I love football. One of the main reasons I started this blog was to be able to write about football. Technically, I think I might actually know more about football than I do about baseball, as I played football for 10 years and coached in on the JV level (one of the most fun things I’ve ever done, for what it’s worth).

But I find writing about football much more difficult than baseball. With baseball, as you may have recognized by now, I like to write confidently about that which can be quantified and skeptically about that which cannot.

In football, I’m not certain anything can be quantified. We can easily determine whether a single hitter or pitcher is good because ultimately there are many, many times in a baseball season in which he has the opportunity to perform independent of his teammates.

No such situation ever exists in football, which is a big part about why I like football. It is the ultimate team sport, and the sport in which coaching — and coaching decisions — matter the most.

We can — and sometimes I do — examine game footage and watch tons of replays and try to determine the good players and the less-than-good players, but the process is so subjective that it’s impossible to tell whether our own biases are affecting our analysis.

I might look at a trap play and note that the guard made a good block on the opposite defensive tackle, but the runningback simply missed the seam. Someone else might look at the same play and see how the defensive tackle stood up that guard, plugging the hole the back was aiming for.

There have recently been leaps forward in the realm of advanced stats in the NFL, but as far as I know, there is still no way to assess any individual player in isolation. We can determine whether a runningback has been good or bad, but it will always have depended on, at least in part, the success of his line and his team’s ability to stretch the field, pulling defenders out of the box.

And of course a lot of that falls on the coaches, who are charged with making sure everyone on the field knows his assignment and executes it.

So it’s difficult to definitively know anything in football. I think Eli Manning used to suck and is now more or less awesome. I’d guess Laveranues Coles was underrated in his time with the Jets.

I’m certain that Mark Sanchez is handsome, and I suspect he’s actually pretty damn good at football. But he really, really needs to tuck the ball in while he’s running.

In short, football requires a whole lot more guesswork and faith than baseball, and while I’m prepared to attempt that here, you have the right to be skeptical. But know that any football analysis or opinion I provide is rooted in that same skepticism, and is only my honest attempt to in some way quantify a completely unquantifiable game.

I’m a Jets fan, for what it’s worth, but I like the Giants, too. I strongly, strongly dislike Brett Favre, and I have since way before it was popular. I think ball control is immensely important, and I think the term “ball control” is funny.

And I’m certain that this is one of the funniest pictures ever taken: