Week Off

Even though it's Wednesday night when I'm writing this, I'll return next week...

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The High Road still has lows...

...across the dreary fallows she casts a mournful light...

I didn't expect the Giants to beat the 49ers that way. I'm glad the Cowboys and Eagles lost. And that's all I'll say...



RIP RK


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Operation Dangerfield

They ain't get no respect.

A post by ESPN's Dan Graziano talks about how he thinks head coach Coughlin stokes the flames of his players by saying no one picks them to win (Let's call it-and the whole damn team while we're at it-Operation Dangerfield after the comedian whose most famous schtick was about getting no respect). This upcoming game against the 49ers is one example. Graziano also seems to think it's fiction that the Giants are not respected by the League. Old Graziano has a tendency to give people a little more credit than they deserve. I know for a fact that when Nike got the NFL franchise, my sweet wife who's always looking out for me, Rebecca, asked a person involved about what to expect regarding the Giants (variety of gear, player appearances, etc.). The reply was something like, "Oh, honey, not much for them," spoken with a tone of "they're not great for business." This year the talking heads at NFL Network admitted to Eli Manning in an immediate interview following the Thursday Night game against the Panthers that in pre-game programing none of them picked the Giants to win. They picked Cam Newton. I wonder why? Last year, the year before last, and on and on. I can point to numerous examples of the Giants never being the favorite to what's new and  hot and sexy and good for business. Sure, not every team will be picked to win every game, but have you heard anyone pick against the Patriots, Packers, Niners (of late), Saints, or Colts (of old) lately? They're a league of their own. The Texans are this years semi-surprise, but they're not flashy so they're hardly mentioned. No one is EXCITED about the Texans. However, no one looks at the Texans with suspicion...not like they always do with the Giants. Last year before the 49ers beat the Saints and then lost to the Giants, there wasn't much love for them like there is now. I really think the plan was for Tom Brady and the Patriots to meet either the Saints or Packers in the Super Bowl last year after the Saints and Packers played each other in the NFC Conference game. Was the media disappointed?

In the end, I think the odds are against the Giants this week against the now beloved 49ers because they're missing half their starters and not because they can't do it. But if they do, what does that say about what we think tomorrow? Nuthin'. Cuz they ain't get no respect.

ADDENDUM

Here's Peter King of Sports Illustrated and sports media high-table NFL representative on this weeks matchup (49ers 24, Giants 16):

Eli Manning's 24-5 in October, and anyone who thinks that can't continue against the hottest team in football is nuts. I watched Manning in Candlestick last January play as well as a battered quarterback could play, keeping the Giants in a game they had no business winning -- and though I like the Niners here, I don't think it'll be a rout. San Francisco has too many weapons for a battered secondary to shut down. This time, it won't come down to a muffed punt.

You could say Peter King is being fair when he mentions the Giants depletedness, but it's also a backhanded complement by sorta saying they shouldn't ever beat this 49ers team.

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Just a (early) hunch...: Gut Check Week 6

...no, no, not like that...

Like a lot of people, I think the Giants will lose, so they'll likely win. I can live with that. But they don't have everybody on the field. And while that may pass against the Panthers and the Browns, I'm not sure how it will cut it in The Stick. Stop the run and see if the Niners can pass their way out of it against the Giants' depleted secondary? My fingers are crossed. Additionally, the GMen likely need a few big plays on offense to go their way to make it something like the game they want to play. The 49ers are really good at dictating the way games go.

Impressions & Depressions: Week 5

Unitas goes deep into the future.

Impressions

• Like has been mentioned somewhat this week, considering the era he played, Johnny Unitas' record of  a touchdown pass in 47 consecutive game is very impressive. I think it also means that Brees breaking it in this passing league on that offense is less so.

• It's odd, but coupled together in American football are brutality and sentimentality. Maybe its the number of games played with the physical nature of the game itself compared to other sports that makes it so manic, I don't know. But I wonder if it has always been this way. Are these "men" out there in the early 20th century sense of the word?

• The 49ers and Patriots are impressive for opposite reasons this season. The 49ers have really not changed and are still winning big, and the Patriots have changed quite considerably and are also winning big. Of course, they're destroying teams that have almost no business playing in the Canadian league let alone the NFL (cough *Bills*, cough *Jets*).

Depressions

• I have more to say on this later, but cheering when Matt Cassel gets hurt is bad at face value, but is it a single event in the history of the game or is it more common than people would like to admit.

• Billy Cundiff is out of a job again. I can only imagine his life right now. Do you press on or move on? I say he presses on. This all began when he missed a game-ending field goal for the Ravens against the Patriots in last year's AFC Conference Championship game. One could argue his miss was just as much to blame on him as it was on Raven's head coach John Harbaugh's sometimes poor game management skills rearing its ugly head. That receiver, Lee Evans, not holding on to a well thrown pass from QB Joe Flacco didn't help either.

• And the Bountygate continues...how awful. this just looks pissy at this point. Lance Armstrong was surrounded by athletes taking enhancements and these guys had to have been part of a bounty program generated by Greg Williams. Now Goodell just looks stupid, but he's been working on it since the beginning of the season with the ref lockout.

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It’s official, I’m griping: 

Defensive pass interference

Oh, woe, the passing league and the advent of fantasy and splash reel single-minded fandom, how you consume my cathartic, instinctual knee-jerkiness.

I get that the game is fast. I also understand the ridiculousness of giving standing ovations to the regular refs’ return and then booing as soon as fans don’t like a call later on in the same game. However, I have a beef with acts of defensive pass interference that aren’t called when the ball is clearly heading toward where the interference is occurring. WTF!? People like Mike Pereira, former VP of Officiating and now a consultant on the Fox NFL program, say it's "subjective." Sure. But how subjective? I suppose it has to do with the timing of the play: when (and how) the defender contacts the receiver before the ball arrives. But, it should never be uncertain; especially with slow-mo and replay. There's no way to avoid the "truth" in either direction. Below are the rule and two subsections of it I think apply to a play involving the Brown's Sheldon Brown (no relation) and the Giants' Victor Cruz: the first for what is a penalizing action and the other for what is not.

RULE: DEFENSIVE PASS INTERFERENCE

There shall be no interference with a forward pass thrown from behind the line. The restriction on the defensive team starts when the ball leaves the passer’s hand. The restriction ends when the ball is touched by anyone.

Penalty action d)

Extending an arm across the body of a receiver thus restricting his ability to catch a pass, regardless of whether the defender is playing the ball. [See Exhibit A]

Exhibit A: Note the defender's fingers in the crook of Cruz's elbow. This is called "putting a hand in the bucket."

Non-penalty action d)

Laying a hand on a receiver that does not restrict the receiver in an attempt to make a play on the ball. [See Exhibit B]

Exhibit B:  :)

I think it was pass interference by the defender extending his arm across Cruz's body and restricting his ability to catch the ball. The defender was making no attempt to catch it. If the defender's hand was coming down on Cruz's shoulder, that would be different and a good non-call. I know I’m a homer, but this can happen anytime to any team at any point in any team’s schedule (including when your team gets away with it!). The Giants won and so I should shut up. However, nothing makes any fan’s blood boil more than when it happens in a critical game like the playoffs or an important division game.

I’m starting my broken record phase on this now cuz I've said it before: if you don’t like a rule, whatever. But if the rule is in the books, it’s gotta be upheld for it to be a rule. Otherwise, it’s irrelevant--subjective or not--because, ultimately, there is replay. And again, this is never clearer than when the interference happens in the seconds before the ball meets its target. If a referee watches anything, should it not be the ball and its targets, interceptors, and carriers?

Yep, this is real.

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The pass rush and the mobile quarterback

Colts LB Mike Curtis (#32) doing something legal to Rams QB Roman Gabriel (#18). Hey, it was the 60's, a time of peace and harmony ... and uppercuts and missing teeth and poopy pants.

