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| A photo no one ever thought they’d see |
BEFORE he was the greatest QB in the history of football, Tom Brady was Plan B. Brady was the 199th pick in the draft, a guy who had started the 2001 camp as the 4th string QB for the New England Patriots, who already had a franchise QB in Drew Bledsoe.
People forget how good Bledsoe was. I remember his first college game, when he did some mop up duty for Washington State in a loss at U.S.C. Bledsoe was the 3rd string QB as a freshman, then came off the bench and threw two TDs in the 4th Quarter, and could pretty much make all the throws. A week later, he was named the starter. Mike Price, the W.S.U. head coach at the time, told the story of going to the weekly booster club luncheon in Spokane, where he was asked by an alum why he’d elevated Bledsoe to the starting spot ahead of the two pretty good QBs the Cougs already had, and Price looked right at the guy and said, “because he’s going to be the #1 pick in the NFL draft one day.”
Bledsoe was that good, and people also forget just how bad the Patriots had to be in order to land him. The Patriots were 2-14 in 1992, earning the #1 pick in the draft after having been beaten 10-6 by the 2-14 Seattle Seahawks during the regular season in one of the worst games of football that I have ever seen. The Pats were truly a horrible team, at that point, bereft of talent and ideas, frequently owned and operated by guys with big names who didn’t have any actual knowledge of how to run a team. But the #1 pick fell their way in a year a franchise QB was available, which is a gift from the football gods when it happens. Bledsoe would then go on to set some records along the way, and lead the Pats to a Super Bowl appearance in 1997. The Pats were set at QB. They had their guy.
Right up until they didn’t in September 2001, when Bledsoe got crushed by the Jets’ Mo Lewis, leaving Brady – who’d impressed enough to earn the back-up spot during the summer – as the Patriots starter. There were modest expectations, to say the least. The Patriots had what looked to be a nice team that season – solid defense, balanced offense – but losing Bledsoe was a huge blow. Optimism regarding the backup QB was, well, not high:
“Most NFL fans have little knowledge or confidence in what Tom Brady can do.”
– Alan Greenberg, Hartford Courant, Sep. 27, 2001
Teams in the NFL pretty much deserve a mulligan when their starting QB gets hurt. A long-term injury at the QB position pretty much ruins your season. The general role of the backup QB, when pressed into service, is to do what they call “game management.” Basically, don’t screw it up. Make smart decisions, don’t turn the ball over, etc. But Bledsoe was going to be out of the lineup for a long time, and the novelty of “game management” only works for so long. If you’re trying simply to manage the game and simply hoping to get by, you’re eliminating large swaths of the playbook. This means defenses have less to worry about and it becomes easier for them to key in. Over time, it gets harder and harder to win.
So what you have to do, then, is not simply turn to Plan B but, more importantly, to embrace Plan B. In New England, head coach Bill Belichick has always been the master of Plan B. He’s never gotten near the credit for this, in fact. If something doesn’t work, he’ll try something else. He’ll shape shift on the fly. The Patriots offense has radically changed from season to season, depending on the personnel available. Some of his more impressive coaching jobs have come in years where the Patriots were injury-riddled and he was forced to get creative. He’d have receivers playing corner, linebackers running pass routes. What Belichick had figured out was that of the 53 guys on your roster, probably 52 of them were going to be necessary during the course of the season – pretty much everyone except the 3rd QB, and who knows, maybe he can return punts or something. Not only do you need depth, but you need versatility and, more importantly, you need to embrace the uncertainty and be prepared for it.
So Bledsoe goes down in Sep. 2001 and is going to be out of the lineup for a long time. Okay, now what? Well, you have this Brady kid and he’s your QB, so figure out what he does well and go with it. Buy into it: “okay, guys, this is how we’re going to win games,” which is precisely what his team did. And, of course, it turned out pretty well for the Pats that season.
