Hitler, John Junker, DeLoss Dodds, Mike Brown ... Arthur Blank

This one is from last week, but it was a theme that I had been considering for quite a while.  Here is the conclusion:

I mention all of this as a cautionary tale for the Falcons. The local professional football franchise is seeking to replace the Georgia Dome - a facility that is only twenty years old and is a perfectly good place to watch a football game - with a retractable roof facility. The price tag for the new stadium is estimated at $948 million, although that seems to be a conservative estimate. Additionally, the only funding source listed so far has been a hotel/motel tax. The remaining funding is undetermined, but could very well come in the form of either additional tax revenue or in the form of charging fans more for the privilege of supporting the local team through PSLs and higher ticket prices.

I feel leery about any analogy that has Mike Brown and Arthur Blank in a sequence. Mr. Blank is widely popular in Atlanta for a variety of reasons, two of which are his various philanthropic endeavors and his generally good stewardship of the Falcons. That said, the Falcons risk the same sort of backlash that the bowls, Texas, and Bengals have all seen for pushing their position too hard. A new Falcons stadium promises little or nothing for an average fan, save for fewer seats, higher ticket prices, and the opportunity cost involved with $300 million in tax revenue going for a private business as opposed to schools, police, and other public services. The Falcons rely on the local community for much of their revenue. They ought to consider that fact when pushing for an unnecessary new stadium.

Arthur Blank faces an interesting quandary.  Mike Brown has no reputation to protect, either in Cincinnati or elsewhere.  The fact that the Cincinnati Bengals remain in the NFL despite decades of miserly mismanagement is a testament to the cartel nature of the league, one free from the competitive pressures that the possibility of relegation creates in the rest of the world.  Brown does not care about his reputation locally, so he has no issue driving a hard bargain with his city and county and then turning a deaf ear when the effects of that bargain affect the services that the local government can provide. 

Blank, on the other hand, has a sterling reputation in Atlanta.  His commercial creation - Home Depot - is generally popular, as are his philanthropic endeavors.  He has done a good job as the owner of the Falcons.  Moreover, he simply has a pleasant demeanor because he smiles and speaks well.  If I were casting a movie and wanted to fill the role of doting grandfather, I would pick someone who looks and acts like Blank.  Because of that reputation, Blank cannot credibly make the threat that would get him a new stadium: "give me this or I'll move the team."  He has too much to lose if he becomes the person known as the guy who killed professional football in Atlanta, a city that loves the sport.  This positive reputation works against him.

That last paragraph, by the way, can operate as a criticism of Liberty Media and Atlanta Spirit.  Whereas Blank has roots in the community and therefore wants the Falcons to do well to enhance his local reputation, Liberty Media, as an out-of-state media company, has no such interest.  Nor does Atlanta Spirit, which (at least in terms of ownership share) is predominantly composed of individuals from out-of-state.

Catching Up

Sorry for the lack of content in recent weeks, but between work and my posts at SB Nation's Atlanta site, time has been tight.  For those of you who don't visit the Atlanta page on a daily basis, hang your heads in shame ... and then click on the tab that I added to the right that goes directly to my profile there.  That has a fill list of what I have been posting, both in shorter and longer form.  Some highlights from the last few weeks:

My predictable gloating over the Saints' little bounty issue:

The last parallel between the Ohio State and New Orleans scandals is that both relate to the most pressing issues facing their respective sports. College football has been plagued in recent months with significant scandals involving major programs and improper benefits, leading many to question the continued viability of a sport that is built on a fiction. For instance, the 2010 national title game was contested between a team whose star quarterback's father was trying to sell his son to the highest bidder and an opponent currently under investigation for paying a runner in Texas to direct players to Eugene.

The biggest issue facing the NFL is the long-term health impact of the sport, a dilemma that leads to a plausible scenario in which the NFL no longer exists. Through a combination of: (1) the school firing its head coach and suspending several of its best players; and (2) the NCAA tacking on a one-year bowl ban, Ohio State has essentially had to give up two football seasons. That's the message that the NCAA and its members have to send to deter money finding its way to the players who generate it.

I don't pretend to know what is in Roger Goodell's holster in terms of potential punishments, but it is clear that he is going to have to bring the hammer down because the participation of Saints' coaches in the team's bounty system and the acquiescence of the head coach and general manager in that system touches on the biggest problem facing the league. Goodell has to ensure that current and future authority figures in the league see what happened to the Saints and take the lesson that they have to stamp out incentives to injure opposing players.

This is one of those instances where I am quite happy that Roger Goodell has given himself untrammeled power to punish league figures who "damage the shield," to quote that preposterous phrase that was bandied about by authority worshipers when Goodell was disciplining Ben Roethlisberger for tawdry conduct that did not lead to criminal charges.  Let's see him use that power when the wrongdoers are management instead of labor.  That, after all, is the big issue with the Saints scandal.  It's not that the Saints had a bounty system, as that appears to be something that happens every now and again in the NFL.  It's that this appears to be the first instance in which a defensive coordinator, a head coach, and a general manager all either participated or at least knew about the scheme and did nothing.

My predictable counter to Forbes labeling Atlanta as the most miserable sports city in America:

Forbes would never permit this terrible reasoning when evaluating companies. Financial reporting is (at least theoretically) based on reviewing the entirety of a company's record to make the best evaluations possible. That same rigor apparently does not apply to sports analysis, where we define disappointment based on a "small sample size important; big sample size unimportant" framework.

The point of sports is to provide us with entertainment. We all want an escape from the ennui of the working world and games provide us with exactly that. A team like the Braves during their heyday provided great entertainment, as they consistently won more than they lost. Day after day, we could rely on the Braves to make us happy by beating down the rest of the NL East. Losing a playoff series was a sad experience, but was it enough to overwhelm six months of happiness? No.

Personally, this has been a pretty good period to be an Atlanta sports fan.  How many other times in city history can we say that two of our teams - the Hawks and Falcons - are playoff regulars and the third - the Braves - are at least on the cusp and have a roster full of promising young players.  Maybe my expectations were beaten down by two of the city's three teams being so bad in the 80s when I was growing up, but this seems fine to me.  It's unfortunate that the Hawks have reached their ceiling at the second round of the playoffs and the Falcons can't win a playoff game, but as between playoff disappointment and finishing in last place every year, I'll take the former.

I also finished a post that I've been meaning to write for weeks on the decline of the ACC as a basketball conference.  I offered four potential explanations: conference expansion, bad coaches, the Big Dance killing the regular season, and the possibility that we are just seeing a statistical blip.  The decline of the ACC stands out for me because of the juxtaposition with SEC football.  The latter is as strong as ever, as population trends have dovetailed with the ability of athletic departments to monetize fan passion - and thereby build facilities and hire coaches that create a recruiting advantage - to put the SEC on top of college football.  Those same shifts in population should be helping the ACC in basketball, but they aren't.  That leads to a chicken-egg question: is fan intensity down in the ACC because the product is weaker or is the product weaker because fan intensity is down?

 

The Giants' Owners, the Georgia Dome, and the NFL as Crony Capitalism

Sometimes, my column ideas come as the result of days of thought.  Other times, the idea comes to me in the shower.  This column is the latter, so I'm interested in your thoughts on whether I'm off the reservation.  Here is the gist:

Last May, FC Barcelona won the Champions League for the third time in six years. On the two previous recent occasions that the club won the title, the trophy was presented to team captain Carles Puyol. Puyol is an iconic figure, a native Catalan who came up through the team's youth ranks and is noted both for being a great leader on the field and for looking like a caveman (or at least a Dokken roadie). When Barcelona won the title last May, Puyol gave the honor of lifting the trophy to Eric Abidal, the team's French left back. Abidal had had an excellent season for Barca, playing both left and center back because of injuries, before he was felled by a liver tumor early in 2011. Abidal recovered in time to play in the Final, where he shut down Manchester United right-winger Antonio Valencia. Thus, there were few fans around the world who weren't a little touched by the scene of Abidal receiving the Champions League trophy from his countryman Michel Platini, himself a French legend who led the French side that won the European Cup in 1984 and made the semifinals of the World Cup in 1982 and 1986.

