Hruby comes clean

SRAM has been berating Patrick Hruby's inane chatter on Snap Judgment all year long, particularly his ridiculous "let-me-get-this-jab-in" non-sequiters. Well, in this week's column, the man finally comes clean. When asked a dumb question about McNabb's play last Sunday, Hruby responds with this gem:

I don't care if McNabb promises to spread freedom, democracy and plum contracts for American oil companies across the globe, all while cutting taxes. Talk is cheap. Play's the thing. McNabb delivered. Nothing else matters. Or have we learned nothing from a certain presidential administration's quickly-forgotten feel-good vow to put a man on Mars?
Not that I'm bitter about the Inauguration or anything.

I am tempted to actually give the man props for finally being up-front about his problem of not being able to prevent his personal difficulties from spilling over into his work. I should applaud his progress: the first step is admitting you have a problem, etc. But in reality, his admission at the end to being bitter over Bush is simply a result of his realizing that he probably finally went a little too far with his Angry Left routine and so he'd better salvage a bit of dignity with a little joke at the end. This was a defensive play, not an admission of guilt.

In another section, the talk turned to Michael Vick "toria's Secret." Vick, of course, had a lousy passing day on Sunday. But since it was in a big game, and he didn't run well, either, suddenly everybody realized that, hey, come to think of it, he's been a lousy passer all year! And wait a minute, didn't the Falcons lead the league in rushing yards? Skip Bayless, to his credit, saw all this last week and simply repeats in Snap Judgment what he's been saying all along:

Vick's offense struggled to score all season and that what he and his running game did to a lousy, clueless Rams defense was terribly misleading. Yet the Eagles' defense deserved 50 per cent of the credit because it had the athletes, the quickness and the disciplined scheme to repeatedly turn Vick into what he struggles to be: a pocket passer.
When forced to stop and throw, Vick's mechanics are still some of the worst this side of a fly-by-night garage.

Oh Peyton, Where Art Thou?

If you suspect that the recent time gap in posts here at SRAM was related to Manning's latest demise in Foxboro, well, there's probably more than a grain of truth to that. Things have been a bit busy around the old day job of late, but I must admit to being in a bit of mourning over those 3 measly points.

Three measly points is a little hard to argue with, but we like to dig a little deeper here at SRAM, and the results of our search along with the game's circumstances show clearly that this was not another example of a Manning big-game nosedive, contrary to what it will undoubtedly go down in history as. First, let's compare Manning's stats to Brady's:

Manning: 27-42 230 YDS 0 TD 0 INT
Brady: 18-27 115 YDS 1 TD 0 INT

(I'm not counting Manning's interception, for obvious reasons.) If you really put a big emphasis on Brady's 5-yard touchdown pass, you may be tempted to call this a wash. But if you didn't know the outcome of this game, you would clearly say that Manning had the better game. I mean, twice as many yards? Plus the man wasn't exactly helped out by his receivers this game.

The most telling stat of the game, though, is the rushing yards:

James: 14/39 YDS
Dillon: 23/144 YDS

As a team:
IND: 15/46 YDS
NE: 39/210 YDS

And, related to that, time of possession:

IND: 22:17
NE: 37:43

Obviously, the weather reduced this to a battle of running games. New England's defense is 6th in the NFL in rushing defense; Indianapolis' is 24th. The Pats shut down Edgerrin James early, forcing the Colts to go to the air, whereupon their receivers demonstrated an inability to hold on to the ball.

In other words, this game was largely determined by the respective teams' rushing defenses. We've been saying all along that the Colts' D does not compare to the Pats' D, and that was borne out last Sunday. Sure, Manning did not exactly come through with a stellar performance. But given the circumstances, it was a respectable performance.

Dr. Z: Grouchier than SRAM?

Yes, I think I may have found someone who can actually take on this blog head-to-head in terms of grouchiness. Dr. Z of cnnsi.com has his 7th Annual TV Commentator Awards column up today and it is for the most part the work of a grumpy old man who thinks things were better in the old days. It's fantastic!

