BRaG Talks Football, Part Drei
2 repliesHe’s back, now ranty-er than ever! But wait, there’s more!
That’s it. The 2022 season is in the books. It was weird, wild, and the way it ended is wonderful, but what can we take away from it? To get good standard answers would take someone like Seth, Dan or maybe Nate, but what you get is me. So I’ll do the best I can, but I’ll say from the outset, I’ll be doing some preening, because I did call some things.
So I might as well start with the run-up to SB LVII, because I did call out a few things that mattered. Not everything came out the way I foresaw, so let’s start with my assertion that PHI wasn’t built for comebacks. They had a better downfield game than I expected, that’s true, so the comeback potential was there – but was it really tested? I’d say no, as they were never down by two scores.
We were built for comebacks, and had to execute that several times on the way there. That’s live-fire experience, which can’t be simulated in practice, and we’re good at it. We’ll never know how good their comeback game was, because when did they need it? Not much of a dunk, but we did execute another comeback win, the Eagles (Egos?) only had to keep up with us.
Which brings me to my next point, a fave, and that’s about misunderstanding statistics and trends. Big surprise, I know, but consider this much, every year so far, Spags’ Ds have been slow off the blocks, at least initially. That draws a lot of ire, but as I’ve said before, it’s the late-season stats that tell the tale. Our D was completely overlooked by the pundits, and why? They worked from the full-season stats, not the trend behind them, and the run-up to SB LVII was much the same as the one before SB LIV. Both times, our D was able to contain an “unstoppable” offense, and none of them noticed the mistake. I saw the trend, though. Both times, though the first time, I was scorned for offering that opinion.
This might need another post, but there’s a parallel I want to talk about, at least a little. It’s clear that Reid, EB, and Spags used the first half of each game to discover what the other team was trying to do, and especially on offense, set them up for later exploitation. I think it was the guy at Jackson Krueger channel who pointed this out on his own, thought he didn’t follow through with the line of thinking. It’s been noticed by others, such as Simms, but his brush over it is lighter:
He’s not the only one, although I’m not sure he thought through the implications of what he saw, not across the season. What he did see is how KC started and then turned things around after halftime. One game will do, for this purpose.
Yeah, I’ll have more to say, in time, but my final point today is that anyone who praises Reid for “scheming Kelce open” is full to the eyeballs, unless they’re specifically talking about a timing route. The rest of the time, everyone else runs their assigned routes, and Kelce’s assigned a route, too, but that’s just a starting point. From there, he’s watching the D, and when the ball’s snapped, he knows how to get open within the concept. It’s easy to scheme for a player who can get himself open, almost at will, and yet has the discipline to not just do whatever. I’m not sure if there’s ever been anyone who can do what Travis does.
So that concludes this particular rant. You might disagree, but you can share your thoughts about it by using the handy form provided below.
the Chiefs came out and played kickass, hard-nosed, old-fashioned, beat-the-crap-out-of-’em-on-the-line football … loved how the O-Line just said “fuck this shit” and took over (esp second half) … that’s fuckin’ football, power football
It’s always funny how people say “There’s no way the Chiefs can beat [team],” and then [team] comes to town and they get (as the kids used to say) “schooled.”