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?

From Each According To His $15M Salary, To Each According To ... Good Lord, We Really Are Going To Blow This!

What the f***?

Those three words best describe the collective feeling of Braves fans on the morning of September 28, 2011? The Braves are one loss from completing one of the great collapses in baseball history. After all of their terrible play over the course of the month, they woke up on Saturday morning with a three-game lead and five games to play. Since that time, they have lost four in a row, scoring a whopping four runs in the process. Last night, with the season very much hanging in the balance, Fredi Gonzalez pulled a Bobby Cox in October special, sticking with the underperforming veteran - Derek Lowe - until it was far too late. Yes, the Braves are in a difficult spot because of the injuries to Jair Jurrjens and Tommy Hanson,* but the rookies who have replaced them have been perfectly fine. Of the Braves' five starting pitchers this month, Randall Delgado and Mike Minor have the lowest ERAs of the five.  How much better would Jurrjens and Hanson have done than a 3.11 ERA in 52 innings?  Maybe they would have pitched a smidge deeper into games, but that's it.  Meanwhile, Derek Lowe, a guy who is taking up a smidge over one-sixth of the team's payroll, has an 8.75 ERA and a 1.99 WHIP in five starts.  He has been the losing pitcher in all five.  If by some simple twist of fate the Braves do make the playoffs** and Lowe pitches in any capacity other than long relief, then Frank Wren ought to relieve him of command on the spot.

* - Was anyone else completely non-plussed when Hanson and Jurrjens failed to return from the All-Star Break with their arms intact?  That's how baseball is now.  You have a good young pitcher and you immediately start counting the days until some arm injury that initially sounds innocuous, then the team can't figure out what's wrong, and then he's finally seeing Dr. Andrews.  Baseball manages to combine a turtle's pace with high-impact injuries.  Bravo, Abner Doubleday!

** - I'd put the odds at this stage at around 30%. They should win tonight with a favorable pitching match-up, but their odds in a one-game playoff will not be good.  The playoff would just be insufferable.  The Cardinals will be up 6-2 in the seventh and then Tony LaRussa will prolong our misery with a bevy of "look at me!" switches.  And G-d only knows what happens when he gets into the One-Game Playoff Supplement to his Compendium of Unwritten Baseball Rules.  Fredi could redeem a season's worth of frustration by decking LaRussa in a stupid, futile gesture at the end of a dispiriting collapse.  That would make the whole thing worthwhile.

And then, let's discuss the offense.  It has been a sore spot all year, with just about every offensive regular underperforming his PECOTA (or whatever Baseball Prospectus is calling it these days) projection, but September has been a total freefall.  The top of the order - Michael Bourn and Martin Prado - both have sub-.300 OBPs this month and have walked a grand total of nine times.  Brian McCann is in free-fall, having slugged .313 in September.  The team collectively has a .301 OBP in the month.  By way of comparison, the Giants - a team that is having a historically bad offensive season - have a .303 OBP for the year.  Parrish raus!

The glass half-full thought for a morning that desperately needs it is that I wouldn't trade places with a Cardinals fan for a second.  Yes, the Cards look likely to pull off a remarkable comeback.  All that gets them is a likely defeat at the hands of the Phillies.  Their franchise player is a free agent, which means that they are either going to lose him or they are going to have to sign him to a payroll-crippling contract.*  They don't have a single good, young position player now that their cantankerous manager chased off Colby Rasmus because his stirrups weren't perpendicular to his big toe or whatever else it is that LaRussa views as necessary to baseball success.  They rely on Dave Duncan to stitch together a pitching staff every year.  Their farm system is blah.  In contrast, the Braves have young keepers at first (Freeman), third (Prado), catcher (McCann), and right (Heyward), assuming that Parrish has not done permanent damage to some or all of them.  We finally have a lead-off hitter.  The Braves have five quality young starters and three quality young relievers, assuming that Fredi hasn't destroyed the relievers with overuse this year.  Do you detect a theme here?  The Braves' future is very bright if the on-field coaches don't screw it up.  Maybe the real silver lining here is that a collapse like this requires at least one fall guy in the dugout.

* - If you think that Derek Lowe making $15M next year is bad, think about paying twice that amount for Albert Pujols' age-39 season.

An NBA Owner Provides

And he does it even when he's not appreciated, or respected, or even loved. He simply bears up and he does it. Because he's an owner of a local basketball team.









The Hawks have been purchased by Gus Fring! I can hardly contain my excitement! I've been in a major Breaking Bad phase this summer as Mrs. B&B and I have ploughed through the first three seasons and asked ourselves the same question that we asked last summer when we were catching up on Mad Men: what took us so long? I have been ruminating on an "SEC Coaches as Breaking Bad characters" post (Gus is obviously Nick Saban, Bobby Petrino is Tortuga, Les Miles is Tuco, Houston Nutt is Saul Goodman, Mark Richt is Walter White [with 2007 Evil Richt as Heisenberg], etc.), but now, Atlanta Spirit has saved me the trouble by selling the team to a Latino restauranteur.* If only Alex Meruelo were from Chile instead of Cuba. Josh Smith might want to keep an eye out for boxcutters in the dressing room if he keep hoisting up 21-footers early in the shot clock.

* - Because a sample size of one tells me that people from Southern California can be prickly about analogies made for rhetorical or humorous purposes, let me make clear that I am not accusing Meruelo of being a psychopath like Gus Fring, nor am I making the claim that his other business interests include an industrial cleaning facility with a meth lab in the basement. I heard Pizza Loca and immediately thought of Pollos Hermanos.

