cue cards series on Monday. Use these tiny synopses throughout the day:

NFL One Liners

Jacksonville 32, Cleveland 28 — Once in a while, two bad teams play each other and produce a great game. This back-and-forth game was one of those.

Tennessee 14, Indianapolis 22 — The Colts pretty much locked up the division championship and a playoff spot today by beating the Titans.

Chicago 20, Minnesota 23 — Both teams missed field goals which would have won the game in overtime before the Vikings finally kicked one successfully.

Miami 23, New York Jets 3 — For the first half of the season, a common story was how surprising it was that the Jets were winning games. Now we know why everyone was surprised!

Arizona 21, Philadelphia 24 — I’m not sure why, but these two teams are always connected in my mind. They’re both birds (Cardinals and Eagles) and they both tend to play fun, throw-a-lot styles. They played true to form today by playing a close game which left them both 7-5 on the year.

Tampa Bay 6, Carolina 27 — Eight straight victories for Carolina, many of them, like today’s, extremely convincing. Makes you think they are the best team in the league right now.

New England 34, Houston 31 — New England is definitely not the best team in the league. Too many close games against too many not-very-good opponents like the Texans. But, another game, another victory, and the Patriots are will easily win their division.

Atlanta 34, Buffalo 31 — This game was another just like the Cleveland v. Jacksonville game: two bad teams, one extremely entertaining game.

St. Louis 13, San Francisco 23 — Poor St. Louis, stuck in a division with Seattle and San Francisco. It’s hard to compete against those two teams.

Denver 35, Kansas City 28 — Three weeks ago the Chiefs were 9-0 and on top of the world. Now they’ve lost three straight and everyone is talking about them like they’ll never win another game. My guess is the truth is somewhere in-between.

Cincinnati 17, San Diego 10 — The Bengals don’t get a lot of respect — because they have a history of dumb decisions on and off the field, because they have a red-headed quarterback, and because they wear tiger-print helmets — but they’ve won twice the number of games that they’ve lost this year. That’s gotta count for something.

New York Giants 24, Washington 17 — In the last minute of this game, Washington had the ball and needed to go down the field and score a touchdown to tie the game up. The refs pulled a bait-and-switch move on them, the likes of which, I and announcers Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth had never seen before. What happened was that on second down the Redskins looked like they earned a new set of downs. Most of the officials on the field, including the guys with the chains and down sign on the side of the field acted like the Redskins had a first down but the head ref apparently did not agree. After the next play, which the Redskins thought was a first down, the head ref told the teams that it was now fourth down. The Redskins were furious but had no recourse and after one last unsuccessful play, they lost. People will definitely be talking about this today!

Happy Thanksgiving! How to Enjoy the Football as much as the Food

Dear Readers,

I’m thankful to everyone who has read, commented, asked a question, signed up for our email list or followed us on Twitter or Facebook, or otherwise supported Dear Sports Fan this year. Writing this blog has been a really great part of my year. I hope everyone has a wonderful day today whether it’s full or devoid of sports!

Here are several posts I wrote to help prepare for more football filled Thanksgiving celebrations. Enjoy!

This post explains why football is an important part of celebrating Thanksgiving for many sports fans: how football is about tradition, how it’s a marker of time passing, and how it makes me feel like I belong.
I also wrote plot summaries of each of the three games today:

Game 1 — Packers at Lions, 12:30 on Fox
The incredible story of Matt Flynn, a backup quarterback who only plays well for Green Bay.

Game 2 — Raiders at Cowboys, 4:30 on CBS
The Cowboys wear the white hats, the Raiders have black souls.

Game 3 — Steelers at Ravens, 8:30 on NBC
Just when you’re ready to sneak back into the kitchen for a turkey sandwich… BOOM! another football game begins.

All the best,
Ezra

Plot in Football, Thanksgiving Edition: Steelers at Ravens

As a companion to the recent post on why football is a special part of Thanksgiving for many sports fans, I’m going to explain some of the plot points of the three Thanksgiving day football games this year.

Game 1 — Packers at Lions, 12:30 on Fox
Game 2 — Raiders at Cowboys, 4:30 on CBS
Game 3 — Steelers at Ravens, 8:30 on NBC

I’m thankful to everyone who has read, commented, asked a question, or otherwise supported Dear Sports Fan this year.

Thanks and have a wonderful holiday,
Ezra Fischer

Pittsburgh Steelers at Baltimore Ravens, 8:30 on NBC

SteelersRavens
The Ravens in purple and black play the Steelers in black and yellow

The turkey’s been brined, basted, braised, and broiled. The pie has been eaten. The family has been feuded with. Just when you’re ready to sneak back into the kitchen for a turkey sandwich… BOOM! another football game begins.

