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On The News Business & Technology on the New World of Politics Editorials Connect...The...Dots |
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Brains, Coaches, and the NFL's last week of Play |
ByThePeopleForThePeople.org Sports Staff
Football is an extremely complex and physical game with contact coming from many different angles and any lapse in concentration can end with your player out of the game or in the hospital. However than doesn’t mean that everyone isn’t going to be aware of what is happening on the last week of the season. This will be particularly true for the coaches watching from the sidelines on Sunday, the last week of the season. During the games on Sunday, critical decisions will have to be made depending upon what is happening on the scoreboard. Both the score and the remaining time on the clock in the New England, Baltimore and Pittsburgh games should and will rightly influence the decisions made. The coaches will make decisions around the playing time for their critical players towards winning the Superbowl. Many teams are just happy to be in the playoffs and “play it to the bone”. However experienced teams want more because they know that the careers of their player is limited and want to go much deeper in the playoffs. Pittsburgh for instance has a lot of older players and will be over the salary cap next year until serious roster cuts are made. Add to the mix that a lot of key players are banged up late in the year and common sense says you want to give them as much rest as possible. Hurt players are subject to more injury and “manhood” isn’t a factor.
New England is playing for either the one or two seed so they are already getting a bye but the one seed is worthwhile as it gives home field advantage up to the Superbowl. The question is at what time and score do Brady and any banged up starters get pulled from the game. If the Patriots are up by 14 in the 4th quarter, do you pull Brady or do you take the chance a late hit ends his season and your Superbowl run? Or what if New England is up by 21 points late in the 3rd quarter? Without Brady, the Patriots are done as they don’t have enough of a deep threat to make their offense unstoppable and their defense is good, not great.
With Pittsburgh and Baltimore it is both simpler and a bit more complicated than in the New England game. If New England wins the early game, Pittsburgh and Baltimore no longer have a chance at the one seed. However the number two seed gives a team a bye and much needed rest for their injured starters. Pittsburgh has a broken quarterback and a battered offensive line and an old (but high quality) defense and a week off could help a lot. However if Baltimore is leading by 21 late in the fourth quarter against the Bengals, should Pittsburgh pull a hurting Big Ben and “playing hurt” starters? Pittsburgh gets the number 5 seed even if they lose their own game against Cleveland. Conversely if Baltimore is losing by 21 in the 4th , does Baltimore pull Flacco as the number 2 seed is gone and like Pittsburgh, they can’t get less than the number 5 seed? Baltimore has an excellent defense but mediocre wide receivers. Baltimore needs Flacco’s rifle arm to make his receivers a threat. Steeler Head Coach Tomlin let a badly limping Big Ben finish a game against San Francisco even though he couldn’t throw well and was losing badly. There is criticism over that and we believe it was totally justified. It will be worse if he does the same thing in Cleveland and Big Ben can’t play in the playoffs. Steelers have a great defense but they aren’t winning the Superbowl with Batch as the quarterback. Connect…the…Dots a lot of hard decisions will be made with an eye on the scoreboard on Sunday.
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Prediction: Bad Basketball all around |
By Jim Griffith, BythePeopleForThePeople.org
One look at any of the NBA upcoming team’s schedules will make basketball purists cringe. There is a lot of bad basketball rapidly approaching. Tired legs mean poor defense and flat jump shots. Basketball isn’t meant to be played on back to back to back nights. Back to back nights can take the toll on every player but it can be a killer for older players in the last year of their careers. Further, the lack of training and practice time will only make things worse.
As a basketball player, to play defense at a high level your knees have to be bent and your back need to remain straight which is a stressful and painful position. Having played basketball for half a century, I can safely say that no one does that well on tired and sore legs. Have you ever been surprised looking at a 3 point competition when really good true jump shooters seldom do well? There is a reason as to why they do so [poorly, their legs get tired. As the legs get tired, their shot get flatter, and the shooting percentage goes down. In fact everything gets worse with those leaden legs. It is not just the legs. Even in our old man half court games, you get minor injuries as elbows and knees get hyper extended, backs twisted and wrists strained. You may be able to recover in a few days but not in 24 hours.
Practices are necessary in basketball to get the timing down. I read an article some time ago about how the Timberwolves’ coach was appalled at all the turnovers committed in practice by his new team. He should know that his team will not be the only one. There are few plays in basketball compared to football but unlike football, there are many, many options on each play. Each play has to be recognized in far less than a second and the timing is difficult to achieve. You only get that kind of timing right by practicing at full speed. Anytime you get a “new guy” into a play, you find yourself throwing balls out of bounds because you misread where the player was going. I expect that to happen a lot this year. Practices will be limited and player rotations frequent as legs (and bodies) start to degenerate throughout the year.
The NBA is rightly to be blamed for much of what is wrong with basketball both on the court and in our neighborhood’s playgrounds. Its horrible and uneven enforcement of the rules trickles down to the playground and the young players it is impossible for a youngster watching basketball on television to figure out what is and what isn’t a violation. Traveling, palming, reaching in, 3 seconds, etc, etc, are all done without regard to the rules whereas any resistance to someone posting up or deviating an offensive player is considered a foul (it isn’t). Jordan would have fouled out in the first quarter in many games if his trick of grabbing the defensive players hand was actually called for the foul it was.
However, this year things will just be plain sloppy. The only thing that is not clear is whether the scoring will go up because of bad defense or down because jump shooters will miss more. Not a pretty sight for basketball purists. We wonder if the rah-rah commentators in the media will notice. After all you are going to see a lot of plays highlighted on your nightly NBA sports centers around the nation depicting the LBJs of the world untouched as they get to the hoop a lot. Connect the dots….it is going to be a bad basketball season, and I for one cannot wait until it’s over.
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