Dr. Z starts out by announcing that there will be no awards for any of the various pregame shows, "because -- and how can I say this without sounding like I'm about 90 years old -- the shows are basically top-of-the-head garbage." He hates all the new trends in these shows:

You know, the quick Q&As. What does Jake Delhomme like better, hunting or fishing? What do all of them like better, Play Station II or Xbox? My goodness, they're asking about toys. Toys! Why not just get my 4-year old grand-daughter on there. Natasha, what's better, jacks or Slinky?

...And this is what we must listen to, pretending it has been created by adults, for adult consumption. Insults such as that horribly dull, wooden "You've Been Sacked" that masqueraded as halftime entertainment on the Monday night show -- before it got sacked itself. ESPN's Stuart Scott on the Monday Night Countdown, previewing St. Louis-Green Bay: "A game so silly good it'll make you want to sop it up with a biscuit."

Announcers, ye be warned: Dr. Z takes his football seriously. The man doesn't want to see the NFL descend into the comic-book entertainment genre that the NBA has become. I, of course, am on his side, although I do think that occasionally he takes it a bit too far in his awards. For example, he gives highest marks to those play-by-play announcers that tell you every single substitution that goes on between plays. "Makes my job so much easier." I hate to say this, but 90% of the viewers don't care about that, Doc! We're not writing articles after the game is over. Yes, let's focus on the meat of the game, but let's remember that it's not the commentators' job to help you with yours.

But in general, the column is a model example of holding the announcers accountable for what they say. In other words, he's stealing my bit! At the top of his chart come the good announcers, and he explains why he likes 'em; for example, about Randy Cross:

I also liked his observation in the San Diego-KC game in Week 12, matching the the two best tight ends in the game, Antonio Gates and Tony Gonzalez. Did he get all gushy about this pair? He did not. He mentioned that it really bugged him that two receivers of this caliber could come off the line totally unmolested and allowed to waltz into the secondary free as birds.

Bill Maas gets good marks, except for the all-too-familiar sports announcer problem:

Bill, I tell you this as a friend. You must try to cut down on the Leo Gorcey-style malaprops. "It's time to button down the hatches ... The Carolina defense is starting to wilter a bit," etc.

Actually, Dr. Z, those announcer malapropisms are often the best part of game! Things really get good when he talks about the Fox #1 team. I apologize for the length of this quote, but since it makes SRAM look so good, I am obliged to run the whole thing:

I had them at three stars, right until the Minnesota-Green Bay wild-card contest. That one dropped 'em. Brett Favre apologists abound, but when the guy screws it up, for Pete's sake say it, don't cop out every time. No interception was his fault; it was always the guy running the pattern. How about the one where he overthrew Javon Walker, and Collinsworth said Walker had screwed it up because he was supposed to run a flat pattern instead of going downfield? Uh, if Favre were expecting him to run to the flat, instead of downfield, he would have underthrown the ball, not overthrown it. And then when Favre pulled that weirdie at the end of the half, near the Vikings goal line, running three yards past the line and underhanding it to Walker in the end zone ... and drawing a penalty...and then laughing about it. We heard this from Collinsworth: "The funniest part was Walt Anderson, the referee, could barely make the call without laughing." Hey, I watched Anderson, too, and I didn't see the hint of a smile. And the guys on the Packers weren't laughing after Ryan Longwell missed the subsequent field goal. This is what is known as dishonest reporting. But when Randy Moss caught the fourth-quarter TD and treated the Packer crowd to a dry moon that lasted exactly one second, that's all, we had to listen to this blather from Buck, who got his panties all in a knot: "That is a disgusting act by Randy Moss and it's unfortunate that we had that on our air live." Well, if no one would get to see it, then how could you get anyone to agree with you, Joe Baby? But the thinking of a guy like this extends only so far.

