BQBL: Where Are They Now Special!

Here we go, yellow highlights for out of the league, green highlights for moved to another team.

Rob's Team:

• Broncos
• Timothy Richard Tebow was traded to the Jets as their backup, made more headlines there by jogging shirtless in the rain than the starting QB did for actually playing real games.  He was let go after the 2012 season and after a brief stint trying out for the Patriots, is no longer in the league.
• But the Broncos got Peyton Manning so that's the most negative BQBL points ever.
• Raiders
• Jason Campbell was moved to Chicago, and then to the Browns, where he seems to have been beaten for the starting job by Brandon Wheeden, and then again beaten for the job when Wheeden went down by Brian Hoyer.  Yikes. 
• The Raiders are playing Pryor, which seems promising.
• Carson Palmer moved to Arizona, where I think he's still starting.
• Colts
• Curtis Painter is now backing up the other Manning in New York
• The Colts drafted Andrew Luck, so that's also a bad BQBL bet
• Dolphins
• Matt Moore appears to still be on the Dolphins, but the starting job now belongs to Ryan Tannehill

Alison's Team:

• Cowboys
• Tony's still Tony.  Threw for 500 yards last Sunday and then lost the game with a pick within the last two minutes.  Overall, that's going to be negative BQBL points, but it continues to hurt.
• Eagles
• Vince Young played for her?  Oh, man.  He is so out of the league now.  I miss Vince.
• Michael Vick is still around.  Still playing questionably and getting hurt. 
• Browns
• Remarkably this year, the Browns are doing okay with Wheedon and Hoyer?  Not sure how that's happening
• Colt McCoy got picked up by San Francisco as a back up
• Lions
• Matt Stafford is still their QB.  Still trucking along up there.

Xian's Team:

• Texans
• Matt Schaub was a freaking hero for the previous season, and quickly a pariah early in this season.  
• Matt Leinart is out of the league.
• Steelers
• Ben did fine last season, but is somehow stinking up the place so far this year...
• Ravens
• Ravens actually won the superbowl and gave Joe Flacco a huge new contract, but they haven't been doing too hot so far this year either...  BQBL needs points (like I said when we were playing) for getting a fat contract and then disappointing. 
• Seahawks
• Whaddya know, Tavaris Jackson is still on the Seahawks team, but he's been obscured by Russell Wilson's coolness, I guess.  His photo reflects how unhappy he is about this.

Nan's Team:

• Panthers
• Cam Newton is no longer the hot stuff.  Not sure how he's scoring in BQBL points, but we don't hear much out of the Panthers these days. 
• Jaguars
• Would you believe they are STILL fielding Blaine Gabbert?  He's still crushing the triple-digit BQBL scores, too!  I checked the website where they tally these things, and they worship him like a god.
• Luke McCown is backing up in New Orleans
• Chiefs
• Tyler Palko seems to be out of the league
• The Chiefs did a major remodel and got new QB and coach and seem to be doing alright, for once.
• Buccaneers
• Josh Freeman is the reason I thought to do a special on where they are now.  He's finally had it in Orlando and their differences caused the team to abruptly let him go mid-season, for which there should be huge BQBL points.  The Vikings just picked him up.

My Team:

• Redskins
• Surprise, surprise, Rex Grossman is still lurking as a backup in Washington D.C.! 
• The Redskins moved up in the draft last year to take RG3, and he's been hit or miss, I feel. 
• Bills
• At least they cut Fitzpatrick, but he's shown back up in a backup role in Tennessee.  Still sporting that horrible caveman beard.  And terrible QB play.
• The Bills have a new rookie QB who is already hurt, so likely they are a good team for BQBL this year.
• 49ers
• I picked them because I don't have confidence in Alex Smith, who was traded to St. Louis.  As it turns out, Game Manager is pretty safe stuff in BQBL, so he's not a good pick in either city.
• Colin Kaepernick is coached by Harbaugh, BQBL numbers are still low there.
• Bengals
• Bengals still aren't winning, but Andy Dalton doesn't look like he's scoring high BQBL points still.

NFL Explanations: Time-outs, Redux

Again, clearly, I don't want to talk about that game. It was bad. Even Alison and Xian were witnesses and were like, "that... was a bad thing, wasn't it." Yes, my non-NFL friends. That was not good thing you just saw there.

"Is... football always this exciting?"

