The “good” teams in the AFC aren’t striking fear into anyone’s heart in Cleveland.
Yeah, they already beat BAL. The only thing to worry about is if they catch BUF on a good day.
No game is out of reach with a defense as good as Cleveland’s.
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Looking through superbowl futures at different sites, there are normal differences but Jacksonville’s odds seem to have crazy variation. 29/1, 35/1, 40/1, 50/1 on 4 different sites.
No they don’t. The only thing that actually matters is ensuring both teams get one possession to begin a half and not having a pedantic trap door option that’s equivalent to a turnover. That unbalances the game somewhere on the order of 2-3 points. None of the other stuff matters. People think it matters (e.g., gaming the wind direction) but there’s no evidence that it does, probably because that aspect is correctly counterbalanced in the rules.
…therefore Dak Prescott and Jaire Alexander are dumber than a child of average intelligence? I don’t understand what conclusion is supposed to be drawn from a statement like that. It’s well known in behavioral economics / psychology that if you give people terrible options to choose from, eventually some will take it.
Yes, they do.
No, it’s not.
We could just get rid of coin tosses all together. And picking sides. All this stuff is just predetermined for each stadium. The reason we don’t do that is that it adds another strategic element. And if it were pre-determined, that could lead to other problems.
It matters rarely. Probably going to be tough to get enough sample size for the cases where it matters. If the rule is adhered to properly, there will be no unbalancing.
Furthermore, these “trap doors” do not occur frequently. This is definitely a less than 1% time kind of thing. Probably quite a bit less. So the vast majority of the time, the rule works fine.
That is not the only possibility. It is also possible that no one properly explained it to them, which is a near certainty in Jaire’s case. Likely in Dak’s case also. I’m sure that if it were explained properly to him, he wouldn’t make the mistake. How can we be so sure? Because he’s never going to make that mistake again. So it is clear that his brain can grasp the concept. Someone just needs to explain it in a way that is as good as actually experiencing the error in real life.
This is exactly the point: you don’t have any good evidence that it matters. The fact that we can’t aggregate enough data to determine if any such edge exists out of many thousands of NFL games is why we don’t need rules for it. What we have plenty of evidence for is how many points possessing the football is worth (around 1.5). That’s also supported by the fact that out of many thousands of NFL games, the number of times a team intentionally (and foolishly) elected to defend a goal and therefore kick the ball away twice is somewhere on the order of one or two dozen. That number is rivaled by the times a team unintentionally chose to give the ball away twice. All of the hallmark signs of terrible rule writing.
What is this number? It’s really, really low, right?
I don’t know the exact number because I’m identifying them through internet searches and not a play-by-play database. Since 2008, there seem to be at least a few cases. In that same span, I can’t seem to find a case where a team chose to intentionally kick / defend a goal in regulation. That was more common prior to the rule change and especially in the 80s and early 90s. Also recall that the kickoff / touchback rules were less favorable to offenses back then.
If a fuck up like this happens something like 1/1000 of games, if nothing else, seems like a small price to pay for the hilarity that will occasionally ensue. I’ll give up that small amount of balance for entertainment value alone. Any theoretical benefit in odd conditions is just the cherry on top.
All of those prices are various forms of theft.
I don’t find it humorous but horses for courses I guess. It might be 1/1000 for any single rule but the problem is that there isn’t just one rule with disaster scenario risk. Last night’s game is a great example.
When I saw the refs bungle that last night, I thought of this discussion and how it reinforces the risk that refs just fuck up the coin toss. Shame that no one last night had a hot mic - although even if league figured out ref screwed up, not sure how you can fix.
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I remember like a decade ago, a bunch of players publicly claimed that didn’t know that a regular season game could end in a tie. Jaire doesn’t need to be dumber than a child, he just needs to be a little dumb and incurious about it. Watch the video of him explaining what happened and it should be obvious he is both dumb and incurious.
Dak probably less dumb than Jaire but could have just had brain fart too. The history of the NFL is full of little mental mistakes as is the history of other, less complicated sports.
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Since home field is a pretty big advantage they should just let visiting team pick, but then they’d lose out on a tradition that can make an excuse for more commercials and probably is an excuse to sell commemorative Super Bowl toss coins or some other revenue stream
lol, I still remember Donovan McNabb looking around confused at the end of a regular season OT game wondering why everybody was walking off the field instead of getting ready for a second overtime. It seems wacky that someone that lives and breathes football wouldn’t ever have stopped to think what that “T” column is in the standings, but yeah.
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Pool reporter: “Well did she say Costanza?”
Brad Allen: “Yes, I called Cartwright and nobody answered.”
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Most rules are subject to “disaster scenario risk” when you have refs that have problems seeing and hearing making the calls.