Tom Brady and Peyton Manning Are More Even Than You Think

Tom Brady won't be the first quarterback to play in seven Super Bowls. Despite making it to five consecutive AFC Championship games, he's gone 2-3 in that span. Outside looking in. Can't win them all, of course. People shrug off Patriots losses in the post season with, "They'll be in contention next year." It's easy to take their success for granted. It's completely unfair to bash the organization for not making it to their seventh Super Bowl in fifteen years. They've still got a success rate better than any team in NFL history, especially during the salary cap era. These losses are a testament to how difficult it is to make it to the Super Bowl at all, never mind year after year.

In many ways, the game in Denver mirrored that vomit-inducing loss in the 2007 season to the New York Football Giants. If anyone remembers that game (and I know, I know, Pats fans have been trying so hard to forget), it wasn't really Eli Manning that won that game for the Giants. It wasn't that miracle helmet catch. It wasn't even that dropped Asante Samuel pick that would have put the NFC champs on ice. It wasn't New York's running game or receivers or special teams. It was barely even their coaching, really. It was their defensive front's execution.

In that Super Bowl, Brady was sacked five times and got pressured throughout the entire game. Though he completed 60.4% of his passes, he had to get rid of it quickly to avoid the rush. He averaged a paltry 5.5 yards per attempt, with 29 completions for 266 yards. Outside of the two Giants Super Bowls, Brady has typically excelled. Here, he looked mediocre, largely because of the pressure. Make no mistake about it, the true MVP of the game was the entire Giants defensive line. 

The same was especially true in 2011 as well. The pressure doesn't exactly show up on the stat sheet - Brady was sacked twice - but the numbers are fairly similar. Brady completed 65.8% of his passes, but still averaged just 6.7 per attempt (although at this point, that was more normal as they had restructured their offense around the short game). Yet the game was impacted greatly by the consistent pressure. Recall that the game started with an intentional grounding safety on the Patriots' opening possession. (Since a lot of people have been playing the "blame Gostkowski game" for the most recent loss in Denver, let's keep in mind that if in that Super Bowl Brady makes a smarter play or a better throw, the Patriots are down by two points going into that final drive, instead of the four. Imagine Brady only needing to get into field goal range to win the game, instead of needing to drive eighty yards, most of which on a last second Hail Mary. Point being, no one play decides the outcome of a game, even late.)

Since those Super Bowls, teams have been trying desperately to copy that. The success for the Giants was not so much in the game plan itself; it was in the execution. It's no secret that every quarterback will struggle if you can get consistent pressure. This always seems to be the big knock on Brady. "He's great! But if you can get pressure on him, he's not that good, really." 

Well, no duh. Virtually every quarterback sees their performance drop significantly under pressure. It's always been strange that this is something people use to diminish Brady's talent, but that never gets applied to anyone else (and certainly, that argument always held true of Peyton Manning too). At the same time, Brady is slightly worse than most others when pressured. Only two other quarterbacks see a bigger drop in QBR with pressure than Brady (Philip Rivers and Drew Brees - two guys well respected, especially Brees, who nobody knocks for being bad under pressure). Even more, you don't have to look that hard to find video evidence of it. Brady doesn't lose a lot in the post season, but when he does, it's almost always against the Giants, Broncos, or Ravens. 

Speaking of, remember that two year stretch when Rex Ryan was a somewhat decent coach and had a pretty great defense? The Jets succeeded against New England in their divisional game - an MVP season for Brady - largely due to their pass rush. Brady completed 64.4% of his passes, and he threw one of the only picks he had all year. Though he completed 29 passes, he averaged 6.6 yards per attempt and threw under 300 yards. More importantly, he was sacked five times.

When you go back and watch the 2016 AFC Championship, Manning had almost nothing to do with it. He'll get the credit, and Brady-bashers are quick to point out that Manning has a winning record against Brady in AFC title games. But the only way this game could have been less about Manning is if Brock Osweiler had started. The Patriots offensive line had been a problem all season. They couldn't block someone on Twitter. And it culminated in one of the most dominant performances by a defensive line since the 2011 Super Bowl. 

What's ultimately interesting about Brady's post season statistics is that he's played in so many damn games. Consider the fact that he's played in ten AFC championship games. That's almost three quarters of an additional season, just in AFCCGs alone! Never mind all the divisional games, and the few wild card games, or the almost half a season in Super Bowls too. No quarterback has played in more post season games. It's actually kind of ridiculous. He's probably played in more post season games than most NFL quarterbacks play regular season games in their careers! The post season is different than the regular season too. It's against superior competition, and it's so much harder to win in the playoffs. It's funny that people mock Brady for losing those two Super Bowls, and yet, Peyton Manning has also lost two Super Bowls. There's a good chance he's about to lose his third too! What will the talking point be if Manning loses almost as many Super Bowls as Tom Brady has won? (I imagine that it will default to "team if Brady succeeds / team if Manning loses" and "Brady if Brady loses / Manning if Manning wins.") 

Inevitably, Manning v. Brady arguments will, at some point, devolve into who had better weapons. In recent years, Brady has had the greatest tight end to ever play the game (and who can barely last a whole season because of the way he plays mixed with the way the NFL doesn't actually give a crap about player safety.) For one year, he even perhaps the greatest receiver in history in terms of pure talent. But then what else? People drop Wes Welker in there, or Julian Edelman. To be clear, those are great players. The importance of Edelman was excruciatingly obvious in the month of December when he was out. But let's not forget what we're saying here: Tom Brady has had better weapons because he had...slot receivers?  Again, they are absolutely all-time great slot receivers, but how strange is it that we're looking at that position as the key to offensive success? (Also, let's not forget that Manning had a few great slot receivers, in addition to his great wide outs.) 

When all is said and done, however, the talent is pretty even, but I'd argue it's skewed more in Manning's favor. Even now, Manning has some of the best receivers in the league, which he can barely do anything with due to his noodle arm. Either way, it's not a large enough gap overall to definitively grant one player the GOAT on surrounding offensive talent alone. However, it is worth reminding people that so much of Brady's career has been about him "making due." He gets weapons and talent, but it's usually not much. (And if we want to go back to playing the "what if" game, Peyton Manning doesn't win his only Super Bowl if Brady has actual receivers in 2006. I'm not sure how many non-Pats fans remember the likes of Reche Caldwell and Jabar Gaffney...)

Reflecting on it highlights something about this Patriots organization. Stripped of all hatred of the team and its success, from a purely football and institutional standpoint, the Patriots with Brady at the helm have been one of the most fascinating organizations. They've fundamentally revamped their offense every three to four years, often setting the trends. Consider that Brady's most traditional years were early in his career. Where the Indianapolis Colts always built their team specifically around Peyton Manning, overloading with offensive talent often at the cost of defense, the Patriots never seemed to care that much. When they started losing that traditional structure - losing guys like Troy Brown to retirement and David Givens and David Patten to free agency - they attempted to plug those holes with whoever (namely, the aforementioned Gaffney and Caldwell).

Things changed in 2007, when they signed Randy Moss and Wes Welker. Though more traditional in its structure, and one of the only years Brady had a typical wideout, the offense was actually built on more of a high/low game. Slot receivers had been used before (especially in Manning's offense with the Colts); the Patriots revolutionized the position. After that stint, they revamped again to heavy use of tight ends. When Aaron Hernandez wasn't shooting people, he was carving up NFL defenses. Rob Gronkowski emerged as an almost literal monster that defenses are still struggling to figure out.

So none of this is to suggest that Brady hasn't had real talent around him. Gronkowski has redefined the tight end position while Julian Edelman has somehow emerged as an even more prolific and significant slot receiver than his predecessor (Welker). But let's just be clear about this: for the last five or six years, the Patriots offense has been consistently impressive while being built around tight ends and slot receivers! Stop me if this sounds like talent your team will win with: Edelman and Gronkowski (the exceptions), Danny Amendola, Brandon LaFell, Keshawn Martin, Kenbrell Thompkins, Aaron Dobson, Brian Tyms, DeAndre Carter, Scott Chandler, and Michael Hommanawanui. Let's factor in end-of-their-careers Chad Ochocinco and Brandon Lloyd (who, to be fair, was actually a much better target for Brady than most Pats fans seem willing to recognize).