You have to embrace risk. This notion is so, so hard for so, so many people to grasp. As someone who runs a scrabble club, I wind up being a de facto coach for new players, whose propensity when playing a superior opponent is to play very defensively. This is the wrong strategy. In playing very defensively, you’re actually limiting your options in a situation where your options are limited to begin with. The superior player probably has a better idea of what to do in a tight, defensive game than you do. The solution, then, is to play more openly and aggressively, take risks and increase volatility and uncertainty. When I point this out, the immediate response is almost always the same: “but they’ll kill me if I do that, they’ll play flashy bingos and I’ll lose by 200,” to which I say, “yes, they might do that, and quite possibly will do that, but what if they don’t? What if you get the good tiles instead of them? How are you going to use the good tiles to win on a closed board where you can’t make any plays? The low-percentage play is always better than the no-percentage play.” It’s usually at this point that the light goes on, although it can take quite a while to convince yourself this is true. Risk can be your friend.
That doesn’t mean be stupid about it, of course. Don’t be reckless. You have to know the situation. Don’t be like the Atlanta Falcons and stupidly keep throwing the ball downfield when all you need to do is run the ball three times and kick a field goal. Be smart about it. But if something isn’t working, or if you’re matched against a superior opponent, you have to be willing to try something else and, more to the point, you have to be committed to trying something else. Go all-in on it. Losing is the default, after all: you can do everything according to plan and have it still not work out. You’re better off trying something different.
We saw that already once this year, in the NCAA Championship Game. Alabama was toast. Georgia was killing them. So out of nowhere, Alabama turns to the big Hawaiian kid at QB in the 2nd half and basically threw their entire playbook out the window. It’s desperation, of course, but these are desperate times. You’re down two TDs in the 3rd Quarter of a championship game, you can’t move the ball, you can’t score. And then, all of a sudden, you’ve got this kid coming in and flinging the ball all over the place and Georgia has no earthly idea how to stop him, because Alabama are suddenly doing stuff they haven’t done all year, and not only are Alabama moving the ball but, more importantly, the belief in winning returns to an Alabama sideline where guys had previously been arguing and fighting with each other.
Alabama went all-in on Plan B and wound up winning in OT. It may not have worked. It could have been a disaster. But the game was already a disaster, because Georgia was kicking their ass. I’m reminded of a quote by Alabama coach Nick Saban after a game where his usually defensively stout Crimson Tide won 55:44 over Auburn but got absolutely shredded by the Auburn QB: “you have to be able to win these types of games.” Yes, in a perfect world, your defense would stuff the other side, you’d control the clock and move the ball and win handily. But it doesn’t work that way. This is why we say it’s complicated by the presence of the opponent. The other side is trying to do stuff, too, and sometimes, they do it really well. Games aren’t a perfect world. Sometimes, you have to make stuff up on the fly.
Embracing risk and unpredictibility can be a wonderful thing. Several weeks before the Royals were 90 feet from tying Game 7 of the 2014 World Series, they were getting worked by the Oakland A’s in the Wild Card game – a game which they then turned around by running all over the A’s to the tune of seven stolen bases. Conventional wisdom was that the Royals shouldn’t be doing this, of course, as outs are precious when you’re losing and you don’t want to risk getting thrown out on the bases. But the Royals needed runs and, more importantly, they needed to make chaos – to which Oakland’s relievers responded by coming completely unhinged. Louisville won an NCAA basketball title by essentially making a decoy out of their best player, as Russ Smith basically stood 25’ from the basket for the entire second half, but Michigan had their best defender on him, and he had to go out and guard him, which then opened up the floor for the Cardinals to take advantage of. But if someone had suggested beforehand that Louisville would win a national title by having their leading scorer not shoot, you’d have thought they were nuts.
And see, I’ve never bought into this ridiculous idea of playing like you have “nothing to lose” as it pertains to something like the Super Bowl. You have lots to lose. You have the chance to lose the game that you’ve pointed towards for the entirety of your career, with no guarantee that you’ll ever get there again. What you do have to do, however, is figure out how to win, and figuring out how to win sometimes means doing things differently, rerigging and rejigging and shifting things up.