When the people who create the NFL schedule put this one on the docket for Thanksgiving night, they probably thought they were pretty clever. Baltimore had just won the Super Bowl and Pittsburgh, although it had just missed the playoffs, was a perennial power that had made it to the Super Bowl three times in the past ten years and won it twice. As two of the four teams in the AFC North, Baltimore and Pittsburgh were natural rivals known for playing close and fierce games against one another. Finally, both teams were known for being led by smothering, violent defenses whose aim seemed equally to prevent their opponents from scoring and from finishing the game without broken bones. They were the perfect choice to lure fans back to the television after a long day and to keep them alert through a haze of tryptophan.

In the NFL, the best laid schemes of men and schedulers often go awry. The defending champion Baltimore Ravens started the season by getting blown out by the Denver Broncos, rallied a bit, and have now lost four of their last six games. They’re really struggling and at 5-6 are two games back from the division leading Cincinnati Bengals. The Steelers are in exactly the same position at 5-6 but got there very differently. They started the season with four straight losses and looked like they were doomed to a painful few years of losing a lot while slowly rebuilding the talent on their team. After their second loss the veterans on the team decided to ban the rookies from playing ping-pong or pool in the locker room. After the fourth loss, the coach tried to “unify” the team by banning everyone from playing any games[1] in the locker room. This seems to have had[2] the intended effect and from that point on the Steelers have won five of their last seven games.

Based on the team’s identical records and their both being two games behind the division lead with only four games to play, their game on Thanksgiving night will have a big impact on whether or not they will make the playoffs. In every sport, there is a palpable difference in play between a regular season game and a playoff game. The NFL is less different from other sports because its short 16 game season makes every regular season game proportionally more important than one of 82 in the NHL or the NBA or one in 162 in the MLB. Still, the hitting will be harder, the scrambling more desperate, and the decisions even more agonized over in this game.

Enjoy the drama and the leftovers!

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)

  1. With the exception of football, I assume↵
  2. With the millions of factors that go into the outcome of every play, it’s just as good to attribute turns in the fortune of a team to this as anything else.↵

Plot in Football, Thanksgiving Edition: Raiders at Cowboys

As a companion to the recent post on why football is a special part of Thanksgiving for many sports fans, I’m going to explain some of the plot points of the three Thanksgiving day football games this year.

Game 1 — Packers at Lions, 12:30 on Fox
Game 2 — Raiders at Cowboys, 4:30 on CBS
Game 3 — Steelers at Ravens, 8:30 on NBC

I’m thankful to everyone who has read, commented, asked a question, or otherwise supported Dear Sports Fan this year.

Thanks and have a wonderful holiday,
Ezra Fischer

Oakland Raiders at Dallas Cowboys, 4:30 ET on CBS

Cowboys Raiders Football
The Raiders in black and silver play against the Cowboys in blue and silver

This is probably the weakest game of the three on Thanksgiving this year, which is good because, plopped right down in the late afternoon, it’s likely the most disruptive to every single non-football related element of your Thanksgiving celebration. This doesn’t meant that there aren’t compelling stories surrounding the game, nor that the sports fans in your life won’t be compelled to watch it. Here are some of the plot points for this game.

The first thing to understand is that everything about the Dallas Cowboys is a big deal. The Cowboys are the most popular, most profitable team in the NFL. According to Wikipedia, they have an estimated value of $2.1 billion and annual revenue around $269 million. Their nickname is “America’s team” which, beloved as they are by their fan-base, makes virtually every other football fan seethe. They are simultaneously the most loved and the most hated team.

The Raiders are an almost perfect foil for them plot-wise. As hated as the Cowboys are, they think of themselves as wearing the white hat. The Raiders don’t just pride themselves on wearing black hats, they like to think they have black souls. For most of their history, the Raiders took their cues from now deceased owner Al Davis. Davis was famously antagonistic. He sued several cities in California as he moved the team from one to another. He sided with another football league in an anti-trust suit against the NFL. His imprint was seen on the style the Raiders favored which was aggressive on offense and especially on defense. Chuck Klosterman wrote a wonderful obituary of Davis in which he describe him as “a hard man — a genius contrarian who seemed intent on outliving all his enemies in order to irrefutably prove his ideas were right.”

Unfortunately, neither team is that good this year. The Raiders are 4-7 and have almost no hope of a playoff spot. The Cowboys are 6-5 and because the rest of their division hasn’t been very good either, tied for first place in their division. The Cowboys are much more talented than the Raiders and should absolutely win this game but, like the Lions from the first game of the day, are known for being consistently unpredictable. More than that, they are known specifically for losing games in embarrassing ways. The Cowboys quarterback, Tony Romo, takes most of the criticism for this. If it is a close game, listen for the fans in the room to start talking about how Romo “always messes up at the last-minute to lose the game” or how he “just isn’t clutch.”