Point being, unlike Manning-led offenses, Tom Brady has never had the benefit of an offense specifically built around him. Quite literally, he has always had to adapt his game to his constantly changing offense. Of course, we can't knock Manning on this: we've never really seen him have to have to do that. This year might very well be the first in which Manning is on a team that specifically focused on building outside the offense, recognizing that the quarterback is hardly the player he once was. His game has changed dramatically due to injuries and age, not because his team has changed. Even still, this highlights that Manning has always had teams catered to him, whereas Brady has had to maintain relevance by fitting into the new offense. It's easily one of the most overlooked and underappreciated elements of Brady's game, and something few Brady-bashers or Manning-maniacs will acknowledge.







That out of the way, Brady is hardly the infallible quarterback he's sometimes made out to be. His postseason numbers are impressive as a whole - although some of it is due to the sheer number of games played. For example, setting the record for most passing yards in the playoffs makes sense given no quarterback has played in more games.

One way that Brady and Manning are similar though is that Brady can be a bit erratic in the post season. His best and most consistent statistical years were actually earlier in his career, when he was part of a more traditional offensive structure (and the kind that Manning enjoyed for most of his career).  Some might make note that his most impressive post season performances have come against somewhat lackluster teams. For example, his six touchdown game came against the Denver Broncos led by Tim Tebow. He's also had a bunch of success against the hapless (and defenseless) Indianapolis Colts as led by Andrew Luck.

Over the course of his thirty-one post season games (nearly the equivalent of two full additional seasons, mind you), Brady has completed 741 out of 1183 passes (62.6%) for 7,957 yards (265 yards per game) and thrown for 56 touchdowns to 28 interceptions (a 2:1 ratio). He's also got a 22-9 record overall (.709 winning percentage). While he's had his struggles too (especially, strangely, in AFC championship games), it's also worth noting that the playoffs are always harder on any team and quarterback. After all, Brady has faced a top ten defense in two-thirds of his post season games.

I've written before about something of a pattern that emerges when examining his yearly playoff performances. Most often, he starts off looking great, follows it up with a bad performance, and then follows that up with an average game (if they make it to a third game.) Seriously. It's super weird, but also totally true.

In all of his thirty-one post season games, he's only played in the wildcard round three times. He's 2-1, completing 58.2% of his passes, 189 yards per game, and throwing a total of 7 touchdowns to 3 interceptions. All three games were against top ten defenses.

He's played twelve divisional round games, and this is typically excels. He's 10-2 there, completing 63.3% of his passes, averaging 284 yards per game, and logging 24 touchdowns against 9 interceptions (so almost a 3:1 ratio). 8 of those 10 games were against top ten defenses.

Of course, he's also played in six Super Bowls. Those two Giants games were a bit of an outlier in terms of his typical play in the big game, but it's worth remembering that those Giants teams had a killer pass rush, which dramatically impacted the game. Overall though, he's completed 67.6% of his passes, averaging 267 yards per game, and he's tossed 13 touchdowns to 4 interceptions (so he's thrown a bit over a 3:1 touchdown to interception ratio). And, obviously, he's 4-2. What's strange is that his best performances were against all the teams except New York, which was the only team without a top ten defense he's faced in the Super Bowl.

So he's pretty great in Super Bowls, and he's almost automatic in the divisional round. And while not super impressive, he's pretty reliable in wild card games - if he ever plays them. And yet, in AFC championship games, he's completed 59.6% of his passes, averaged 237 yards per game, and has thrown 12 touchdowns to 12 interceptions. What's strange is that only half of these matchups were against top ten defenses. Disregarding his wild card games due to the severally limited number, Brady's completion percentage drops about four points from divisional rounds and eight points from Super Bowls. His yards drop by thirty to fifty yards per game. And his pretty usual 3:1 touchdown to interception ratio is altered to a mediocre 1:1.

It's super weird. What is it, exactly, that makes the AFC championship game so much tougher for Brady and company? Part of it, of course, is the inherent nature of the playoffs. People tend to take the Patriots continued success for granted. They're the only team I've ever seen become favorites just by simply being there (looking specifically at the 2011 Super Bowl when there was no reason for them to be favored against a clearly superior and more complete Giants team). Yet winning in the NFL is pretty hard; winning in the post season even more so. The competition gets better, defenses get stiffer, and when you've played in 30+ post season games, it's just literally impossible to win them all. People knock the Patriots whenever they fail, but even the most ardent haters are holding them up to an insane standard, because they're the most successful dynasty in NFL history. (Seriously, for the Patriots to have proved the haters wrong, they'd have had to win 13 Super Bowls in the last 15 years...That's barely even possible in Madden games!)

Part of it too is, of course, while the Patriots regularly get the bye week, they're not always the number one seed. This means that most of their divisional games are played at home, while a fair amount of the AFC title games are on the road, and Super Bowls are on "neutral" territory. Brady hasn't exactly been at his best on the road in playoff matches. While he's 15-3 at home, he's also 3-4 on the road. (Worth noting, three of those losses were in Denver.)

Keeping everything in perspective of the increased difficulty of the post season, and with how the NFL is set up to prevent teams from having this kind of sustained success, Brady's numbers are still very impressive. Still, he's not perfect. He'll struggle if you get a great pass rush, and if it's on the road, but he's still reliable and great much more often than he's not.





Really the only thing that stands out, when all is said and done, he's at his weakest in AFC title games. He's managed to get his teams to overachieve on numerous occasions, most notably 2006, 2011, and 2015. (Seriously, it's hard to win on the road in the playoffs when you've got a weak o-line and virtually no running game due to injuries. And yet, the Patriots were a two-point conversion away from bringing that game to overtime.)

Manning supporters will regularly discredit Brady's post season numbers for being team achievements, yet will give Manning credit for his. At the same time, Brady fans do tend to sell Manning a bit short. It's true, Manning took a while to eventually get good in the post season. He actually had largely turned it around. 2006 was definitely a turning point for him. (Of course, that AFC title game pretty much was the Super Bowl given the winner went onto face the Chicago Bears...led by Rex flippin' Grossman.)

While Manning has played in five fewer post season games, it's still enough to compare. Here are some comparisons.


RECORDS:

Playoffs/Total:

Tom Brady: 22-9  (.709)
Peyton Manning: 13-13  (.500)


Home Playoff Record:

Brady: 15-3  (.833)
Manning: 10-6  (.625)


Road Playoff Record:

Brady: 3-4  (.428)
Manning: 2-5  (.285)


Wildcard Games:

Brady: 2-1
Manning: 3-4


Divisional Games:

Brady: 10-2
Manning: 5-6


AFC Championship Games:

Brady: 6-4
Manning: 4-1


Super Bowls:

Brady: 4-2
Manning: 1-3


Playoff Games Versus Top Ten Defenses:

Brady: 20
Manning: 15


Record Versus Top Ten Defenses:

Brady: 16-4  (.800)
Manning: 8-7  (.533)


INDIVIDUAL STATS:

Totals:

Brady: 741/1183 - 62.6%       7957 yds - 265 ypg     56 TDs  28 INTs  (2:1)   67.7% against top 10 defenses
Manning: 636/1004 - 62.3%   7198 yds - 276 ypg     40 TDs  24 INTs   (1.7:1)    57.7% against top 10 defenses


In Wild Card Games:

Brady: 60/103 - 58.2%    567 yds - 189 ypg       7 TDs  3 INTs  (2.3:1)     100% against top 10 defenses
Manning: 153/228 - 61.7%   1969 yds - 281 ypg   13 TDs  6 INTs  (2.1:1)   42.8% against top 10 defenses


In Divisional Games:

Brady: 298/471 - 63.3%    3413 yds - 284 ypg       24 TDs   9 INTs  (2.7:1)    80% against top 10 defenses
Manning: 268/436 - 61.4%   2830 yds - 257 ypg    15 TDs  9 INTs   (1.7:1)    45.5% against top 10 defenses


In AFC Championship Games:

Brady: 216/362  -  59.6%      2372 yds - 237 ypg       12 TDs   12 INTs  (1:1)   50% against top 10 defenses
Manning: 125/208 - 60%      1539 yds - 307 ypg        9 TDs     5 INTs   (1.8:1)   100% against top 10 defenses


In Super Bowls:

Brady: 167/247 -  67.6%      1605 yds - 267 ypg         13 TDs   4 INTs  (3.25:1)    67% against top 10 defenses
Manning: 90/132 - 68.1%     860 yds - 286 ypg           3 TDs     4 INTs   (1:1.3)     67% against top 10 defenses


Versus Top 10 Defenses:

Brady:  466/742  -  62.8%     5103 yds - 255 ypg     38 TDs    20 INTs   (1.9:1 ratio)
Manning: 368/581 - 63.3%   4208 yds - 280 ypg     23 TDs     13 INTs  (1.7:1 ratio)


Basic point here is that Manning and Brady have been a lot more even than backers of both seem to realize. On the surface, of course, Manning fans (Fannings?) will suggest that the even play, yet heavily skewed record indicates that Brady has simply been part of a better team, hence more success. Stats don't exactly tell the whole story, of course. It would be a little hard to argue that Brady hasn't benefited from a more well run organization that actually knows how to build a team. People mention that Manning was drafted by a dismal Colts franchise, which is true, but ignores that the Patriots weren't exactly top notch when Belichick took over in 2000 either.