Which is certainly what the Patriots have done in reaching eight Super Bowls since 2002. Yes, they’ve had the Plan-B-turned-franchise-QB in Tom Brady, who I do believe is, in fact, the greatest QB in history, but that fact alone doesn’t guarantee success. I’ve referred to the Patriots as The Fragile Dynasty in the past, not as a means of deriding their success but as a means of praising it. The NFL is a league which has made it a point of attempting to institutionalize parity – which, for a long time, was really hard to do, and you can run through the litany of awful Super Bowl blowouts in the 1980s and 1990s as proof of that. We don’t get those sorts of awful blowouts in the Super Bowl too often any more. Oh, sure, you had the Seahawks beat the stuffing out of the Broncos a few years ago, both otherwise, we’ve had two decades of good, often great, and usually exciting Super Bowls. The operations in the NFL have become more sophisticated than ever, they are more data-driven and more savvy than ever before. The margins are narrower, the differences between one team and another are getting smaller and smaller. In that light, New England simply getting to eight Super Bowls in 17 years is the great achievement.
I call the Patriots the Fragile Destiny because they’ve won five of those eight Super Bowls and could easily have lost seven of them. The most “one sided” of those games still involved recovering an onside kick in the final moments after the Eagles had cut the lead to three points. (The first Pats-Eagles game. We’ll get to the second in a moment.) Can you imagine all of the ridiculous narratives that would have been spun over the years if the Pats had, in fact, lost seven Super Bowls? “Brady can’t win the big one!” “Belichick is a choker!” Blah blah blah. Even if they were 3-5 in those games – let’s say that the Seahawks run the damn ball, and let’s say that the Falcons don’t go and throw up all over themselves in the last 9:00 of the game – they’d be viewed negatively. Instead, of course, we hate them because they’re successful, and because they’ve always seemed to find a way to wriggle off the hook – which isn’t really true at all, as the best team they ever had, in terms of talent and record, got beat by the New York Giants in the Super Bowl, partly something miraculous and ridiculous took place. Managing to win five of these eight games – all of which came to the end, and some of which required great escapes that Houdini would be proud of – is, in fact, dynastic. No, they don’t just roll over the opposition like the 1986 Bears or the Montana/Young Niners or the Jimmy Johnson Cowboys. Those sorts of games just aren’t going to happen very much any more in the modern NFL.
The point is that the margins here are really, really thin, and while we look to craft and construct narratives based upon final outcomes, Super Bowls are still one-off contests and small sample sizes. All games are, in fact, with the difference being that for this particular game, you have extra time to prepare and don’t have to focus on the long-term. This is the long-term. This is the end. You’d better have a Plan B in mind if things aren’t going well and, more importantly, not only be prepared to take risks but be committed to take risks.
Which is exactly what the Philadelphia Eagles did against New England in the Super Bowl on Sunday. Your first thought, when you see the Eagles going for it on 4th Down, and you see them pulling out a crazy razzle-dazzle trick play for a TD, is to say, “wow, the Eagles are being really aggressive in this game!” Your second thought, right after that, is to say, “why don’t teams always play like this?” Football is chess on grass. There are so many things that you can do, there are so many choices. Why play it safe? Why do what is expected? The Eagles didn’t just stash that crazy trick play away on page 600 of the playbook, either – they actually walked through it the night before the game in a hotel ballroom. They were going to run if they needed to. They were the underdog, after all, against the 5-time champion Patriots. They were going to take all the risks.