As far as my actual opinion of the purchase, it sounds good. Anything is better than the irretrievably broken Atlanta Spirit. The Hawks might get some local goodwill as a result of a new ownership face. They can certainly use the boost after a disappointing year at the box office. I have little time for the idea that team ownbership requires one face. The Braves' solid performances over the past two years on mid-level payrolls illustrates that corporate ownership can be just fine. Conversely, the people who claim that they wish that the Braves had an Arthur Blank-style face of the franchise might consider that Jerry Jones and Dan Snyder are also the faces of their franchises. That said, Atlanta Spirit was a disaster, so Meruelo is a welcome addition. As long as he has the money to run the team without cutting corners, then I'm happy. The story that he started with one pizza restaurant when he was 21 and turned it into a business empire speaks well to his acumen.

Hopefully, that acumen has identified the Hawks as a neglected asset. For most of its history, the franchise has struggled to convert its place as Black Hollywood's home team into butts in the seats. Atlanta remains a good basketball town and a very good NBA market without being crazy about the Hawks. The roster is fairly good, outside of the colossal disaster that is Joe Johnson's contract. If Jeff Teague's playoff burst is not ephemeral, then the Hawks have a good starting lineup, a notch below Miami and Chicago, but not too shabby. The team lacked depth last year, which is a problem that an emotionally invested owner with a checkbook can remedy. Also, if a new labor deal has retroactive effect to erase (or at least ameliorate) insane agreements like the Johnson deal, then Meruelo will be in great shape. Mike's services will not be required.

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. 

Question for Fredi

Like your team, the Dodgers have a top-heavy lineup. You're in the 12th inning. One of the Dodgers' two good hitters just doubled with one out. Their other good hitter, a guy hitting .411, is at the plate. The next three guys in the order are batting .221, .000 (the pitcher is second in the sequence), and .190. (My apologies for using batting averages after complaining about Mark Bradley doing the same. I am doing this on the run.) First base is open and you lose if you give up any runs in the inning, so there is no difference between having one runner on or two runners on.

So, with this in mind, how in the world do you let Cristhian Martinez pitch to Matt Kemp so he can give up the winning home run? Is there some law that says that Braves managers have to make atrocious bullpen decisions in the last game of a series at Chavez Ravine?

The Morning S***list

Comcast - I can't comment on the first 55 minutes of the Copa del Rey Final. Why? Because I ordered a new DVR receiver from Comcast before going out of town last Friday and they neglected to inform me that when they send a new receiver, they disable the old one remotely. So, when I got home yesterday, the cable box wasn't working and I did not have a recording for the Final. By the time I was able to talk to a "customer service" representative to sort the issue out, I was only able to pick-up the replay midway through. But hey, they took $5 off my bill, so it's all worthwhile!

ESPN3 - My first impulse when I realized the impact of Comcast's perfidy was to try to watch a replay of the game online, but neither of the links on ESPN3 were working. Helpfully, ESPN3 had a picture of the trophy with white ribbons on one of their broken replay pages, so I had a good idea as to the eventual victor before I started watching.

Me - I was a pouty bitch about not getting to watch the match in proper circumstances. Domestic hilarity ensued.

Cristiano Ronaldo - It's not enough that Barca had to lose a cup final to their arch rivals, but they did so to a Ronaldo goal. Playing Javier Mascherano at center back is probably the right move for Pep Guardiola because Busquets and Pique are too slow a pairing to function, especially against a fast counter-attacking side. The downside is that Mascherano is not a big guy. Thus, losing to a headed goal was not that surprising.

My Intellectual Honesty - I have evolved into a college football/European footie fan for a variety of reasons. One of the major reasons is that these are the two major sports that don't have the absurd American structure of ignoring a large sample size and putting outsized importance on a short playoff at the end of a long season. That said, Barca's season of over 60 matches is going to rise or fall on two games: the Champions League semifinal legs against Real Madrid. Win those and the season is a success (even if Barca are upset in the Champions League Final, although I suppose the manner of the match will matter). A domestic title, two cup finals, and taking two of three from Mourinho's Real would be a great season. Lose the tie and the season, while not a total failure, will come with a bitter aftertaste. The season (or at least the second half of the season) all built towards these four matches against Real. It cannot be an unqualified success if it ends in failure against the arch enemy. I hate this line of thinking because it throws away so much good work, but that's how I feel right now and I doubt that I'm alone.

Five Thoughts on Barca-Arsenal

1. It seems sacrilegious to criticize Pep Guardiola for anything, but he made a major mistake pulling David Villa off and that was a factor that turned the game.  At the time that Guardiola made the move, Messi and Villa had been making outstanding combinations to take advantage of Arsenal playing a high defensive line.  Villa had slipped Messi in for a breakaway that Messi dinked wide; Messi returned the favor and Villa scored Barca’s goal.  When Villa came off, Messi lost his partner in the middle of attack.  Additionally, the move pushed Andres Iniesta out wide, which further weakened Barca’s offensive presence in the middle of the pitch.  The move seemed timid, which is rare for Guardiola.  Michael Cox agrees:

Guardiola’s decision to bring on Seydou Keita for David Villa on 67 minutes looks like a mistake in hindsight. Barcelona pushed Iniesta forward into the front three but they had less attacking threat – they sat back too much and focused on keeping possession rather than looking for further chances.

