Football blogging

Note At the tail end of this post, I have a youtube video of a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon. I had thought about Mr. Leghorn when I was discussing Fred Thompson. Then I remembered the cartoon in which the cartoonist poked fun at quantum mechanics. Enjoy!

Right now I am enjoying the Patriot-Colt game. It is 13-10, Colts. The Pats were up 7-6 when Brady was intercepted on the Colt 3 yard line with about 90 seconds left in the half.

The Colts moved it out to the 12 for a first down, and with about 30 seconds left had moved it out past the 20. So, they take a knee or play it safe, right?

Well, they throw a short pass, the receiver splits the defenders to the left sideline, then cuts across the field to score with 16 seconds left!

It is such a joy to watch good teams go at it! Big plays abound; acrobatic catches, interceptions, shoestring tackles; it is obvious that neither team has faced a team the caliber of the other.

Update This game continues to have twists. The Colts made a long drive to go up 20-10, but New England used a long drive to cut it to 20-17, and then forced a fumble (interception?; it was on a sack of Peyton Manning) to get the ball close and go up 24-20. Then, another interception stopped the Colt drive; now the Pats are running the “kneel down” offense at the 35 as the Colts have no time outs left.

I missed this pick; I thought that the Horseshoes would win at home. Still, these are the best two teams in the NFL, in my opinion.

Navy-Notre Dame Football, Part III

I’ve notice that some were looking for “Notre Dame didn’t kick a field goal”. The game was tied 28-28, there was less than a minute to go and Notre Dame had 4′th down at the Navy 24 but didn’t try the 41 yard field goal. They went for it on 4′th and long and didn’t make it. The game went to overtime and Navy won. Why didn’t Notre Dame kick?

Weis explains his reasoning here (early in this press conference)

Basically, he says that they were going against the wind and that their kicker was not making them in pregame warmups from this spot on the field, and that they needed 4 more yards.

One thing to remember: each coach, in addition to being a football expert, knows his team much better than any fan ever could. Some of the difficulties that a coach encounters is explained very well by a coach who has an undefeated season on his resume, Terry Bowden (who went undefeated at Auburn).

Did I hear somebody say they heard that I wanted to get back into coaching? If it’s true I’ve got to be crazy. I have not lost a game in nine years and I’m an expert. I’m never wrong. Expert analysts are more like fans than they are coaches in that we have all the answers after the fact. We’re all Monday morning quarterbacks. The truth of the matter is, most of our answers are wrong … or they are only partially right.

I often tell people that in 15 years of calling plays as a head coach in college, I almost never called the best play. I called the best play I could think of in 25 seconds. Shoot, if I had until Monday morning sitting around at the local restaurant and drinking coffee to call a play, I’d call the right one every time. The fact of the matter is, it is very hard to call plays. It is even harder to call the right ones.

And, it is very hard to win ballgames.

How many times have you heard someone say, if we only had a coach like Bob Stoops we’d never have lost that game. Or if Urban Meyer worked for us we would have won. Or if we had Rich Rodriquez or Mack Brown or Kirk Ferentz we never would find ourselves in messes like this. Well, guess what? All those guys lost this weekend. In fact, six of the top 11 teams in college football lost. Most of them were heavy favorites, with very little chance to lose. But they did.

The fact is, it ain’t easy to win a football game. If it was everybody would be doing it. If the best coaches with the best players at the best schools can all line up against teams they should beat by a couple of touchdowns and still lose, then there has to be a reason.

The reason is that you can never do enough things right to win them all. You might do enough things right to win most of the time, but all the time just is not going to happen. There are a million things that you have to do right in a game to win, and there are a million things that can go wrong when you lose. Just when you get the running game going, the kicking game breaks down. Just when the starting defensive lineup gets healthy, a running back gets suspended. A pass is dropped, a field goal is missed, a ball is fumbled, a penalty occurs. No game is ever played perfectly. Ninety percent of the time, 10 percent of the things you do go wrong.

Now, here’s the kicker: No matter how well you coach, how hard you play, or how much you want it, there are some things in a football game you just can’t control. The ball is oblong, not round, and sometimes it takes a funny bounce. College players are people not robots and they are going to make mistakes. Sometimes you have to be willing to say … well, you can’t win ‘em all.

So, the next time you lose a game that you’re supposed to win and you want to send your coach packing, be thankful. You could be stuck with Mack Brown, Bob Stoops or Urban Meyer.

You should be so lucky.

Random thought on college ball I keep hearing that “Michigan is back”. BS.
They are winning games because who they are playing. If they played Oregon right now, they’d get blown out again. Period. I have nothing against Michigan (actually, I think that their fans have lots of class) but their team is way overrated this year.

Humor

Thinking about Fred Thompson reminded me of Foghorn Leghorn. That also reminded me of my favorite Foghorn Leghorn cartoon.

At about 5 minutes, note that the cartoonist pokes fun at quantum mechanics!