Forgive me for sounding like a Eurosnob* for a moment, but the presentation of the Lombardi Trophy last night didn't quite have the same flair. (Watch trophy presentation video here.)

Instead of a football icon handing the trophy over, we get Roger Goodell, a life-long NFL suit who is most noted for giving himself the power to suspend players for any reason he sees fit and for persuading Peter King to write the most sycophantic cover story that I can recall reading in Sports Illustrated. Instead of a club totem like Puyol or a cancer-survivor like Abidal accepting the trophy, we had the New York Giants' owners getting the honor. Puyol and Abidal got the right to hold the trophy aloft because they established themselves as some of the best players in the world at their positions; John Mara and Steve Tisch got the right to hoist the Lombardi Trophy because they inherited the team from their parents. On the list of individuals about whom Giants fans were feeling very strong affection last night, I doubt that the team's owners were in the top 20.

This leads to a complaint about the Falcons having the gall to ask for a new stadium to replace the Georgia Dome, a facility in which they have all of twenty seasons under their belt.  The overall point is that the NFL is a perfect illustration of crony capitalism, an entity that socializes profits by extorting concessions from local government and minimizing the incentives for good management.  Somehow, the awarding of the Lombardi Trophy to the Giants' owners and the Falcons' chutzpah in asking for a $700M new stadium seem linked in my head, although I'm not sure that I properly explained why.

Other thoughts for the director's cut:

1. You'll notice that there is an asterisk with no footnote.  That was going to be a paragraph where I list all of the reasons why the US is better than Europe, including the fundamental contradiction that is the EU (putting Greece and Germany under the same roof isn't a recipe for stability) and our bad-ass technology for blowing things up.  (Generally speaking, I could have just said "our technology.")  When I was done with the footnote, it read like a loyalty oath, so I took it out.  But, just in case you are concerned, G-d bless the USA! (HT: Lee Greenwood.)

2. I was also going to include a footnote to the effect of "I'm not saying that everyone should love soccer because of the way the sport is structured in Europe.  I grew up playing and watching the sport, so I'm not offended by a nil-nil.  Your mileage may vary.  In the old days, I would get mad at Americans who didn't like soccer because that sentiment kept it off of TV.  With the Internet and digital cable, that's no longer an issue, so if you find the sport desperately boring, that's your choice and I respect it."

3. Is there anyone out there who thinks that the Georgia Dome needs to be replaced?  Seriously.  I know the selling point is going to be that the new stadium will be funded by a hotel tax, but a significant number of Georgians will end up paying that tax.  Additionally, if we are going to raise $700M, then I can think of 20 better ways to spend the money.  For starters, how about a moratorium on plunking metal plates down on our roads?  $700M would pay for some pretty smooth surface streets.  The public gets this, hence the significant opposition to a new stadium.  If there are any Polisci students out there, this issue would make for a really interesting thesis.

Guys, The Roadblocks on 316 Are Not Necessary

I took a quick run this morning at the rumor that the Falcons are interested in Todd Grantham.  I guess if you are replacing one former Georgia defensive coordinator, you might as well do so by making another one, right?  Aside from the facts that Grantham's scheme is a bad fit for the Falcons' personnel and the team has neither the draft picks nor the cap space to re-tool in the offseason, I opined that there is no way in hell that Arthur Blank is going to piss off the significant portion of his fan base that spends their Saturdays barking:

A significant portion of the Falcons' fan base is comprised of Georgia fans. How exactly do we think that Georgia fans would react to losing their now-beloved defensive coordinator to the local pro football collective right before a season in which Georgia will be preseason top ten and expected to win the East and challenge for the SEC title? Arthur Blank didn't get to where he is by angering his customers. It would make a lot more sense for him to back the Brinks truck up to Steve Spagnuolo's house so the Falcons can sell their fans on the fact that they hired a Super Bowl-winning defensive coordinator.

So no, I don't think that this is happening.  In fact, I seriously doubt that the Falcons even considered it beyond "yeah, that would be a terrible idea."

If the Falcons wanted to do a change of scheme, how about the Air Raid?  It's almost certainly too radical for a winning team, but if some teams are going to move towards the spread 'n' shred, then why wouldn't someone try the other offense that is ripping up college football?  It's not like the run 'n' shoot was a resounding failure in the NFL.

Mularkey Fuera!

You know that when I am channeling the ever-disgruntled fans at Atletico Madrid,* then thinks are not going well.  Here's the column.  As usual, I am complaining about the focus on Michael Turner:

Leaving the playoff struggles aside, the most basic criticism of Mularkey is that he doesn't understand the strengths of his own attack. The Falcons are at their best when Matt Ryan is throwing the ball around to the toys that Thomas Dimitroff has bought for him.

The Falcons' running game is overrated by people who only look at raw numbers. Michael Turner was 39th in the NFL in DVOA this year. Put another way, he was below average in terms of his success rate on a per-play basis. Collectively, the Falcons' running game ranked 25th in the NFL by Football Outsiders' numbers. If you look at the more conventional yards per carry number, the Falcons jump all the way up to 22nd. An objective observer would look at this team and conclude that their approach in January should have been to throw the ball and then use the run on occasion to keep the defense honest. Mularkey, whether because of ideological rigidity or a misguided notion of avoiding the Giants' pass rush, stubbornly gave Turner nine carries in the first half. Those carries produced a whopping 27 yards. Did Mularkey react to this evidence by refraining from wasting downs in the second half? No, he started the half by giving Turner three more carries that produced ten yards. The Falcons blew their chances when the defense was playing really well.

I heard a good call this morning on 790 by a fan arguing that the problem is that the running game is so uni-directional.  The Giants' runners can all change direction and cut back, but Turner just plods between the tackles whether or not the blocking is there.  Interestingly, the Falcons are above-average in their percentage of runs going outside, so I'm not sure that this criticism is valid, but it sure feels right after yesterday.

* - The full chant there is "[Insert name of inept manager or club owner], cabron, fuera del Calderon."  Catchy, no?

Customary Invective About New York

You didn't really think that I would let a week like this go by without a paragraph on my love for New York sports culture, did you? 

Adrift on a sea of potential ennui, there is one subject that in my experience unites Atlanta sports fans: we hate New York teams. I've yet to encounter a non-Big Apple transplant Atlantan who views the teams from New York with anything but contempt. When their teams come to our venues, we get overrun with loutish, gold chain-festooned former New Yorkers who have John Franco mustaches with no shred of irony and who cheer lustily for teams from a city that they fled because they didn't want to pay $3,000 per month for 500 square feet. When we turn on the TV, we get inundated with news about their teams as if they are our teams. Their shills in the media have completely appropriated baseball history as being the story about New York teams and their games against one another or the Red Sox. Nothing will quite bring out passion quite like being dismissed as a bystander.

Unfortunately, the post then deals with reality, which is that Atlanta teams have a terrible history against New York teams in the postseason.  I missed an opportunity to make a joke about Rutgers football not being in a position to play the Dawgs in a bowl game.  Sorry about that.

Vickkampf: the Panther is in the Shop Again

At the end of the Falcons-Eagles game last night, I had the same feeling as I did after Michigan-Notre Dame: should I be happy that my team won or concerned by the manner in which they won.  On the one hand, the Falcons got a critical win to avoid an 0-2 start.  They kept pace with the Saints and Bucs.  They came off the mat when they were down by ten in the fourth quarter.  With the game in the balance, they mounted two long touchdown drives against a defense that had been shelling them for most of the game.  And they did all of this against a team that is clearly one of the two best in the NFC.  (The hierarchy in the NFC: Green Bay and Philly are clearly on top, the Saints are third, and then everyone else fills in behind in some convoluted order.)

On the other hand, yeesh.  The Falcons pretty clearly won because Michael Vick sustained an injury in the third quarter.  Prior to Vick’s injury, the Eagles were pretty much moving the ball on the Falcons at will.  After the injury, the Eagles had to deploy third-string quarterback Mike Kafka, leading a bunch of NFL types to make the same Metamorphosis jokes that college fans exhausted several years ago.  Despite this good fortune, the Falcons still let the Eagles mount a late drive, a drive that ended not because the Falcons made a great defensive play, but rather because Jeremy Maclin – a player who had killed the Falcons all night – dropped a pass on fourth down.  At one point before Vick’s injury, the Falcons were being outgained 350 to 152.  The local pro football collective looked at times like they belonged in the NFC West.  Only the good fortune of scoring touchdowns after a lengthy fumble return by Ray Edwards (great play by Peria Jerry to force the fumble, but everything that happened thereafter was luck) and then an interception that wasn’t really an interception by Kelvin Hayden* had kept the Falcons in the game in the middle stretches. 