We’ll see what happens when they play!

Plot in Football, Thanksgiving Edition: Packers at Lions

As a companion to the recent post on why football is a special part of Thanksgiving for many sports fans, I’m going to explain some of the plot points of the three Thanksgiving day football games this year.

Game 1 — Packers at Lions, 12:30 on Fox
Game 2 — Raiders at Cowboys, 4:30 on CBS
Game 3 — Steelers at Ravens, 8:30 on NBC

I’m thankful to everyone who has read, commented, asked a question, or otherwise supported Dear Sports Fan this year.

Thanks and have a wonderful holiday,
Ezra Fischer

Green Bay Packers at Detroit Lions, 12:30 ET on Fox

Packers Lions
The Packers in green and gold play against the Lions in silver and blue

The first game of Thanksgiving Day begins early in the day, when the turkey is just starting on its eighteen hour journey to being slightly over-cooked when you serve it. The Detroit Lions are one of the two traditional teams (along with the Dallas Cowboys) that always host games on Thanksgiving. Since 2000 this has often meant that there wasn’t much drama to the game they were involved in. Since that year, the Lions have only had one winning season, and more often than not they were out of the playoff hunt and, frankly, a bit of a joke. This year is different. The Lions are tied for first place in their division and their opponent, the Packers, are only a half game back. We covered what “games back” means in a post recently but in this case the half game is because the Packers tied last week, not because they’ve played fewer games than the Lions.

The Lions are a predictably unreliable team. They are undeniably talented but prone to dumb mistakes and run-away tempers. They score the seventh most points in the league behind an exciting offense featuring quarterback Matthew Stafford, running back Reggie Bush, and wide-receiver Calvin Johnson. Sports writer and media mogul, Bill Simmons, recently wrote an ode to Johnson on his website Grantland that is worth reading. In it, he makes the case that Johnson is not only one of the best wide receivers ever but also, amazingly, almost totally non-controversial. Johnson wears 81 and truly is exciting to watch. Here’s how Simmons describes him:

And other than Randy Moss, I can’t remember being more excited about a receiver during that split second when his quarterback is heaving a football downfield, and the light bulb flickers on, and you say to yourself, “Wait, he’s going deep!”

When Stafford throws the ball deep to Johnson, tear yourself away from the potato chips and sneak a peak of a wide receiver who is a uber-talented physical freak.

The Green Bay Packers have had much more success over the last few decades than the Lions but they are missing their most important player. Quarterback Aaron Rodgers fractured his collarbone a few weeks ago and isn’t going to play tomorrow. That leaves the Packers reliant on rookie running back Eddie Lacy who has been performing excellently and in one of the most curious stories of the year, replacement quarterback Matt Flynn.

Here’s the story with Matt Flynn. He backed-up Aaron Rodgers from 2008 to 2011. In 2011 the Packers were so good that they had their playoff spot clinched before the last game of the season. They chose to hold Rodgers back from playing the game and played Flynn in his place both to prevent Rodgers from injury but also, I’d like to think, to pay back the long-time backup Flynn by giving him a chance to showcase himself to other teams before he became a free-agent at the end of that season. Showcase himself, he did! Flynn passed for 480 yards and 6 touchdowns, both of which set all-time team records. Sure enough, in the offseason he signed a three-year, $20.5 million dollar deal with the Seattle Seahawks. But before he played a game with Seattle, he lost the starting job to rookie Russell Wilson and at the end of the year, was traded to the Oakland Raiders. That brings us to this year when he AGAIN lost his starting job in training camp, this time to a second-year player, Terrelle Pryor. After a few poor performances when Pryor had a concussion, Flynn was cut. A few weeks later, the Buffalo Bills had some quarterback injuries themselves and signed him briefly but only as a last resort and then cut him a week or two later. And that’s when Aaron Rodgers broke his collarbone.

Now Flynn is starting on a nationally televised game with first place in the division and the playoff hopes of the team and their fans riding on the outcome. He played the second half of the last Packers game and did quite well, but it will be very interesting to see how he plays now that he’s the starter. Is there some special magic for him on the Packers that will transform him from the player who lost his job twice to unheralded younger players back to the record-setting backup? Or will he fail and go down in history as one of the weirder footnotes?

Thanksgiving's Three Fs: Family, Food, and Football

As a companion to this post on why football is a special part of Thanksgiving for many sports fans, I’m going to explain some of the plot points of the three Thanksgiving day football games this year.