Wenger made an attacking switch – Song off, Arshavin on, and Nasri into the middle of the pitch. Those two substitutions happened at the same time, so it wasn’t either manager responding to the other, but it worked nicely for Arsenal. Whilst taking off their holding midfielder was something of a risk, the fact that Barcelona no longer had a driving, attack-minded central midfielder meant it wasn’t an issue. Song’s absence meant Iniesta would have thrived in the centre of midfield – the two were in direct competition.

2. To me, the difference in this Arsenal team and the edition from last year is Jack Wilshere.  Over the last several years, Arsenal have had good attacking players (especially when Robin van Persie is healthy), but the midfielders behind them have been suspect.  Wilshere is a revelation, an English midfielder who can actually pass the ball.  There are a number of troglodytes in England who are going to owe Arsene Wenger an apology when Wilshere gives the Three Lions something they haven’t had in years.  Wilshere is the platform off of which Fabregas, Nasri, and Walcott can function.  The platform certainly isn’t Alex Song, who didn’t look like he belonged on the pitch.

3. My one obligatory whine about the ref: it was amusing to hear Martin Tyler intone that Arsenal fans thought that Barca was getting all the calls as a replay was playing that showed Barca having a perfectly legitimate second goal ruled out for offside.

4. Victor Valdes, you’ve come so far and then you leave your near post like that?  If there is one piece of knowledge upon which you should be able to rely, it’s the knowledge that Robin van Persie will shoot at every possible opportunity. 

5. The 2-1 result makes for an interesting second leg.  Barca have progressed with road draws in five Champions League knock-out ties under Guardiola and they were knocked out after a 3-1 loss at Inter last year.  Now, we have a middle ground.  I’d make Barca the favorite because every single home result they have had under Guardiola in Champions League knock-out ties would be sufficient to allow them to progress.  Also, it’s unlikely that Messi will finish as poorly as he did tonight (although the rest of his game was outstanding).  That said, at 0-1 and even 1-1, the tie was pretty much over.  At 2-1 Arsenal, Barca’s chances aren’t much above 50%.  The big question is whether Arsenal’s backline can handle the pressure that they’ll see for 90 minutes.  What worked for Inter last year was a great center back pairing and terrific defensive midfielders in front of them.  Arsenal doesn’t have that personnel, so they have to be thinking about 2-2 instead of 0-0.

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.

C3PO, You’re Up

When I make small talk at cocktail parties about backgrounds, I almost invariably get the question “wait, so you grew up in Macon and went to the University of Michigan?  How did that happen?”  (This question usually comes about 45 seconds after making the joke that I didn’t live in Macon for my whole life and that’s why my knuckles don’t drag on the ground when I walk.)  My answer is that Michigan was an antidote to everything I hated about Macon.  In short, my adolescence was spent as a red-headed Jewish liberal debate star with less than “stylish” clothes (as if a polo shirt and khakis is the definition of style) at an non-diverse private school where open displays of prejudice were the norm and outsiders (read: people whose parents weren’t members at Idle Hour) were shunned.  I was attracted to Michigan by the end of middle school because it was everything that Macon wasn’t: big, progressive, diverse, intellectual, and welcoming of outsiders.  The last quality was especially important to me.  By design, I was going to a school where I wouldn’t know a soul, so a public university where one-third of the students were from out-of-state fit the bill perfectly.  If I’m not from here, then you won’t be either.

I bring up this back story not because my therapist told me to vent, but rather to express why I hate the Brady Hoke hire with the heat of a thousand suns.  Michigan hired Hoke because he coached at Michigan before.  Let’s ignore the fact that his eight-year coaching record has produced a losing record, or the fact that he wasn’t exactly in demand by other schools, or that he has expressed a disdain for the spread offense that is the one part of the team that worked in 2010.  Let’s hire Hoke because he has Michigan on his resume and only Michigan Men need apply.  There’s a word for that line of thinking: inbred.  I have this crazy preference for evidence-based decisions and there is no evidence to support hiring Brady Hoke at this stage in his career other than the fact that he’ll know how to place an order at Zingermann’s.

My verdict on the Hoke hire depends somewhat on my view of the Lloyd Carr era.  I liked Carr as a coach and as a representative of the University, but I wasn’t upset when he retired in large part because he had not done a good job of surrounding himself with top-notch coaches.  It’s in this respect that he is no Bo.  Bo Schembechler created modern Michigan football and one aspect of his greatness was that his coaching tree was excellent.  Carr, on the other hand, doesn’t have a coaching tree to speak of.  Thus, the two obvious candidates for Michigan’s head coaching position were Jim Harbaugh – a Bo quarterback whom Carr declined to hire when he was looking for a quarterback coach – and Les Miles – a Bo lineman/assistant whom Carr reputedly did not want as his replacement in 2007.  If Dave Brandon’s much-discussed Process was designed to bring back a Michigan Man from Bo’s lineage, then that would have been fine because hiring a Bo protege is can be done on merit.  The fact that the Process produced the one sickly branch from the Carr tree is the reason why Hoke’s hire has been greeted by articles with titles like "Advice for the Despondent."  I couldn’t agree more with this description by Brian Cook:

I'd rather have Rich Rodriguez entering year four with a new defensive staff than this, a total capitulation. Does anyone remember Tressel's record against Lloyd Carr? 5-1. Change was necessary. It didn't work, but that doesn't mean you go back to the stuff that required change.

Lloyd’s teams looked out of date by the end of his tenure, especially against spread opponents.  (Might I mention the Appalachian State game as Exhibit A?)  So that’s why I feel nauseous about the prospect of hiring a coach who expresses the following about the offensive style of the two teams that played in the national title game last night:

“Right, wrong or indifferent, when you’re zone blocking all the time -- when you’re playing basketball on grass -- you practice against that all spring, you practice against it all fall and then you’re going to play a two-back team that wants to knock you off the football,” Hoke said. “I don’t think you’re prepared.

