More of me complaining about people not understanding
football…
I just finished watching the Colts play the Bengals on Monday night football, beating them thoroughly 34-16. In my opinion, there were number of gross strategic errors made in this game, and the announcers definitely did not pick up on a single one of them, and, in fact, cited a completely bogus reason why Cincinatti lost this game. The Colts seemed to play a nice, solid game, but mostly because the Bengals didn’t exploit their weaknesses. Here were what I consider to be the clear mistakes made:
1) The Colts went for it on 4th and ½ on the Bengals 45 in the 3rd quarter (yay!). Previous to that, they had 3rd and 1. Now at this point in the game, they had run about 10 times for maybe 20 yards tops (I’m being generous), and had at least 4 plays where they gained negative yardage. Meanwhile, Peyton Manning was something ridiculous like 20 for 22. Now doesn’t it make sense to, say, pass the ball rather than try and bash it up the middle given the relative success of both of those thus far? You should have already decided that you’re going for it on 4th down, so passing twice, given you previous successes has a success rate of, oh, about 99% (and I’m not being generous about that). And once you get 4th and less than a yard, you have a 6-5 230 pound quarterback. If he tilts himself forward by 5 degrees, he gains a half a yard. Nobody seems to be running QB sneaks but they are rarely, if ever, stopped for less than a yard.
2) The Bengals never onside kicked. When are these teams going to learn? Manning has just run over your defense twice to end the first half. And now you’re just going to hand the ball back to him? Now it turns out this “worked.” Manning gave the ball back without scoring (see #1), but that doesn’t mean it was the right thing to do. If not this drive, then certainly when they only got a field goal on their first drive of the 3rd quarter. Giving the ball to Peyton Manning when he has the chance to put his team up two scores is bad news. On a side note, there seems to be this stigma that when something doesn’t work it was wrong. Coaches don’t seem to be willing to put themselves out there knowing it was right, and be willing to assert that in a press conference. People need to understand that no play has a 100% chance of success, and in fact many times the right play will fail nearly half of the time (like if it’s a 55-45 favorite to succeed).
3) The Colts punt returner dropped a punt. If this were purely a physical error, I could maybe forgive it. But when you have the Colts offensive juggernaut about to come on the field, I don’t care if you have to put superglue on your gloves, you take starting at the 1 before you risk giving up the ball. Clearly from the replays he was starting to run before he caught it. He was trying to make a huge play, and for a team that’s losing, or a team with a bad offense, this is reasonable. But not for the Colts.
4) The Bengals didn’t stick to running the ball down the Colts’ throats. In their prevoius game, the Colts gave up 375 rushing yards, all on downhill plays. You can run straight up the middle on the Colts because you’re bigger than they are. They’re faster than you are, though. So what do the Bengals do? Once in the first half, they ran a reverse on 1st down for a gain of 1. Reverses are trick plays that work against big slow defenses. Not against defenses that were built for speed. Not only did this not work well, now they’re in 2nd and 9 and feel they have to pass (which against the Colts, you don’t). It’s incomplete and now you really have to pass. Voila the Colts get a 3 and out, because they’re good at defending passes. That’s what small and quick does for you. Then in the 3rd quarter (I think), they ran a toss on 1st down. Again, playing to the Colts’ defensive strength. They ate it up for a loss and back to throwing it was. Then several times in both halves they threw on 1st down. Sometimes it worked, but also sometimes they stopped the clock out of bounds, giving the Colts’ offense more time. Running against the Colts is like investing. You have to start early, and keep at it. The later you start investing the harder it is to save lots of money. When you run against the Colts you are not only chewing up clock and keeping Manning on the bench, but you’re wearing their small defense down, which sets up more running later when they’re tired. You notice that the Colts’ defense didn’t wear down this game.
5) I’m putting this as a separate entry because it annoys me the most, since the announcers are freakin paid to make intelligent conversation (accent on intelligent). They decided that the Bengals lost because they forgot who they were and played to the Colts’ weaknesses instead of their own strengths. First of all, this is crap – your opponents’ weakness IS your strength. That’s how it works. If you’re playing basketball and the other team is Shaq, Ben Wallace, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett and Chris Webber, you’re not going to try and take the ball inside, I don’t care how good you think your inside game is. (for the basketball-unenlightened, those guys are all friggin big) The announcer was seriously suggesting that they should have passed more and try and shootout with the Colts rather than running so much, when in reality they didn’t run enough. You know how many teams have beat the Colts in a shootout since I can remember? 0. They’re just too good at it. Their defense is built to stop passing teams and you just can’t run with their offense. You have to keep them off the field and out of sync. That’s what the teams did to make them lose 3 of the last 4. But apparently the plan that worked just wasn’t good enough for the Bengals.