The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

Being born and raised in the Cornhusker state that is Nebraska, I know all about college football teams' rampant fans hollering for head coaching changes when their team doesn't reach their typically unrealistic expectations. After the Cornhuskers finished their 2017 campaign at a disappointing 4-8, it was all but inevitable a change would again be made. This will be their 5th different head coach over the past 14 years. Oddly enough, Nebraska's head coaching version of musical chairs started in 2003, after Frank Solich led the team to a 9-3 season, the best record the team's had in the past 14 years. So, in hindsight, perhaps Nebraska pulled the trigger a bit too quickly on firing Solich. That got me to thinking about other such institutions who haven't been as successful in recent years as they had been under a particular coach previously. Here's how those numbers pan out. I'll start with the program which has experienced the lowest drop-off in terms of wi...

I've always been curious on the actual impact and success of the strategy known as "icing the kicker" in football, if it has one at all. Well, thanks to research, I have some answers. One Tobias Moskowitz put together some numbers on this very thing and released them in his book Scorecasting , where he compared field goal kickers' success rates in the final couple minutes of a game when they were iced and when they weren't. To me at least, the results aren't very surprising. When the kick transpired between the 1:01 and 1:59 point in the 4th quarter of a game, iced kickers made 74.2% of their kicks, compared to 77.6% who weren't iced - a difference of 3.4%. When the kick took place between the 1:00 and 0:31 mark, iced kickers converted on 74.3% of their attempts, while the kickers who weren't iced converted on 74.6% of them - a difference of 0.3%. When the kick happened between the 0:30 and 0:16 point, iced kickers made 76.0% of their field goa...

While watching football yesterday (and hearing commentary on SportsCenter), these random thoughts came to my mind: - I can officially say I don't like the fade pass, especially in college. Unless a team has a Calvin Johnson to throw to (and there is only one Calvin Johnson), the ball typically winds up being lofted up like in the old childhood game 500. If it's underthrown, it could very well be intercepted. If it's overthrown, it will likely be an incompletion. There is very little margin for error when making this throw and like I said, unless Calvin Johnson is the receiver, I've found it to be quite difficult to get things right on the fade. It feels like a very low-percentage play and on most occasions, I just see it as a wasted down. - Most coaches have a chart to tell them in which situations to go for a two-point conversion. Late in the game, if they're down by 11, and score a touchdown, they'll likely go for two to try and trim the lead to 3, so they...

The Philadelphia Eagles have made some very unwise moves these past couple years. A lot of it simply has to do with coaching. Before last year, Juan Castillo had never coached defense in his life. He was the Eagles' offensive line coach for 13 seasons prior to last year, when for some strange reason, he was hired as the team's defensive coordinator. The defense struggled mightily during the first half of the season, but showed enough improvement in the second half to warrant Castillo another year on the job. Well, it wasn't a full year on the job. Following a couple losses mid-season where the defense gave up 4th quarter leads, Castillo was fired. The defense was quite mediocre for the most part - ranking in the very middle of the pack in most categories. On the other side of the ball, the offense ranked near last in many important categories, yet Castillo was made to be the first scapegoat of the season and was let go. The Eagles were 3-4 at the time, far from out of the p...

The short answer? No. I understand Washington's concern with allowing their young ace - Stephen Strasburg, who's coming off Tommy John surgery, to throw more innings than was recommended. However, who knows if/when the Nationals will again have this kind of opportunity to not only make the playoffs, but to have home-field advantage throughout (including the World Series, since the National League won the All-Star game)? This is a young club who has never made to the playoffs before. With a large lead over second-place Atlanta in the National League East, the Nationals will likely win the division with or without Strasburg playing the rest of the season. However, what about the playoffs? Are they really going to sit their ace in the playoffs? I also think it'd be a mistake to sit Strasburg in the regular season (maybe skip one start) and play him in the playoffs, because he'd likely be rusty to a certain extent. Just look at Strasburg's numbers for the season. He...

In the Outback Bowl today, Michigan State came back to tie Georgia 27-27 to send the game to overtime. In their first possession, Spartans' quarterback Kirk Cousins was intercepted, so all Georgia needed to do was score some points, any points, to win the game. On the first play, the Bulldogs ran the ball for a yard to reach the 24-yard line. On the second play, the quarterback, Aaron Murray, centered the ball and went down. Head coach Mark Richt then sent the kicking team out to attempt a game-winning field goal of a little over 40 yards on 3rd down. The kicker had made just over 60% of his kicks on the season. For every 3 he made, he missed about 2. Yet, Richt played the ultra-conservative card, ran the ball on first down, centered it on 2nd and went for the three on 3rd, in case something wrong happened and they could attempt it again on 4th. It doesn't get much more conservative than that and it backfired. The field goal was missed and Georgia wound up losing 33-30 in tripl...