But here's the thing: remember Peyton Manning's one Super Bowl success? If the argument is that Brady won due to team effort, that argument goes double for Manning's ring. In his 2006 campaign, Manning threw six interceptions to just three touchdowns. He threw more interceptions than touchdowns in two consecutive games. On the one hand, he did face the top three ranked teams in total defense. On the other, he faced only one of them during his horrible stretch. I've noted before that the Patriots sometimes win in spite of Brady (see 2006 and 2007, when Brady combined for four touchdowns and six interceptions against the Chargers), but Brady has never had a bad stretch in the post season like that. At least, none that the Patriots survived. Brady has only ever accounted for more turnovers than scores in a post season run once - in 2009 when they went one-and done.

Speaking of, Manning has also gone one-and-done eight separate times, compared to Brady's two. Again, natural inclination is to say, "team effort!" Indeed, Manning's success has evened out since joining the Broncos, a team wherein John Elway has wisely built arguably the strongest overall team Manning has ever played for. (Is it wrong that I think of Elway as a better GM than he was a quarterback?) But the stats tell a story of a mediocre Manning in most of those games. They also tell of a poor Brady in the one-and-done campaigns he's been a part of. Point being, to simply shrug everything off as "team effort" ignores the role a quarterback has on a game. For example, you can't ignore Manning's role in a loss wherein he completed 45% of his passes for 137 yards, 2 interceptions, and 0 touchdowns (as he did in his third post season, facing the New York Jets). Nor can you ignore his inefficiency in the red zone in 2005 against the Steelers.

Plus, if the argument is always "Brady succeeds with team effort," then we can't turn around and pin Manning's success in AFC championship games on primarily him. You don't really get to pick and choose when to apply that argument. Either it applies to both or it applies to neither.




At the end of the day, these guys are two of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. The fundamental difference though is that when push comes to shove, in the biggest game of the year, Brady's just better at scoring.

Fair Is Just A Feeling: Part 2 of the Critical Look of the NFL's Overtime Rules

I'm not quite sure how or why it happened, but last week's examination of the NFL's overtime rules became one of the most viewed entries. Since then, I've been involved in a strangely high number of conversations - online and off - about the perceived "unfairness" of the current rules. After hearing a lot of arguments, I figured I would do some more digging and update my argument with a few thoughts that came to me later.

In the previous article, I mentioned that in 2010 and 2011 combined, teams that got the ball first in overtime had a game winning score on their opening possession just about 16% of the time. Some have accused me of being deceptive with my limited selection of years. I don't think I was being deceptive about it (in the original article, I did specifically state outright that I was citing a very limited sample size, so it's not like I made it a secret). So, naturally, the first thing I went and did was found data in more years.

For the sake of transparency: this information is not readily available. Turns out, no one else has really been collecting this data in one easily accessible spot. Googling, "how many OT games were won opening possession scores" doesn't yield anything particularly helpful.  However, the information itself is out there. What I've had to do is painstakingly find all the games in a season that went to overtime (by looking at the scores week by week), then read the play-by-play logs to find out which OT games were won on an opening possession. If you've never tried collecting data like that, let me assure you it's extraordinarily tedious and time consuming. I'm even going to mention that you have to take these stats with an error margin of maybe +/- 2 games total. (I think, for example, I originally claimed that teams that got the ball first in 2014 and 2015 went 15-23. They didn't. They went 15-22. I apparently re-counted a game. Staring at a computer screen and reading tons of tiny text can make it kind of easy to mess up here and there.)

Point being, there's a reason my sampling sizes are not that large. First step, then, was double checking the four years I had already tracked, and then counting more. I've gathered the stats for all four years of the new OT era, and I went back seven years - to 2005 - with the old rules. Not because I'm trying to cherry-pick. Indeed, I fully plan to keep digging at another time. It's just that this has been such a time consuming process that I need a break. Still, seven years of data is enough to give us a bit of a clearer picture.

Here is what I've found:

Teams that got the ball first in overtime from 2005 to 2011 had a combined record of 49-52-1. However, out of those 102 overtime games, only 31 were won on an opening possession. That means that in the span of seven years, the game was over after a single possession 29.5% of the time.

Comparatively, from 2012 to 2015, teams that got the ball first in overtime had a combined record of 37-32-3. Out of 72 overtime games during that span, the game was won on the first possession score, or the team that got the ball first scored and the other team failed (functionally the same as sudden death) 23 times. That's about 31.9% of the time.

Basically, a team that gets the ball first and scores on their opening drive is functionally the same. In four years, there has only been one occasion in which a team scored on their opening drive, then wound up losing the game (the Colts lost to the Panthers in 2015 after getting the ball first and scoring a field goal). 21 out of 23 teams that scored on their opening possession in overtime win the game. (One time resulted in a tie - more on that in a moment.)

Well, ok, what about games that were won on an opening possession touchdown? From 2012 to 2015, that's happened 20 times, out of 72 overtime games. that's about 28% of the time. It makes sense that we'd see a jump in this stat given that the new rules fundamentally shift the strategy of coaches, offenses, and special teams now that a field goal doesn't guarantee anything (even though it kind of effectively does). One might expect to see a rather substantial dip when looking back at this stat when looking at the original rules. Yet from 2005 to 2011, overtime games were won an an opening possession touchdown 24 out of 102 times - or 23.5% of the time.

Yes, yes, I understand that results don't equate to fairness. But this further backs my argument that this idea that all you have to do, really, was win the coin toss was complete nonsense. Football is a little more complex than that. Games won on opening possessions has been almost identical in the first four years of new OT rules as they were in the last seven years of old ones. The frequency a game is won on an opening touchdown isn't particularly different either.

So what was the point of these overtime rules?

I suppose in defense of the anti-old rules and "win the coin toss, win the game" fighters, it's worthwhile to examine years independent of each other too. Certainly when you look at the years individually, you find that there is no real pattern. Below is the breakdown of percentage that games with the old rules were won an the opening possession, without the other team's offense seeing the ball:

2005 - (31%)
2006 - (41.6%)
2007 - (40%)
2008 - (50%)
2009 - (40%)
2010 - (11%)
2011 - (27%)

At first glance, one might say that there is something of a commonality in that three of the four years saw it occur 40% of the time. One year even saw half of all overtime games end on the first possession! And yet, there's also 2010 and 2011, and 2005 only saw this happen less than a third of the time. I'd guess that if we went back further, we'd see something similar in that the success rate fluctuates pretty wildly at times.

Regardless, none of those statistics indicates that this was something happening all the time, like everyone suggests. Even 2008, the year most favorable to the team that gets first possession, it only happened half of the time. Hardly enough to indict the rules. And oh yeah, the overwhelming majority of overtime games today are still won on field goals.





However, there's one other stat I'd like to call attention to. Did you notice that in the last seven years of the old rules, there was just one tie? Did you happen to catch that in the first four years of the new overtime rules, there have been three? 2015 is the first year of the new rules that didn't have a game end in a tie, but there were a few close calls. This leads me to a few additional thoughts about overtime rules from a design perspective.

Take a moment to consider what the function of overtime is. The entire point of overtime is to determine a winner. The whole "fair" argument is really strange to me since it throws out the fact that there was an entire sixty minutes of regulation in which both teams had plenty of opportunities and chances to legitimately win the game. When it's still tied, the game slightly alters one rule to help determine a winner when a full game wasn't enough. All it changes is that the first team to score wins. That's it! The game plays out almost exactly the way it would in regulation. The only strategical difference is that coaches will call super conservative plays deep in the opponent's territory, knowing they don't need to try for the touchdown.