In the 1969 NFL season, Roman Ildonzo Gabriel Jr., 8^th year quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams, was the league MVP. Consider Ben Roethlisberger and you have a good idea of who Roman Gabriel was as a pro quarterback. I could argue that Eli Manning showed flashes of Gabriel during the Double Miracle play in Super Bowl 42 against the then undefeated Patriots. Any time you see a quarterback dart a shovel pass off to an eligible receiver in the midst of being sacked, you see a bit of Gabriel. Of course, he wasn’t perfect. No quarterback back then was nearly the passer and game manager as today’s quarterbacks. This is especially true since quarterbacks often used to call their own plays and offenses typically featured an every-down stud of a running back carrying the load. This was an era of Jim Brown, Paul Hornung, Leroy Kelly, Jim Taylor, and Gale Sayers. In any case, he was really the first quarterback who was big and hard to take down. Therefore, he could buy time in the pocket with his size and, consequently, his mobility. All this is to say if he was fast as well, this type of resourcefulness would have driven defensive linemen to even greater fits of frustration. 

What prompts this introduction to mobile QBs and effective pass rushes is related as usual to my NY Giants and something ESPN’s Dan Graziano pointed out about the lack of success the Giants vaunted defensive front is having the first quarter of this 2012 season; they’re chasing after “mobile” QBs (Romo, Freeman, Newton, and Vick). I think this is a larger issue, but I’ll focus on just the Giants defensive line. What is it about mobile QBs that are so enticing? Clearly, few mobile QBs have had the ultimate success of winning a Super Bowl (Elway, Roethlisberger, and Young are exceptions) or being the winningest QBs. Is it that teams like the Panthers and Redskins know their personnel are not adequate to support a pocket passer? Will a mobile QB fare better on a team with a shoddy O-line and they know this already before the season starts?

To test this I crunched some numbers and I found it is not that mobile QBs are prone to significantly fewer sacks (they actually have more but it’s insignificant), but that they more frequently run and are more likely to score points for their team themselves. Furthermore, many of those that the Giants defensive front faces this year are in that category. Combined with game-planning intended to get the ball out of the QB’s hands quicker, the Giants’ pass rushers just aren’t able to make plays.

What did you do, Ryan? More number crunching bull@$#%?

What I did exactly was I gathered data on the percentage of sacks the QBs take (Sk%), rushing attempts per game (A/G), and touchdowns per game (TD/G). I did this for career and the 2012 season so far. I initially figured these parameters would bear out as fewer sacks, more rushes, and more TDs for mobile QBs. Additionally, these were the stats I could find that seemed closest to illustrating what is measurable about mobility.

Doing a statistical test of two sample's medians called a single sample sign test I tested for any differences between samples. Samples that demonstrated a significant difference between each other belong to 2012 QB rushing attempts per game in 2012 (A/G 2012) and 2012 QB rushing touchdowns per game (TD/G 2012). I also tested (for what it's worth) the 2011 and 2012 opposing QBs the Giants faced. Only the A/G and TD/G data proved significantly different.  Significant numbers are in bold and underlined in the shoddy looking table below. I didn't test means because the data are not normally distributed.

Table 1. Means and medians of data gathered for career, 2011, and 2012 seasons on sack %, QB rushing attempts per game (A/G) and QB rushing TDs per game (TD/G).

	Sk % (Career)	Sk % (2012)	A/G (Career)	A/G (2012)	TD/G (Career)	TD/G (2012)
Mean 2012 NFL Strtg QB	6.081	6.272	2.984	2.897	0.136	0.134
Median 2012 NFL Strtg QB	5.700	5.850	2.550	2.400	0.070	0.000
Mean 2012 NYG Opp QB	6.381	6.681	4.250	4.306	0.269	0.266
Median 2012 NYG Opp QB	6.550	6.700	2.650	3.250	0.094	0.250
Median 2011 NYG Opp QB		6.600		2.300		0.067

In a nutshell

The Giants pass rush is not getting after the QB this year so far because the QBs they face can move. And given any information about getting passes off quicker and inspired offensive line play opposing QBs can neutralize the threat. Unfortunately, this is likely to persist for the foreseeable future unless they find another way to get after the QB. Many of the QBs the Giants face this year are mobile. Last year, not so much. In 2011, the QBs the GMen faced were significantly less likely to run and, consequently, to score with their feet. This year, it's much more likely. This is not a good sign if it's true since the pass rush is the Giants only real counter to the passing league as their secondary is the the thinnest area in their roster.

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