“I think there’s a toughness level (required in college football). I still believe you win with defense. That’s been beaten into my head a long time, but I really believe that. The toughness of your team has to be the offensive front and your defensive front.”

So let’s summarize.  The University of Michigan is a great research institution based on the concept of open inquiry, but its football program just hired a coach who ignores all evidence regarding the dominant offense in modern football.  The University of Michigan is supposed to represent the values of tolerance and open-minded thinking, but its athletic director just concluded a coaching process where he did not interview a coach who was not a former Michigan player or coach.  The University of Michigan’s football program is the winningest in college football history and leads the nation in attendance on an annual basis, but with a massive pool of revenue from which to pay a coach, it just hired a guy with a 47-50 career record.  For the first and last time, I will quote Michael Rosenberg (excluding fisking purposes, which come up on a weekly basis): the University of Michigan is better than this.

Michigan is Replacing "Hail to the Victors" with...

Michigan Football in a Nutshell

Uh oh. For the second straight coaching search, Michigan has had an alum who was an obvious candidate and who was rumored to be coming back to Ann Arbor. For the second straight coaching search, Michigan couldn't reel in a blindingly obvious candidate.

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?

The Sunday Splurge is Happy to Have a Heel

For much of the season, it felt like something was missing. Without most of the major powers in contention for the national title, I had a hard time working up the energy to dislike a team in the Glendale mix. Outside of Seattle, how does someone work himself into a lather about Donald Duck? Or about TCU and Boise State? We've lacked a really hateable program in the BCS discussion. We've also lacked a star player who gets so force-fed to us by the media that we all rebel and root against that player. Then, Saturday provided us with what the season has been missing: a heel. Say hello to this season's Snidely Whiplash: the Auburn Tigers. I'm not sure if it was: (1) the fawning coverage of Cam Newton having to go through the trauma of multiple credible reports suggesting that Auburn paid handsomely for his services; (2) Nick Fairley's attempts to mimic Darnell Dockett (what is it with outwardly religious coaches who preside over teams that seek to maim opposing quarterbacks to the echo of the whistle and beyond? And where is Chaz Ramsey when Auburn opponents really want him around?); or (3) Auburn fans showing their (cl)ass by booing an injured Georgia player, but at some point Saturday, I decided that a fifth straight SEC national championship is not worth the feelings of nausea that I would have rooting for this Auburn team.

Some of my frustration from the game was caused by the realization that Auburn is a Pac Ten team in disguise. SEC fans have routinely mocked teams from the Left Coast and, more recently, the Big XII for being offense-heavy units that are not truly great because they can't stop their opponents. Does that remind you of any team you saw on Saturday? Auburn's defense isn't exactly '98 UCLA, but if an opponent can block their front four, there are options aplenty going on in the secondary. Mike Bobo drove me crazy on Saturday because he didn't recognize that Georgia needed to be scoring touchdowns on every possession and the surest way to do so would be to keep throwing the ball to A.J. Green until Auburn showed that they could stop him by shifting their secondary. Green had a monster first half and then Georgia seemed to forget that they had the best NFL prospect on the field. The third down screen pass at 35-28 was an especially egregious example. If Auburn can't stop your downfield passing game generally and A.J. Green specifically, then why would you ever go away from it? If Steve Spurrier has something working, he'll call it ten times in a row until the opponent stops it. To use an example from another sport, Coach K is the same way. Bobo was either too cute or too committed to balance to realize that he had one major advantage and that he should just keep using that advantage. The Senator concurs:

But then there are the times when Sharp Bobo defers to Dogmatic Bobo, and we saw that yesterday when the Dawgs got the ball back in the second quarter leading 21-14. That’s the Bobo who reminds himself about things like time of possession, balance and number of plays run and forces his offense into an ideological straightjacket, because there’s a book on what an offensive coordinator is supposed to do to be successful and it’s important not to stray from those principles.

The thing is, Auburn’s defense has its flaws, too. The single worst unit I saw on the field yesterday was the Tigers’ secondary. As Danielson noted, they literally couldn’t cover A.J. There were several pass plays during which you could see on replay that Georgia had multiple receivers running open. And Murray was getting decent protection for the most part. The strategy there should have been to stick with what was working in the first quarter (at one point, Murray’s average yards per completion was an eye-popping 21.3) and damn the time of possession and number of plays stats. But that’s not what Bobo elected to do, and Georgia’s scoring pace slowed considerably from that point forward through the rest of the game.

I’ve always believed that the first rule of being a good offensive coordinator is to take what the defense gives you. In his heart, I think Bobo believes that as well. The difference is that he doesn’t trust his judgment enough to stick with it for an entire game. That’s what separates him from a coordinator like Malzahn. In the end, I think it’s the biggest (although not the only) reason for yesterday’s loss. And the question for Mark Richt is whether he can get Sharp Bobo to convince Dogmatic Bobo to take a hike.

The Malzahn comparison is dead on. Auburn didn't throw a single pass in the third quarter. Why? Because their basic running plays were working and there was no reason to deviate. Dan Mullen did the same thing against Georgia this year. To use a counter example, in the 2006 Rose Bowl, USC went from 3-3 at the half with Michigan to 32-10 ahead by abandoning the running game and throwing 29 straight passes. There's no need for balance when one aspect of your offense is working beautifully. Bobo needs to learn that lesson. I suspect that he's too traditional and would be offended by the notion of throwing 29 straight times, but that was the way that Georgia was going to avoid losing its sixth game of the year.