Can you recognize what that rule change does, from a game perspective? It practically guarantees a winner. Sure, there have been those few games that still end in a tie, even with sudden death rules, but the rest of the time, there is always a winner as long as someone scores. The sudden death rules decrease the chances of a tie.

Here's what the new rules functionally do: by allowing the other team to have an offensive possession if the first team scores a field goal, the rules actually increase the chances of a tie. Here's the perfect example: a couple of years ago, the Vikings and Packers went to overtime. The Packers got it first and scored a field goal. The Vikings got a possession, by rule, and proceeded to score a field goal of their own. With a normal fifteen minute period, that doesn't leave a lot of room for additional possessions. There was about six minutes left in the period when the Packers got the ball back for their second possession. Plenty of time to kick a game winning field goal, but when teams have to drive 60 to 70 yards down field for a high percentage chance, it might take a little more.

In this case, the new overtime rules directly led to a game ending in a tie, whereas with the old rules, there would have been a winner (and it would have been the Packers, who conveniently are always complaining about OT rules since they keep losing in the post season - seriously, the Packers have lost their last four playoff games that went to overtime).  What's more is this same situation happened with the Bengals and Panthers! That game would have had a winner if not for the new overtime rules. These situations highlight how the new rules can sometimes defy their purpose.

From a game design perspective, you generally don't want a set of rules that can off-set the function of them. If the overtime rules are meant to determine a winner, a system of rules that increases the chances of ties defeats the purpose. (We almost had this same situation happen again this year, by the way, when the Colts scored on their opening possession, and the Panthers scored a tying field goal too. Fortunately, with about five minutes left, the Panthers defense got a takeaway to set up excellent field position for the game winning field goal.)




So ok, the stats don't really back the idea that the old rules really were so terrible, but they just felt wrong. The results don't mean anything about "fairness," it's argued. The whole premise that it's not fair is built on the conceit that the primary element of football is the offense. Even after the rule change in 2012, we still hear people argue that it isn't fair that the other team "didn't get the ball."

Fun fact about football: it's not a turn-based game. Sure, it's not a free-flowing game like soccer or basketball or hockey. And yes, we do like to make analogies to chess. Thing about chess though? It is turn-based. For a while, it was considered an unfair advantage for players who get the first move. After some time, players got really good at developing strategies that there are many who think going second is advantageous. Either way, the point is that chess, like checkers or othello, are purely turn-based games. When one player goes, the other player cannot do anything but watch.

Football does not actually work like that. It's maybe easy to think of offense as "getting a turn" with the ball, but it's not purely turn-based. When the other team has the ball - or has their "turn" - you have your defense on the field. You don't sit idly by while the other team moves the ball into field goal range. When it's not "your turn," you still have the opportunity to act in a way that can earn the win.  Because both teams field players at the same time, there is nothing inherently "unfair" about it. If the concern were that both teams get a possession in overtime, then there should be equal focus given to ensuring both teams have an equal number of possessions during regulation too. How many times does a team win after getting the ball first in the game, then getting the ball and trying to kill the clock? This entire strategy is built around ensuring your team has one more possession than the other team. Is that any more "fair"?




The main reason why I don't like all of these rule changes is sort of a fundamental design thing for me. Given that some teams build around offense - like all of those Colts teams with Peyton Manning - and others build primarily around defense - like the Seahawks - it seems weird that the argument is that we need to ensure offenses get a chance. At the end of the day, we're trying to mold the rules around the teams, rather than having the teams build around the rules.

It's a highly questionable approach to design, and one that I don't think the league should get into. Even the idea of college rules - which I think is very entertaining - takes away special teams and some key coaching aspects. Field position is removed from the equation entirely, as are all of those decisions that make or break teams and coaches.

So yeah, I still don't think the rules ever had to change in the first place. The new rules are worse, even if slightly more entertaining. And I do worry a bit about what any more knee-jerk rule changes will do.

Fair Is A Feeling: A Critical Look at the NFL's Overtime Rules

The NFL is in something of a no-win position when it comes to their overtime rules. For the longest time, they had very simple, straightforward rules to it, but fans complained. The noise got so bad that in 2012, the rules committee voted to change it. On the most part, the suddenly convoluted rules were well received. And yet here we are, again, with a team losing in overtime, in the post season, without ever possessing the ball, and people are complaining about the rules.

Frankly, the NFL is never going to pass overtime rules that please everyone. At the end of the day, sports fans are very emotionally-driven. And let's be real here, the Green Bay Packers wouldn't be saying anything about the perceived "fairness" of the rules, or arguing that they need to change if their defense had, I don't know, not given up an insane 75 yard catch and run by Larry Fitzgerald.

One thing that's really interesting about sports though is that at their core, they're just games. Most of these sports have a lot of crazy rules, but many of them - as complex as they sometimes are - actually do a lot to keep a balance. People don't often look at rules or rule changes in terms of game design.

For example, look at intentional grounding. A quarterback cannot throw the ball away when under pressure if he's in the pocket. If he gets out of the tackle box, however, he can. On the surface, this seems totally arbitrary. Why can't the quarterback throw the ball away when he's in the pocket, but if he moves a few yards to the left, he can? Well, balance. It may be tempting to view that as a rule designed simply to drive up sack stats and increase excitement, but it also creates balance between offense and defense, making it fair. Given the formations of offenses and defenses, all of the pressure comes in through the pocket. If the quarterback were allowed to simply throw it away without penalty while there, the system would lean in favor of one side, giving him an unfair advantage.  By outlawing throw aways within the pocket, it gives the defense a chance to succeed too, rather than giving the QB the unfair ability to just chuck the ball wherever at the last second to avoid losing yards in a sack.

Additionally, when the quarterback gets out of the pocket, he's essentially earned the right to throw it away. The defense has had a chance to get pressure, and didn't capitalize, thus now the quarterback can perform that action in a way that is fair. These seemingly pointless rules actually create a fairness wherein the defense has a chance to sack the quarterback, but the quarterback - once meeting a particular condition - is not forced to take a sack every time there's pressure. These kinds of rules help create a level systematic playing field. Of course, why the quarterback has to get the ball back to the line of scrimmage doesn't strike me as anything but arbitrary, but no one ever said all of these rules were well thought out game design elements.

Often times, people want changes when they feel they got screwed out of a rule, even though those changes can't change the past, and could very well hurt your own team later down the road. Here, I'm going to attempt to break down why, from a game design perspective, the current overtime rules are a hot mess that doesn't actually make the game more fair. Bear with me, this could get long-winded.

For those who are not sports fans, the former overtime rules in question were quite straightforward. If, at the end of regulation, the game is still tied, they functionally restart the game with sudden death rules. Meaning, first one to score wins. This essentially put the impetus on chance. It was often thought that whoever won the ensuing coin toss at the start of overtime would win the game. After all, field goal kickers have gotten so good that you have a great shot at winning if your offense can just drive to about the opponent's thirty yard line.

Fans got so annoyed with the idea that a field goal early in OT wins the game that the league was eventually confronted with the idea of altering it. The more positively received rules aren't the most difficult to grasp, but it takes a bit longer to explain. Follow me here: the game can only end in overtime on one possession if the offense that first receives the ball scores a touchdown on their first drive, or the defense manages to score a safety or returns a fumble or interception for a defensive touchdown. If the first offense scores a field goal, then the other team gets one possession to tie the game with a field goal of their own, or can win if they score a touchdown. If the first offense doesn't score, or they score a field goal and the second offense also scores a field goal on their possession, then the game defaults to sudden death rules and the first team to score any points in any fashion wins. Alternatively, if the first offense doesn't score at all, and on their ensuing possession, the second offense doesn't score either, then the game defaults to sudden death rules as well.






Did you follow that? If it sounds pretty complex, it's because it is. It's rather unnecessary too. Let's break down why these rules don't actually make overtime any more fair.

The problem with the original overtime rules, it's argued, is that it's skewed too much in favor of offenses and special teams. It's often posited that sudden death rules that include field goals puts the defenses at too much of a disadvantage. Ostensibly, it's unbalanced and "unfair" to the team that doesn't win the coin toss.