About Dick Stockston and Daryl Johnston:

Worse is the way they push the super-stars. Giants-Dallas again, this time the dark side. Roy Williams delivers a cheap shot to Amani Toomer's back. They're all raving about Williams. Another Ronnie Lott, etc. "He's really something," Tony Siragusa says from the field. Next play Toomer gets even. He cuts Williams, takes him off his feet, as Tiki Barber goes 55 yards on a screen pass. "His man vacated the area," Johnston says, without mentioning that said man was the great Williams, the second coming of Ronnie Lott.

Pushing the superstars. We've groused about that a time or two around here, haven't we? He thinks Tim Green has shown improvement:

Green, a former DE, is one of the few analysts who knows what's happening up front. And he's gotten away from that inspirational lecture circuit of his.

Love that line. Michaels and Madden get panned for sleep-walking through this year's MNF snoozefest, but the Doc's most venomous jabs are aimed at ESPN's Sunday Night Football team:

Maguire on Cleveland-Baltimore, Week 9: "Jamal Lewis averages six yards a carry. All you have to do is keep giving it to him, and you'll keep getting in second-and-four situations." My God! Brian Billick must be told immediately! Theismann, Bills-Patriots, Week 10, after Brady throws a pick: "You've got to figure the receiver went where he shouldn't." Absolutely. Great QBs never throw interceptions on their own. And through all this, the slow, half goofy drone of Patrick, with every word emphasized, no matter how meaningless. "And tonight! We have sixty-three! Thousand! Fans!" (Whew). Oh, we get some inside stuff all right. Theismann on his exclusive interview with Pittsburgh defensive coach Dick LeBeau during the Steelers-Jaguars telecast: "I saw Dick LeBeau before the game, and I told him, 'Nice to have you back,' and do you know what he told me?" No, what? "Nice to be back."

Anyway, it's all in the article ("Verbatim!"). If I see many more columns like this, I might have to open a new Hall of Fame for Sensible Reporting. Not too worried about that yet, though.

NFL Playoff myth-busters

David Schoenfield, who occasionally substitutes for Dan Shanoff in the Daily Quickie (and apparently loses about 50 I.Q. points when he does), has written a solid article for espn.com on true and false playoff theories. You know, the usual cliches, like "Defense wins championships," and "You gotta run the ball." He takes ten such theories on and compares them to actual facts and figures.

I especially enjoyed his conclusions on that first theory, that defense wins championships:

When's the last time you heard an analyst say, "Offense wins championships!" Fact is, a great defense is no more important than a great offense in reaching the Super Bowl. Taking it a step further, 10 teams which led the NFL in total yards reached the Super Bowl while five teams which led in fewest yards reached the Super Bowl.

Now, SRAM has moaned over and over about people actually forgetting about the role of defense in winning championships, particularly when they're pushing some pet star of theirs. The above quote does not argue against SRAM's beef; on the contrary, it's a confirmation of the obvious fact that, well, defense and offense are about equally important.

The "Defense wins championships" saw is similar to its famous baseball equivalent, wherein people attribute as much as 80-90% of "the game" to pitching. Well, no, actually it's probably around 50% of the game, assuming that statement has any meaning at all. (Rob Neyer took this on a couple of years ago, as I recall, and I'm pretty much just repeating what he said.)

A couple of minor complaints about Schoefield's article. First, he uses data from all teams that made the Super Bowl, not just those that won. This is understandable, since you double your sample size and get more reliable data; and justifiable, because the article deals with success in the playoffs, not just the Super Bowl. But on the other hand, it would be very instructive to look at just the champions, because there have been so many Super Bowl blowouts, and it seems that there have been lots of suspect teams who sneak into the big game, but few of those end up actually winning it.

My second complaint deals specifically with how he handled Theory #3: "You Gotta Throw the Ball." The stat he uses to examine the theory is yards per attempt. This is indeed an important statistic, but it seems to me that it would be used to prove a theory that states, "When you throw the ball, you gotta throw it well." Since the theory simply states that you gotta throw the ball, a better supporting statistic would simply be passing yards for the year, or even just the number of passing attempts. But since Schoefield uses yards per attempt, he actually ends up pointing to this year's Steelers as an example that validates the theory. But how could that be, since the Steelers throw the ball less than anyone in the league?