Speaking of Malzahn and Mullen, I kept waiting for Gary Danielson to acknowledge that his never-ending claim that the Spread is dying might be a tad weak in light of the fact that Auburn has overcome a mediocre defense to go 11-0 on the basis of an unstoppable Spread attack. Crickets.

A few other thoughts from the weekend:

• I love the way some members of the media uses the term "style points" with such disdain when describing TCU's close call against San Diego State. Leaving aside the fact that "style points," a.k.a. scores, are statistically significant, how exactly does one separate unbeaten teams without them? Does anyone really want to parse out TCU's and Boise State's schedules?
• Another benefit to Auburn losing one of their last two games: a non-AQ conference team will almost certainly make the national title game, which will puncture the air out of Mark Shurtleff's balloon.
• Just to show that he does have something in common with Bo Schembechler, Rich Rodriguez mimicked Bo's decision to kick twice to Rocket Ismail by leaving his right tackles one-on-one with Ryan Kerrigan. Kerrigan repeatedly blew up Michigan's passing plays while Michigan's right guard Patrick Omameh looked for someone to block.

The Sunday Splurge is Ready to Track Flights

Rich, it’s not you, it’s me.

Since Derek Dooley has made this the week to make World War II analogies, the Michigan defense is most like the German Sixth Army in February 1943: pathetic, feeble, stationary, ill-equipped for the task of fighting, and abandoned by its leaders. Penn State came into last night’s game last in the Big Ten in total offense. To boot, the Lions were starting a back-up, walk-on quarterback. 41 points, 435 yards, and 27 first downs later, the Lions had a win and Michigan has a complex. It’s hard to conceive of a worse defensive performance by a Michigan defense, but then again, we’ve been saying that a lot over the past three years, now haven’t we.

Not unreasonably, I thought going into the game that Michigan’s defensive success against Notre Dame’s back-ups in South Bend would be relevant and so I figured that the Wolverines would win comfortably. I was disabused of those notions when Michigan trailed 28-10 at halftime. The second half was much like the Iowa game. The offense scored to make the game reasonably close, but the defense couldn’t make a stop to get the ball back to the offense with a chance to tie. It’s not just that the defense is underpowered; it’s regressing. Michigan can’t even stop bad offenses now.

This hits on one of the major reasons why Rich Rodriguez looks likely to be looking for work at the end of the season: his teams regress. The 2008 team was a disaster, but moreso in the second half of the year. In the first half, Michigan was competitive with a Utah team that ultimately finished unbeaten and then beat Wisconsin in Ann Arbor. Last year, Michigan started 4-0 and was 5-2 after respectable, close road losses to Michigan State (in overtime) and Iowa (by two points) before the bottom fell out, starting with a hiding from Penn State. Sound familiar? The final straw last year was a disgusting performance in the second half in Champaign against the worst team in the Big Ten. Sure enough, after being Croomed out of the SEC, Ron Zook is on the menu this week to put the final nail in Rodriguez’s coffin. The shoe is on the other foot. Nothing quite says failure like going 0-3 against a coach whose name elicits laughter among college football fans.

The second reason why Rodriguez has failed in Ann Arbor is that his coaching staff doesn’t handle the small stuff. You know, stuff like having competent special teams. I first grew to like Rodriguez as a coach when I watched his 2005 West Virginia team rip holes through a good Georgia defense in the Georgia Dome. (Given what we now know about Willie Martinez, that might not have been the accomplishment that it seemed at the time.) That game ended with West Virginia using a clever fake punt to help run out the clock. Where exactly is that Rich Rodriguez now?

Michigan lost by ten last night, despite virtual parity in total yards and an advantage in yards per play. Likewise, Michigan outgained Iowa by 139 yards and lost by ten in its previous game. Michigan lost the Iowa game by turning the ball over four times, but the Wolverines didn’t have a single turnover last night. How does a team outgain its opponent on a per play basis, not the ball over, and still lose by double-digits? A massive disparity in field position is a good place to start. Penn State started three drives in Michigan territory; Michigan didn’t start a single drive in Penn State territory. The same was true in the Iowa game. How’s this for your stat of the day: in four Big Ten games, Michigan has started a drive in its opponent’s territory once. Part of this is because the defense doesn’t force turnovers, but it’s also because Michigan is terrible on special teams. Is it possible that Rich Rodriguez sealed his fate by his decision not to bring back Bryan Wright, a disappointing scholarship kicker who could do one thing well: kick the ball high and deep on kickoffs. If so, that would be a fitting coda on Rodriguez’s tenure: a short-sighted decision that didn’t put proper value on a small, but important part of the game. It’s not enough that Michigan fans are tortured by Jim Tressel’s record against the Wolverines; we now have to watch our head coach’s tenure wither on the vine because Michigan gives away a truckload of hidden yards as a result of insufficient attention to special teams.