According to a super interesting breakdown from Football Outsiders, the average starting field position off of kickoff for most of the early aughts was about one's own 28 or 29 yard line. In 2010, NFL kickers connected on 74% of kicks between 40 and 50 yards. Let's use these parameters for a moment. The argument goes that for the offense that gets the ball first in old rules has to drive about 45 yards to have a 75% chance of winning off a long field goal, given the improved overall quality of modern kickers. With the current rules in place, the first offense could drive the same 45 yards and kick a long field goal, but then they'll have to play defense and stop the opposing team from doing the same thing or better.

First off, that isn't really "nothing." The idea that this system is imbalanced in favor of the offense and special teams is kind of absurd. Sure, the offense only has to drive about half the distance that it would need for a touchdown, but that's to specifically set up a long field goal, which would mean that it's not skewed particularly favorably for special teams. Kickers have gotten a lot better over the years, but most teams don't play overtime to set up a 40+ field goal, especially when you recall another rule: if a kicker misses a field goal, the opposing team gets the ball at the spot of the kick, not the line of scrimmage like usual. Meaning, if a team does play for a long 45 yard field goal to win, and misses, then you're giving the ball to your opponent with great field position. The second offense would only have to drive 35 to 40 yards for the same opportunity to win the game.

And, of course, for shorter field goals, the offense still has to drive a good chunk of the field. If a team starts on their own 30 yard line and hopes for a 30 yard field goal, they'll have to drive about 50 yards from to get into range at their opponent's 20 yard line. It shouldn't seem so unfair that a defense has to stop an offense from driving down literally half the field.

Secondly, and more significantly, it is disingenuous to suggest that the other team - the team that lost the coin toss - "didn't get a chance." They did. In such field goal winning situations, the other team had chances to reduce field positions or block the kick with their special teams, and had the opportunity to keep the opposing offense out of field goal range with their defense. Football is not just offense. The original overtime rules were surprisingly balanced to not show any real favor to the offense or the defense or the special teams. It was balanced. The defense has an opportunity to make a stop or get a turnover. The special teams has an opportunity to score/contain the opponent. And the offense has an opportunity to drive to score the game winning points.





Here's what the new rules did, if anything: it actually skewed it so that the defense has an advantage. They are no longer on the line for giving up large chunks of yardage. If a defense played poorly in overtime and allowed an opposing offense to get into field goal range, that was their fault. They'd lose the game for playing poorly. Now though, if a defense gives up a lot of yards and a field goal, their offense has one more opportunity to bust them out of trouble.

See, here's the other thing about the new rule changes: they were completely unnecessary. Apart from the fact that a team can still win without the opposing offense ever seeing the field (as happened in the Green Bay/Arizona game), there was another rule introduced that actually fundamentally made things better for the original rules, that instead, with the new OT rules, makes the new OT rules even more imbalanced than the original rules.

That major change is, of course, the kickoff spot. Sports are a bit different than most games in the sense that these aren't pieces moving around a board. These are human beings. As such, there are going to have to be concessions for the sake of player safety. For example, the new kickoff spot, mixed with banning the wedge formation and more than two players linking are dumb rules from a gameplay perspective, but make total sense when considering player safety.

And here's what the new kickoff spot does for overtime rules: it pits the first offense in worse field position. Instead of starting near their own 30 yard line, teams are regularly starting on their own 20 due to the huge increase in touchbacks. Plus, if for some reason they do get a return, there's a strong probability they'll be starting inside their own 20. What this does it makes the distance the offense needs to go for a potentially game winning field goal farther by about ten yards. A team needs to drive about 55 to 60 yards to get into reasonable field goal range now. In effect what this does is makes it more challenging for the offenses. So the new kick off rule hurts the offense and helps the defense, and the new overtime rules hurt the offense and helps the defense. These two rules, however separate they may be, have ultimately skewed the balance in favor of the team that is on defense. They are presented with a better opportunity.





What's kind of funny though is that what people thought about the original overtime rules and what they assume about the new ones are, frankly, without statistical merit. Now, admittedly I'm using a rather limited sampling size. Given that the main argument is that the original rules were skewed too heavily in the favor of the team that wins the coin toss (read: the offense that gets the ball first), and the new rules are supposed to balance it out, then presumably, looking at the data should show us that the team that gets the ball first should have been winning most of their games in the old rules, and the winning has been subsequently more even with the new rules. To check this, I meticulously looked through the game logs of four years: 2010 and 2011 (the last two years of the old OT rules), and then 2014 and 2015 (the two most recent years of the new OT rules).  The data suggests what I've always felt to be true: the mechanic wasn't broke, and there was never a reason to change them in the first place. Here, check it out:

Between 2010 and 2011 - the final two years of the old rules with the simple sudden death even by field goal stipulation - teams that got the first possession had a losing record of 15-23. That's a winning percentage of .394.  More than that,  of the 38 games that went to overtime, only 6 were won on the first possession. Yes, that's right. Only 15.8% of the time under the old rules did a team that got the ball first win the game on their first possession in a two year span.

Conversely, between 2014 and 2015 - the most recent two years of the new rules that are supposed to be more "fair," - teams that got the first possession had a winning record of 19-13. That's a winning percentage of .594. And again, more than that, of the 32 games that went to overtime, 14 were won by teams that scored a touchdown or scored a field goal on their opening possession, followed by their opponents failing to score (which is functionally the same result as the old overtime rules).  That means that in the new overtime rules, 43.8% of the time, the game is over because of scores on the opening possession.

Essentially, there is no statistical data that actually suggests that winning the coin toss and receiving the kick off for the first possession held any discernible competitive advantage under the old rules. Probably because it's football and teams have defenses and special teams. Contrary to popular opinion, it isn't only offense.






Of course, the most obvious counterargument here is that statistical correlation does not equal causation. Obviously, teams that get the ball first were not losing games because they got the ball first. The same argument, naturally, can be applied to the new overtime rules too. The Packers, for example, did not lose because they didn't get the ball first.

Bottom line: the new rules do virtually nothing to make the game "more fair." From a design perspective, the old rules were nearly perfect. The advantage of winning the coin toss was obviously not a problematically large advantage. The team that kicked off was given a chance to get the ball back (and at times, even win the game - there were at least three games I encountered in the old rules that were won on defensive touchdowns, and none of them were that Packers game when they beat the Seahawks through a pick six of Matt Hasselback way back when!). Functionally, it was fair to both teams. They were neutral rules. It didn't favor the offense. It didn't favor the special teams. And it didn't favor the defense. It provided equal significance to each phase of the game.

The new rules have made no difference, except that now, it gives a defense more leeway. Mixed with the new kickoff rules, it even gives the defense more of an advantage. In essence, the new rules are actually more unfair than they were before (even if I completely agree that it's not particularly "unfair" - however, the rules are slightly imbalanced, leaning more favorably on defenses now).

Yes, yes, I just made a rather confusing argument. While I believe the statistics prove that tales of the coin toss's significance in the original rules are dramatically exaggerated, I don't believe statistics are everything. I'm not a total idiot and know I just made an argument that the new rules should be helping the defense, but the statistics show that more overtime games are won on first possessions than ever, despite it being harder.

They're sort of separate arguments though. As I said, the statistical correlation does not mean causation. The statistics argument was used to highlight that the old rules were not giving a team any particular unfair advantage in terms of results. Examining how the mechanics work in detail, though, highlights why they actually do - as a system of rules - give a slight advantage to the defense. Obviously, one can quite simply look at the pro-offense statistics of 2014 and 2015 to say that the new rules clearly don't give defenses a big advantage, but I hope the fact that I also examined how the mechanics actually work on a game-level, and not just on a results basis, helps clear up that I'm arguing in defense of the old rules and suggesting the new rules are really only slightly more unfair on a mechanical level.



What was the real cause of concern to begin with? Is the problem really that it's "unfair" the other team doesn't get a possession? If that were true, the new overtime rules don't actually do much to change that, since a team can still be robbed of a possession if the first team scores a touchdown. If that were the argument, then by all means, the NFL should adopt college rules, where each team gets a possession from the 20 yard line and is given a chance to score - playing a bit more like penalty kicks, if penalty kicks weren't a load of nonsense that is extremely favorable to the kicker and extremely unfair to the goalkeeper.  (While I don't necessarily think college OT rules are "more fair," I do think that it is a more entertaining system at any rate.)

