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The Futility of Making Picks but Doing It Anyway

06 Thursday Oct 2016

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Our picks have not been pretty over the last two weeks, despite me building a five point advantage over Dan, but in a way the failures highlights why I love the NFL and there is a reason we keep picking games.

One of the characteristic things about the NFL is through a combination of deliberate attempts to foster parity like the Draft and salary cap, and the unpredictable nature of a game with such large rosters and high injury rates, it is incredibly hard for a team to remain consistently good from season to season.

The Carolina Panthers, who last year went 15-1 in the regular season on the way to the Super Bowl have got off to a 1-3 start with Cam Newton picking up a concussion in the fourth quarter of their week four loss to the Atlanta Falcons. They Panthers were already well behind when Newton left the game as their defence that was such a strength last year gave up over five hundred yards of passing with Julio Jones accounting for three hundred of them as he caught twelve passes from fifteen targets and scored a touchdown. Some of this is likely down to the loss of not just Josh Norman, but Charles Tillman and the addition of two rookie corners, but team have not been in synch on offence either despite getting Kelvin Benjamin back from injury. The worry would be for me that one player was able to get so many yards individually and that the coaches didn’t adjust, but there appears to be a real problem in Carolina.

The Arizona Cardinals who played so well last season are, struggling as their offence is misfiring, and they have a fallen to a 1-3 record despite having one of my favourite head coaches in the league. Things are not clicking for them on offence in the passing game, although David Johnson looks to be continuing on from his excellent rookie season last year. However, a stumbling offence and a defence that hasn’t gelled yet do not win football games, and so it is now less surprising that the Patriots were able to beat them in week one despite Tom Brady being suspended.

Meanwhile, to counter this point the Denver Broncos are 4-0 despite losing Payton Manning and a number of defensive starters. The defence is still playing to a very high standard, whilst the offence is getting improved results from a very inexperienced starter in Trevor Siemian, and continued to do enough a win when he hurt his should and Paxton Lynch came into the game. They look to be up there again this season, and it certainly seems that John Elway has a clear idea of what he wants and this has been delivering results so far for him.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule model of consistent success for the last decade has been the New England Patriots. They have started the season 3-1 despite Tom Brady’s suspension, but even the best teams don’t win all of their games and they came a cropper this week as having beat the Texans 27-0 in week three, they lost to the Bills 16-0. I wouldn’t bet against them this week with Brady returning, but we get these kinds of results fairly regularly and so it kind of makes a mockery of picking games each week.

There is a reason that I do it though, and not just because it gives me a something to write about. I don’t really like making predictions in terms of it proving one way or another that someone knows what they are talking about, it’s a standard requirement of covering sports, but at the end of the day if the outcome was so predictable there would be no reason to play the games. I like writing about what I have seen, what happened, and why I think it did.

However, picking games against the spread gives me a framework to look at each team, and helps highlight which teams I need to watch more. Of course you always tend to be interested in certain games each week, but by looking at what might happen, it keeps you focussed across the entire league and encourages sharpness, or in the last couple of weeks, distinctly dull. That said, I doubt many people were expecting for the Bills to beat the Patriots in the way they did, and that was far from the only surprise result.

So despite the poor record, we’ll keep ploughing on and hopefully things will improve, but you can never guarantee anything in the NFL.

Gee:      Week 4   6-9                       Overall   27-36
Dan:       Week 4   4-11                     Overall   22-41

Cardinals @ 49ers (+2.5)

The Cardinals are in real trouble, with Carson Palmer not playing well even before he got a concussion and on a short week he shouldn’t play. Against almost any other team with the start they have had, this would strongly tempt me to pick against the Cardinals despite by admiration for Bruce Arians, but even though they are on the road in San Francisco, I can’t bring myself to pick the 49ers to win, especially after losing Navorro Bowman last week on defence.

Gee’s Pick:          Cardinals
Dan’s Pick:          49ers

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Super Bowl 50

07 Sunday Feb 2016

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So here we are, one game left. The week has been full of build up and interviews. The Super Bowl has become one of the biggest sporting events of the year, now viewed around the world, although exact figures are hard to come by. The hype has been there, so has the analysis if you go looking for it.

There is always a tension in where to pitch the coverage of American Football, with twenty-two people carrying out two sets of complex coordinated actions on every single play, there is something going on everywhere. One of the reasons that the game is so fascinating also makes it hard to broadcast. It is pretty much impossible to cover every nuance, and so receivers appear wide open mid-play and the viewer needs a replay to see what happened. That is if the team obligingly is not running a hurry-up offence. The international feed has often featured a simplified commentary aimed at the new people who are drawn into the spectacle of the NFL for this one game that us obsessives have been following for months. You can’t blame the broadcasters, the NFL is not an intuitive game due to its tactical nature and stop start game flow. Plus not every fan is interested in what route concepts are used to attack single high man coverage as opposed to a two deep zone.