Which is actually a weird thing to say, because the risks they took on Sunday were, in retrospect, smart. This trick play – reverse and throwback from a backup tight end to QB Nick Foles – came late in the first half, with the Eagles up 15-12 on the Pats. You could kick the field goal here on 4th down to make it 18-12, but you’re then giving the ball back to the Patriots, most likely around the 25-yard line, ahead by only one score with time remaining on the clock, and Tom Brady has already shredded your defense for 250 yards. You could easily go into the locker room only up three, or maybe even behind 19-18. (Although, given how pathetic New England’s kicking game was on Sunday, you might have liked your chances.) You’re on the 1-yard line, so if you go for it and don’t make it, the Patriots have 99 yards of field in front of them and are likely to just run the clock out and be glad they’re down three points. So the bold play here – going for it – is also the right play. Go for it, score and you’re up 10 and the pressure is back on the other side. Brady may have been amassing zillions of yards, but so long as they have to chase the game, the Eagles have the advantage. So go for it, damn it! And going for it on 4th down in the 4th Quarter was the only right choice: the Eagles are down a point, they might not get the ball back if they punt, and if they turn it over on downs on their own 35-yard line or something, and New England goes in and scores, at least you get the ball back again.
But this is “radical” thinking in a league where far too many coaches can’t do the math and far too many of them fail to realize that you need to stop trying to establish the run and start trying to actually win the game. The reason for conservative play-calling, of course, is that if it doesn’t work, you look bad. But so what? LOSING LOOKS BAD! Had the situations been flipped, I think the Pats would have gone for it in both of those instances, because Belichick gives ZERO FUCKS about looking bad. He cares about winning football games, and amid all of the second-guessing afterwards, had it not worked out, he would have said, “we thought it was our best chance to win.”
Doug Pederson gave zero fucks as well. The Eagles were one of the most aggressive teams in the league during the season when it came to going for it on 4th down. And the Philadelphia Eagles had already embraced uncertainty and risk, because they’d been forced to turn to Plan B when QB Carson Wentz, who was likely to be the MVP, went down with a knee injury, and the Eagles had to turn to backup Nick Foles. The first few games after Wentz went down were, well, a mess. Even though they were the #1 seed in the NFC playoffs, the Eagles were still underdogs at home in their first two playoff games.
But there is stuff Nick Foles does well. Nick Foles went to the Pro Bowl when he was the Eagles QB the first time around. No one gets to a Pro Bowl in their career who doesn’t do stuff well. So during the bye week, which the Eagles earned for being the best team in the NFC, Doug Pederson and his staff went back and looked at the film and figured out what it was does Foles did well and adjusted the offense on the fly, adapting the passing game to create more play action and what they call run-pass options or “RPOs.” It was sort of murky in the first go-round, as the Eagles stumbled past the Falcons, but then the new offense kicked in against Minnesota, a 38:7 rout in which the Vikings – who had the best defense in the NFL – looked completely flummoxed. The Eagles were the best team in the NFL before Wentz got hurt, not just because of Wentz but because they have good players all over the field, and now, all of a sudden, here they are running all of these weird plays Chip Kelly drew up back when he was at Oregon – plays designed entirely to take advantage of speed mismatches in space – and now you’ve got big strong receivers running free all over the place, and more room for the backs to run, and they’re throwing it out in the flat to scat backs who can beat you to the corner. Foles can make all of those plays. Whereas the tendency is to play it safe and game manage with a backup QB, the Eagles went the other way: turn the disadvantage into the advantage, use the element of surprise, be hyper aggressive and, above all else, trust Foles to make the plays he’s capable of making.
And if Foles is making plays he’s capable of making, and doing what he can to cancel out – even a little – the enormous Brady advantage at QB, then guess what? The Eagles have better players than the Pats at almost every other position on the field. They have a great offensive line, they have more speed on defense and in the skill positions. I had taken the Eagles +4½ bet offered me by my Pats-lovin’ columnist buddy Piano because across the board, save the QB position, the Eagles were a better team. In the end, I wasn’t that surprised that the Eagles won.
I was, however, surprised at how they won. I would have expected the Eagles to win by making some big plays on the defensive side. Instead, they made exactly one of those, but one was enough, because the Patriots made none.