* – All of Andy Reid’s game management issues that Bill Simmons has lampooned for years were on display in this game.  Reid erred by not using his timeouts at the end of the first half when the Falcons were inside the Eagles ten and time clearly wasn’t an issue.  He didn’t challenge the Hayden pick.  He wasted a timeout discussing the fourth down play at the end with Kafka, thus depriving the Eagles of a chance to mount a drive after the fourth down attempt failed.  Reid is a good coach in most areas, but he is usually found wanting in the areas that fans can most easily judge. 

There was really no aspect of the Falcons team that looked good.  The running game was productive on Michael Turner’s first two and last two carries, but in between, there was a whole lot of nothing.  Matt Ryan threw two picks and averaged only 5.6 yards per attempt.  Whether the failings of the passing game were the result of Ryan playing poorly or the offensive line getting abused on just about every dropback is an open question.  If the NFL is a passing league and the key on defense is getting a pass rush without blitzing, then Eagles fans have to be feeling a lot better than Falcons fans this morning.  On defense, the Falcons struggled to cover Maclin and DeSean Jackson and they didn’t get a sack on any of the Eagles’ 37 pass attempts.  But hey, the Falcons injured Vick by throwing him into one of his teammates, so there’s that.

On the surface level, this was a win straight out of the 2010 playbook in that the Falcons got outgained, but still managed to beat a good opponent.  However, the formula isn’t even working anymore.  The Falcons won last year despite pedestrian yardage numbers because of three strengths, but none of the strengths were evident last night:

1. They were fourth in the NFL in first downs, showing a low variance offense that was able to control the clock and score.  Last night, the Eagles had 27 first downs to the Falcons’ 20.

2. They were third in the NFL in fewest turnovers surrendered.  Last night, the Falcons threw a pair of picks.  In a similar vein, the Falcons were third in the NFL in fewest sacks allowed, but last night, Ryan was sacked four times and was running for his life on most of the rest of his dropbacks.

3. They were excellent on special teams.  Last night, the Falcons had an 18-yard punt from Matt Bosher (Bosher is a major step down from Michael Koenen) and also saw Pro Bowler Eric Weems make a series of dreadful decisions on punt and kickoff returns.

There are two possibilities here.  The first is that the Falcons simply played two bad games to start the season and they will right the ship in the coming weeks.  The second is that the 13-3 season in 2010 was a mirage based on factors that will not or cannot be repeated and regression to the mean is going to hit with force this fall.  I’m leaning towards the latter.   

Vickkampf: He's Back

Well, this has been a fun week to be a Falcons fan. After much excitement in the offseason and a prediction from Peter King that the team will make the Super Bowl for the second time in franchise history, the team laid an egg in Chicago on Sunday, getting buried by a Bears team that no one respects. After being promised a more explosive offense, we saw a damp squib of an attack produce exactly six points. The concerns from last year - Mike Mularkey's bland play-calling, Matt Ryan playing like crap on the road, etc. - appear unresolved. So why has it been a fun week? Because Mike Vick is coming to town with the NFC favorites, which has forced a critical analysis of where this team is four years after Vick's departure. This isn't just any week in an NFL city where the home team got off to a bad start in week one. With a significant portion of the Falcons' fan base still sore over the fact that Vick is no longer under center for the Falcons (how the Vickstapo think that the team could have waited patiently for him while he served a stint in a federal penitentiary, I'll never know), the question of "how much better off are we?" is a pertinent one.

The funny thing for me is that I've been listening to 790 the Zone, which can come off like Pravda Flowery Branch, and the defense of the Falcons is remarkably similar to the same defense that we heard in 2005 and 2006 when the team was obviously heading off the rails. (OK, my criticism here is mainly of Steak Shapiro, a living embodiment of the maxim that one does not have to be good at one's job in order to be successful.) Back then, when it was becoming apparent that the Falcons were not a contender in the NFC, the defense of Vick and the Falcons was "he's a winner." In Vick's first three years as a starter, the Falcons made the playoffs twice and the third season, Vick was out for 12 games with a broken leg. Moreover, the Falcons won playoff games in each of Vick's two trips to the postseason before losing in Philadelphia both times. So yeah, the Falcons didn't look good in 2005-06 and there were worrying signs that Vick was regressing (his accuracy was spotty, his footwork was bad, he wasn't dropping back in the pocket properly, etc.), but Vick is a winner! Look at his record as a starter!

How did that turn out? If any fan base should be wary of "look at the quarterback's record as a starter," it's the Falcons' one. As it turns out, building a team properly and coaching it well matters. The Eagles built excellent rosters, they are well-coached, and they have won consistently. The Falcons had a pair of flash-in-the-pan seasons, we thought that we were the Eagles, but our two trips to Philly in January should have told us that we were not. Now, Vick is playing in Philly, he's twice the quarterback that he was in his final two seasons in Atlanta, and we ought to be reminded that judging a quarterback based on wins and losses is a fool's errand.

The second defense of the current iteration of the Falcons' offense that Shapiro repeats ad nauseam is that they were fifth in the NFL in points scored last year. I can't tell if Steak is being willfully blind here, if he isn't smart enough to understand his poor use of statistics, or if the format of sports radio simply eschews intelligent use of numbers. Shapiro is a former gambler, so maybe he ought to consider the fact that most Vegas sharps - the guys who pay their hefty mortgages by making better predictions than the general gambling public - base their statistical models on yards per play. By that measure, the Falcons were 25th in the NFL offensively in 2010. The Ryan-led passing game was 25th in yards per pass attempt. Account for touchdowns and interceptions and the Falcons jump all the way to 13th in adjusted yards per attempt. (The numbers are all here.) Or, let's look at Football Outsiders' numbers. They pegged the Falcons has having the tenth-best offense in the league, which is good but is a far cry from fifth. Using their weighted DVOA, which gives extra weight to performances later in the year (and remember that Shapiro is a guy who bitches about the lack of a playoff in college football because the point of sports to him is to get a team playing well at the end of the season), and the Falcons drop to 13th.

There is all manner of noise in the points scored stat. If a team has good field position, then it will score more points. If a team has a defense that forces turnovers, then it will score more points. If it has a defense and special teams that score touchdowns, then it will score more points. If it is playing against a weak schedule, then it will score more points. All of these factors were in play for the Falcons last year. Their special teams ranked second in the NFL. They scored five non-offensive touchdowns. They were seventh in turnovers forced. Moreover, fully half of their schedule was composed of the worst team in football (the Panthers), the worst division in football (and possibly in NFL history - the NFC West), and the Bengals and Browns (combined record: 9-23). That's how you end up scoring the fifth-most points in the NFL despite an underwhelming offensive coordinator and a young quarterback who is giving off a worrying aroma, just like the last young quarterback who excited Falcons fans.

Steak Shapiro Knows How You Should Feel

One of the virtues of writing for a major newspaper as opposed to an eclectic (read: marginal) blog in the hinterlands of the Internet is that a writer can gauge how a fan base is feeling at a given time.  Because of his position, Mark Bradley gets to interact with tens of thousands of Atlanta sports fans by e-mail, Twitter, and the comments sections of his articles.  So, when Bradley writes that his sense is that Falcons fans aren't especially excited for the upcoming season, he is making an interesting observation.  I can watch the same games that Bradley does and come to my own conclusions as to what I just saw.  I can’t, however, claim to have my finger on the pulse of how Atlanta fans are feeling about a given issue. Bradley can, so when he says that Falcons fans don’t seem as excited about the upcoming season as one would expect for a team that just went 13-3, he is performing a useful function.