I am looking forward to watching the game live, and going through the coaching tape afterwards and then taking a break. I love writing about American Football, but what I like doing is looking at the games and writing about the approach and coaching. I will dip in an out a bit more this offseason, but I am ready for a break. The grind of covering the sport year round must be tough given the competition to deliver news ahead of each other, but we don’t actually know what the affects of the offseason will be until well into September. In fact it can take years for a coach to turn around a franchise, a draft can’t be evaluated properly until years afterwards. I love talking football as much as the next fan, and we all have instant opinions, but the truth is that things take time to develop, and what I enjoy is watching that happen over the long term.

However, today is very much about the here and now so let’s grab this last game and squeeze as much out of it as possible as I take a look at the match up for tonight.

The obvious place to start is the one that has garnered the most coverage in the build up to the game, which is the Broncos defence against the Panthers offence. This is because it is the best contest in the game, with everyone being wary of how effective the Broncos offence will be, but it is also a fascinating tactical encounter. The Broncos defence is strong at all three levels, but will be facing a unique offence. The Panthers run the ball more, and with greater complexity than any other team this season. They have built their offence around the dual threat of Cam Newton, but also use extra blocking players in conjunction with forcing the opposition to account for the quarterback. One of the reasons this causes problems for a defence is historically the quarterback was too valuable to expose to multiple hits and so was unlikely to move the ball himself unless scrambling. The read-option changed this in recent years, but there were still limits to how many hits you would want them to take. Cam Newton is built like a defensive end, and the Panthers are not afraid to repeatedly use him in power running situations. This will cause the Broncos defence issues as they have to account for him in their run defence, whilst being aware that the Panthers also use these run looks to create play-action passes to throw the ball deep. If your safety is stepping up to account for a running quarterback, and that same quarterback then pulls up and throws the ball you have big problems.

The good news for the Broncos is that they have a pair of outside pass rushers who are not only good at straight up getting round the edge of the offence, but run stunts by moving inside as their the tackle moves out. This can help to counter the read-option as it makes the read that the quarterback has to make more complex and can slow it down.  There are other ways you can play a running quarterback is by getting your edge defenders to play a specific player, i.e. they have responsibility for the outside man, forcing the play in towards the rest of the defence, or focussing inside whilst a linebacker scrapes over the top to cover the outside player. I expect to see all three from the Broncos talented front seven, and they also have two hard hitting safeties that will be able to help in run support. Their secondary should also be able to matchup against the Panthers skill players, and it will fascinating to see how they mix up man and zone coverage as they try to prevent the deep strikes that have served the Panthers so well all season.

The story of the Broncos offence all year has been Peyton Manning, but there have been other problems affecting them all year. The offseason saw some strange decisions in that the Broncos brought in a new coach whose zone run scheme was much different to what they had been running previously, meaning the offensive line had to learn a new scheme as well as protect an ageing quarterback. This offence has not been able to move the ball consistently on the ground or through the air, but they can get big runs here and there. More importantly perhaps, since coming back from his injury Peyton Manning seems to have embraced his new role and has not thrown an interception in the playoffs, which is in stark contrast to his play during the regular season. Also, when they are down in the red zone, his lack of arm strength is less of an issue and he still has the smarts to get touchdowns as demonstrated by the throws to tight end Owen Daniels last week.

However, they are facing a defence that has been playing well all year. They may not be as consistently good at all three levels as the Broncos defence, but the Panthers coaching staff have done a great job of making the best of the talent they have around theie super start players. In Luke Kuechly and Thomas Davis they have one of the best pairings of linebackers in the league, although it will be interesting to see how Davis will play two weeks from breaking his forearm given that I have no idea how he is even contemplating it. The defence does not blitz much, but defensive tackles Kawann Short and Star Lotulelei are going to cause the Broncos offensive line problems all day, which a rotation of ends will apply pressure from the outside. The question will be if the Broncos secondary, which apart from stand out corner Josh Norman, is a little patchwork but plays their zone scheme very well.