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| (Streeter Lecka/Getty Images) |
It was a crazy game, an astonishing game with more total yards than any game in league history. It looked like some college game from the Big 12, some Oklahoma-Texas Tech game where they run up oodles of yards and “good defense” constitutes holding the other side to a field goal. Brady threw for 505 yards, often in massive chunks, but Foles threw for 373. I would never have thought that Foles would be going toe to toe, shot for shot against Brady and matching him. If anything, the Pats scored too quickly – it’s sort of hard not to if you’re moving in 30-yard bursts – because their defense couldn’t get off the field. The Pats defense was terrible: the Eagles scored eight times, including several long drives lasting more than seven minutes. In that sense, it reminded me of the Giants-Bills Super Bowl of 1991, where the Giants managed to hold the ball for 40 minutes – which is what they had to do, because the Buffalo offense were gaining 20 yards a minute, but the Bills just simply ran out of time. And on Sunday, there were the Pats launching the unsuccessful Hail Mary into the end zone with :09 left, out of time. The Eagles had done just enough to win.
But just enough is good enough, and I’m happy for my many, many good friends from the City of Brotherly Lose … I mean, uh, Brotherly Love … because Philadelphia has been an underratedly terrible sports town over the years. Philly has seen it all, when it comes to losing. The Phillies have lost more games than any team in the history of sports. The 76ers have managed to post the 2nd- and 3rd-worst seasons in NBA history. But then it goes the other way as well: since the Broad St. Bullies won a couple of Stanley Cups in the mid-1970s, the Flyers have lost in the Stanley Cup finals six straight times. In the heyday of 76ers basketball, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, they managed only one title. Those Sixers teams were great. They really were truly great teams – but the 1980s Celtics and Lakers were simply better, and I have no idea how they managed to lose to the Blazers in 1977. That ’77 Sixers team was one of the weirdest, zaniest, funnest teams ever, and also one of the best. It sort of sucks they didn’t win a title.
And the Eagles, of course, had never won a Super Bowl before this past Sunday. In fact, there is no question that, prior to Sunday, they were the best franchise in the sport that hadn’t won one. It’s cyclical, of course, with ups and downs along the way, and they’ve had a few down years like most everyone, but the Eagles have generally played at a high level for the past 40 years, losing several Super Bowls and a gaggle of NFC Championship games along the way. And that sort of consistency matters in the end. All you have to do is compare them with the 76ers, who tanked and lost on purpose for three years and less resembled a basketball team than an interpretive dance troupe. Sure, maybe all of that losing will result in enough talent to win an NBA title, but there is no guarantee of that, and in the meantime, 76ers fans had to put up with a shitty-ass product. Seriously, fuck the process. I take issue with any pundit in sports who is an advocate of tanking, because they usually are media people who don’t have to actually buy tickets to the games. Who wants to watch that crap? Anyone who thought Sam Hinkie’s Process wasn’t bullshit obviously didn’t have to pay to see it.
We’ve come to overvalue losing in creating this sports culture of “RINGZ.” Being good all the time matters. Being consistent matters. The Eagles have usually been pretty good, and what’s wrong with that, exactly? Winning is hard. It’s really, really hard. Anyone can lose. Losing doesn’t impress me. It’s good job security, but it doesn’t impress me.
Being good matters, in the end. The idea that being terrible is somehow what’s necessary in order to some day be good is complete folly, and always has been. I’ve always admired teams like the Patriots for being so good for so long. Being consistently good is impressive. And it’s cool that, for once, the Eagles finally figured out how to be great.
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| All hail the gooey cheese of bliss! |
Do you have any questions you’d like to ask? Would you like to commiserate because your team sucks? Drop me a line! You can email me at inplaylose@gmail.com, and when we get enough questions and comments gathered up, I’ll do another Hate Mail edition of In Play Lose.