If the problem people had was that a field goal on an opening possession would win the game (something that didn't happen nearly as often as people seem to think it did), that might be a fair point. Kickers are more accurate than they've ever been. The league is currently altering PAT rules to make the most boring and unnecessary play in all of football even vaguely relevant, since kickers and their extra point attempts were converted at an absurdly high rate. Seriously, it was basically 100% of the time. Even more, accuracy at a distance has also jumped pretty substantially over the last decade and a half.

Admittedly, I'm one of the few football fans who likes kickers and punters. I've always found them an intriguing part of a football game. They're far more a part of a team's game strategy than people ever give them credit for, and while people may find kicks boring, I find the long kick with the game on the line one of the most exciting plays in football. Few football plays have the same kind of anticipation and anxiety-inducing build up as the field goal attempt. Adam Vinatieri lining up in the snow against the Raiders or against the Rams or Panthers with no time left was the football equivalent of a batter stepping up to the plate with a full count, bases loaded, bottom of the ninth down by two.

However, I can concede that kickers are too accurate now. When they're as great as they've been, even long field goals are a bit boring. If this is the problem though, then the solution for overtime isn't to change the overtime rules into this super complicated thing that takes two paragraphs to explain. Instead, the thing that should really have been addressed was increasing the difficulty of field goals. How about instead of the convoluted overtime rules, they make the field goal cross bar higher and the side posts narrower. Make it so kickers need to be even more accurate. If field goals aren't automatic, then no one can really complain about a field goal winning a game in sudden death overtime.

Or, alternatively, the league could examine the possibility of altering point values. Field goals could function a bit like shots in basketball where at a certain range, they're worth two points, at another range, they're worth three, and at 50+ yards, they're worth four. (It's really not that hard or more complicated to keep track of this stuff...) Or, we could abolish the extra point and only do two-point conversions, as starting from the five yard line to make it something that isn't automatic. (11 teams that attempted at least one two-point conversion in 2015 had a conversion rate of under 50%. 15 teams had 50% or higher. 4 teams didn't attempt one at all. Point being, successful conversions are still a bit skewed favorably for the offense. Setting it back to the five would presumably give the defense more of a shot.)

Point being, looking at adjusting point values would help reduce the chances of a game going into overtime entirely. Yes, yes, I know, I know. "But tradition!" "A field goal has always been worth three!" "You can't abolish the dumbest, most pointless, and least exciting play in all of sports! (the PAT)" But the thing is, in game design, you typically don't just accept a points system that allows for a bunch of ties to keep happening. This suggestion, by the bye, isn't entirely necessary (even if I think it's a good solution). All in all, 38 overtime games in 2010 and 2011 is still a rather small percentage. Given there are 267 games in an NFL season, 38 OT games in two seasons (534 games) means that only about 7% of those games went to overtime. Is that a large enough percentage to merit rule changes? Up for debate, really (I'd say yes, but others might disagree).






Look, Packers fans have been on the wrong side of overtime post season games two years in a row. I get it. It is kind of anticlimactic to have one score at the beginning of a new period conclude the game. Frankly, if we want complete fairness, the NFL post season overtime rules should be a full, ten minute period that plays out in its entirety. No sudden death at this point. If it it's still tied at the end, then you play another fifteen minute period that is completely sudden death. No one can complain about "fairness" when you've played basically five periods of football! At some point, you just have to accept that the other team made more plays when you lose.

It's just funny to me that people always want to change rules that cost them that year, without examining what its impact might be. We changed a system that wasn't broken to one that is slightly imbalanced, just because a few times at key moments in the season, a field goal won a game in sudden death. From a design perspective, the original rules were better, cleaner design. From an entertainment perspective, it was virtually the same.

All in all, there's no need to change the current rules unless we are aiming to simplify them. As it happens, I prefer my rules simple and straight forward, so I would support changing it back to simple sudden death, or just a full period followed by sudden death if still tied. But at the end of the day, the current rules - as unnecessary as they are - are every bit as fair as the originals.

And yes, the original rules were totally fair too.



UPDATE:

Done a little more digging. For the sake of transparency, the reason I went with two years on each end for the OT victory stats was that I had to go through all the game logs myself. There wasn't really a central source of the information. It was a tedious and time consuming process.

I've done a little more digging and included three additional years. It does appear, with a larger sampling size, that winning on the opening possession happens more frequently than it did in 2010 and 2011. Hard to say without doing far more intensive digging if those two years were just weird outliers, but even in 2007, 2008, and 2009, it still wasn't a common enough to feel like it was hugely unfair.

In those three years, the winning percentage does skyrocket compared to 2010 and 2011. Teams that got the first possession were 30-15-1 in those years.

But what's funny is, 21 of those 45 games were won on the opening possession. That's 45%, still less than half the time. While that paints a different picture than 2010 and 2011, it hardly gives a portrait of a horribly unfair system. If anything, it still comes off as rather fair.

Looking at individual years also shows that there isn't anything universal. It sometimes swings wildly. For example, if you were to look at 2009, teams that got the first possession were far more successful than than the same teams in 2007, a year that fits the norms found in 2010 and 2011. Point here being, there doesn't appear to much of a consistent picture being painted, and that the success of teams getting the first possession vary wildly by year. None of it really suggests that the rules were the problem.

The NFL Is Just The Worst: Cheerleaders Edition

Cheerleaders are kind of a funny thing, huh? They seem the last remnants of a bygone era where only men cared about sports, and nothing is better for men than drinking beer, seeing beautiful ladies jiggle, and watching other grown men in spandex bump into each other. (Wait. What is a "smokescreen" in football, really? Ah! Moving on!)

That's all fine and dandy, except that they're still a thing. Yes, every franchise has their own cheerleaders. And they still parade them out. CBS, NBC, and Fox still make it a point to include shots of them in their broadcasts. The NFL and those individual organizations - with their billionaire owners - make so much bank that it stands to reason that those cheerleaders are getting their fair share of the pie, right?

Well, turns out, not so much. Like, at all.

Turns out, the average hourly wage of an NFL cheerleader is $9 to $15 an hour. Basically, they're making minimum wage, or the same wage as anyone else in an entry-level position. Evidently, Raiders cheerleaders were making $5 an hour in 2014, well below minimum wage. The hourly wage covers the hours spent training, and there's also a "match fee" for game days.

Typically, there are two tiers of cheerleaders, "elite" and "armature." Elite are the ladies you see at the stadium and on television. They make between $100 and $200 in such fees, while armature make about $60 to $70. The breakdown of the season's income though is a little depressing considering the NFL made about $10 billion in revenue. Elite cheerleaders earn about $3,500 for their services while armature cheerleaders make about $2,000.

A lot of people might be willing to shrug it off, saying that $3,500 over the course of eight games isn't too shabby. In essence, they're making almost $500 per game! Sounds pretty good, right? A few thousand dollars for eight shifts sounds all right.

NFL officials - generally the low men (and now women!) on the totem pole - make considerably more money. On the surface, it's easy to pass it off as simple volume. Cheerleaders only work home games, of which there are only eight. Officials, on the other hand, will work an entire season's worth of games, of which there are nearly double the number. So of course officials will make more money.

Except that the breakdown is still highly uneven. NFL officials make between $25,000 to $70,000 per season. (This is much higher in MLB, NHL, and NBA, where there are substantially more games. In this case, the "more money because more shifts" does make some sense.) If you break that down per game, officials on the lower end of that salary spectrum will earn about $1,500 per game - nearly $1,000 more than the cheerleaders. And if those long-time officials who earn on the higher end get broken down, it's about $4,300 per game.

One of the main arguments, of course, will be that the officials are more important to the game. Cheerleaders are just there to look pretty while officials are there to oversee the game. This argument is a fair one to an extent, but it downplays the skill level required for cheerleaders. It talks about them like it's an entry level position, or that it's unskilled labor.

NFL cheerleaders are considered a part-time gig, and many organizations even require these women have other jobs. They're expected to attend two four-hour rehearsals each week, while game days turn into eight-hour shifts. Never mind the demanding nature of the position, wherein the women must be diligent about maintaining their weight and tone, lest they get benched and lose a paycheck. It's also a hyper competitive market. The official requirements might not be that complicated - high school diploma or GED, having a full time job elsewhere, and some squads have a height/weight ratio requirement - it's still something of a skilled position. Applicants with prior dance or cheerleading experience have a better shot than those that don't, although if you're attractive enough, you have a shot. Not to demean the patience of other stadium employees like beer hawkers, vendors, and ticket takers, but cheerleading, by comparison, is much more of a skilled position.