Based on the emotionally incontinent* reaction of Steak Shapiro, we should feel differently.  It was hard to tell from his rant whether Shapiro is mad with Bradley for reaching an incorrect conclusion (although, this being sports talk radio, Shapiro didn’t offer any evidence for his assertion) or whether he is mad at Falcons fans for feeling this way.  The claim appeared to be something along the lines of “the franchise is in much better shape than it was before, so how can you people not be fired up!?!  Have I mentioned that we are the new home of the Falcons?”  (I’m not pretending to be quoting him directly.)  Well, yeah, but saying that the franchise is exceeding its historical norm is damning with faint praise. 

* – I stole that term from Graham Hunter, who used it to describe Jose Mourinho.

I found the rant to be remarkably lacking in self-awareness for a couple reasons.  First, Shapiro was mockingly citing the names of the fans that Bradley cited in the article.  Hello, you’re a sports talk radio host!  Your whole format is based on giving a voice to average fans.**  The implication of your criticism that Bradley put quotes from Average Joes on the front cover of the paper is that a newspaper is a more legitimate format than sports talk radio and should not reduce itself to quoting the ticket-buying proletariat.  Second, your whole view of the sports world is buzz-based.*  Is buzz only legitimate when you agree with it?  When the buzz isn’t against your commercial interests?

* – Man, it’s odd to read what I wrote six years ago and say to myself that I was once an unapologetic fan of the format.  I guess that was the age before podcasts.  

** – And for f***’s sake, please stop referring to commenters on AJC articles as “bloggers.”  The people who call your station are not hosts or analysts, so why would you make the equivalent mistake about people using the Internet?

Personally, I’m not overly excited about the Falcons season for two main reasons.  First, my two loves are college football and European soccer and both are starting their seasons at the same time as the Falcons.  With a finite amount of intellectual and emotional energy, thinking about the Falcons’ pass rush comes in behind Al Borges designing an offense for Denard Robinson, the prospect of Isaiah Crowell tearing through holes, and Cesc and Alexis Sanchez fitting into the best XI in the world.  I’m unusual in liking soccer so much, but I am hardly unusual in this market in thinking that the NFL is dessert after the main course is served on Saturday.  That’s how this market operates.  Second, my view is that the Falcons were a mirage last year, a nine- or ten-win team masquerading as a 13-win team.  I doubt that there is wide-spread belief that the Falcons were not a great team last year because of their yards-per-play margin, but I do suspect that there is a general sense that the team wasn’t as good as its record.  Fans in this market watch enough NFL to know that there are often teams that have great records in a given year and then regress to the mean.  I would guess that the Falcons fan base is taking a wait-and-see approach because they remember that at this time last year, the Vikings and Cowboys were coming off of seasons where they were the second- and third-best teams in the NFC.  Those teams both finished 6-10 in 2010.  But why should historical memory get in the way of a good buzz?

And one last, related point: it’s hilarious to me to listen to a sports talk radio host try to use the “don’t overrate the importance of a small sample size playoff over the large sample size regular season” argument when it suits his purposes.  Shapiro constantly rants about the fact that there is no playoff in college football.  He killed the Braves for their postseason failures in the first part of the Aughts.  Now, his personal affection for the Falcons and the people who run the franchise has caused him to see the light that putting all importance on playoff results might not be the most rational way to evaluate a team or a season. 

Newsflash: if he is Uncovered, Julio Jones Can Score Touchdowns!

Doug Farrar, you aren’t making me feel any better about the Julio Jones ransom with this article.  Farrar’s theme is that the Falcons were terrible at hitting big plays in the passing game and Jones will address that weakness.  As evidence for his claim, Farrar diagrams Jones’s touchdown against Auburn, a play on which he was totally uncovered.  I remember watching the play and thinking “holy crap, Auburn’s pass defense is even worse than I thought.  They just left Alabama’s best receiver alone in a deep zone.”  I did not think “wow, that Julio Jones really is something” and I doubt that anyone else had the same thought.  Jones may turn out to be worth the stiff price that the Falcons paid, but it won’t be based on his ability to score when opposing safeties ignore him.

Contra Everything I’ve Written Since the Draft…

This ($) is how you make an argument in favor of the Julio Jones pick.  KC Joyner notes that the Falcons were terrible in the short passing game last year, most likely because none of their receivers could break a tackle or make a defender miss.  Jones was excellent in the short passing game at Alabama.  In fact, he was better than AJ Green in this department, so he answers a major need for the Falcons.  If Jones lives up to his college numbers, then he’ll be able to take some of the load off of Roddy White and he’ll also open up the deep passing game.

Speaking of which, Joyner’s article raises an interesting issue with the oft-criticized Mike Mularkey offense.  Joyner notes that the Falcons were both bad in the short passing game and they barely ever threw deep.  This raises two possibilities.  The defense of Mularkey would be that the Falcons were bad at the deep passing game, so he had to call a number of short and intermediate routes.  The less charitable explanation would be that Mularkey’s conservative tendencies – either through play-calling or through drilling a “don’t make a mistake under any circumstances – allowed opponents to sit on the short passing game.  Again, I find myself asking the question “how did this team win 13 games without being very good at anything?”

Pesky Numbers

The more I think and read about the Julio Jones pick, the more skeptical I become. Football Outsiders has created a statistical formula to analyze receivers and before the Draft, they wrote that Jones only came out as the 13th best receiver in the class ($) based on his college numbers. Anticipating the claim that Jones played in a run-first offense in a great conference and that it is to be expected that his numbers will be low, take a look at FO’s criteria:

The exact formula behind Playmaker is too complicated to get into here, but it is based on six factors:

• Receiving yards per game
• Receiving touchdowns
• Average yards per catch
• The team's yards per pass
• The team's passes per game
• The conference the receiver played in

In short, Playmaker accounts for both the style of the offense and the level of competition. Jones’s pedestrian numbers go into that system and come out with the projection that he’ll be a pedestrian receiver in the NFL. As FO acknowledges, their system is by no means perfect. We are simply talking about probability here. Combining the history of receivers taken in the top ten spots in the Draft and Jones’ numbers leaves us with the conclusion that the odds are against Jones producing at anywhere near the level that would justify his price tag.

Speaking of the list of top ten receivers, look at the college numbers of Jones and the three receivers who have lived up to their lofty draft positions as exceptions to the "don't take receivers at the top of the Draft" rule:

	Catches	Yards	TDs	Yds/R
Andre Johnson	92	1,831	20	19.9
Larry Fitzgerald	161	2,677	34	16.6
Calvin Johnson	178	2,927	28	16.4
Julio Jones	179	2,653	15	14.8

None of these four receivers played in pass-heavy spread offenses and they did not play with quarterbacks who would go onto success in the NFL. With that groundwork out of the way, there are two issues that jump off of the table. First, Jones’s yards per catch is lower than any of the three receivers on the list. Second, he caught fewer touchdowns. The touchdown issue is especially worrying when you account for the fact that Andre Johnson - the only one of the three whose TD total is close to that of Jones - only started for two years in college, whereas Jones started for three. Those 15 touchdowns look a lot more like Troy Williamson (13 TDs in three years as a starter at South Carolina) than they do Johnson & Johnson or Fitzgerald. Thus, we have to go on faith that Jones was a decoy for most of his time at Alabama and that he will thrive when he has Roddy White on the other side of the formation as opposed to Marquise Maze. I’d rather have more than faith in my corner when trading five picks for one guy.

One last thought: for the first time, I’m a little anxious for the NFL owners and the NFLPA to reach a deal. Previously, I was ambivalent about the prospect of a lockout eating some or all of the season. I do like watching NFL games, but on the other hand, a fall where college football doesn’t have the share the spotlight is an appealing thought. Now, I’m so interested to see how the Jones gamble pays off that I want a resolution so we can start getting reports on how the Falcons’ passing game looks in August.

The History Books Tell it / They Tell it So Well

This is not Mark Bradley’s strongest effort. Bradley is, by nature, an optimist and wants to think that a major move by the Falcons is going to pan out. Thus, in his column yesterday, he started grasping at straws, like this one:

Before we leave the NFL draft, we need ask a simple question: Were you the Falcons, would you rather have had the second-best-at-worst receiver in this class or the eighth-best defensive end? Because the rationale for trading up to take Julio Jones lies therein.