The third reason why Rodriguez has failed is because he has the Tommy Tuberville problem: position coaches on his weak side of the ball who don’t mesh with the coordinator. Tuberville was undone at Auburn because his buddies on the offensive side of the ball were constantly interfering with the offensive coordinators who were brought in from the outside. In retrospect, Scott Shafer’s spectacular failure at Michigan in 2008 and his resulting success at Syracuse (the 'Cuse are currently 15th nationally in total defense and yards allowed per play) is evidence that Rodriguez’s position coaches got in the way of a capable coordinator. A similar issue might be going on right now with Greg Robinson, although it is just as likely that Robinson is simply a bad coordinator, in which case Rodriguez’s untergang is the result of a terrible hiring decision after firing Shafer. (One exculpatory possibility for Rodriguez: maybe Michigan wasn’t willing to pay for a top defensive coordinator. Robinson makes less than just about every defensive coordinator in the SEC. If this was the result of an edict from Bill Martin to hire a coordinator on the cheap, then Michigan behaved like a newly-wealthy guy who pays for a Mercedes and then skimps on maintenance.) It’s possible that Rodriguez could save himself by bringing in a proper defensive coordinator (after all, this offense isn’t far removed from Oregon’s, statistically speaking), but that might be a futile move if the same position coaches remain to muck things up. Also, if Rodriguez looked far and wide and decided on Robinson, who is to say that he’ll get the decision right this time? (This comes back to a question from earlier this year: is picking good coordinators a skill or is it simply a matter of luck and resources?)

The fourth reason for Rodriguez’s failure is that he just hasn’t recruited well. The defensive backfield that started the season consisted of a four-star wide receiver and then a series of three-star recruits. The big change for the Penn State game was to insert a two-star true freshman safety into the lineup. This is not all Rich's fault, but one would think that the response by Rodriguez and company to inheriting a depth chart that included a frightening defensive backfield would have been to recruit the hell out of the position. That hasn't happened. Maybe Rodriguez is unlucky in that he pulled in blue chip players like J.T. Turner and Vlad Emelien who didn’t pan out for one reason or another, but at the end of the day, I believe that Rich is unlucky in the same way that another Michael thought that Moe Greene was unlucky. And we know how that turned out.

We Can’t Hit. We Can’t Field. The Division is Gone. The Wild Card Lead is Almost Nil.

Other than that, Bobby Cox’s farewell tour is going just swimmingly.

Last night’s game made me as frustrated as I have been watching a Braves game all season. There’s no shame in losing two games in Philadelphia to the best team in the NL when the Braves were throwing a pair of rookies who were in the minors at the All-Star Break. The Braves were competitive in both games. It is what it is.

In the final game of the series, the Braves finally got to throw one of their front-line starters and Tommy Hanson lived up to billing. He shut the Phillies out for six innings, allowing only two hits and three walks while striking out four. He had to be lifted after six, having thrown 109 pitches. His pitch totals were so high in no small part because he had a labored fifth inning that started with Nate McLouth fumbling a sinking fly to left. It was not an easy catch, but it was one that a major league outfielder should make, especially a centerfielder in left.

McLouth’s bumble was symptomatic of the team’s defensive issues throughout the game (and indeed, for the past several weeks). Martin Prado couldn’t hold onto a great throw from Brian McCann in the seventh that would have gotten the Braves out of an inning. And then the Phillies scored in the eighth when McLouth missed the cutoff man on a double to the corner by Raul Ibanez, whom I hate, but I can’t tell why.

That said, the Braves could have played for 18 innings and it didn’t look like they were going to score. Cue Bob Uecker: one G-ddamn hit? Three baserunners? No Brave made it to third base? The offense has disappeared. The Braves prospered all summer because they worked counts and got on base. That skill picked a fine time to leave us, Lucille. I would say “thank goodness we have the Nats this weekend,” but I remember last week.

My Reaction to Trading Yunel

For once, I wish that Terence Moore were here to weigh in on the Braves clubhouse being too professional. We can only assume that the Braves trading Yunel Escobar for Alex Gonzalez relates to a locker room issue about which we don't have all the facts, because on the numbers, this trade makes no sense at all. Gonzalez is a 33-year old shortstop who is terrible at getting on base and has durability concerns. Gonzalez has never finished a season with an OPS above the league average. Escobar is a 27-year old shortstop who has never finished a season with an OPS below the league average. In short, Gonzalez is a below average player who is leaving his prime, while Yunel is an above average player who is entering his prime. Either Yunel did something appalling behind the scenes or Frank Wren has forgotten everything that he should have learned over the first three months of the season about the importance of baseball players who don't make outs.

We're One Week in and this Tournament Already Sucks

16 games. 25 goals. 1.56 goals per game.

When Italia '90 was universally panned by non-Teutons as being a hopeless bore because it finished with 2.21 goals per game, FIFA stepped in with two major, positive rule changes. First, it introduced the rule that teams would get three points for a win instead of two. Second, it banned goalies from picking up the ball after it had been played back to them from a teammate's foot. Leagues across the world followed the change and by USA '94, the average goals per game increased to 2.6.

Right now, we've regressed from the low standards of Italia '90 by almost two-thirds of a goal per game. Moreover, the quality of goals has been low. I can't recall a free kick on target, nor can I remember a quality shot from outside the box. There are two major causes of the stultifying play:

1. Damn you, Jabulani! Who is with me for a boycott of Adidas? The prevailing impression that I have taken from the first 16 games has been of attacking players futilely chasing balls as they run out of play for goal kicks. On the rare occasions where teams have found themselves in promising attacking positions, their passes have typically been too heavy for the players making runs. Quality crossing has been virtually non-existent. Top strikers who are noted for their first touches have been bumbling balls out as if they were over-the-hill drunks in a park. Maybe this is the result of the fact that FIFA and Adidas, in a shameless grab for filthy lucre, changed the object of the game - the ball - on the eve of the tournament. Can you imagine if Major League Baseball reduced the seams on the baseball before the playoffs so pitchers couldn't get the same spin? Bud Selig may be a goof, but he's Pete Rozelle compared to Sepp Blatter. And naturally, FIFA and Adidas didn't account for how their new ball would perform at altitude, which makes perfect sense since Johannesburg and Bloemfontein were all at sea level until last week. In the end, the best footballers in the world are playing with an oversized racquetball. I'm hoping that they get used to this abortion of a sphere, but I'm not hopeful.