Let it just sink in, by the way, that NFL squads expect women to commit 16+ hours a week to cheerleading while requiring they also have full time jobs outside it. Probably worth noting that practices and rehearsals are unpaid. In essence, cheerleaders are expected to be working and active for 55-60 hours each week.  Alternatively, you could skip the other job requirement if you're a full time college student. So yeah, it is something of a time commitment.

None of this is to speak of the appearances they will make at publicity and charity events, some of which are unpaid, but typically, these events net the women more money than the actual cheerleading at games does.

And this is sort of the problem: cheerleaders keep getting treated like part-time, unskilled employees. Yet these women could potentially spend full time hours involved in squad activities - from games to practices to public events. If the justification for paying these women such low wages is that they're part-time, then it gets really absurd when you hear that the minimum salary for NFL mascots is $23,000. The lowest paid mascots make about $3,000 for two games, putting them up there with NFL officials in terms of per game payment - well above cheerleaders.

The other part of the problem is that for a job treated like part-time and entry-level, the teams sure do have a lot of insane requirements. A heavily reported leak from a former Baltimore Ravens cheerleader made its rounds in the news outlets some time ago, and it's pretty messed up. Quite literally, the women are judged explicitly by physical appearances. Right from the rule book, each woman "is expected to maintain ideal body weight and physical look for the duration of your contract. Weigh-ins will be held at the discretion of the Ravens. a) Failure to comply with body weight and/or appearance guidelines could result in suspension from the team or gameday suspensions. b) 3 game misses due to physical appearance suspensions could result in dismissal from the team."

Several women have reported being benched and left out of big games because they gained a few pounds. Despite looking totally fine, and with one woman, still weighing less than she did the year before, they lost paychecks as a result.

I hate to bring up the hypocrisy, especially when it seems so obvious, but this is taken directly from the Ravens contract with cheerleaders:

"Cheerleaders shall not commit any act that will or may create notoriety, bring the Ravens or cheerleaders into public dispute, or reflect adversely on Ravens and/or Ravens' sponsors."

That applies to the cheerleaders. Listed examples include exotic dancing, posing in nude or semi-nude photos, participating in swim suit contests (which sounds absurd when the highest selling Sports Illustrated issue is its stupid swim suit edition), and publishing memoirs of their time as a cheerleader (probably because they know how horrible they are towards those women and want to keep it under wraps).

It seems a little strange that this applies to their cheerleaders - a group of women the organization regularly refers to as "invaluable" to their operations and as "ambassadors" - but not, you'll note, to any of their players. The Ravens are an organization in which two of the best selling jerseys in franchise history were Ray Lewis and Ray Rice. And another highly popular player is Terrell Suggs. So apparently, involvement in a murder and obstruction of justice, knocking out your fiancee and casually dragging her body around, and more beating of wives are not detrimental enough to the organization, but models posing in string bikinis on their free time (because they're told they're part-time employees and should seek alternative income elsewhere) is over the line.

(As an aside, the Buffalo Jills sent their cheerleaders to an event called "The Man Show," which had all the women walking around the casino in their bikinis. So apparently, the women aren't allowed to use their looks for personal gain, but the Bills organization sure doesn't mind profiting from it!)


These organizations are also extraordinarily controlling over the lives of these women. Teams give out guidelines that sound like an 19th century "Lady Etiquette" book. It ranges from how much bread to eat at a formal event to how to properly polish nails. It even covers how to "properly" clean their lady bits. In many cases, they're forbidden from posting selfies on Facebook, and often, they'll pull images from someone's Facebook (without their permission) and display it for all of the other women as examples of what not to do.

Oh yeah, and you know those calendars? Yeah, the cheerleaders themselves have to pay for them. Not just one, but ten a month. Yes, apparently, the cheerleaders are expected to spend their own money and are required to sell as many as they can on their own. You know, kind of like one of those elementary school candy fundraisers! If women weren't able to buy the required number of calendars, they would be benched.

Not enough nonsense? The cheerleaders are also expected to pay for their own uniforms, which are about $650. Even more, the women are required to subject themselves to a physical inspection in their final rehearsal before game day. Coaches and managers stand with clipboards, scribbling down all the physical flaws that must be addressed in order for these women to be allowed to work the game. One would imagine that at best, it's all slightly dehumanizing and demeaning. Quite literally, they're often required to subject themselves to a "jiggle test."

One woman from the Buffalo Jills reported that she was pulled aside and told her hair was not "game ready." She was told to see the squad's stylist to fix the color. Ok, reasonable enough (well, considering everything else, at least). Except that she was expected to pay for the coloring herself. For a $90 hair coloring, being part of the Jills netted her a measly $5 discount.



One of the ultimate problems, of course, is that in this multi-billion dollar industry, with organizations making hundreds of millions on their own and sharing billions in collective bargaining revenue, the cheerleaders don't have any representation. NFL players have been gaining more power in the business - and rightfully so - because they have the Player's Association. The NFLPA has been hugely critical in stopping owners from enacting abusive and exploitative policies. The NFL referees also have a union that participates in collective bargaining agreements. Officials and players, on the most part, get a fair share. (Perhaps an article for another day is how they might not actually be getting a reasonably "fair share" of the NFL pie, but they're in much better positions than other stadium and team employees.)

NFL cheerleaders don't. There's been talk of unionizing, but cheerleaders are less central to the overall product. We've already seen what damage replacement officials can do, and there's a reason they don't even bother trying to have a season if the players hold out. If the cheerleaders unionize, there's a good chance the NFL teams just replace them and try to sweep everything under the rug.

What's strange is that with five teams involved in lawsuits for unfair wages and demeaning workplaces, the NFL should try to get ahead of this. The NFL has something of an image problem. With all that's happened with the Ray Rice incident, and the Greg Hardy incident, and the Terrell Suggs incidents, and the Ray McDonald incidents - all domestic violence cases involving some pretty horrifying violence against women -news has also surfaced of their breast cancer awareness scam.

Each October, the NFL pushes pink to the fold in an effort to raise awareness for breast cancer. It's one of the ways they claim to support women, which makes sense to do that given women are an increasingly important part of their fan base. (All this, mind you, while the NFL has told Steelers running back DeAngelo Williams - who practically started the entire thing - that he can't wear pink on his uniform all season long in memory of his mother and four aunts who died of breast cancer.)

Breast Cancer Awareness is a popular cause, and it makes it appear as if the NFL cares about women. But Business Insider crunched some numbers and found that a little over 8% of profits from the month go cancer research. They tout the whole $4.5 million thing too, but that's not even half a percent of the annual NFL revenue. Even more though, their Crucial Catch program has met criticism for being overly simplistic. It doesn't help either that the whole "annual screenings save lives" thing isn't even factually true. So on top of giving a tiny percentage to cancer research - and if anything, actually profiting from the Pink Ribbon - they're also dolling out inaccurate health information. (Surprise, surprise.) It's even been argued that what the NFL is doing on this might actually be more harmful than beneficial.

Oh, and by the way, only a portion of that 8% donated goes to actual cancer research. The numbers boil down to about $3.50 for every $100 in pink merchandise revenue going to actual cancer research.



So now that we've gone down that rabbit hole, it's kind of hard to look at the NFL as something of a positive force in anyway. (Mix in Lance Armstrong-to-the-nth-degree behavior in covering up concussions, and you've got an organization that is incredibly, morally reprehensible.)

Look, I love football. I do. And I've spent a lot of time and money on the NFL. Part of me is cringing at the fact that I am currently missing Tom Brady's "Revenge Tour," as he has thrown 20 touchdowns to 0 interceptions.* I'm super bummed that I'm missing one of Brady's best seasons, at a time when the Patriots have actual characters like Rob Gronkowski and Julian Edelman, who are hilarious and great and go against the normal idea that Bill Belichick is just this grumpy old man who chases players like Wes Welker out of the organization for being too personable in the media.

I would love nothing more than to be able to actively care about the NFL again, and to watch it, and to go to games. But it's impossible to do now. The NFL is the worst organization in America, clean and simple. Walmart doesn't even have half the dirt and stink on it that the NFL does, frankly.