The only team to beat the Panthers this year were the Atlanta Falcons, and they did this by running the ball consistently to bring up Davis and Kuechly, before attacking the defence deep. The problem for the Broncos is that Manning doesn’t have the arm for long balls any more, but it seems unlikely that they would be able to run a Patriots style short passing game either. They will have to commit to running the ball, which they have done under Gary Kubiak, and hope to generate play-action passing and enough long running plays to get into a position to score. I am looking forward to seeing how they try to do this, but I am not sure if they have the tools to be successful.

Overall I see this game as either being a close tight affair, with the Broncos hanging around and making it competitive as they have done all year, or the Panthers could really run away with it. However, with as good a defence as the Broncos have and two weeks for defensive coordinator Wade Phillips to prepare, I think it is more likely to be a close game. A lot will depend on what wrinkles the coaches prepare for this game and who executes their game plan more cleanly, but I hope it will be a good contest. I am not particularly invested in who wins as both results would have good stories, but it would be nice if Manning could have at least one last good performance to go out on.

Roll on Super Bow 50, let’s hope it lives up to the hype.

Odell Beckham and Josh Norman on Coaching Tape, plus the Early Week 16 Picks

24 Thursday Dec 2015

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It was always my intention to look at the coaching tape of the matchup between Odell Beckham and Josh Norman as it was one of the most enticing prospects of the year coming into week fifteen. We were expecting to see a competition between two of the young stars of the NFL, with Beckham making breathtaking catches all through his short career and Norman being talking about as a candidate for defensive player of the year. I am going to focus on what I saw on tape, rather than go fully into all of the mess that has so dominated the post game coverage, but with Norman fined and Beckham suspended I cannot just ignore what went on after the whistle and sometimes during the play.

The first thing for me to say is that I can’t know what was said before or during the game, the amount of accusations thrown around after the game seems to be an attempt to distract from a spectacle that made neither player look good. However, there is plenty of blame to go around as there were plenty of signs that Beckham was not playing under control and neither team leaders nor coaches were able to bring him back from the edge. It is understandable that in such a physical game as football that players have to play with a fire, but there has to be a line that you don’t cross and Beckham hurt his team with a number of penalties. It is also disappointing that in 2015 we are still dealing with the questioning of a player’s manhood and the throwing around of homophobic slurs as accepted ways of trying to get into the opposition’s head. There is not the same organised chanting at football games in the States as there is over here in terms of songs and a terrace willing to say anything to put off the opposition, but the culture of masculinity is very similar and it is something that should be dismantled in a systematic way. Without going back and watching the game as broadcast it is hard for me to comment on what was going on between plays, but this was not what the NFL was hoping the matchup would look like going into the game.

Anyway, moving on to the game film, this game didn’t look to me quite as eventful as the highlights and the coverage has made it appear. I will be asking Dan about the game on the next podcast as I know he is intending to watch it, but in terms of what I could see on tape there were more snaps where Norman and Beckham lined up and not a lot happened than there were problems. The Giants move Beckham round the formation and bring him in motion to try to get him open. Meanwhile the Panthers played a mixture of zone and man, with Norman covering Beckham at times and others he was on the opposite sides of the field as both players lined up on either side of the formation.

We are used to seeing the spectacular catches and the impressive numbers for Odell Beckham, but he only had six catches in this game and a lot of the yards he did gain were wiped out by penalties he gave away. He also had a couple of drops, but what was striking on tape was his ability to get open. He is both quick and sudden, which enables him to often get open whether he is finding a way through zone coverage or in a one on one matchup. The touchdown he caught at the end of the game was from a lovely double move, that allowed him to get behind Norman to make the catch, and that wasn’t the only time he got behind Norman. There was a lovely deep post pattern that he ran in the third quarter creating a deep play opportunity, but Eli Manning couldn’t quite get the ball to him. The thing I will say about Beckham’s temperament in this game was that it was not just Norman that Beckham was petulant with, he ran into several safeties and other corners as the coverage rotated. I was also getting frustrated by his blocking in the running game as several times he bumped with a shoulder rather than truly engaging as a blocker. I don’t know how he is coached so it may be that this is what the team want him to do, but later in the game there was a snap where he engaged and turned his corner on a run play so he can do it. The egregious play to me was the running play where he went past Norman who did take a swipe at him, but Beckham came back down the field and clearly tried to take Norman out with a helmet to helmet hit. With the emphasis on player safety it was an outrageously dangerous play and you could easily argue that he should have been ejected from the game for that alone. It was hard to always see what was going on between snaps, but there was at least one play where part of an officiating crew put themselves between Beckham and Norman after the whistle had blown.

