Examining football myths

Last July, I took the plunge and decided to add the NFL Network to my cable subscription plan.

Yes, I confess to being a borderline football junkie. After all, that comes with the territory when you are a University of Nebraska alum.

The network was launched during the 2003 season and includes game broadcasts, up-to-the-minute news around the NFL, and various features. Among those features are various “Top Ten” lists, such as top ten quarterbacks of all time and so forth.Just recently, the network aired a feature of Top Ten Football Myths. The list primarily geared itself toward the NFL but definitely has a degree of truth for the college game as well. We are all guilty of uttering these myths but watching this show kind of made me re-examine the beliefs.

10) Tackle stats are accurate

On one hand, the statistic is important because after all, if the defender (or defenders) does not make the tackle, the play continues for perhaps a touchdown. However, they do not accurately gauge how valuable a player is to his team. How valuable is someone if he is making most of his tackles say 10 or more yards downfield? And if a running back goes straight into the line of scrimmage greeted by a wall of defenders, who really made the tackle?

But it comes down to the fact that tackle stats cannot always be trusted. Each NFL and college team employs a stat crew for its home games. That crew's final statistics are deemed official: yardage for rushing, passing, receiving and various kick returns plus field goal and punting distances, sacks, interceptions, touchdowns. However, most NFL teams and perhaps college too do not acknowledge the press box tackle stats as official. Following games, defensive coaching staffs break down the films on their own and award a new set of tackle numbers. Those are listed by each team as its "official" tackle count.

9) It’s tough to repeat as Super Bowl or National Champions

There is a kernel of truth to this idea but more so as college football national champions. In the Super Bowl era, eight of the 17 franchises that have won Super Bowls have repeated as champions (the Pittsburgh Steelers did it twice in the 1970s). In college football, only three teams have repeated as National Champions (1978-1979 Alabama, 1994-1995 Nebraska, and 2003-2004 USC).

Repeating is harder in the college game because the most games that a team can afford to lose and still have a shot at the National title is two games (i.e. LSU in 2007) and even that is an aberration. Many times, even one loss kills a team’s National Title hopes. In the NFL, a team can lose as many as six regular season games, get hot in the playoffs and then raise a Vince Lombardi trophy.

College or NFL, however, if a team has a proven formula that works as far as developing and keeping its players, it is going to be good enough to win it all again. If anything, this phrase should be changed to either “it can be hard to repeat” or “it’s hard to ‘Threepeat.’”

8) You should punt on fourth down

If the situation is fourth down and less than one yard, you hear fans and commentators bristle, “If you can’t make a half-yard, you don’t deserve to win.” That’s a philosophy that I champion but simple mathematics suggest that regardless of your decision, the result will be a hit-or-miss proposition. And no, don’t give me the argument that the coach is “a genius if it works, a dummy if it doesn’t.”

Please, folks, it’s not that simple. The outcome of a decision does not make it good or bad — what’s important is the reason behind it. Field position and game momentum play a role in decision-making. If a team faces say fourth-and-one from its own 20, it makes more sense to punt than it would if the ball was at midfield or deeper into the opponents’ territory.The difference is that at the 20, you risk giving the ball up to your opponent in prime scoring territory.

That said, I find it amazing how some coaches develop a reputation for being mavericks or river boat gamblers, tossing caution to the wind and taking the chance on fourth down more often than their rivals. The ones that don’t fall into this category get labeled as ones with “no guts,” or something along those lines.

7) Dome teams are soft

The argument you frequently hear is that dome teams are weak and can’t handle the elements. It is generally believed that upper management of dome teams attempt to build teams that are suited to play best in perfect indoor conditions but they almost always succeed at creating teams incapable of slugging it out in a postseason street fight.

At a disadvantage in the postseason? More often than not yes. After all, dome teams have played ten conference title games on the road – losing all ten. Soft, however, is only true in some cases but not across the board. Most people see teams like the Indianapolis Colts or the St. Louis Rams as finesse oriented teams. However, Bum Phillips’ Houston Oilers teams played a physical brand of football led by Earl Campbell. Jim Mora’s New Orleans Saints had plenty of defenses that inflicted pain on opponents.

On the college side, Syracuse, Idaho, Minnesota, Tulane, and Houston come to mind as dome teams but notice how none of those team are the “brand names” of college football.

6) Icing the kicker works

This strategy is employed by defending teams to disrupt the process of kicking a field goal just prior to the snap. Typically, either a player or a coach on the defending team will call time out just as the kicker is about to attempt a game-tying or game-winning field goal. This is intended to make the kicker nervous and increase the likelihood of him missing the kick.

