A day late and several dollars short:
Recapping Giants-Dolphins with John Fennelly
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Category Archives: Other Football
Previewing Jets-Chargers with Brian Bassett
Awesome story on neck rolls
Despite their undeniable popularity, however, neck rolls — much like parachute pants, Members Only jackets and bolo ties — faded away. And now, even with an increased focus on head and neck injuries in the N.F.L., there has been no indication that the La-Z-Boy — Thomas’s term for the headrest-style neck roll Bryan Cox made famous — will return to prominence….
Joseph said that neck rolls probably disappeared because the game had sped up and equipment had been altered to allow players to keep pace. Linebacker Michael Boley, who said he never dabbled with a neck roll in his younger days, agreed, saying most players today want pads that are light and allow for movement.
Borden, late of this here network of websites (among other places), continues doing work on the Times’ Giants beat with an awesome feature on the disappearance of neck rolls in the NFL. I love this kind of stuff, especially since it concludes — as I long suspected — that neck rolls really don’t do anything besides make you look cool.
Glory days: I always tweaked dudes on my high school team who wore them. A couple of guys were honest and admitted it was just for style, but some guys made excuses about how they had lingering neck problems that would somehow be cured by the presence of their neck roll.
But until senior year, I always tried to find the biggest, coolest-looking shoulder pads available in our school’s equipment closet. Once a year I went to the local sporting goods store and picked out a facemask more complex and more badass-looking than the stock one that came on my helmet. And I wore a heavily padded glove on one hand while on offense in part because I was a little self-conscious about my skinny fingers (but not, apparently, about looking like Michael Jackson, since I needed my right hand glove-free to snap the football).
By senior year I was confident in my ability, so I picked out the lightest and most comfortable shoulder pads I could find because I cared more about moving quickly than looking cool. And I rocked the old Thurman Thomas-style facemask, and ditched the gloves so I could best use my hands for all the dirty tricks I’d learned with years of playing experience.
I played much better that year, though it certainly had more to do with experience and physical maturity than the equipment.
More on predictability in football
For offenses to be most effective, they need to be unpredictable. In the 2nd and 10 situation, this means defenses would have to prepare for the nearly equal chance of a run or pass. Many analysts refer to ‘balance’ as the key to unpredictability. But balance itself doesn’t matter if the offense is predictable in achieving its balance. Running and passing on every other down would provide perfect balance but would be completely predictable. That’s why randomness is at least as important as balance to keeping the defense on its heels. Anything other than random play selection provides a pattern, however subtle, that an opponent can detect and exploit….
Coaches and coordinators are apparently not immune to the small sample fallacy. In addition to the inability to simulate true randomness, I think this helps explain the tendency to alternate. I also think this why the tendency is so easy to spot on the 2nd and 10 situation. It’s the situation that nearly always follows a failure. The impulse to try the alternative, even knowing that a single recent bad outcome is not necessarily representative of overall performance, is very strong.
– Brian Burke, Advanced NFL Stats.
It turns out most teams are predictable on 2nd and 10, if not quite as predictable as the Jets have been in the first few games of this season. If you’re interested in play-calling tendencies at all, click-through and read the piece (and look at the graphs); it’s good.
Also, a fun fact: Brian Burke is the first cousin of my former roommate Ted Burke.
Hat tip to reader Brian (not Burke) for passing this along.
Me doing silly stuff
Before the Giants game on Sunday, I took a tour of some of the extras at MetLife Stadium for SNY.tv and MetLife. It was only when I got the football in my hands that I realized I haven’t thrown a football in about seven years.
I mention in the video that I was the sixth-string emergency backup quarterback at my high school. That was true, but the only reason I even earned that distinction was that for one game four of our top five options at quarterback were injured and I was the only guy left who knew all the plays. Fortunately I never got in a game at the position, because snapping the ball to myself would have been awkward.
Tedquarters 