Focussing on Josh Norman, the coverage of him this season has been very positive, but looking at his play I would not say that he is quite the man on man lockdown corner that some would have you believe. That is not to say that he isn’t playing well as he really is, but the Panthers play a fair amount of zone but it looks different to the three deep zone with almost man corner play that you see if you were to watch Richard Sherman in Seattle. However, Norman is similar to Sherman in that he moves well and has the length to bother receivers and cause disruption. This is however, a great defence at all levels and on the all twenty-two you could see receivers passed smoothly between corners, safeties, and linebackers, as the receiver ran their route through the defence’s zones. Norman was clearly taking his chances to be physical where he could, and was called for his own unnecessary roughness penalties apart from the retaliation for the helmet to helmet hit. It was clear that he was niggling at Beckham for chunks of the game, and there was one play were he clearly just went for the head area of Beckham.

With one player suspended and another fined, neither has created a good look for the NFL. More worryingly for Beckham is that he clearly let things get to him and so he will see a lot more of this needling tactic as he is too good a receiver to cover conventionally, and has revealed a potential weakness that the rest of the league will see if they can exploit. Only time will tell if this will be a problem, but in what is one of the most team orientated of sports, Beckham will have to learn integrate his phenomenal talents into the team ethic if he wants to win games. As for Josh Norman, he will be watched closely, and let’s hope he can find the balance between being competitive and detrimental to his team.

And now onto the first picks of week sixteen that are immediately around Christmas day, with me managing to eek out another game on Dan last week.

Gee:    Week 15   11-5                       Overall   119-105
Dan:    Week 15   10-6                       Overall   110-114

Chargers @ Raiders (-5.5)

The Raiders have definitely made progress this season, but they are still making the mistakes of a young team. They lost to the Green Bay Packers last week, and still have plenty of areas that they need to develop, but in 2014 they drafted Khalil Mack and Derek Carr, then followed it up this year with Amari Cooper, so there is hope for a franchise that sat in the doldrums for too long that they can continue to build and develop. This is another team that could be on the move, although I’m not sure any team has the votes they require to get a move approved by the other owners, but given the games last week I expect this to be an emotional occasion in Oakland.

The Chargers got the win that so many players wanted in what was possibly the last game at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. However, there is so much in flux for this team with it being up in the air where they will play next season, and likely who will coach them. They have been beset by injuries on the line, but they had problems with this last year as well, and they have a closing window given that as good as Philip Rivers has been, he is thirty-four.

In this game I think that the Chargers come back to Earth as they are not a good team, and with the Raiders at home for possibly the last time and them definitely heading in the right direction I think they will cover these points. It might also be another big day for Khalil Mack given the problems in pass protection that the Chargers have had all season.

Gee’s Pick:      Raiders
Dan’s Pick:      Raiders

Washington @ Eagles (-2.5)

There was a power struggle in the offseason at the Eagles, which Chip Kelly won, but I am not sure how much the total control of personnel has been of benefit. Initially I could see a plan in what he was doing, trusting his scheme on offence and focus his efforts on getting players for their defence, but the plan seemed to be ignored for some of his moves. However, a lot of talent has been shipped out over the last couple of seasons and it will be telling if he retains control over personnel and is given time to continue with his plan, or if some power is taken back or worse still if he is fired. On the field it has been a real mix with some good performances but nothing for them to really hang their hat on. The offence started of struggling, before they found a way to run the ball, but whilst high priced free agent DeMarco Murray might lead the team in rushing, he seems to have slipped down the pecking order and does not seem to fit the system. It appears that Sam Bradford is becoming more comfortable in the offence, but this is not the offence people were expecting to see coming into the year. More worrying is that the defence, which for much of the year looked like the stronger unit, has struggled in recent weeks and has given up forty points or more in three of the last five games.

This week the Eagles welcome a Washington team to Philadelphia who are currently a game clear at the top of the NFC East and who could clinch a playoff birth with a win in this game. It was not the most auspicious of starts for Jay Gruden in Washington, but you have to admire the way he stuck to his guns regarding the Robert Griffin situation and it would appear the starting quarterback question has been solved for now. The other thing that seems to have helped was the appointment of Scott McCloughan as GM, with his focus on building through the draft looking like it has been of benefit already, and I will be curious to see how they continue in the offseason. On the field the team has not excelled on offence or defence, although their special teams are ranked sixth in the league by DVOA. However, Kirk Cousins has managed to find a balance between willingness to make aggressive throws and protecting the ball. The team have played better in Washington than on the road, which makes me nervous about picking this game, but I do not trust the Eagles and if I am getting two and a half points then I am going to take them.

Gee’s Pick:      Washington
Dan’s Pick:      Washington