No. Sorry. Only when you're trying to will the Dallas Cowboys to victory. They didn't coin the phrase "RomoCoaster" for no reason. I suspect being a fan of the 13-0 Green Bay Packers is not exciting, with their 46-16 yawn-win over the Oakland Raiders. Boring! And don't even get me started on the past few years with the Mavericks and the Rangers. It can be a gut-wrenching place, Dallas.

So. Back to time outs, since it is the subject of more questions this week. I clearly did not actually explain the science of time outs in the last post. So here it is for you. Each team gets 3 time outs per half of game. They're give at the start of each half (not counting overtime, which has it's own timeouts) and they do not roll over like cell phone minutes. You use them or lose them.

Moments in which to use timeouts are usually pretty cut and dry.

- Your defense in not ready for the play, and the offense is about to snap the ball. Anytime your defense is not ready, the offense can easily score a touchdown. It's a professional league, after all; you'd expect nothing less.

- Your offense is not ready for the play, and the play clock (the clock they use to enforce timely games - 40 seconds from the conclusion of the previous play to start the next one) is almost at zero. There's a 5 yard penalty for letting the play clock wind to zero on offense.

- You are trying to conserve precious clock seconds as the final seconds tick away, to give yourself a chance to win. When the ball is 'downed' in the field of play, that is, the play did not end out of bounds, the game clock keeps running down. A time out stops the game clock until the start of the next play, saving you 40 seconds of game time, which can be a lot in football.

That's about it. You don't want to waste time outs early in the half and then have none when you really need it - say, you're trying to squeak out a victory with a kick in the last seconds, but in order to kick a field goal, you need to change all the personnel on the field. The clock does not stop for this, so you'll want a time out in your pocket in case the game clock is still going. You can stop it at 1 second, and get that last play off in time.

But, like any good video game, you almost always horde those time outs then leave them on the table. A coach that is busy winning the game usually doesn't have much reason to stop the clock and allow the other team time to get back in the game. So, at the very tail end of close games, you'll see one team trying to grind the clock to zero to preserve a win, and the other trying desperately to save seconds. When this situation gets all the way down to that last field goal kick, many coaches 'ice' the kicker: take a final timeout just before the kick goes off, so that play doesn't count, and pretty much forcing the kicker to think about it for 30 more seconds.

It's a silly and largely empty gesture. The pressure's already on to win or tie the game, and the kicker probably won't get any more nervous or jittery if you take a time out just as he makes the first attempt and force him to take another. But it's the only action you can take, and you don't exactly need those time outs for anything either way, so almost everyone does it. It's probably backfired as many times as it's succeeded - the first kick did not go through, and the second does. But even if there's not much to be gained, there's not much to be lost.

And yesterday, the giants lucked out on the ice.

NFL Explanations: Time-outs

Back in 2006, I told Xian (he doesn't really follow football) the high-drama story that was the Dallas Cowboy's epic season. I'd say it should be made into a movie, but it'd have to be a tragedy, unless they wanted to fudge history and pretend we won the Superbowl or something. I'll tell you the story (in my highly stylized way, of course) some other time. Today, we're going to set the scene for yesterday's tragic loss.

Week 1, everything's starting out great. We're in New York exactly 10 years after 9/11, the stage is big, the lights are bright, and the Cowboys are clicking on all cylinders, poised to hand a tough defeat to the New York Jets. It's Rob Ryan vs. twin brother Rex, with their ex-head coach dad Bud in the stands. The night is rife with storylines. But none of that matters when the Cowboys fumble away a 14-point fourth quarter lead by means of an extremely rare blocked punt returned for a touchdown, on top of two not-very-excusable turnovers directly from the hands of Tony Romo. Afterwards, we all sat down and said to ourselves, 'we let that one get away from us', slapped Tony on the wrist lightly for trying to over-achieve when a simple dose of conservative play-calling would have gotten the job done. Well, Cowboys fans did. The media at large could not find it in their hearts to be so forgiving, and lambasted all of them for the entire week without letup. It was the big story of Week 1, and general consensus seemed to agree that Tony Romo played well for the first three quarters, and then personally choked away the game, and all but branded the "choker" label on him, forever. Grantland even calls losing the game singlehandedly with a bad interception "a solid Romo," now.

Week 2, all the media talk lavished praise on Tony Romo for gutting out an impressive performance, with two broken ribs and no receiving core, to lead a comeback win against what has actually been a pretty impressive SF team this year. You can read the dramatized version in my BQBL Week 2 Recap post. Suffice to say, he was media darling for a week.

