Mythology

It's amazing, the difference between fact and fiction in professional sports. That which is accepted as fact, often by the apologists or those looking to bolster their own arguments in an effort to make a player, coach, or organization look either better or worse. Sometimes the myth is true...or more accurately, the truth is so wild or great that it becomes mythic - the Immaculate Reception, Carlton Fisk's home run in game six of the 1975 World Series, Kirk Gibson, the 1980 Olympic American ice hockey team, and so on. Sometimes it becomes difficult to separate myth from fact.

Let's take a shot at a couple of the big myths floating around professional sports today...

Myth - Bill Belichick was fined $500,0000.00 for filming the Jets' signals. The knock, among fans of other teams, is that Belichick cheated by stealing signals.

Fact - Belichick was fined for filming from the sideline, the fact that he was shooting the defensive signals was incidental. According to the following report from when the story broke -

From reports when the story broke -

As part of the league's investigation, Goodell determined the filming of Jets coaches had no impact on the outcome of the game. Goodell also ruled that Robert Kraft and Patriots ownership were unaware of the filming...The NFL's rules state that "no video recording devices of any kind are permitted to be in use in the coaches' booth, on the field, or in the locker room during the game" and that all video shooting locations for coaching purposes "must be enclosed on all sides with a roof overhead."

In a memo to NFL head coaches and general managers on Sept. 6, 2006, NFL executive vice president of football operations Ray Anderson wrote: "Videotaping of any type, including but not limited to taping of an opponent's offensive or defensive signals, is prohibited on the sidelines, in the coaches' booth, in the locker room, or at any other locations accessible to club staff members during the game."

So...according to the NFL, the issue had nothing to do with them taping signals, and everything to do with where they taped from. According to this, any team can film its opponent's signals as long as the filming location is not accessible during the game - like, say, one of the skyboxes, which is enclosed on all sides with a picture window facing the field.

Myth - "Steroids don't help you hit the ball." This is the favorite defense of Bonds apologists who first will argue that he never used (he did, he admitted it, get it through your thick skulls) and even if he did...(see statement above)...

Fact - No, the performance enhancers largely don't help a person with their natural ability to hit the ball, but they do, in the end, help a batter hit...

To wit, steroids and other performance enhancers in baseball are used in order to recover faster from games, double headers, and other workouts. They also make the player stronger.

Increased strength and faster recovery time results in the following -

• Balls hit harder, thus, the ball travels both farther and faster. Balls dying on the warning track get deposited three rows behind the outfield wall. Balls barely reached by the middle infielder in the hole get by for hits.
• The player using these drugs is fresher at the end of a ten game stretch than the one not using, thus allowing the user to turn on a ball, with the greater likelihood of putting it into play than the tired opponent whose timing might be off enough to make his swing result in a foul ball or strike, instead of a hit. Hmmm...help hitting the ball. Who would've thought. Oh, right, the ball players injecting themselves with steroids.
• Balls get thrown harder by power pitchers losing their power

Myth - Baseball didn't even have a rule banning steroids in 1998.

Fact - MLB had a rule passed in 1971. According to the Mitchell Report a drug policy was written in MLB that prohibits using any prescription medicine without a prescription. From all reports, virtually none of the players named for use of either steroids or HGH had a prescription from a doctor. And those that did had their prescription from less than reputable doctors (see Paul Bird).

So, based on this 1971 rule, steroid and HGH users were in violation of MLB's rules and regulations, and use of those substances, in essence, has been against baseball's rules for the last 26 years.

Then in 1991, just to be safe, then commissioner Fay Vincent added steroids to the prohibited substance list.

Myth - The offensive coordinator of a record setting offense will make for a great head coach.

Fact - Right now 31-year old Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniel is generating interest from both the Falcons and the Ravens for their head coaching vacancies. Recent jumps from record setting coordinator to head coach have included Mike Martz and Brian Billick.

While it can be debated as to how successful Billick was, winning a Super Bowl and making multiple playoffs, one thing is certain - Billick was brought to a Ravens team that already had a solid defense, with the purpose of putting together a championship caliber offense. His offenses, over his nine years with the Ravens, have averaged 23rd. Only twice in the Ravens last six seasons have the Ravens achieved at least ten wins and the playoffs.

He inherited a team that had an improving defense, a slowly improving record, and an opportunity to build the offense he wanted. The offensive guru has been so good at identifying the talent he needed at key positions that he had 12 different quarterbacks start for him during his nine seasons at the helm.