So is it effective?

Scott Berry, who is a statistician and the former chairman of the Statistics in Sports section of the American Statistical Association, where every field-goal attempt made in the 2002 and 2003 seasons was studied. It was concluded that, for field goal attempts of higher difficulty in the 40-55 yard range, icing the kicker causes the likelihood of a successful attempt to drop by about ten percent. On shorter kicks, the effect was found to be negligible.

I must say I’m hardly surprised. What other job is a kicker thinking about throughout the game other than kicking off and kicking field goals or extra points? I doubt he’s spending the game thinking about that Cover Two defense or that “sluggo” route by the X receiver.

5) Quarterback needs a rocket arm

Anyone believing this idea knows about minus-10 percent about football. Granted, John Elway and Brett Favre could throw a strawberry through a locomotive and had Hall-of-Fame careers. However, guys Joe Montana, Tom Brady, and Troy Aikman didn’t wow anyone with their arm strength and had Hall-of-Fame careers.

If quarterback success was based solely from physical attributes, players like Andre Ware and Jeff George would both be headed to the Hall of Fame. Nevertheless, finding signal callers is becoming more about accuracy, intelligence and intangibles than it is overall physical skills. There have also been plenty of strong-armed high school quarterbacks that couldn’t cut the mustard in college.

4) You have to run to set up the pass

I believe teams need to have at least a presentable running attack but the fact that it sets up the pass is an outmoded idea. I find this idea to have gray areas even though as a Husker fan, I enjoyed watching them pound teams into submission. There is definitely truth to the idea that a team needs to have a genuine running threat if it wants to win a championship. College and NFL Teams are more likely to win with a 100 yard rusher (probably two-thirds of the time) than a 300 yard passer (about 50 percent of the time).

The one difference being in the college game teams run variations of the Spread Offense, where the quarterback is an extension of the running game. In the NFL, quarterbacks are more likely to use their mobility to buy extra time trying to find a receiver downfield.If a team has a dominant quarterback, then the need for a dominant running game is not great. However, if a team has a average or worse quarterback, then it had better have a strong running game if it wants a chance to win.

3) A player should not lose his job to injury

Puuullleeeaaaasssseeeeee!

Now there’s a copout if I ever heard of one. What a stupid question. It’s one thing to have that rule in high school but pro sports and college to a lesser extent are about a business, as much as some people hate to admit it. As a coach, your job is to play the guy that gives you the best chance to win. If you buy this theory, then Lou Gerhig should have his Hall-of-Fame induction revoked. While we’re at it, Kurt Warner and Tom Brady should return their Super Bowl MVP trophies.

2) Defense wins championships

Given that that the rules of the game (both college and pro) favor offenses, this theory holds less water than say 25 years ago but don’t kid yourself – defense matters. Just ask the 2000 New York Giants, 2001 St. Louis Rams, 2002 Oakland Raiders and 2007 New England Patriots. What do those teams have in common? Well, they all had a supposedly unstoppable offense going into the Super Bowl that got shut down by a bad ass defense.

The college game? How about those 2008 Oklahoma Sooners that got their jollies scoring 60 points a game. Well, they scored a friggin’ whopping 14 points against a superior Florida Gator defense.

You might not need a dominant defense to win a championship but until teams with soft defenses win a championship for ten years in a row, I’m not buying the theory that the game has changed.

As a whole, defensive teams tend to be more consistent, especially from year to year. QBs have off days, conditions break down, etc. It's much easier to plug in a talented new defender than it is to replace a QB or OL (especially multiple).

1) Prevent defense prevents you from winning

I’ve been very guilty of echoing this sentiment but I’ll back off to some degree. A true prevent defense is a “Hail Mary” defense where you drop seven or eight defenders near the goal-line. How many Hail Mary attempts actually work? One out of every 20, maybe.

Fans confuse a “soft zone” with a prevent. Well, it’s not the same. A soft zone means that all the safeties and cornerbacks are playing back, five or ten yards off the line. The free safety will often play as much as 20 yards back. There will be no jamming of receivers on the line. The zone means that each defensive back is responsible for an area of the field, so they're all watching the quarterback's eyes instead of running stride for stride with a receiver. It is very easy for the offense to make short plays against this defense, gaining four to eight yards per play, but it's almost impossible for the offense to make a big play of 20 or more yards against this sort of defense.

I do, however, echo the sentiment that if your normal defense apparently was very successful at stopping their offense and getting you to a place where the game is all but won. Why change what is working in the last minutes? Still, one frequently sees the prevent defense hauled out in the last few minutes of a game that is not close.