I'm going with 4 1/2 games. I think that puts the owners in a position of strength, but also that they'll start losing some of that strength if they move beyond that. 

Continue reading this post »

A couple quick thoughts on Champ Bailey, who looks to be back to his true form after a rough year last year:

First of all, that interception was INCREDIBLE. The way he moves his whole body and changes all of his momentum on a dime is just mind-boggling. I know we've all seen him do things like that before, but it just never gets old.

Secondly, I'm glad the defensive scheme allows him to play the CB position the way he prefers ie, off the WR so that he can read the QB's eyes and jump on some interceptions (and relying on his textbook tackling skills to limit gains after the catch. Aikman noted that it was unusual for a CB to give Roy Williams a cushion as he did after Williams easily caught a pass in the flat early in the game, but I had no problem with it. The QB is never going to throw that the ball in front of the WR in that scenario, and Champ will easily tackle the WR for a minimal gain. recall if you will a crucial pass to Ochocinco in week one that Carson Palmer through in the dirt. It was a bad pass to be sure, but it would've been a completion if he had been aiming it even remotely near Ochocinco’s hands, instead of making the safe throw down and slightly behind the receiver.

And lastly, it is my opinion that Champ played Tony Romo for a sucker on those last two throws. As Aikman pointed out, it's very unusual for a CB to give up the inside route in that situation once, let alone twice. But it's also unusual for a CB to have the pass defense skills (and confidence in those skills) that Champ has. I'll bet the farm that if you shot him up with sodium pentothal,, he'd admit that he gave up the inside position in order to trick Romo into making the throws he did. Since he wanted Romo to make those throws to begin with, he had the advantage in making the break on the ball that he did, and was confident that he could defend them with the game on the line.

It may be a bit premature, barely a quarter of the season in, but I’ll say it now – Champ’ll be making a well-deserved return to the pro bowl this year.

Few things in life annoy me more than logical fallacies, and I heard one of them on the Mike and Mike show this morning - a logical fallacy based on a statistic.

     Of course we've all heard the various statistics about how important the first game or two it to the season, and the Mikes had a list of 4 teams that were headed into "must win games" next week because they had lost their opener and didn't want to start the season 0-2. Greenberg brought out the statistic that, out of the 160 playoff teams since the current playoff format began; only 22 had started 0-2, or about 14%. Then he made the fallacious statement that "if these teams lose their next games, they'll only have a 14% chance to get to the playoffs", which just about made me mad enough to drive my car off the side of I-25. What the MSM has to understand here is that while there's a correlation between the starting record of a team and it's playoff expectations, there's not necessarily a causative relationship between them, at least not more so than any other 2 games in the season. The reason why more teams who start well make the playoffs than those who start poorly is that those are the good teams to begin with! Or, put another way, it's not that teams who win their first two games tend to make the playoffs, but rather that teams who make the playoffs tend to win their first two games (and they tend to win all the other games just as equally, because they're better teams).

     Now, as to this 14% thing. I grant you that losing your first two games makes it harder to reach the playoffs (just as losing, games 3 and 11 make it harder, for example. If it probably takes a 10-6 (or .625) record to make the playoffs, then these teams would now have to win 10 of their next 14 games (or .714) to have a 10-6 record. There's really no way to equate that to a percentage, but it varies greatly from team to team. Two examples that were given were Tennessee and Chicago. Assuming  that they both lose next week, What would you say the chances are for Tennessee and Chicago to go .714 for their next 14 games? based on how well they played on Thursday night against a formidable opponent, I'd give Tennessee much better chances than 14%. it might now be probably, but not so improbably that i'd call it 14%. For Chicago,  I might say that 14% is accurate, but not because that's what's happened in the past to other teams - I'd say that based on Jay Cutler's play and the loss of Brian Urlacher.

   So in the final analysis, the first few games of the season don't predict how the playoffs will turn out just based on their records, they just give us our first glimpse of the way that the teams actually play in real games.

     This time of year there's a lot of early predictions flying around the interwebs, and a good portion of them fall prey to on of my pet peeves - overstating the importance of strength of schedule. It's common to read something along the lines of "New england will improve it's record this year becuase they won't have to face a first-place schedule" or "Atlanta's first place schedule won't allow them to sneak up on the NFL this year. But my claim is that strength of schedule isn't really much of a difference maker.

    First of all, strength of schedule only impacts 2 of a teams 16 games - that's only 12.5%. 6 of the 16 games are played against divisional opponents, and then another 8 games are determined soley by one's division. Each division plays an entire division, top to bottom, in both the NFC and the AFC. it's only the last two games that are determined by rank as the # 1 plays the #1 in the two other divisions within the conference. So a team's finish last year doesn't have a huge impact on their schedule this year.

     The other factor here (and I know it's been beaten to death) is parity and the speed at which teams improve or decline from year to year or even within a year. There's no guarantee that a bad team this year will be any easier to play this year - as the sting of Denver's home loss to Miami last year still reminds me.

    In the end, the bottom line this time of year is if the roster has been stocked with playmakers (fertile ground for discussion given the volume of changes so far this offseason), if they're all getting along in the locker room (looks good from what I hear) and if the coaches are going to get that talent into a scheme that allows them to make plays (looks very good to me).