Mike Martz won a Super Bowl ring running the Greatest Show on Turf for Dick Vermeil. Without Vermeil's tempering hand, Martz eventually went pass-happy, let the defense deteriorate, and the team's record eventually suffered in subsequent years.

Under Vermeil, during his last season at the helm, the Rams ranked 4th in points allowed on defense. Under Martz in the first year, 31st. Over the five full seasons at the helm, his defenses finished an average of 17th in points allowed and was fired in a year that the team was again 31st.

Gaudy numbers get you noticed, and there is success to be had with these coaches, but the numbers in a record setting season sets the bar impossibly high. Billick's offense in Minnesota was fueled by a young Randy Moss, just as McDaniels' offense in New England is fueled by Moss.

What is the likelihood that McDaniels will be the solution in Baltimore when they have a scouting office that can't identify a pro-ready quarterback on the collegiate level, or a veteran that still has some gas left in the tank?

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

The Patriots won last night.

As a New England fan, that's pretty much the good of it.

I suppose you can throw in the following facts as well - when the chips were down, the Pats came up big while the Ravens made the mistakes that lose you games. Even when the Pats made mistakes, they turned them to an advantage - like a late penalty before the snap that negated a fourth down play that would have given the Ravens the ball back with less than a minute-and-a-half to play. Instead, it was fourth and six, and Tom Brady scrambled for a first down.

Oh...and the forced fumble by Kevin Faulk after Brady was intercepted just before the half was probably worth at least a three point swing in the final score of 27-24.

As for the bad and the ugly...well, there was a whole lot of that in this game.

This was, for Brady and the wideouts, a bad game. Brady completed less than 50 percent of his passes, including a couple of poor throws (the interception at the end of the first half and the ricochet off a Raven helmet in the red zone late in the game come to mind). The receivers dropped a number of balls that hit them on the hands - Randy Moss had at least two and tight end Ben Watson one. Of those, at least two of them would have accounted for touchdowns and an 11 point swing (Watson's unforced error in the back of the end zone turned into a field goal attempt).

Asante Samuel was bad. He was picked on, and he made few plays. The biggest play he made was for the Ravens when he misplayed a 15-yard sideline pass into a 50+ yard reception in the first half.

The refereeing was bad as well, although I would say not as bad as the Colts game. The refs left calls on the field against both teams. I will even grant that the Pats touchdown to Jabar Gaffney was borderline, but I also don't believe there was enough to merit overturning the call on the field. Of course none of this matters since Raven Bart Scott was undergoing a meltdown which would have given the Pats the ball with four fresh downs on the Raven two yard line.

As for the Ravens public claim that the officials were trying to give the game to the Patriots, they might want to re-watch the film of the bomb at the end when the official kept the flag in his pocket in spite of the fact that Derrick Mason did not play the ball. Replays clearly show that Mason threw a block on Asante Samuel, the closest defensive back to receiver Mark Clayton who came down with the ball. Not only did Mason hit Samuel, he then wrapped the corner from behind, aiding Mason in making the reception that almost won the game for the Ravens.

Yeah, refs conspiring to get the Patriots an undefeated season are going to ignore that every time, I'm sure.

As for the ugly...

The Patriots run defense was ugly through most of the game, as Willis McGahee carved up the Pats (at least until the game was on the line late in the fourth quarter). The Pats secondary was also carved up for the second week running by a career second string quarterback.

That the Ravens can't come to terms with the fact that their own mistakes killed them is ugly.

What could possibly have been the ugliest is what the Ravens allege about one of the refs calling Sumari Rolle "boy," throughout the game...were the ref white. Head linesman Phil McKinley, a black man and former player in the late sixties and early seventies (ie: the man grew up during segregation and the Civil Rights Movement). Given the background of the "name caller" I would say that Rolle and his teammates are looking for any reason to try and discredit a mediocre officiating staff just because they don't want to accept responsibility for melting down in their loss.

On a different note - the time of year has come again for the annual weight loss contest. Husband and wife teams: me and my wife, my wife's sister and her husband. Whichever pair drops a combined 40 pounds first, or whichever pair has the greatest combined weight loss by May 1 wins. I weighed 188.5 yesterday. Let the games begin.

Caveat Emptor

Buyer beware.

Everyone has something to sell. Everyone. Me? I'm trying to sell the idea that I might indeed have a clue as to what I'm writing about...not everyone buys, particularly not my wife.

At least retail is honest about it. For the rest of us...well, let's just say you have to pay closer attention to what's being sold...

