We lost the better part of the day yesterday to jury duty, so we’re late getting this up. We apologize for the convenience.
After the jump, this week’s TMQ…
Stable situations at head coach, secure starting quarterbacks who stay the same year-to-year — these are benchmarks of teams that have dominated recent title rounds.
In other words, stability is good. TMQ may be right about this, but:
In the past dozen years, the Cowboys have had three head coaches, three starting quarterbacks, and five playoff appearances, but TMQ apparently doesn’t consider that “stable”. The Houston Texans have had three head coaches and either three or four starting quarterbacks during this period (depending on how you count), and two playoff appearances. It seems to us that stability is a good thing, but not a necessary or sufficient condition for a winning team.
But isn’t Oregon one of the major proponents of the “quick-snap” or “blur” offense? How did that work out for them?
“The overwhelming majority of Ohio State and Oregon players who performed so well Monday night will never receive one thin dime for their on-field efforts.” New England’s tactics aren’t unprecedented, at least at the college level.
Stats. Sweet: Indianapolis. Sour: Dallas. Mixed: New England-Baltimore.
“Do zebras reduce enforcement of defensive pass interference during the postseason?” TMQ’s answer is: no, because scoring in the playoffs has remained constant. We’re not sure we agree 100% with TMQ’s police work here: why not look at something like average number of DPI calls per game?
“Whatever’s up with playoff scoring, it seems unlikely zebras are allowing defensive backs to get away with things they couldn’t get away with during the regular season.” Perhaps. But we can easily see a scenario where officials avoid making possibly controversial DPI calls because they don’t want to be seen as influencing the outcome of a playoff game.
“The new, aluminum-based Ford F-150 pickup, combining strength with higher MPG, owing to less weight, is a major triumph for American manufacturing.” We’re reserving judgment on this until we see how the new F-150 holds up over time.
Is Peyton Manning the problem in Denver? Maybe not. Maybe, according to TMQ, the problem is poor front office decisions and “hyper-conservative” coaching. And Peyton Manning.
About all that Indianapolis big blitzing on third-and-long — it worked against the aging Manning. It will not work against Tom Brady.
For the record, Tom Brady is 37. Peyton Manning is 38.
Lemon Oreos? Here are your ESPN Grade Standings. Short summary: Ohio State in first, TCU in second.
Authentic Games: “The nonscientific metric continues to forecast a Seattle-New England Super Bowl, which has been the TMQ gut feeling since early December.” Of course, on December 30th, “The Authentic Games index clearly taps Pittsburgh and Seattle as the Super Bowl pairing.” On December 23rd, the four top ranked teams in the Authentic Games index were Pittsburgh, New England, Denver, and Arizona/Seattle (tied for fourth). TMQ’s “gut” may have told him something different than his “Authentic Games” ranking did; but if that was the case, why make such a fuss over the ranking?
Chicken-(salad) kicking: Oregon. Who would have thunk that a pizza appetizer wouldn’t sell well at a pizza place? “…at Malnati’s, one can still order cheese bread or fried mozzarella as appetizers before pizza.” That’s pretty common around here, too. Does TMQ ever go out for pizza?
The annual firing of the assistant coaches. More PeyPey. We got our mother to purchase some Ovaltine for us once. Once. We found we didn’t care for the taste of it, prefering Nesquik instead. Point of this anecdote being, “intravenous grape Ovaltine” sounds disgusting. (It also sounds like a recipe for gangrene.)
More cosmic thoughts on possible “Earthlike worlds”.
Walking off yardage against the opponent is the “safe” tactic, but most of the time, a good offense would rather have a snap than 10 yards.
Really?
1. Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, does Gregg Easterbrook not understand anything about screen writing or dramatic conventions?
2. “…how many times in the real world has a single small object controlled the fates of millions?” Gavrilo Princip’s FN 1910 wasn’t terribly large. Fat Man was pretty big, but the core itself wasn’t. Any more examples? Feel free to drop them in comments.
We really wish we could find a link to a classic “Saturday Night Live” sketch involving a group of Bond villains. “I question the wisdom of even having a self-destruct button.”
Quoted without comment, because we think it actually makes sense:
This also gives a chance to link to an excellent post by Tom Nichols, “Cops and soldiers, and why they’re different“.
Something something New England. Kyrzbekistan. We remember “Real People”, but not very fondly.
College coaches are being paid too much. Well, some of them are, anyway.
Correct us if we are wrong, but don’t the really big deals – the Harbaughs, the Sabans – come out of the pockets of boosters, not out of university funds? Would the boosters still give money to “reduce tuition” rather than pay for a coach? (And shouldn’t the “reduce tuition” argument be considered separately from the “coach pay” argument? We think tuition is too damn high, but we don’t think coaches are the only reason for this.)
Interestingly, the coaches who bundled up against the cold won; the ones who didn’t lost. This, of course, defies TMQ’s creepy “Cold Coach = Victory” mantra and causes Easterbrook all kinds of tsuris. The Football Gods are invoked.
Why did Seattle win? It couldn’t have been because Carolina was a lesser team. No, the answer is: excessive blitzing by Carolina, lots of Carolina mistakes, and poor Carolina clock management.
“…the Oregon Ducks are run on positive coaching principles.” This is, indeed, praiseworthy. But what’s Urban Meyer’s style? Is he a screamer? (This is kind of interesting.)
And if you’ll be her bodyguard, she’ll be Janet Yellen of the Fed. Doesn’t quite scan, does it? But we like yelling “Stop! Federal Reserve Police!”
“Adventures in Officiating“: New England – Baltimore pass interference, Harbaugh’s fine whine.
The Celtics are the latest team to take a dive:
We just had to quote that. And you know, we thought going into the season that Philadelphia was going to take the loser crown: now it looks like they have stiff competition.
That wraps things up for this week. Tune in next week, when TMQ will either be gloating over how accurate his “Authentic Games” metric was (after all but four teams were eliminated) or explaining why his Superb Owl prediction was wrong. Until then, we think you should take some wooden nickels, as they’re actually kind of cool.