Token Holiday Post

Ho, ho, ho. Christmas posts are required for any blog, but I don't have any really appropriate writing I've done and most people don't want to read about a zombie throwing it's head like a Nolan Ryan fastball on yuletide. Thus, I'm going to digress a bit. A quick post on football, genius and media hypocrisy all of which interest me.

There's been a theme going around lately about the "Maddenization" of the NFL. The great website www.profootballtalk.com and the Sports Guy have both taken coaches to task for unorthodox and somewhat reckless decisions in recent weeks. The sort of thing a kid playing Madden 2010 would do. Of course we're talking about the infamous 4th and 2 that Bill Belichick went for against the Colts earlier this year and Mike Tomlin's surprise onside kick last week in the Steelers - Packers game. You can add to this another surprise onside kick Josh McDaniel ordered for the Broncos against the Chargers back in November. All of these moves went against the conventional wisdom and all were routinely condemned. Why? Because they all failed.

The Patriots didn't get the first down and Peyton Manning quickly drove the Colts to score on the short field. The Steelers gave the Pack the ball in great field position and had to rally to win on the game's final play, which spared Tomlin the 24/7 media crucifixion that Belichick endured. McDaniel's decision came with Denver trailing 13-3 early in the third quarter. The ball skipped through one of the Broncos hands and the Chargers ending up scoring a touchdown that put the game away, although with a 32-3 final it's hard to see how much the decision really mattered. Coach McHoodie flew under the radar nationally, but he took it pretty hard locally from the legion of Denver Post columnists.

In all three cases, the proper or safe play would have been to kick away. Defeat still could have been the result, but it would have been an impersonal loss that really was no one person's fault. Baseball managers have known for years to go by the book -- if you bring in the lefty to face Ryan Howard or David Ortiz, you can't be criticized. If you leave the righty in to face the left-handed power hitter and he gets taken deep, it's all over the papers, the blogs and talk radio. Going by the book leads to safety for the head man because if the move blows up, it isn't his fault. It's the player's fault for not getting the job done when he was put in a position to succeed by his boss. If either of the three coaches above had just kicked away, no one would have said boo.

Which is ironic, because the sports media likes to pretend that it celebrates genius and risk-taking. Bill Cowher pulled a surprise onside kick in Super Bowl XXX that got the Steelers back in the game. Andy Reid did it against the Cowboys back in 2001 and set the tone for a successful season. Both were celebrated as moments of genius, high-stakes gambles that paid off in spades. Both were celebrated because they succeeded.

Pro football tends to be criticized for being conservative and its coaches are castigated as Birchers, the NFL embodiment of George Wallace or Pat Buchanan. Media types (whose jobs used to be much safer before most daily papers started circling the drain) scoffed at guys who coached to save their jobs and protect the status quo. Field goals were derided, running the ball was derided and the XFL actually banned fair catches on punts and started each game with two guys wrestling for the ball, rather than a coin toss. You would think that anyone who actually rolled the dice and gambled would be celebrated, but that's not the case. Not if the gamble doesn't pay off which happens frequently because, you know, that's kind of the definition of a gamble.

So I guess that's my point. I don't deny going for a 4th and 2 on your own 28 is pretty risky and that I'm not sure if I would even do it in a game of Madden. But if you are going to sing hosannas if the move works, then you need to heap similar praise on the gamble if it fails. The act itself is what matters and while the outcome is important in the context of the game, none of these guys take the risk planning to fail. If it's a good move if it works, it's still a good move even if it doesn't work. Sometimes you have to roll the dice but whether they hit a seven or snake-eyes shouldn't change the evaluation of the event itself since the same person threw the damn things to begin with.