Let's go through some of the people and groups making sales pitches out there -

Scott Boras/Alex Rodriguez - A-Rod is the car that Boras is trying to sell. He's like a Jaguar- a sleek, pretty bauble of a car with a 12 cylinder engine that has a tendency to crap out on you at the worst possible moment. In 2004 when the Yankees needed a $30 million bat to save them from Mo Rivera's struggles, A-Rod disappeared like J.D. Salinger from the public eye.

Buyers need to beware of the slick, used-car salesman Boras, and his shiny toy of a product, A-Rod. Consider - even in a (contract) year in which A-Rod set career highs in RBI's (156), OBP (.422), and slugging (.645), hit the second most homers (54), and third highest batting average (.314), Boras is going out of his way to get potential buyers to NOT look at his client's post-season failings in that same career year - in a year in which A-Rod led the league in RBI's, he knocked in one in this year's post season.

So during a season in which A-Rod averaged an RBI per every 3.7 at bats, he had one in 15 during the postseason. Even adding in the 8 he had during the 2004 playoffs, this is what he has done in baseball's second season since then - 9 RBI's in 94 at bats, or one for every 10.4 at bats. For his career he has knocked in a run for every 4.9 at bats in the regular season, that has dropped off to one for every 8.6 at bats in the postseason, a number that has gotten progressively worse with each passing season.

This doesn't include the following facts that I have mentioned in other posts - for the first three seasons after A-Rod left Seattle, the team averaged in the vicinity of 10 more wins per season; after he left Texas, they averaged eight more wins per season; the Yankees have average almost four fewer per season, decreasing from 111 wins per year to 94 this year. And, here's the kicker, he has failed to help any team he has been on advance to the World Series. Buyer beware.

The first half of the Patriots schedule - What they are trying to sell? Professional football. How? By complaining that the Patriots are doing things they shouldn't be...like scoring a lot. The people who need to beware? The fan-bases of the Jets, Dolphins, Cowboys, Chargers, Bills, Bengals, Redskins and Browns. Really, the fans of the Cowboys, Jets, Dolphins, and Redskins in particular.

Those teams, those four mentioned at the bottom of that last paragraph, were the ones that started the complaints of how the Patriots are playing offense this year (well, the Jets complained about something else, and maybe they should be more worried about what's happening on the field than on the sideline - if this were European soccer, they and the Dolphins would be well on their way to playing in a semi-pro league). One Redskin, who shall remain unnamed in this post, accused the Patriots of disrespecting the game in an effort to deflect attention from the fact that what the Patriots really disrespected was the Redskins highly regarded defense.

As just about every former coach, player, and most pundits have said - there's no mercy rule in the NFL, if you don't like a team scoring on you, then do something about it. Rolling over and playing dead when you get down by a couple of touchdowns is what really disrespects the game.

Buyer...beware.

The National Press - The national press, in an effort to build up this weekend's game between the Pats and Colts, are trying to sell the Patriots as the evil empire with the merciless coach who won't take his foot off the pedal once he's driven the opposition into the ground. The Colts are the perennial good guys of the league with the owner doing everything he can to make a stadium happen in his host city, and the brilliant, but nice head coach in Tony Dungy.

Let's look at some of the facts in this - yes, the Patriots are running the score up on people and annihilating their opponents. However, it's not like the Colts under Dungy have never done this. The following was ganked from the Boston Globe's Eric Wilbur, via Dave at The Coffin Corner -

W, 49-14
W, 41-10
W, 41-9
W, 51-24
That quartet of one-sided scores comes to you courtesy of the 2004 Indianapolis Colts from a November-December period during which Peyton Manning and Company annihilated the Texans, Bears, Lions, and Titans, respectively. And, you know it's funny, I don't remember one person whining about them running up the score.

Tony Dungy, the good-guy coach in all of this, did not call off the dogs. Dungy has also publicly associated himself with groups that have well known anti-gay stances (but I suppose that's okay, because everyone knows that on one is gay in the locker room). Focus on Family, the group with which Dungy is most closely associated has been referred to by a number of people as "rabidly anti-gay." Last I checked, Bill Belichick has never aligned himself with any hate groups that hide behind a thin veil of legitimacy by claiming to be family advocates.

Let's look at Jim Irsay - still public enemy number one in Baltimore. Still the only owner that gets more of a rise out of Baltimore fans that Peter Angelos. For those who have forgotten, Irsay, the so-called nice guy owner, packed the Colts up in the dead of night and broke his lease with Baltimore County in an effort to move the team to Indy. Irsay did this against league wishes. Yeah, he's a good guy.