Gee, if only it were so simple. The Falcons were not choosing simply between taking Julio Jones or one of the defensive ends who would have been available with the #27 pick. No, they were choosing between those two options, only with four additional picks, including a first-rounder and a second-rounder behind door number two. One can just as easily make a simplistic argument in the other direction by saying that the Falcons made the wrong decision in a choice between one player or five. Bradley also assumes without evidence that the Falcons are going to have a late first-round pick in next year’s Draft. He is overrating a team that was outgained on a per-play basis and then lost by 863 points in its first playoff game.

And then this argument by Bradley ignores all recent evidence:

Julio Jones will start as a rookie. That’s a given. It’s all but a given he won’t be a bust. He’s too gifted and too focused. Jones was a high school star and played college football at the highest level, so he’s accustomed to the pursuit of excellence.

I told myself that I wasn’t going to be condescending to a columnist whose work I’ve enjoyed since I was in middle school, but I can’t help myself. Mark, in case you haven’t been watching the NFL for the past decade, wide receivers have a disturbingly high bust rate. Here is the list of wide receivers who have gone in the top ten spots in the Draft since 2000:

Darius Heyward-Bey
Michael Crabtree
Calvin Johnson
Ted Ginn
Braylon Edwards
Troy Williamson
Mike Williams
Larry Fitzgerald
Roy Williams
Reggie Williams
Charles Rogers
Andre Johnson
David Terrell
Koren Robinson
Peter Warrick
Plaxico Burress
Travis Taylor

By my informal count, the number of busts (Ginn, Williamson, Mike Williams, Reggie Williams, Charles Rogers, David Terrell, Koren Robinson, Peter Warrick, and Travis Taylor) outnumber the stars (Calvin Johnson, Fitzgerald, and Andre Johnson) who have been taken in similar positions. (Neither Crabtree, nor Heyward-Bey are off to starts in their careers that indicate that they will be anything other than busts, but for the sake of argument, I’ll give them grades of incomplete.) If the recent past is a guide, then it is three times more likely that Jones will be a bust than it is that he will be the player that Bradley describes.

If Bradley is thinking clearly, then he will counter with some variation of the following: “Michael, none of the busts on your list had a quarterback throwing to them with anything close to Matt Ryan’s ability. Most of your busts are the victim of circumstance.” That may be true, but there are two problems with this argument. First of all, if their lack of success was a function of teammates, then one would expect one or more of those receivers to have flourished when they moved to different teams. The only guy who could possibly be described in that manner is Mike Williams. Second, if wide receivers are simply a function of their quarterbacks, then it makes no sense to invest five good picks into one receiver. Rather, you would simply bide your time and wait for the chance to take your version of Desean Jackson, Mike Wallace, or Wes Welker later in the Draft. You know, like the good teams do.

Thomas Dimitroff: Mr. Jones and me Tell Each Other Fairy Tales

Here is the abstract of Cade Massey and Richard Thaler’s academic article regarding the value of NFL Draft picks:

A question of increasing interest to researchers in a variety of fields is whether the biases found in judgment and decision making research remain present in contexts in which experienced participants face strong economic incentives. To investigate this question, we analyze the decision making of National Football League teams during their annual player draft. This is a domain in which monetary stakes are exceedingly high and the opportunities for learning are rich. It is also a domain in which multiple psychological factors suggest teams may overvalue the chance to pick early in the draft.. Using archival data on draft-day trades, player performance and compensation, we compare the market value of draft picks with the surplus value to teams provided by the drafted players. We find that top draft picks are overvalued in a manner that is inconsistent with rational expectations and efficient markets and consistent with psychological research.

Massey and Thaler conclude that the most valuable picks in the Draft are second round picks because the players taken with those picks are closer to first rounder than one would think in terms of quality and they are significantly cheaper.  (Note: changes to the salary scale for rookies might alter the analysis.  Always in motion is the future.) 

Massey and Thaler’s conclusion is consistent with what our own senses can tell us about the most and least successful teams in the league.  Which teams are the best run teams in the NFL?  The Patriots and Steelers immediately come to mind.  Do those teams trade up into the top ten?  No.  The Steelers generally stay put and take players in the late first round spots that they invariably occupy; the Patriots actively try to trade down, as they did last night.  Conversely, the Redskins are probably the worst run team in the NFL and what is their usual strategy?  Mortgaging a quantity of picks for a few stars.  How does that work out for them?

With that context in mind, I have a simple question for Thomas Dimitroff: what the f*** are you doing?  You just traded two first round picks, one second round pick, and two fourth round picks for one player?  It’s painfully clear that the Falcons’ brass went down to the dealership, fell in love with one particular car, and let the salesman jack them for it. 

This approach would make sense if the Falcons were truly one player away from being a Super Bowl team, but their brass are letting a lucky season cloud their judgment.  The Birds were outgained on a per-play basis.  At best, they were a ten-win team masquerading as the #1 seed in the NFC and they were ruthlessly exposed as a pretender by the Packers.  There are needs all over the roster, starting with the fact that they have only one defensive end who can generate pressure and he is about to turn 33 years old.  Assuming for the sake of argument that the Falcons would have batted 50% on the fourth round picks, the Falcons just traded four players for one.  In the modern NFL, this is a smaller scale equivalent of the Herschel Walker trade or Mike Ditka giving up the Saints’ entire Draft for Ricky Williams. 

And the worst part is that Dimitroff is a good evaluator of talent.  I wouldn’t care about the Hawks giving up draft picks because they are going to waste those shots anyway.  Dimitroff knows how to grade players.  Unfortunately, it also appears that he didn’t learn everything about pick value from his former employer.

Look, I’m the same guy who thought that the Falcons were making a huge mistake when they drafted Matt Ryan, that Arthur Blank was overreacting to Vickkampf by rolling the dice on a great white hope because Ryan made good eye contact in his interview.  Three winning seasons later, it’s safe to say that that assessment was wrong.  However, I’m also the person who didn’t jump on the bandwagon when the team was winning in November and December.  I think I have a good handle of where the Falcons are as a team and they are not at the stage where they can sacrifice five picks for one player. 

And as if on Cue...

Arthur Blank channels Hyman Roth:

The Atlanta Falcons moved a step closer toward a possible new home field Tuesday, after the Georgia World Congress Center Authority signaled it is ready to move into detailed talks on the matter.

The Authority agreed to enter into a “memorandum of understanding” with the Falcons on plans for a potential $700 million open-air stadium downtown.

Both parties emphasized the memorandum does not constitute a done deal, but rather allows them to begin negotiations over details of the project, including financing.

But the Falcons have made it clear that they want a new open-air stadium, rejecting alternatives such as expanding the Georgia Dome, adding a retractable roof to the facility or building a new dome with a retractable roof.

I suppose that we are supposed to feel good that the new stadium is going to be paid for by a hotel tax, so the expense of Blank's new palace will fall on out-of-towners, but why can't we keep the tax and spend it on something useful like, say, roads or college tuition? And has anyone gone to the Dome and said "gee, this facility is inadequate and outdated?" There is nothing wrong with the existing facility and the Falcons are perfectly capable of competing in the NFL with their existing revenue streams. This isn't about keeping the Falcons, improving the fan experience, or maintaining the team's ability to compete. It's simply about maximizing profit for a private entity.

Speaking of revenue streams, it's interesting to me that the socialist structure of the NFL ends up undercutting the rationale of its teams to demand public money. Because Major League Baseball payrolls are uncapped, a baseball team can argue that it needs a sweetheart stadium deal in order to spend on better players. In that instance, the local electorate can weigh the expense against the positive psychological impact of having a winning team. In the NFL, teams are going to have roughly the same player payroll regardless of how much they are making on their stadium. There's no reason for a city to enrich the local NFL team in order to produce wins. Instead, the NFL is ruthless enough to leave the second biggest market in the country without a team as a way to extort other cities, so they provide the stick rather than the carrot.

