Although the Giants are in first by two games, they continue to look half-assed against bad teams. They were all out to beat the Dolphins yesterday, and they lost to the frikkin’ Seahawks - both games were at home. And in both games, the opponents had backup QB’s playing some or all of the game. The Giants have been underperforming against backup QBs for years now. It’s maddening!
They also looked crappy against the Rams, but at least that was early in the year, when they were clearly out of sync. Thank goodness their bye week has passed - unlike the Eagles, they don’t benefit from the time off.
Just to follow up on this, no Redskins team has had a better record in the second half of the season than in the first half since 2001, when Marty Schottenheimer was the head coach. (This isn’t a balanced statistic since a team will have the same record in both halves of the season fairly often, but you’d expect a team to do better in the second half of the season some of the time, just by sheer chance.)
And thinking of Schottenheimer reminds me that The Danny’s had six head coaches during his dozen years as Redskins owner, not counting Terry Robiskie’s brief fill-in when Norv was fired with three games left in the 2000 season. There’s been Norv, Schottenheimer, Spurrier, Gibbs, Zorn, and now Shanahan. Wonder who’ll be the head coach next season.
Believe it or not, I was not in love with the Eagles last night. They were impressive, but that has been their m.o. for awhile … when the offense is in sync, they look unstoppable. But IMO, the good offenses are the ones that can still be at least functional when they’re not in sync, and the Eagles under Vick seem either all the way on, or else totally, disastrously, off – and as often as not what kills them is ball security. Even last night, they had some ill-advised throws and some lucky bounces, and both Vick and McCoy are really reckless in the way they carry the ball. The defense was getting gashed by Murray before the score took him out of the game.
Honestly, I want to see them win a 17-14 game in sloppy weather against a good team.
Oh I believe it. It’s ridiculous and silly, but I believe it.
The first seven games don’t really allow that to hold up. The offense was out of sync often and still amassed tons of yardage. Even giving up several turnovers a game the Eagles were still competitive in every game. This Eagles offense has traditionally been very boom or bust - last night was the best possible outcome, the most unlikely dream, of an Eagles fan.
They sustained methodical drives. They ran the ball often and effectively (against what was a very good run defense). Great on third down. Great on short yardage. Vick was damn near perfect, but not only that, he was terrific reading the Dallas D and attacking it like a surgeon. His audibles at the line directly resulted in two red zone TDs, which was the biggest offensive hurdle the team suffered outside of turnovers. And no turnovers by the way. Vick missed 7 throws all night and only one was in danger of being intercepted.
Dude, that’s the design of the defense. They focus on getting a quick lead (did you notice how the Eagles elect to receive on every coin flip they win?) and forcing the opposing team to pass, hoping to be able to tee off on the QB and create turnovers and pressure. They sacrifice stout run defense to go for big plays. Their plan worked to perfection, finally. The Eagles forced the Cowboys to throw early and still held Austin and Bryant without a catch in the first half.
I honestly don’t see how you could have watched that game and found fault in how the Eagles played on offense or defense. Against a good team!
Of course it’s the design. Of course they want to play with the lead. In the NFL, you will not always be afforded that luxury. Sooner or later, the other team will get an opening drive and a turnover, and you’ll be down 14-0 and facing two-TE sets the rest of they day. An NFL team must be able to stop or at least contain the run, period.
I’m not saying they sucked; I’m saying that for the most part they won by leaning on their strengths, not by seriously improving their weaknesses. The Oline was improved, and that was a good sign, and Vick made a couple nice reads. But I still want to see improved ball security and I want to see them stop the run. Those will impress me more than speed and racking up a ton of yards; we already knew they could do that.
I realize this wasn’t your main point, but in 45 years of watching football at all levels, I can surely count on my fingers the number of times I’ve seen a team electing to kick off after winning the toss. Quite possibly the fingers of one hand.
I’d expect good defensive teams to do it more often - kick off to the other team, try to stuff their offense on the first series, and give your offense the ball in good field position. (And get the ball first in the second half.) But they almost never do.
Damned if I ever see it. “Team X has won the toss” being followed by “and has elected to receive” has been only slightly less predictable, in the thousand or so games I’ve watched, than Tuesday following Monday.
I’ve never noticed it one way or the other. I feel like it’s a 50/50 proposition. There are many contributing factors. Your D, Your O, Their D, Their O, Wind, Sun, Rowdy fans, etc all contribute to whether to elect to kick/receive, or choose a side.