2. Creeping Mourinhoism. You knew I'd blame Jose somehow, right? With limited exceptions, the coaches in this tournament have been remarkably conservative. Kenny Hassan was right on point on a World Football Daily episode before the tournament when he said that every team seems to be planning to play on the counter, so nothing is going to happen. It used to be that inferior teams played on the counter and teams with talent (save for Italy) would, you know, actually try to pass and score. Now, mimicking the Special One, numerous talented teams refuse to commit players forward, instead waiting for the other teams to take risks. The problem with being a parasite is that you need a prey. If everyone is a parasite, then everyone starves. The nadir was the Ivory Coast-Portugal game. Sven Goran Eriksson and Carlos Queiroz managed to neuter two teams packed with talent such that each team had about one good scoring chance. I say that on information and belief for last 15 minutes because I fell asleep on 75 minutes. If a game loses me, then it's fair to say that it's losing a casual fan. I feel especially bad about the spineless instructions given by managers to their players because ESPN has expended a great deal of time and money to sell this product. Soccer is becoming more mainstream in this country, but a tournament with record-low scoring will not be good in that respect. In a certain sense, I shouldn't care. If the games are on, why does it matter if I'm part of a select few watching them? I care because I love talking and writing about the game. The more fans, the more I get to do that.

Other thoughts on the first 16 games:

• The Dutch looked uncomfortably similar to the 2006 version that struggled to create chances and bowed out of the tournament in the round of 16. They struggled to generate chances against an organized Denmark side. The problem with the team was that Wesley Sneijder and Rafael van der Vaart are similar players, not unlike Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard. When they play next to one another, they look to do the exact same things: get the ball in a center-left position and make the final pass. They got in each other's way repeatedly and they lacked targets, other than the well-marked and off-form Robin van Persie. The Dutch looked much better when they hauled van der Vaart off and brought on Eljero Elia, a younger, fitter version of Arjen Robben. With a passer and a dribbler in the attacking midfield instead of two passers, the Dutch looked much better. When Robben is healthy, the Oranje should click. Until then, Elia needs to start.

• France can't score without Zidane? Knock me over with a feather, I'm shocked!

• I tipped Nicolas Lodeiro before the tournament as the missing link for Uruguay. He lasted 18 minutes. FML.

• I got misty this morning listening to the Honduran national anthem. I can't imagine how exciting it must be for that small country to see its players and hear its song on the world stage for the first time in 28 years. As much as I bitch about this World Cup, I still love it like family.

• Yes, my bitching at the start of this post started before my Spanish friends laid an egg today. Yes, that egg has further fouled my mood on the tournament. I didn't see the match, so I don't know whom to blame other than the ball and the injuries that the team suffered at the end of the European season. And no, I'm not going to accept that the reigning European champions are bottlers.

• It's funny listening to English announcers express surprise at Brazil struggling to break down a defensive side. They are aware that Dunga is Brazil's coach, right? And that half of Brazil hate him because his teams play so defensively, right? And that 1970 and 1982 were a long time ago, right? It's not unlike being told over and over that the Dutch are perpetual disappointments, despite the fact that they come from a country of 17 million. And I'm still waiting for someone to acknowledge that the Germans are playing the most attractive football of any team so far. If the performance against Australia would have been delivered by a team in orange or yellow, we would never hear the end of it (and I say that as a fan of the Dutch). This Germany team is fun to root for. They're young, athletic, attacking, and multiethnic. They could be a great metaphor for the modern success of that country. (I have The Third Reich at War waiting on my bookshelf for when I finish Inverting the Pyramid. These nice statements about Germany will surely cease.)

• Speaking of our friends in central Europe, if the English want to know what they're doing wrong, they should take a peek at the Germany side. The Mannschaft is loaded with young talent: Muller, Badstuber, Khedira, Ozil, and Neuer are all young players who have gotten domestic and European experience playing for top Bundesliga sides and are now performing on the highest international level. When was the last time that promising young English players broke into any of the Big Four? Chelsea, Liverpool, and United all feature lineups that they bought and Arsenal's youngsters come from everywhere by England. (Yes, I am aware of Aaron Ramsey and Jack Wilshire. Let's see them break into the first team.) Germany's clubs produce young talent and then give young players quality experience. England's clubs see their top young players waste away at Middlesboro and West Ham. This is why you fail.

From Normandy to Waterloo

You're Bobby Cox. On a Sunday afternoon, you're headed into the bottom of the 11th inning at Chavez Ravine in a 4-4 game. Here are your options:

1. Billy Wagner, your closer with a 1.69 ERA who hasn't pitched since Wednesday;

2. Craig Kimbrel, a young reliever with good stuff, control issues, and a 2.08 ERA in limited work;

3. Cristhian Martinez, about whom we know precious little other than the fact that we will cut-and-paste his name for the entirety of his career in Atlanta; or

4. Jesse Chavez, who has a 7.09 ERA in 23 innings and therefore is a pitcher about whom we know all we need to know.

Naturally, Bobby took option #4. Chavez entered, walked the leadoff hitter Russell Martin on five pitches, and then allowed the game-winning single after the Dodgers sacrificed Martin to second. I'm angry now and my anger will double when Wagner comes in with a 6-2 lead in one of the games against Arizona to mop up. Our $7M closer will mop up in a meaningless situation after he collected splinters when his team needed him most in LA.

I can't be angry at Chavez. To quote Chris Rock, that tiger didn't go crazy; that tiger went tiger. Chavez is a bad pitcher. He should not come into a high leverage situation unless there are no alternatives. There were three superior alternatives available to Bobby and that's before we start discussing putting position players on the mound or summoning Don Sutton from the booth. Once those alternatives were exhausted, then Bobby should have pulled a Coach Eric Taylor in East Dillon's opener and forfeited the game.

Bobby Cox is a Hall of Fame manager, but he has never been good at managing a bullpen. I always defended the Braves' lack of success in the postseason as a matter of luck, but in my heart of hearts, I'll admit that having a manager who doesn't have a feel for the pen didn't help matters. Bobby is great at both seeing the big picture in a long season and maintaining a friendly atmosphere that is conducive to players performing at their best. There's a reason why multiple polls of major leaguers have Cox as the runaway winner in the "for which manager would you most like to play?" category. However, he is not good in late game tactical situations, which are the easiest scenarios upon which fans can judge a manager (we don't see Cox behind the scenes smoothing things over in the clubhouse) and which generate the most white heat among baseball fans. (There is an obvious Lloyd Carr analogy to be made here.) Ergo, we all acknowledge that Bobby is a legend as a manager, but we won't miss everything about him.

Just Like Old Times

Since this is the last season in which I will get to gripe about Bobby Cox's tactical decisions, I need to get my licks in. Bobby has managed the last two games as if the Braves are nine games up in September as opposed to scuffling around .500 in May. When I looked at Sunday's lineup, my first thought was that Bobby was trying to insult the Pirates, maybe as a last thumb in the eye of our opponents in the '91 and '92 NLCSs. No Chipper, no McCann, no Heyward, no Hinske. The lineup included Brett Cleven, as well as Melky (.299 OBP), Yunel (.272 OBP), and McLouth (.316 OBP). I understand giving one or two guys the day off for a day game after a long night game, but the lineup resembled what I would expect from Mark Richt in the fourth quarter of a game against Tennessee-Chattanooga. Eric Hinske is f***ing torrid; why is he sitting on the bench under any circumstances? Sure enough, Hinske got one plate appearance, hit a game-tying homer, and the Braves lost in extra innings.

Then last night, the Braves were down 3-2 in the 8th against the Marlins with the top of the order around the corner in the 9th. What in G-d's name was Jesse Chavez doing in the game? It was a miracle of the first order that Chavez made it through the seventh without allowing a run. What are the odds that a reliever with a 7+ ERA is going to throw a second scoreless inning? We sent Craig Kimbrel to the minors because he wasn't getting enough work, but we keep sending Chavez to the hill? Was Rick Luecken not available?

Please Care More

If I wrote anything about the Hawks this morning, it would probably be a string of obscenities and name-calling. Thus, I'm going to outsource the analysis. Here's Mark Bradley:

How does Ersan Ilyasova will himself to dominate the final four minutes of an NBA playoff game?

“Just a lack of concentration,” Jamal Crawford said afterward.

But how do you not concentrate with a season on the line?

Said Crawford: “I honestly don’t know.”

I don’t, either. And neither does Mike Woodson or Rick Sund or James Naismith. It’s the great imponderable of a series that beggars belief. The Milwaukee Bucks are playing without their MVP; the Hawks won seven more games in the regular season and have all hands on deck, and they’re 48 minutes from elimination and perhaps a coaching search.

I keep wanting to believe the Hawks can still win this series, but I no longer have any basis for it. Game 5 was the worst moment in Hawks history since the loss — also to an undermanned Milwaukee team, also in Game 5 — at the old Omni in 1989. I was on hand for both, and the one of 21 years ago was the beginning of the end for Mike Fratello. For Mike Woodson, this Game 5 could be the end, period.

I remember that loss to the Bucks in 1989. It was the most frustrating loss that I can remember as a Hawks fan. The Hawks had staved off elimination in overtime on the road in Game Four and then blew the series at home in Game Five with the Bucks running some sort of bizarre weave that the Hawks couldn't stop. The loss in 1989 was the end of an era for the team, as they dismantled the group that had been pushing the Celtics and Pistons for several years. Last night's loss could be the same in terms of a sea change. Does Joe Johnson really want to come back to a team that has colossal mental lapses like this one does, especially when he can be a second fiddle to LeBron or Wade?

Peachtree Hoops also smells the end:

So yes, there are real coaching issues with this loss that point back to prior problems we have seen all season long. There are player performances that raise questions about team building blocks and ceiling. And there are actual blogging points to discuss as the team moves forward in a series that is far from over. But tonight? Tonight I mourn. I mourn 13 win seasons and player development. I mourn a free agent from Phoenix that took a chance on a city and a seven game series that made that city come alive. I mourn unlimited upside and player development and I mourn coaching question marks and franchise players. Because for this set of players, the unknown is over. The ceiling has been reached. And no words or box scores or analysis make that easier to take. Because it is just sad, but you can know I am sad right there with you.

Last night was definitely the end of something for me. I went to the draft party when the Hawks took Marvin Williams over Chris Paul. I went to ten games the year we won 13 and 20 games the year we won 26. I watched this team grow from the worst in the NBA into a 53-win team. If the Hawks would have hit the ceiling against LeBron or the Magic, I would have accepted that Knight and Sund had created a very good team that couldn't quite get over the hump. I have a harder time accepting losing to a demonstrably inferior team because a core group that has been together for years can't keep their heads together in the biggest games of the year.