I have no personal issue with the Colts on the field. Manning is a supremely talented quarterback (please take a cue from Brady and cut back on the public endorsements - its annoying enough to make me look forward to seeing you get your head handed to you). The team is talented. However, the general manager and owner have whined whenever things didn't go their way, the head coach is a bigot, and the press is selling a serious double standard here.

Once again...buyer beware.

NFL Questions: AFC South

So...it appears that I have touched a few nerves with supporters of a few teams...and evidently there is at least one Detroit fan out there who is indeed a Matt Millen fan. Who knew?

A quick note before I start on the AFC South...

I have found that these NFL questions pieces are attracting feedback from readers who I am completely unfamiliar with. Well, welcome to the site. I welcome all feedback, and criticism - however, if I feel as though I am being personally attacked, I will respond in kind...btw, to the Baltimore fan who was defending McNair - I understand your point about the running game, but I still think the bigger issue is McNair - and no, it wasn't just the national press that was wondering about McNair's effectiveness last season: I live in an area where I see the Baltimore papers, and they weren't often kind to the signal caller.

Also understand, sometimes my questions about a team are the same being asked by the national media because a player or organization did more last season or during the off-season to enforce the question rather than the answer. These aren't predictions - these are places where, in the off-season, I perceive a team to have an issue. It doesn't mean that the issue will remain during the season. It's a fact that Rex Grossman was alternately the best or worst quarterback in the league on any given Sunday last season. It is a fact that the Bears coaches have been spending an inordinate amount of time trying to fix what they think may be a mechanical problem with his delivery in order to get rid of Bad Grossman. It is a fact that the Bears will struggle if Bad Grossman shows up. If he can even be mediocre Grossman through the entire season, it will likely be an improvement over a quarterback that had less than a 25.0 QB rating in 25 % of his games, and lower than a 2.0 in two of those.

If you come for debate, which I always welcome, come well armed.

And now for the AFC South, odd place that it is.

Houston Texans - Have the Texans done enough during the off-season to bolster their offensive line? A lot of pundits will ask about the acquisition of Matt Schaub and his roughly 50 percent completion percentage, and of course will make the comparisons to back-ups turn-bust-starters Rob Johnson and AJ Feeley. While this is a legitimate question and concern, the Texans problems since their inception has been the lack of a line that can protect. Sure they've produced a couple of 1000-yard running backs, but run blocking and pass blocking aren't the same thing.

If they haven't fixed the blocking, then it won't matter if they have Peyton Manning in their backfield. The results will be no different with Schaub than they were with David Carr.

Indianapolis Colts - Many will question the quality of a defense that was horrible during the regular season in light of the defections of close to half the starters, but the Colts have already proven they can overcome horrible defense. Can they overcome the loss of left tackle Tarik Glenn? Glenn's sudden retirement will put the Colts' newly drafted tackle Tony Ugoh- who was supposed to be Glenn's replacement down the road - to the test. If he struggles with the top pass rushing end from the opposing teams, look for some major changes to happen to the Colts offense, such as the tight ends being kept in for extra protection.

There has been talk of others playing the spot, such as switching Ryan Diem from right to left. The bottom line remains, if whoever plays on that side struggles, then the Colts become more limited in creating the mismatches they love in the passing game.

Jacksonville Jaguars - Beaten by teams like the Texans (twice), Bills, and Redskins, but with wins against the Cowboys, Colts, and Eagles, the big question to me is at signal caller. Maurice Jones-Drew proved more than adequate at running back, but the team again found itself relying on David Garrard due to an injury sustained by Byron Leftwich. The question that Jags fans have to be asking themselves is whether these signal-callers are the ones that can lead them to the promised land. Carbon copies of each other, Leftwich's development has been hindered by his inability to stay healthy, and Garrard's by his inability to beat Leftwich out for the starting job.

If either manages to start all 16 games, the team has a chance at the playoffs, otherwise it's likely to be another third place finish.

Tennessee Titans - There are a lot of questions for Tennessee and few answers. Teams have seen Vince Young and will prepare differently for him, and that could be cause for the old sophomore slump question, but I think any slump suffered here might have more to do with whether or not the Titans can produce a running game. To me that says that Young's success and progress are directly tied with either Chris Brown's health, or whether or not LenDale White has managed to pull his own head out of his ass and comes into camp in shape this year.

If the Titans aren't able to produce a running game from its running backs, Young will literally be left holding the ball. If that's the case, then Tennessee is going to see its top pick from last year take a beating which is never good for the development of a young quarterback.