In the grand scheme of things, paying the cheerleaders fairly and treating them like, I dunno, humans and employees rather than just a collection of jiggling body parts, is literally the smallest thing a $10 billion business can do. No one is saying they should make what the players make. Few are even arguing they should make what officials make. Everyone understands their roles in the overall game.

But if the NFL and its thirty-two organizations have no problem using their images to promote their club and objectifying them at fundraisers and in calendars, the very least they can do is pay them reasonable and actually treat them like employees. Teams like to talk about cheerleaders as being ambassadors for their clubs. They are, in fact, one of the many faces. They're held to a higher standard than the players and owners, but they aren't even paid as well as the mascot.

Well, Kevin Durant knows:






*Yes, yes, I know Brady has actually thrown one interception. I don't know why other people don't use this metric, but I've long separated interceptions from drops. My personal format works a bit like hits versus errors in baseball. If it doesn't count as a hit because an infielder made an error, then a quarterback shouldn't be credited with an interception if it came off of a dropped pass. Brady's one interception was the result of Edelman's drop (which he actually dropped twice, since it hit him in the hands, popped out, and then he hit it again to pop it up again). 

The Yearly MLB Salary Cap Rant

Well, would you look at what time it is? It's post season time for baseball! Admittedly, despite not being a particularly big baseball fan, I'm kind of interested in it this year. Maybe it's because it doesn't feature all the same familiar faces - though there are some - or maybe it's because I've slowly been becoming something of a casual Mets fan (I know, I know, bandwagon guy here, but most of my family are Mets fans, and I have a couple friends who are weirdly so - it's been a years-long process by assimilation, really), but I think I might very well follow this year's post season beyond just checking the scores and watching a couple of games.

But, it also means it's time for my yearly rant about Major League Baseball's lack of a salary cap, and how I find it to kind of ruin the league. Allow me to update the numbers a bit. Here are the last twenty-three World Series winners, and their respective ranking in highest payrolls of that year:

2014 - San Francisco Giants - $154 million (7th highest)
2013 - Boston Red Sox: $159 million (4th highest)
2012 - San Francisco Giants: $138 million (6th highest)
2011 - St. Louis Cardinals: $105 million (11th)
2010 - San Francisco Giants: $97 million (10th)
2009 - New York Yankees: $201 million (1st)
2008 - Philadelphia Phillies: $98 million (13th)
2007 - Boston Red Sox: $143 million (2nd)
2006 - St. Louis Cardinals: $88 million (11th)
2005 - Chicago White Sox: $73 million (13th)
2004 - Boston Red Sox: $125 million (2nd)
2003 - Florida Marlins: $63 million (20th)
2002 - Anaheim Angels: $61 million (15th)
2001 - Arizona Diamondbacks: $81 million (8th)
2000 - New York Yankees: $92 million (1st)
1999 - New York Yankees: $89 million (1st)
1998 - New York Yankees: $64 million (2nd)
1997 - Florida Marlins: $48 million (7th)
1996 - New York Yankees: $53 million (1st)
1995 - Atlanta Braves: $46 million (3rd)
1993 - Toronto Blue Jays: $43 million (1st)
1992 - Toronto Blue Jays: $44 million (1st)
1991 - Minnesota Twins: $23 million (13th)

 Anything in particular stand out? Well, in case you haven't read any of these posts for the past two or three years, allow me to point out that teams in the top ten highest payrolls (the top third) account for 16 of the last 23 World Series victors. That's 69.5% of the time! Or, if you're more into fractions, that's over two-thirds.

Notice anything else though? Well, there are 30 teams in the Major Leagues. With that in mind, how many teams in the bottom third of payrolls do you see have won a World Series? Yes, that's right. In the past 23 World Series, not a single one of them came from the bottom third. In fact, only one winner came from the bottom half (the 2003 Marlins) of payrolls. Which means, by the way, that 95.7% of World Series winners come from the top half of payrolls.

Well, ok, but not every team in the top third financially even get to the playoffs. Sure, sure. Let's break down the last six years of post season teams:

2015:
AL: New York Yankees (2), Houston (29), Kansas City (16), Texas (8), Toronto (10)
NL: Pittsburgh (25), Chicago (13), St. Louis (11), New York Mets (21), Los Angeles Dodgers (1)
4 of 10 in top third. 3 out of 10 in the middle third. 3 out of 10 in bottom third. 6 out of 10 in top half.

2014:
AL: Oakland, Kansas City, Baltimore, Detroit, Los Angeles Angels
NL: San Francisco, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Los Angeles Dodgers, Washington Nationals
5 of 10 in top third. 3 of 10 in middle third. 2 of 10 in bottom third. 7 of 10 in top half.

2013:
AL: Cleveland, Tampa, Boston, Detroit, Oakland
NL: Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Los Angeles Dodgers, Atlanta
4 of 10 in the top third. 3 of 10 in the middle third. 3 of 10 in bottom third. 5 of 10 in top half.

2012:
AL: Texas, Baltimore, New York Yankees, Oakland, Detroit
NL: Atlanta, St. Louis, Washington, Cincinnati, San Francisco
6 of 10 in the top third. 4 of 10 in the middle third. 0 of 10 in the bottom third. 7 of 10 in top half.

2011:
AL: New York Yankees, Detroit, Texas, Tampa
NL: Philadelphia, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Arizona
3 of 8 in top third. 3 of 8 in the middle third. 2 of 8 in the bottom third. 5 of 8 in top half.

2010:
AL: Tampa, Texas, Minnesota, New York Yankees
NL: Philadelphia, Cincinnati, San Francisco, Atlanta
3 of 8 in top third. 3 of 8 in middle third. 2 of 8 in bottom third. 5 of 8 in top half.

Sure, 2015 is a bit different from the norm. Nearly a third of the teams come from the bottom third, which has only happened once before since 2010. By the way, in this instance, the difference between the lowest payroll in the top third and the highest payroll in the bottom third is about $20 million.  Houston and Pittsburgh are the only teams in this year's post season that did not spend over $100 million. The disparity between the Dodgers (the highest payroll, by far) and the Astros (the lowest in the post season) is insane. It's almost $200 million difference.

Anyway, let's put these numbers into totals and percentages, for those who are into that sort of thing. Here's the breakdown over the last six years, out of 56 playoff slots (8 per year in 2010 and '11, 10 per year after, with that silly wildcard business):

Teams in the top third: 25    (44.6%)
Teams in the middle third: 19   (33.9%)
Teams in the bottom third: 12   (21.4%)

Teams in the top half: 35   (62.5%)
Teams in the bottom half: 21   (37.5%)


World Series Winners (of the past 5 winners, since 2015 is TBD):
4 out 5 came from the top third. (The 2011 Cardinals were 11th in payroll that year.)  That's 80%, to do some simple math.


Without knowing anything about baseball, I can pretty much guarantee that Houston and Pittsburgh are out. No chance to win the championship. I can also pretty reasonably rule out the Mets, as well as the Royals and the Cubs.  That leaves us with really only half the teams having a reasonable, statistical chance at the title. And look, if it turns out any of those five teams I just listed even make the World Series - never mind win it - I will come back here and post about it.

But frankly, either way, the point doesn't change. The numbers and statistics are pretty clear: the more money you spend, the better your chances are. It's almost like baseball is America's past time in the sense that it really embodies that idea that those with money just have better odds. It's true in baseball. Again, my argument is not that money guarantees anything. It clearly doesn't. If it did, then the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, and Phillies would have won practically every title in the past ten years.

No, my point is quite simply that the money clearly has some impact. It increases your odds. And, frankly, it's entirely unfair that teams in huge markets like Los Angeles and New York get to compete against markets like Kansas City or Houston. Even if you don't think money makes much of a difference, certainly some of these stats must seem a little strange, right? Surely, you can recognize that the money does make some impact, at least, right?

Really though, no team should be able to spend almost $200 million more than other teams. That cannot be considered fair play...


Anyway, that's my yearly update to the increasingly skewed-in-favor-of-those-with-money statistics. Certainly, I'm hoping for an outlier this year. I'm just not holding my breath.



EDIT: I realized that I incorrectly stated that no wild card team had won the World Series yet. This is, of course, false. The San Francisco Giants were the National League wild card team and won the World Series. Don't know how that slipped through. Was using a previous installment of this rant and forgot the time stamp on it.