BowlenBall
09-16-2008, 10:59 AM
I've been reading this guy's column for years (on Slate, then NFL.com, now on ESPN), and this is the first time he's EVER said something complimentary about Mike Shanahan:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/080916
The good, the bad and the ugly of Week 2
Last week I journeyed alone to a distant mountaintop -- OK, a distant parking lot -- and beseeched the football gods to give me a manly man coach. Here is last week's column on cowardly NFL coaches kicking instead of going for it. What to our wondering eyes does appear but the Denver Broncos, down 38-37 to San Diego with 24 seconds remaining, going for two and the win rather than passively kicking and proceeding to overtime. Mike Shanahan, who styles himself as The Ultimate Leader, made a bold leadership decision! And the football gods crowned him with success.
Not only was Shanahan rewarded by the football gods, all football enthusiasts were rewarded with a fabulous conclusion to the game. Whatever happened on that deuce attempt, the ending would have been one of the most entertaining and talked-about game endings in years. Suppose instead Shanahan had kicked, and either team had won in overtime with a field goal -- yawn. Instead, what a fabulous game!
From the moment Shanahan made his decision, sports nuts called it "gutsy" or "bold" or "a huge risk." As TMQ has pointed out before, going for it is actually playing the percentages! Suppose Denver had kicked the PAT and advanced to overtime. That's about a 50/50 prospect, and in overtime you may never even touch the ball -- on Sunday, San Francisco won the overtime coin toss, took the ball and beat Seattle, which never had a snap. Go for two in the waning seconds, and all you need is 2 yards to win the game. Up to that point, Denver had rolled up 484 yards of offense. The offense was hot, so why not try for 2 yards more? The invaluable Pro Football Prospectus reports that since 2003, deuce attempts have succeeded about 55 percent of the time, which sounds better than trotting on to overtime. True, in the past 15 years, teams that have gone for two to win in the final minute won three times and lost three times. That's still no worse than proceeding to overtime -- and tells you how rare going for two in this situation is. TMQ suspects that if coaches went for the win in this situation more often, they'd do better than 50/50.
Shanahan's decision was "bold" mainly in the sense that if the gamble failed, sports pundits would now be bashing, bashing, bashing him. Whereas if he ordered a kick and the Broncos lost in overtime, the players would be blamed. Coaches act like cowards mainly to avoid criticism -- how wonderful to see Shanahan not caring about that.
Now consider another aspect of the decision: The deuce try helped Denver score the touchdown. How's that? When the Broncos took possession with 4:22 remaining, trailing 38-31, Shanahan told the offensive unit that if they scored, the team would try for two. This must have excited the offensive players -- their coach was challenging them to go win the game, and expressing confidence in them. Going for two is a lot more exciting for an offensive player than passively trotting off the field as the kicker trots on. The knowledge they would go for the win was likely a factor in the Broncos' pumped-up drive down the field.
In other football news, coaches are obviously important, as Shanahan just showed. Yet TMQ contends they are overrated as factors in sports outcomes; TMQ's Law of Coaching is that great coaching adds about 10 percent to performance, and bad coaching subtracts about 10 percent; everything else comes from the athlete. A good example of attaching too much significance to coaching is a Washington Post article asserting that Maryland's monster upset of Cal occurred mainly because Terrapins coach Ralph Friedgen gave his players a good pep talk. I am sure it was, in fact, a really outstanding pep talk. But 90 percent of an athlete's motivation comes from within. Friedgen was the same coach, using the same techniques, the week before when Maryland was upset by Middle Tennessee. As for Cal, coach Jeff Tedford had his team fly through three times zones and arrive on the East Coast at 4 p.m. Friday for a game that kicked off at noon Saturday. That really dumb coaching decision likely hurt Cal more than the best pep talk in history could have helped Maryland.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/080916
The good, the bad and the ugly of Week 2
Last week I journeyed alone to a distant mountaintop -- OK, a distant parking lot -- and beseeched the football gods to give me a manly man coach. Here is last week's column on cowardly NFL coaches kicking instead of going for it. What to our wondering eyes does appear but the Denver Broncos, down 38-37 to San Diego with 24 seconds remaining, going for two and the win rather than passively kicking and proceeding to overtime. Mike Shanahan, who styles himself as The Ultimate Leader, made a bold leadership decision! And the football gods crowned him with success.
Not only was Shanahan rewarded by the football gods, all football enthusiasts were rewarded with a fabulous conclusion to the game. Whatever happened on that deuce attempt, the ending would have been one of the most entertaining and talked-about game endings in years. Suppose instead Shanahan had kicked, and either team had won in overtime with a field goal -- yawn. Instead, what a fabulous game!
From the moment Shanahan made his decision, sports nuts called it "gutsy" or "bold" or "a huge risk." As TMQ has pointed out before, going for it is actually playing the percentages! Suppose Denver had kicked the PAT and advanced to overtime. That's about a 50/50 prospect, and in overtime you may never even touch the ball -- on Sunday, San Francisco won the overtime coin toss, took the ball and beat Seattle, which never had a snap. Go for two in the waning seconds, and all you need is 2 yards to win the game. Up to that point, Denver had rolled up 484 yards of offense. The offense was hot, so why not try for 2 yards more? The invaluable Pro Football Prospectus reports that since 2003, deuce attempts have succeeded about 55 percent of the time, which sounds better than trotting on to overtime. True, in the past 15 years, teams that have gone for two to win in the final minute won three times and lost three times. That's still no worse than proceeding to overtime -- and tells you how rare going for two in this situation is. TMQ suspects that if coaches went for the win in this situation more often, they'd do better than 50/50.
Shanahan's decision was "bold" mainly in the sense that if the gamble failed, sports pundits would now be bashing, bashing, bashing him. Whereas if he ordered a kick and the Broncos lost in overtime, the players would be blamed. Coaches act like cowards mainly to avoid criticism -- how wonderful to see Shanahan not caring about that.
Now consider another aspect of the decision: The deuce try helped Denver score the touchdown. How's that? When the Broncos took possession with 4:22 remaining, trailing 38-31, Shanahan told the offensive unit that if they scored, the team would try for two. This must have excited the offensive players -- their coach was challenging them to go win the game, and expressing confidence in them. Going for two is a lot more exciting for an offensive player than passively trotting off the field as the kicker trots on. The knowledge they would go for the win was likely a factor in the Broncos' pumped-up drive down the field.
In other football news, coaches are obviously important, as Shanahan just showed. Yet TMQ contends they are overrated as factors in sports outcomes; TMQ's Law of Coaching is that great coaching adds about 10 percent to performance, and bad coaching subtracts about 10 percent; everything else comes from the athlete. A good example of attaching too much significance to coaching is a Washington Post article asserting that Maryland's monster upset of Cal occurred mainly because Terrapins coach Ralph Friedgen gave his players a good pep talk. I am sure it was, in fact, a really outstanding pep talk. But 90 percent of an athlete's motivation comes from within. Friedgen was the same coach, using the same techniques, the week before when Maryland was upset by Middle Tennessee. As for Cal, coach Jeff Tedford had his team fly through three times zones and arrive on the East Coast at 4 p.m. Friday for a game that kicked off at noon Saturday. That really dumb coaching decision likely hurt Cal more than the best pep talk in history could have helped Maryland.