Week 3 continued the love-fest. Tony overcame all kinds of feel-good-movie antics, including injury-depleted roster, difficulty speaking loudly with still-broken ribs, and his center hilariously snapping him the ball early multiple times. The Cowboys didn't win elegantly, but they won, a credit to the entire team effort, and mostly Tony Romo.

Week 4 the second honeymoon was over. Up by a massive 24 points in the third quarter, Dallas seemed like that elegant win was in the books, and everything was settled in for a well-organized offensive and defensive juggernaut. And then the 27-3 lead vanished under two interceptions returned for touchdowns, and a sudden defensive breakdown after a third. There was blame to go around during the following week, and even during the bye week. What was Tony even throwing passes for in the third and fourth quarter? As I explained to Xian, one of the first things you learn when watching football is clock management, and here's the general rule: running burns clock, passing saves clock. When teams have that good of a lead, usually it's time to shelve the QB and start running around to get to 'game over' quicker. And with less risk of interceptions, by the way. (The exception to this rule is when you're the New England Patriots, who aren't satisfied with winning games by a 24-point margin, and will continue to throw the ball even when they're up by 48. That is beyond the scope of this article, but suffice to say, we generally call it the "Being a Jerk Exception") Media outlets questioned Tony's ability at the same time they questioned the coach's decision to "allow Tony to lose the game for you". In Dallas, we grew concerned that the Cowboys were covering up a total lack of running ability. Either way, it was back to being the talk of the choking world for another week. They also created the term: "Romo-Coaster".

Since the bye week, the Cowboys have gone 5-2, mostly due to weaker competition and the decision to actually run the ball. Fortuitously, another previously unknown guy has emerged from nowhere to be a good runner, and we finally achieved some balance. Aside from a loss to the Patriots (Evil Team Evil, won't get into that now) and a blowout loss to the Eagles (who obviously have their own issues, won't get into that either), there were 5 good wins in that stretch, and everyone credited the newly-discovered rushing game. With increased balance comes more spread out defenses. Tony took care of the win-baby (that was a great article) and stopped trying to "do too much" as everyone puts it. The head coach, Jason Garrett, also asked less of him, too, once DeMarco Murray established himself as a reliable runner. Everything seemed to be coming up roses.

And then yesterday's game happens. Let us overlook for now the fact that the Cowboys had plenty of chances, and probably should have been up by a much wider margin. Water under the bridge for now. It's 13-13, and there's 26 seconds left. Tony Romo has just landed a tight throw to Dez Bryant for the first down at the Arizona 31 yard line. Here's how a conventional game goes, i.e. what you expect to see after watching enough football:

The Cowboys call a time out, stopping the game clock at 26 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter. All the players leisurely jog up to the line of scrimmage, Tony informs the Cowboys offense that they're going to rush up the middle (Let's refer to this as Imaginary Play #1) DeMarco Murray rushes up the middle. That takes about a second, and the clock is still ticking. Both sides hurriedly reset the lines (maybe... 10 seconds) and Tony hands it to DeMarco again for another rush (another second or two) (We'll call this Imaginary Play #2). We've used about 14 seconds of clock, 20 at the outside, and the Cowboys take their last timeout. Let's be conservative and say DeMarco got us about 5 yards and we've stopped the clock at 2 seconds remaining in the game. Dan Bailey hits a 44-yarder (knock on wood) from the middle of the field as time expires, and the Cowboys win the game.

That, oddly is not what happened. Instead, the Cowboys did not take one of their two timeouts, let the clock run down to 7 seconds, spiked the ball, and let the kicker come onto the field immediately. There's nothing really wrong with a 49-yard field goal attempt to win the game, but it's pretty odd that they didn't even try to get more yards. Dan Bailey hits the field goal, and everyone rejoices. Except apparently, Jason Garrett called a time out just before he hit the ball? It's like I'm in the twilight zone at this point. Dan Bailey says "um..... ok." and relines up to take the kick again. And promptly misses. And then the Cardinals win the coin toss in overtime and the Cowboys never see the ball again on their way to a 19-13 loss. What?!

The media is more or less roasting this guy alive today. He's completely unapologetic about the call, and for a moment, I was going to throw him under the bus, too. But then I remembered what kind of a season he's had so far, and how can I blame him for being over-conservative now, when everyone was saying in Week 4 that his unconservative approach lost us the game (not even mentioning the Week 1 disaster last season). He is, in fact, doing as we asked, and "not letting Tony lose us the game". He thought they could make the field goal from 49 yards and didn't want to take risks. It just turned out tragically this time.