There Must be Some Way Out of Here, Said Thousands of Falcons Fans to the Thief

So it turns out that the Falcons just aren't that good. The 13-3 record masked the fact that the team just isn’t that good on offense or defense. The shortcomings were exposed brutally by the Packers last night. If anything, the game was another illustration of the fact that a team is often not as good or bad as its record. I have no idea how Green Bay lost six games in the regular season. Coaching malpractice is the only explanation that makes sense. Now that the Pack have a functional running back, they are a team with no weaknesses. The Falcons, on the other hand, have a raft of issues to address. In fact, the silver lining to a loss like that is that it will prevent Thomas Dimitroff and the rest of the Falcons’ brain trust from buying the notion that the team is elite and needs only minor tinkering. The Packers showed what an elite team looks like and the Dirty Birds are still about two drafts away from getting there. What needs to change?

Let’s start with Mike Mularkey. There is a general criticism to be made and then a specific one. Generally speaking, the Falcons’ offense is underwhelming because it does not threaten the opponent down the field. Can anyone remember an instance where the Falcons took a shot down the field last night, other than the hurried throw-and-hope by Matt Ryan for his first interception? (And nice effort on that play, Michael Jenkins.) The Packers knew that the Falcons were going to be throwing in a certain short area and they jumped all over those routes. Look at the difference between the cushions given to Packers receivers and those given to Falcons receivers. You think that the ability to stretch the field isn’t a factor there? That brings us to the specific criticism: the play that ended in the back-breaking pick six was one of the worst playcalls in recorded history. Let’s count the ways in which it was a terrible idea. Mularkey decided to roll his right-handed quarterback left to throw a sideline pattern when the defense knew that the Falcons had no timeouts and would need to throw to the sidelines. Not to belittle him, but Tramon Williams had an incredibly easy read. You know you’ve dialed up a bad play when your quarterback is asked about the play after the game and he says he should have thrown it away. No shit you should have thrown it away, Matt; your offensive coordinator might as well have presented Dom Capers with an engraved tablet telling him where the throw was going.

Athough the Falcons’ defense was as bad as the offense yesterday, Brian VanGorder does not deserve the same degree of criticism for two reasons. First, there was evidence of good defensive coaching yesterday in the fact that blitzes dialed up by VanGorder got unblocked blitzers into Rodgers’ face on numerous occasions. Those blitzers whiffed repeatedly, which is a clear an example of a failure in talent as opposed to scheme. The team had the same issue against the Saints. Those missed sacks were critical because they deprived the Falcons of the ability to get the Packers off the field. Second, the offense is supposed to be the strength of the team. It’s the offense that has the #3 pick under center, the first round left tackle, the pair of first round receivers, the coveted free agent running back, and the Hall of Fame tight end. The defense hasn’t received the same attention until the last two drafts and it had a longer way to go when Dimitroff and Smith came to power.

That brings us to the second area crying out for improvement: the pass rush. The defensive line is critical for Brian VanGorder’s defense because he isn’t a blitz-heavy coordinator. The defensive game plans in the second Saints and Packers games were out of character in the number of blitzes (a point that Ron Jaworski made quickly) and were probably based on a recognition by VanGorder that his defensive line isn’t good enough to get pressure on Brees and Rodgers without help. We assumed after last season that the Falcons would look to upgrade the defensive line – specifically the defensive end spot opposite John Abraham - after a season in which opponents had great success throwing the ball. Instead, Dimitroff took the opposite approach to the pass defense, signing Robinson, and then he didn’t draft a defensive end at all. Given the available options in the Draft, this made sense at the time, but now, it’s time to get an upgrade over Kroy Biermann, a player who should be the first defensive end off the bench. The Falcons were 22nd in the NFL in sacks this year. If you prefer advanced stats, the Falcons finished 23rd in Football Outsiders' adjusted sack rate.

Last night’s game drove this inadequacy home. Aaron Rodgers had beautiful pockets from which to throw. When he felt pressure, there was always somewhere to go. Ryan usually had guys in his face. For the Falcons to become elite, two things have to happen on the defensive line. One is that either Peria Jerry or Corey Peters need to turn into a pocket crusher to go with Jonathan Babineaux as a penetrator. The second is that the Falcons need to find a bookend for Abraham, either in the Draft or in free agency. VanGorder needs to find his Quentin Moses (or 2002 Sugar Bowl Will Thompson) to go opposite his David Pollack.

Even if 13-3 flattered the team, this was a very good season for the Falcons. Three straight winning seasons and two playoff berths out of three means that this team isn’t a flash in the pan like every other good Falcons team has been. The days of a topsy-turvy NFL are long gone. Smart teams have figured out how to manage the salary cap. With limited exceptions, the AFC is consistently dominated by the Colts, Patriots, Ravens, Steelers, and Chargers (with the Jets seeking to join the club). In the NFC, the Falcons seem to have joined (or are at least close to joining) the Giants, Eagles, Packers, and Saints as teams that can be expected to contend every year. The keys for the team going forward will be figuring out how to unleash their offensive weapons in more dangerous ways (Mularkey needs to stop thinking like he has the Steelers defense in his corner) and improving the pass rush. If that happens, then maybe Falcons fans will stick around for all four quarters of a playoff game.

Preparing for the Invasion of Styrofoam Cheddar

Let’s get this out of the way up front: the Packers are a better team than the Falcons.  Vegas think so by making the Falcons a two-point favorite, which means that the Packers would be a slight favorite on a neutral field.  Football Outsiders puts the Packers ahead of the Falcons on both offense and defense.  Sagarin would make the Pack a five-point favorite on a neutral field, as would SRS.  Yours truly’s Lazy Ass Ranking System (hereinafter “LARS”) shows an even wider gap, as the Packers are +.6 in yards per play margin, while the Falcons are –.6. 

So why bother on Saturday night?  Here’s how the Falcons win:

1. Turnovers – the Falcons are slightly better at protecting the ball.  (The teams are a push in terms of forcing turnovers.)  If Atlanta wins, I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that they will end the night with a positive turnover margin.  With homefield advantage and a loud Dome, John Abraham should be close to unblockable, which means that Aaron Rodgers is going to make throws under pressure.  Also, because they have had two weeks to prepare, Brian VanGorder should be able to throw a blitz or two at Rodgers that he hasn’t seen before (not unlike the home game against New Orleans, in which the Falcons turned in an excellent defensive performance).

2. An advantage in close games – my regular readers will know that I abhor explanations that come down to clutchiness, but run with me here.  The Falcons are 7-2 in one-score games this year; they are 17-8 in such games during the Mike Smith/Matt Ryan era.  The Falcons’ conservative offensive style tends to lead to close game and then for whatever reason, the Falcons are very good in such games.  None of us would feel bad about the prospect of Ryan having the ball with the team down three and three minutes to go.  In contrast, the Packers are 9-17 in one score games during the Mike McCarthy/Aaron Rodgers era.  McCarthy is 18-21 in such games overall, which means that either Brett Favre was more reliable than Rodgers in close and late situations.  I’d prefer to believe that the Packers struggle in close games because of McCarthy because I like Rodgers.  Moreover, McCarthy does seem to struggle in game management tasks.  His use of timeouts isn’t good (such as not using one when the Eagles were lining up for a field goal at the end of the first half last week) and if either of the the games in Philly is any indication, he tightens up with a lead.  That said, to the extent that we can determine anything from the small sample size, Rodgers is a problem in close games.  I don’t really buy this explanation because it’s the kind of claim I’d expect on sports radio, but I’m looking for reasons to be optimistic when I’m attacking a liter at Der Biergarten before the game.  (Speaking of which, how does one insult someone from Wisconsin in a biting, but non-offensive way?  I tend to do these things when drinking, but I’m at a bit of a loss here.  "Fat Fuck!” only goes so far.  “You live in an ice box” doesn’t exactly work this week.  “Thanks for sticking humanity with Brett Favre?”  “Paul Hornung was a drunk?”)

3. A week off – With the exception of Mike Mularkey, I like the Falcons coaches.  I like the idea that they have had two weeks to prepare this team.  And speaking of Mularkey, he has a reputation of liking trick plays.  Wouldn’t this be a good game to use one or two?

4. Special teams – this is where the Falcons have a major advantage.  According to weighted DVOA, the Falcons have the best special teams in the NFL, whereas the Packers are 17th.  The Falcons are outstanding on both kickoffs and kickoff returns; the Packers are terrible.  If the Falcons are starting drives on the 35 and the Packers are starting on their own 20, then that will make up for a significant yardage disparity.  (Note: this advantage will matter more in a shootout than in a 21-14 game.)