All that aside, though, it's a solid article. Facts to examine the conventional wisdom. What a concept!

Go Randy!

Despite the fact that he's playing for the Yankees, I confess that it would have been mighty hard for me to root against Randy Johnson if he continued the treat the media the way they deserve.

You all know the story; here are the highlights:

"Get out of my face, that's all I ask," Johnson said, according to a video of what occurred, which was posted on the station's Web site.

"No cameras," Laveroni said.

"Don't get in my face," Johnson then said. "I don't care who you are. Don't get in my face."

"I'm just taking a picture," said the cameraman, identified by the station as Vinny Everett.

Responded Johnson: "Don't get in my face, and don't talk back to me, all right."

(Note: Laveroni. Great name for a security guy. Also Vinny for a cameraman.)

I say, all hail Randy! Where do these media scumbags think they get the right to pester a guy as he's walking down the street? If you think you have the right to shove a camera in my face and all over my private life, then at the very least I have the right to push that camera out of the way. Even if I'm in a provincial town like New York where it's been years since the local media rubes have seen a decent pitcher walking down the street.

Of course, the high-class NY media immediately responded by trashing Johnson every which way but loose, and Johnson immediately capitulated by apologizing not once, not twice, but three times in his introductory press conference. And if he wanted to, that's fine. But I say he didn't need to. Baseball is not a popularity contest. If the media doesn't like him, that's their problem. I love seeing players who don't care what anybody thinks of him or what the media writes about him, who just go out and play ball.

NFL Playoffs, week 1

It was another good week for us proponents of Peyton Manning, MVP of the NFL. Don't you just love it when you pick the right guy? It's like buying a stock that keeps beating the market quarter after quarter. Meanwhile, those who didn't buy the stock keep digging a deeper and deeper hole for themselves trying to explain why they didn't.

The man destroyed the Broncos in the first round of the playoffs for the second straight year and set a postseason record for passing yards in a 4-quarter game. Stats like these have become so routine for Manning that it's easy to just take them in stride and fail to appreciate them for the truly mind-boggling achievements that they are. Think about that: a postseason record!

Of course, what would have been even more impressive is if Manning would have played a subpar game for 3 quarters, resulting in a close game in the 4th quarter and forcing him to lead the Colts on a dramatic last-minute drive for the game-winning touchdown.

Did that last sentence sound stupid to you? It sure should have. The idea that it's better for a quarterback to not play his best and win on a dramatic last-minute drive as opposed to just blowing the opposition out of the building in the first half is simply ludicrous. Yet this is exactly what sports reporters regularly do when they worship the "comeback king" quarterbacks over those who simply have those great, soulless statistics. Which is why it's so ridiculous for one to say something like, oh, I don't know, Manning's 4th-and-1 pass to Reggie Wayne after waving the punt team off the field against the Chargers was more impressive than anything else he did all season.

Meanwhile, over in Wisconsin, the Green Bay faithful are in agonies over another playoff heartbreak, thanks in no small part to another Favre meltdown to the tune of 4 interceptions. I'd like to know, who has the record for most playoff games with 3 or more interceptions? Favre has to be up there. If he hadn't had that one Super Bowl win, he'd be the one with the reputation for choking big games--often in spectacular fashion. And the year he did win the Super Bowl, he had a little help from his defense, which was ranked #1 in fewest yards allowed and #1 in fewest points allowed.

Remember: I'm still not saying that he would deserve such a reputation because I don't generally believe in such a thing as players congenitally choking in big games unless someone gives me some pretty overwhelming evidence. I'm simply pointing out what a flimsy basis there frequently is for such reputations. Reverse the outcome of one game for Favre, wherein oh by the way he was massively helped by the #1 defense in the league, and you have a completely different career story for the man.