But your opinion seems to be: When given the choice to kick or receive (either by winning the toss, or your opponent winning and choosing a side to defend) you say that teams choose to receive by a vast margin.
It’s an interesting theory, Not sure we can find those statistics anywhere, so we’ll have to watch this weekend to see.
In thirteen games this week, only six teams that won the toss chose to receive. The other seven deferred. That was just this week.
But one other (not) interesting note is that the Eagles have won six of their seven coin flips.
You can say it’s a 50/50 proposition, and I might even agree to that (even considering your latest post about 2010), but the point was the Eagles are decidedly not 50/50. They are very aggressive in getting the ball early and trying to score right away. Their entire defense is built to play the pass. That makes criticism that they aren’t stonewalling the run silly.
Isn’t deferring a relatively new option? I thought they couldn’t do that until just a couple of years ago - before that, if you won the toss and didn’t take the ball, your opponent could get it to start both halves.
That’s what Ellis Dee said (in 2005) at RNATB’s link, and that’s the sort of thing where if I say one thing and Ellis says another, I’m betting on him.
Short version of what Ellis said back then: what alternates between halves is the right to choose, not the kickoff itself. So if you chose to kick off, you’d used up your choice, and the other team got to choose to receive in the second half.
If that’s changed in the past few years, it would have been easy for me to miss it: I’ve watched/listened to a rather small sample of games since the Firebug came along. So it’s quite possible that I’ve missed a revolution in coin-toss decisions.
And good on them for changing the rule to make it make sense, sometimes, to defer.
I’m pretty sure that’s not right. As far as I can tell, the team that kicks off to start the first half receives to start the second whether they win the toss, pick the south endzone, paint themselves green or convert to Baha’i.
I think the problem is that there are two senses in which a team can “defer”: the current option, which is picking an endzone and deferring the choice of whether to kick or receive; or the old option, which was simply letting the other team pick.
Here’s the relevant part of the NFL rule: “Immediately prior to the start of the second half, the captains of both teams must inform the officials of their respective choices. The loser of the original coin toss gets first choice.”
Your first example isn’t deferring - it’s making a choice on one of the two options available. Before each half begins, the teams choose (a) who kicks off and who receives and (b) which team is defending which endzone to start the half. The system of choices is set up so that neither team gets to make both those choices.
Say team 1 wins the initial coin toss and chooses to defer - team 2 then gets the first choice for the first half. They will choose to receive the kickoff, and team 1 gets the choice of direction. In the second half, team 1 chooses to receive the kickoff, and team 2 chooses the direction.
If team 1 chooses to receive in the first half, team 2 chooses direction and the situation above is simply reversed. But if team 1 wins the toss and chooses which goal to defend, team 2 gets the ball to start the first half, and they make the first choice in the second half. If the defer instead, then team 2 will choose to receive the kickoff, and they can choose their direction without screwing themselves over.
It’s a nitpicky difference, but it’s an important one.
This sounds exactly like what Ellis Dee described in 2005. What alternates between halves isn’t who gets to receive (which is what I’d always incorrectly assumed), but (effectively) who gets to choose who gets to receive. If you win the coin toss and elect either (a) to kick or (b) to defend a particular goal, then the team that lost the toss will (a) receive or (b) choose to receive the opening kickoff. Then the team that lost the opening toss will get first choice in the second half, and will have no reason not to choose to receive.
Have I read this correctly? Because it’s hard to see why you’d get 7 coaches who won the coin toss last season electing not to receive, let alone 77.
Yes, unless there’s some reason that going in a particular direction confers a bigger advantage than having the ball. Deferring is just deferring the choice until the second half, and you can always use that choice to elect your preferred end rather than receipt of the kickoff. In practice, “the choice” always ends up being the right to choose to receive, which the team that wins the toss can either give itself in the first half or the second half, but there’s always the other option.
A perfect example of the distinction is the “We’ll kick to the clock” screwup in the 1962 AFL Championship. Game goes to overtime and there’s such a strong wind that Hank Stram wants his guy to take the wind at their backs if they win the toss, rather than electing to receive. Dallas does win the toss, only Abner Haynes says “we’ll kick to the clock,” intending to convey the direction they’ll be going and assuming that everyone knows they will be kicking off since they’re choosing direction. Except since he said “we’ll kick,” he was actually using his choice to elect not to receive, and the other guys got to choose which direction they wanted to go, so they got the ball and the wind.