Overall, I’d say that the game is a coin flip.  Green Bay is better at the two basic elements of football: moving the ball and stopping the other team from doing so.  Atlanta is better at all of the garnishments.  This is a game between a very good piece of New York Strip unadorned on a plate and a really good hamburger with a bevy of great toppings and the best onion rings in the NFL.  So let’s eat.

Ugh

My Monday started with a gum graft and ended with Mike Smith's indefensible decision to punt the ball back to the Saints inside of the final three minutes. Happy days are here again! Here are my barely coherent thoughts on the game:

Overall, last night's game was either overdue or out-of-character. If you view the Falcons as a team that isn't especially good at either moving the ball or stopping opponents from doing so, then it was unsurprising. The team's record flatters them, so losing a close game was bound to happen. A team can't keep getting outgained and expect to win again and again. On the other hand, if you view the Falcons as a team with certain defined traits - a low variance offense that keeps the ball and avoids turnovers and a defense that doesn't give up the big play - then last night's game was weird because Atlanta didn't play like the team that we have seen for the first fourteen games. The Falcons turned the ball over twice, once on a fumble by a running back who never fumbles and the second a completely unforced blunder by Todd McClure. The Falcons were poor on third downs and as a result, were on the short end of total plays, first downs, and time of possession. In short, Atlanta didn't show any of the strengths that have gotten this team to 12-2.

Mularkey! The Falcons have one major advantage and one major disadvantage against the Saints. The advantage is that the Falcons' offense is based off of a between-the-tackles running game and the Saints are weak up the middle, as Baltimore showed the week before. The disadvantage is that the Saints' defense is entirely dependent on blitzing like mad, but the Falcons are not a team that looks for big plays to punish opponents for taking risks. In other words, Gregg Williams doesn't let his teams get nickeled and dimed and the Falcons don't have another way to attack. In the first game between the teams, the Falcons' running game was dominant. Last night, the Saints negated the running game and the Falcons had no Plan B. Whether by design or by circumstance, the Falcons went away from the bread and butter of their passing game - Roddy White (five targets) and Tony Gonzalez (three targets) - and instead funneled the ball to Michael Jenkins (nine targets!?), Harry Douglas (three targets and no catches; slot receiver ought to be a focus in the offseason, unless the Falcons are confident that Douglas's poor 2010 is the after-effect of his knee injury last year), and the non-Turner options in the backfield (Jason Snelling and Ovie Mughelli got three targets each). In an odd way, the Falcons were mimicking the Saints by spreading the ball around, but the end result was a meek 215 yards and seven points. It's hard to escape the conclusion that Gregg Williams ate Mike Mularkey alive.

And I'm spent. Brian Van Gorder's defense was terrific last night. Like the offense, the defense was out of character in the sense that they blitzed like crazy. If Brian Williams could make a tackle, the team would have had a bevy of sacks and gotten the Saints off the field sooner on several occasions. Williams' repeated whiffs were a reminder that Van Gorder had come up with blitzes to get rushers free, so kudos to Brian. The one concern for Falcons fans is that there is a good chance that the Falcons and Saints will be seeing one another again in January. In the grand scheme of things, last night's game didn't matter much because the Falcons have what the English would refer to as a home banker: the home game against the hapless Panthers on Sunday. We have to hope that Van Gorder didn't empty his magazine last night.

Hi, we're 32-14 over the last three years. Nice to meet you for the first time! From the start of the game, when Jon Gruden proclaimed that Matt Ryan is the best quarterback that no one knows about, to the end, when Mike Tirico admitted that fans around the country might not know much about the teams in the NFC South because they aren't favored in the media, there was a sense of "America, meet the Falcons." Gee, I wonder why America doesn't know much about the Falcons. Could it be that Tirico and Gruden's employer pays them no attention? Could it be that a team with consecutive winning seasons and a hot young quarterback hasn't been on a Sunday or Monday night game until week 16? The broadcasters' repeated references to the Falcons' low profile reminded me of Kirk Herbstreit claiming that Texas was motivated in their Rose Bowl against USC because no one gave them a chance, all while ignoring the fact that leading up to the game, he had been pimping USC as the greatest team of all time. A little self-awareness would be nice.

One other gripe about the broadcast last night: unless I missed it, no one mentioned that Saints safety Malcolm Jenkins is a converted corner. That's a pretty important fact when commenting on a safety who is showing great man-to-man coverage skills against the opponent's slot receiver.

OK, and one more: there is a creeping Favreism in the coverage of Drew Brees. When Brees blindly flipped a lateral to Pierre Thomas while being sacked, the obvious conclusion was "that's a low reward, high risk play." Tirico, Gruden, and (to a lesser extent) Jaworski all oohed and aahed a a quarterback making a dumb decision. He's just a crazy backyard quarterback out there having fun and making plays! So with the "where have I heard this before? alarm bells going at full steam, it was only natural that Brees threw a horrendous pick six on the next series. The funny thing about Tirico's reaction in particular is that it shows a complete lack of understanding big and small risks. He loved Brees taking a major risk with limited upside, but he treated Mike Smith's ludicrous decision to punt with 2:48 remaining - a decision that was high risk (as evidenced by the fact that the Saints were able to run the clock out) and low reward (the best case scenario was that the Falcons would get the ball back with two minutes and no timeouts) - as self-evident. And then the best part was that he never acknowledged Smith's and his mistake when the Saints were able to run out the clock.

What a pity, such nice muscles too. If only they were brains. Ed Hochuli and his crew seemed especially addled last night. The call that stood out was the inaugural appearance of a mutual pass interference call against Roddy White and Jabari Greer. I'd love to hear from anyone who has seen that call made before. The funny thing is that it makes sense to make that call in certain instances. How many times have we heard announcers say (correctly) that a receiver and corner had their hands all over one another? Hell, Deion Sanders and Michael Irvin played an entire NFC Championship Game that way in 1995. The problem was that Hochuli's crew unearthed the call for the first time on a play where Roddy White did nothing.

I'm confused. If Drew Brees and the Saints really saved New Orleans, then what was with all the transplanted Louisianans who now live in Atlanta at the game last night?

A Few Follow-up Thoughts on the Falcons Post

• It's worth mentioning that a low variance offense can be very effective, even though it ends up with a lower yards per play number. Georgia Tech's 2009 ACC Championship team is a perfect example. Tech averaged 6.2 yards per play, which is good, but only ranked 17th in the country. According to Football Outsiders' FEI rankings, however, Tech had the best offense in the country. Why? Because FEI is drive-based and Tech's offense was excellent at scoring by consistently stringing together five-yard gains and by avoiding long yardage situations that kills drives. All things considered, you would rather have an offense that gains five yards on every play than one that gains seven yards per play on two 35-yard plays and eight plays stopped for no gain. The Falcons seem to follow that model. The Eagles are the polar opposite; they have an offense that generates a high yards per play number on the strength of a wealth of big plays, but they are also high variance, which is how they found themselves down 31-10 to the Giants with eight minutes to go on Sunday.

• A second benefit of a low variance offense that strings together consistent, medium-sized gains is that a team with that sort of offense will hold onto leads very well. Remember the stat during the Cowher years about how the Steelers almost never lost games in which they led in the fourth quarter? Mike Mularkey has brought that tendency to Atlanta. Here's your stat of the day: the Falcons have not lost a game in which they held a fourth quarter lead since the road game against the Saints in 2008. The Smith/Mularkey regime has only lost two times when the Falcons had a lead in the fourth quarter: the games against New Orleans and Denver in 2008. For Falcons fans like me whose formative memory is the home playoff loss to Dallas in 1980, this is a refreshing feeling. It's like rooting for a team with a great bullpen. If the Falcons have a lead heading into the fourth quarter, they're in great shape, even with a suspect pass defense.