Simmons' case "for" Boggs

I put the "for" in quotes because in reality, Simmons' recent article on Wade Boggs' Hall of Fame election, which is linked to with a line that reads "The case for Boggs," is the case against Boggs. It's a typical Simmons ignore-the-facts column; in fact, he even does us the service of stating out front:

That's the thing about statistics: you can trust them only so much. They don't account for the Horrys and Jeters, or Orlando Cabrera's sparkling defense last October, or even the petrified look on CWebb's face.

Here's a better way of putting that: it is the absence of statistics in the columns of writers like Simmons, in favor of an infatuation with personality and pretty faces, that accounts for the Jeters. But Simmons clearly has a vested interest in ignoring stats because he makes a (darned good) living inventing things like The Chris Webber Face.

Boggs never resonated with fans like other Boston stars of that era. You never went to Fenway thinking, "Boy, I get to see Boggs today, somebody pinch me." You never watched a Red Sox-Royals game and thought to yourself, "I'm glad we have Boggs instead of Brett."

Nobody's arguing that Boggs is better than Brett, of course. And I don't remember seeing "Fans excited to see him play" being a criterion for the Hall of Fame (then again, I don't believe any formal set of criteria exists anyway). Just because a player isn't flashy and is severely undervalued by a fan base famous for trashing its own stars doesn't mean you "can't trust the statistics."

Situations never mattered to him. If the Sox were down by one in the ninth, with a runner on third and two outs, Boggs invariably drew a walk, leaving the game in someone else's hands. That's just who he was. There's a reason he cracked the top five in MVP voting only once. Local writers and talk show hosts skewered him for being a selfish singles hitter, wondering why he wouldn't hit for power. All this "getting on base" stuff was hurting the team.

I sort of expected Simmons to follow this up with a "Ha ha! Just joshing ya!" in the next paragraph, but apparently it's straight up, and he believes it! First of all, why in the world would a pitcher even throw to Boggs in the described situation? If the score were tied, it would be a no-brainer intentional walk; down by one, the 8-time OBP champion is still not going to get anything over the plate. Not to mention the fact that since it's Mr. Anti-Stats telling the story, we can't even be sure that this situation ever actually occurred.

And get this: a "selfish singles hitter." Yeah, it's the singles hitters who get all the glory, isn't it? The big contracts, the endorsements, the women. Mark MacWho? And don't you just hate it when your players get on base? Look, if Billy Beane wasn't right, if the A's hadn't had the most wins per salary cap dollar for the last five years or so, then maybe you could treat this paragraph as something other than sand-pounding stupidity. But Beane is right, he has the results to prove it, and the whole world is following his lead now anyway. Which Simmons at least acknowledges in the last paragraph:

But then maybe Boggs was just ahead of his time.

So shouldn't this column have been something more along the lines of, "We Boston fans were too stupid to know what we had"?

Long live Schatz!

For Snap Judgment's last regular season edition, they finally shelve all the morons and turn the whole column over to the only intelligent panel member: Aaron Schatz. He ranks the NFL's quarterbacks' 2004 performances from 1 to 42. Number 1, to the surprise of no one except Bill Simmons, is Peyton Manning. Number 42 is not Eli Manning, unfortunately--that certainly would have given the list a beautiful symmetry--but another rookie, Craig Krenzel. Eli Manning's solid last two outings boosted his final ranking to #35. Interestingly, he finishes right behind Ken Dorsey, who got virtually no press for his efforts for the Niners, because, of course, he (a) doesn't play in New York, and (b) wasn't a jerk before the draft last year.

Also of note is that Michael Vick finished #26. Ah, you say, but that doesn't count his valuable rushing contributions. Actually, I'm afraid it does. Even after taking his rushing yards into account, Vick finishes towards the bottom of the heap. And yes, this man is going to the Pro Bowl. But who else is there, in that pathetic wreck of a conference? Well, Mark Bulger and Brett Favre finished #6 and #7, respectively, in Schatz's ratings. I'm not saying that Schatz's ratings are the end-all and be-all of value metrics, but I mean come on, a 20-place difference there is kind of hard to ignore. The world continues to evaluate Vick based on what they think he will do, rather than on what he's actually doing.