Just as an exercise, let's go back and explore a few possible outcomes of alternate-reality decisions, starting from the assumption that they called timeout at 26 seconds:

- They decide to run the ball, thus minimizing the chance for turnovers (it's less likely to fumble in such a run than to be intercepted)
1) DeMarco Murray bangs past the line for a touchdown, hooray. (Pretty unlikely, the defense is ready for this play).

2) He leans forward and gains a yard or two as described in the imaginary scenario above. (Much more likely). Dan Bailey kicks from the much-higher-probability-location of 44 yards out

3) He gets stuffed at the line for zero or - gulp! - negative yardage. (Not super likely). Dan Bailey is forced to make a 49+ yard field goal.

4) Epic disaster strikes, and he fumbles the ball away or somehow, the clock runs out (Very unlikely, but it's happened).

- They decide to pass the ball, to make sure there's no mishaps with the clock

1) Touchdown, woo (Somewhat unlikely?)

2) Incomplete passes, and almost no time is taken off the clock (Pretty likely), and Dan Bailey must make a 49 yard-or-shorter kick to win the game

3) Tony gets sacked (Very unlikely), and now they're out of field goal range and have to hail mary or go to overtime

4) Epic disaster, Tony is intercepted and it's returned for a touchdown as time expires (Not as impossible as one would hope, but still Very Unlikely)

And the corresponding Murphy's Law: "If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which something can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop"

Jesse Holley

I was kind of joking when I said it deserves a movie, but then I remembered, I watched "Invincible".

This is actually a way better story than that one.

Pro Bowl

One more idea, before the season is over - can we make the pro-bowl a Fantasy SuperBowl?

Most of the players in the pro bowl are owned, and they're surprisingly motivated by the thousands of fantasy managers out there, I hear.

NFL Idea

So I had forgotten I had a blog. I'm sure it happens to everyone at some point.

Here's the idea, before the season is officially over:

Overtime with NO KICKING.

No field goals, no punts. Sit that poor kicker down and do the real dirty work yourself. Yes, we might end in more ties, but it wouldn't seem like it came down to the coin flip, right?

NFL Network

Don't think you're missing out on anything without the NFL Network. Sure, the Cowboys game is going well so far for the home team (5:30 til the half). But Bret Favre is out of the game right now - Aaron Rogers is playing! Also, a few aesthetic issues to complain about. The NFL network refuses to bow to convention: the line of scrimmage is bright red, as is the game clock. It's surprisingly distracting.

And a complaint against complainers: Chris Collingsworth is a hater, and he's spent all night so far doing nothing but hating on T.O. and Tony Romo. "If I had the kind of fairy-tale success two seasons Tony Romo has had, I'd sure be smiling and joking around, too!" Is that so, Chris Collingsworth? Too bad you're just a bitter old man, sitting across from Tiki Barber on Sunday nights this season instead, isn't it?

A Riot of Fun

A good day of football today, Dallas vs. Miami. Down in Florida, it was apparently burning under the oppression of the sun, and both teams sagged while they were on the field. I don't know about the Dolphins, but I know the Cowboys own a "personal air-conditioning system" for those extensively nasty games in that Dallas half-dome, where it gets both very hot, and very cold. The system plugs into the back of a player's shoulderpads, and pumps either hot or cold air straight into their confining uniform and circulates around to keep them from over-heating.

At first, the game was normal, though the offense was on the field for an abnormally long time, wearing out Miami's defense and scoring a couple of times. Though Miami came back by the end of the first half, it was pretty clear that their defense was tired, over-heated, and rather upset at being out on the field for two-thirds of the first thirty minutes.

As the second half wore on, the Dolphins actually became laughingly obsolete, and it seemed to become a contest between the Cowboy's offense, and the Cowboy's defense - who wanted to sit on the sidelines in their air-conditioned pads more. As soon as the defense stepped on the field, they made a spectacular interception of the football, and Nan and I adlibbed them as they celebrated: "Get back out there, Tony Romo! That's right! Back to my air-conditioning! Boy, howdy is it hot out he-yuh!"

Offense walks onto the field? Immediate huge play for touchdown. "That's right, defense. We're done here, why dun ya'll get back onto the field! I'm hustling back for my air-conditioning and Gatorade."

They went back and forth maybe five times in the final quarter, in a small war over who would get to sit on the sidelines longer before Miami simply gave up in disgust.