• Watching Michigan on Saturdays and then the Falcons on Sundays has been an Elvis-like experience of taking uppers and downers. Even with an appalling defense, Michigan had a reasonably good yards per play margin this year because the offense averaged 6.9 yards per play, which was 7th nationally. However, Michigan's yardage advantages didn't translate onto the scoreboard because of what I described as the "dumb shit" factor: red zone turnovers, missed field goals, and terrible kickoff coverage and punt returns that gave opponents field position advantages. The Falcons are 180 degrees from that. The Falcons are outgained by a significant margin on a per-play basis, but they get the dumb shit. They don't turn the ball over, they make field goals, they don't commit penalties, and they are good on special teams. If "dumb shit" is a way to measure the effect of coaching, then Mike Smith should be coach of the year and Rich Rodriguez should be making way for Jim Harbaugh.

• When I did the chart of conference champions from the pas decade, 2008 stood out to me for a couple reasons. First, Arizona was better than their record. The '08 Cardinals were not strong in terms of points and Football Outsiders was very down on them, but their yardage margin was better than the margins of a number of Super Bowl champions (admittedly against a weak schedule). It shouldn't have been a massive surprise that they made the Super Bowl. The team they played in the Super Bowl had the best defense on a yards per play basis of any Super Bowl team in the decade. The '08 Steelers were three-tenths of a yard better than the '02 Bucs and four-tenths of a yard better than the team that struck me as having the best defense at least since the '85 Bears: the '00 Ravens. (The '85 Bears allowed 4.4 yards per play, which is surprisingly high, although that team did force a ridiculous 52 turnovers. The '76 Steelers - the Steel Curtain at its best - allowed 3.8 yards per play.) Given the quality of the teams in the game and the way that it played out, Super Bowl XLIII deserves consideration as one of the best Super Bowls of all time.

• One argument in favor of the way that championships are awarded in college football: the two best teams of the past decade in the NFL were the '01 Rams and the '07 Patriots and neither team won the Super Bowl. In both instances, those teams lost the Super Bowl to opponents with demonstrably inferior records whom the '01 Rams and '07 Pats had beaten on the road during the regular season. It strains the meaning of "champion" to assign that title to the '01 Patriots and '07 Giants. I remain in favor of a small college football playoff; four teams would be good, six teams would be very good, and eight teams would be OK. However, we shouldn't ignore the fact that the absence of the playoff reset button in college football is a good thing in a significant way.

What do we Know about the Falcons?

As the local professional football collective comes down the stretch, they are 12-2, which gives them a two-game lead over the Saints and Eagles for the best record in the NFC. Unless something goes terribly wrong, the Dirty Birds are going to be at home for the NFC playoffs. At first glance, the Falcons’ record is deceiving because the team has won seven straight games decided by one score after losing the opener in Pittsburgh in overtime. They look like a team whose record flatters. However, the Falcons are also second in the NFC in point differential, so maybe they aren’t a lucky team after all. The best team in the NFC in terms of point differential is Green Bay, a team that last year and this year seems like less than the sum of its parts. Great offense, good defense, and yet still loses more games than they should. Do we point a finger at Mike McCarthy? They’re the anti-Falcons: good statistical profile, but mediocre record because they lose close games.

When I say that the Falcons don’t have a good statistical profile, this is what I mean:

	Yards per play gained	Yards per play allowed	Margin
Eagles	6.3	5.3	+1.0
Giants	5.8	4.9	+.9
Saints	5.7	5.2	+.5
Packers	5.6	5.1	+.5
Bears	5.0	5.0	0
Falcons	5.0	5.6	-.6

Eeek. We can explain away that low yards per play gained number by pointing out that the Falcons have a low variance offense that consistently churns out first downs by getting medium-sized gains without giving up sacks or penalties. The opening two drives on Sunday against Seattle were the Platonic ideal for this team’s offense: 15 plays and 51 yards for a touchdown, followed by 14 plays and 51 yards for a field goal. At the end of two drives, the Falcons had ten points while gaining a mere 3.5 yards per play. (Put in context, the hapless Panthers have the worst offense in the league and they gain 4.3 yards per play.) Yards per play doesn’t quite do this offense justice. The Falcons don’t hit big plays, so their number isn’t very high, but they score points just fine because they are rarely in third and long and they convert makeable third downs on a consistent basis. The Falcons are first in the NFL in total plays and second in first downs. The offense may look like a tortoise, but we ought to remember who wins the race in Aesop’s fable.

The defense, on the other hand, is harder to justify. They are significantly worse on a per play basis than any of the other contenders in the NFC. They are decent at denying opponents first downs (11th in the NFL), but that’s probably a function of the fact that the offense keeps the ball all day. The saving graces for the defense is that they are good against the run (seventh in yards per rush allowed) and they force turnovers (fifth in the NFL). (The Falcons are not unlike the Patriots, who also allow 5.6 yards per play and get by by forcing turnovers. The Pats, however, are better on offense.) That said, the NFL is a passing league and the Falcons give up a lot of passing yards. Should we feel confident that we can win consecutive playoffs games against Aaron Rodgers and then Mike Vick or Drew Brees? Yes, the Falcons beat Green Bay and New Orleans this season, but both games were very tight and the Falcons needed a little bit of good fortune both times.

So how much does yards per play matter? Can the Falcons win a Super Bowl when their opponents are outgaining them by a healthy margin? Let’s look at the last decade’s worth of conference champions:

	Yards per play gained	Yards per play allowed	Margin
‘09 Saints	6.3	5.5	+.9
‘09 Colts	5.9	5.0	+.8
‘08 Steelers	4.9	3.9	+1.0
‘08 Cards	5.9	5.3	+.6
‘07 Giants	5.1	5.0	+.1
‘07 Pats	6.2	4.9	+1.3
‘06 Colts	6.0	5.5	+.5
‘06 Bears	5.0	4.6	+.4
‘05 Steelers	5.4	4.6	+.8
‘05 Seahawks	5.8	4.9	+.9
‘04 Pats	5.5	5.0	+.5
‘04 Eagles	5.9	4.9	+1.0
‘03 Pats	4.8	4.4	+.4
‘03 Panthers	5.1	4.7	+.4
‘02 Bucs	4.9	4.2	+.7
‘02 Raiders	5.8	5.0	+.8
‘01 Pats	4.9	5.3	-.4
‘01 Rams	6.6	4.7	+1.9
‘00 Ravens	4.7	4.3	+.4
‘00 Giants	5.1	4.6	+.5

Eeek squared. 19 of the last 20 conference champions have had a positive yards per play margin. In fact, only two of 20 conference champions have been lower that +.4: the ‘01 Patriots and the ‘07 Giants. Both of those teams won the Super Bowl, but they needed to pull two of the biggest upsets in NFL history to do so. Is that what we’re counting on to make the Super Bowl? You wouldn’t know it from reading the paper or listening to the radio, but this Falcons team doesn’t fit the statistical profile of the vast majority of conference champions.

Again, we need to point our fingers at the defense. There are six teams that have made the Super Bowl averaging five yards per play or less and five of them came home with the Lombardi Trophy. (An interesting side note: there are four teams on the chart that allowed less than 4.5 yards per play and every one of them won the Super Bowl. If you drop last year’s Super Bowl in which both teams had top offenses, there have been seven teams to make the Super Bowl with an offense gaining 5.8 yards per play or more and six of those teams lost. Let’s file that away in the memory bank if the Eagles or Patriots make the Super Bowl.) There isn’t a single team on the list that allowed 5.6 yards per play, although there are two teams that allowed 5.5 yards per play and both of them won the big game.

So we have one team as our beacon of hope: the 2001 New England Patriots. A young team with a burgeoning star at quarterback that got hot, won a ton of close games, and then pulled a massive upset in the Superdome. There’s actually a larger point to be made here: it might not be hyperbole to say that the Falcons are built on the Patriots model. Look at the three New England teams that won the Super Bowl. One had a negative yards per play margin and the other two were a nothing special +.4 and +.5. Those New England teams won with superior turnover margins: +8 in 2001, +17 in 2003, and +9 in 2004. If there is a secret to having a positive turnover margin, then Thomas Dimitroff has brought it from Massachusetts. Maybe we aren’t doomed after all. If the Tuck Rule comes into play in the Falcons’ first playoff game, then I’m headed for the nearest casino to bet on the Dirty Birds in Dallas.