Game 1 — Packers at Lions, 12:30 on Fox
Game 2 — Raiders at Cowboys, 4:30 on CBS
Game 3 — Steelers at Ravens, 8:30 on NBC

I’m thankful to everyone who has read, commented, asked a question, or otherwise supported Dear Sports Fan this year.

Thanks and have a wonderful holiday,
Ezra Fischer

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. It’s got everything you could want in a holiday: family, food, and football. All three of those F-related aspects of Thanksgiving can be the cause of great joy and the cause of much F-word inducing consternation as well. Of the three, the football has perhaps the lowest stakes, but for many of us, it’s an important part of the day. Tradition, inclusion, time, and snacks are a few of the reasons why.

Thanksgiving is about tradition and so is football

Every holiday is about tradition: the way your family decorates the Christmas tree, the references to childhood that only your family would understand, your mother’s baked ziti. Thanksgiving is perhaps the most purely tradition oriented holiday because it doesn’t have any religious underpinning. The NFL has been playing football on Thanksgiving since 1920. It’s a tradition that’s remained a predictable part of Thanksgiving for many households since 1953 when it was first televised. Other sports lay claim to holidays. The NBA plays marquee games on Christmas day. New Year’s day was traditionally a day for college football until the NHL began televising their outdoor “winter classic” that day. Only the NFL doubles down on tradition by having the same two teams host games every year. The Detroit Lions and the Dallas Cowboys always host games on Thanksgiving. A few years ago the league added a third game at night with a rotating cast but the day games remain a constant. There’s real comfort in consistency, particularly when it comes to family. From generation to generation, through births, deaths, marriages, divorces, estrangements, and reconciliation, when Thanksgiving rolls around, you can count on seeing the Lions and the Cowboys play football.

Football on Thanksgiving makes me feel like I belong

I’m proud to be different. I used to revel in switching between Hot 97’s hip-hop and NPR when I commuted to work by car. I love that in past years my family has cooked quesadillas, Chinese food, and corned beef and cabbage[1] for Thanksgiving dinner. I wouldn’t change any of it for the world[2] but I am also drawn to feeling like I belong. On a holiday that is about the shared history of all Americans, (whether your family immigrated by land strait thousands of years ago or by air a few days ago,) I want to feel like I am unified in some way with the rest of the country. Unity through football is a funny concept and has a few meanings. There’s the literal unity — I’m guessing more people in the United States will be watching the football games than any other single shared experience excepting, perhaps, the Macy’s Day Parade and arguing with your family. There’s also an amorphous unity — football fans come in all shapes, genders, socio-economic statuses, sizes, language preferences, sexual preferences, colors, and intensities. Watching football on Thanksgiving, as odd as it may seem, makes me feel like I belong in this country, and I like it.

Sports are a marker of time

One thing that people who aren’t sports fans often marvel at is the way that some sports fans can remember the most minute details of sporting events that happened years ago. I am not one of those fans but I use sports as a marker of time in my life. Sometimes it’s a remarkable game that, like a popular song, gets lodged in my head and becomes evocative of that time in my life. I’ll always remember watching game six of the Lakers v. Kings NBA playoff series on a television resting on the floor of my first apartment in 2002 or stumbling out of a bar (from bewildered excitement, not drink) mid-afternoon after the United States’ miraculous injury-time goal against Algeria in the 2010 World Cup. Sometimes the games aren’t memorable but they help me remember important times in my life, like the death of my Uncle Pete (it was first game of the Stanley Cup playoffs, not that I watched it, but I remember that the Penguins beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 3-0).

Football on Thanksgiving marks time in a different way by staying the same while other things change. Football wasn’t a big part of my experience of Thanksgiving but I remember being a kid and rooting for famous and somewhat mythical Lions running back Barry Sanders to score every time he touched the ball. Later on, I remember ducking into a girlfriend’s living room to enjoy the oasis of watching football with her grandfather. And I have fond memories of being at my own grandparents house for our big annual get-together on the Saturday after Thanksgiving and hoping there was an hockey game between the Islanders and the Rangers so I could enjoy the way my cousin Jared rooted for his beloved Rangers in what was definitely an Islanders household.

Snacks!!

I know, I know, there’s turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and pie. But don’t you want some potato chips and pretzels? I do! If any of this has opened you up to enjoying some of the Thanksgiving football this year, tune in tomorrow for plot summaries of the games.

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)

  1.  (CB&C as we call it)↵
  2. Okay, maybe some of the conversations my brother and father have about music theory or advanced mathematics do get a little dry for me, but…↵