Now, I don't pretend to understand the intricacies of Schatz's rating system at all, but I was at least superficially impressed with some explanatory notes he included at the bottom of today's rankings. Particularly, these points on the value of his system:

1. Gives value for first downs, which are not really included in any other QB rating system but are hugely important.

5. ... Sacks are punished as well.

6. 5-yard scramble on 3rd-and-10? Worthless!

Learn how to argue!

Despite my devastating critique of their twisted logic that concluded that Cal's loss in the Holiday Bowl proved that the BCS somehow "got it right," espn.com still had the audacity to post a similar headline (story here) after Texas won the Rose Bowl on Saturday. They didn't actually add "In your face, SRAM!" at the end of it, but they may as well have. It's hard not to take it personally.

Obviously, the same arguments as set out in my previous post apply here. The media continues to ignore the flawed and corrupt process that produced these matchups, the ends don't justify the means, etc.

However, if we are to use their logic, then we have to ask, where are the "Pittsburgh Proves Big East Doesn't Belong" headlines? Not a real respectable showing in the Fiesta Bowl for the Beasts o' the East, was it? And if you say that, well, Utah was just that good, then why aren't they playing for the national championship? Or at the very least in the Sugar Bowl? The fact is, if you accept the existence of the BCS, there is still an elephant in the living room that the establishment press continues to ignore, which is the embarrassing weakness of the Big East. There is essentially no argument for the inclusion of that conference over the WAC or the MWC other than its geographic proximity to the Good Ol' Boys club.

Sporting News similarly afflicted

I was listening to a "senior NFL reporter" being interviewed on Sporting News radio yesterday concerning the upcoming playoffs (proving that yes, I occasionally get my sports news from a source other than ESPN). The whole conversation was a painful recitation of Conventional Wisdom, including such stunning insights and predictions as "Indianapolis will bounce back and should win pretty easily next week against Denver" and "the Vikings defense will have a hard time stopping Favre and Green." An extended theme of the conversation was, of course, the weakness of the NFC, and how utterly painful it will be to watch not one but two NFC West teams play for at least two of the playoff weeks, as if we were being forced to watch a couple of Pop Warner teams duke it out (actually, guys, Seattle is 9-7, and it's really not that uncommon for a 9-7 team to make the playoffs).

But my point in bringing this mind-numbing conversation up is that the "senior writer" (sorry, no idea who it was--no one you've heard of, I'm sure) seized the opportunity to criticize the NFL's "ridiculous" system of awarding the top 4 seeds to the division winners, regardless of the records of the wild-card teams. Mr. Senior Writer went on at some length about how stupid it was that a team like Seattle should thus be rewarded with home-field advantage in the first round despite sneaking into the playoffs, blah blah blah.

Now, the obvious counterargument here is that this year the two NFC wild-card teams are both 8-8, and, well, somebody has to play at home in the first round. But the thing that bugs me more than the existence of an obvious counterargument is the fact that the guy didn't even really make an argument for his contention in the first place. He essentially made an assertion and expected it to be accepted as obviously correct. I think that it's a reasonable argument to make, but my point is, you have to actually make the argument! And the argument, in particular, would have to address the erosion of integrity in the divisional system.

Since that last sentence didn't actually mean anything, let me explain. In other words, it has to mean something to be in a division--otherwise, let's just have two 16-team conferences. So you play each team in your division twice. If you're in a particularly hard division, you're at an unfair disadvantage in competing for playoff spots for your conference, so you should be rewarded accordingly if you win your division. If you're in a weak division, then maybe you get an unfair advantage, but them's the breaks. Over time, thanks to the draft system and salary cap, imbalances across division and conferences ought to correct themselves.

As I said, I think that one could argue against this. But the guy didn't make the argument. He didn't address essentially the one objection that any intelligent person would have to his proposal. This, of course, isn't an exceptional example; it happens every day. And it bugs the heck out of me that reporters continually say things like that without making a proper argument.