Smart Football's Guide to the BCS Championship

Okay, so it's not really a guide at all, but instead just some stuff I've previously written that happens to have some tenuous link to the title matchup between Oklahoma and Florida.



1. Rhythm Nation: Auburn Hires Gus Malzahn. Money quote:

Is Chizik Trying to Copy Oklahoma?

So, you can see why this might be appealing to Auburn, even with a defensive minded head coach. As Dr Saturday recently pointed out, "only Oklahoma's 1,036 total plays bested the Hurricane's 1,007 this year, though TU led the nation in yards per play." I think this is no coincidence.

Oklahoma too has a fairly basic system as far as schemes go. They don't do anything that a lot of teams don't. Their passing game is kind of a derivative of what they did under Mike Leach and Mark Mangino, but they have gotten away from the pure faith of the Airraid and now use a lot of rather traditional (meaning, common) concepts. Labeling them spread, pro, multiple, or whatever is a bit futile. (When asked what offense Oklahoma runs, Bob Stoops said simply: "The Oklahoma offense."). They use both the "I" and other traditional sets, though are probably still more "spread" than anything else. But before people jump down my throat, I note that I think Wittgenstein was accurate when he said most arguments boil down to people's different uses of labels and language, in this case what spread or pro means to one person versus another.

Kevin Wilson, OU's offensive coordinator, is not known as a passing guru, and few would confuse him with one. But he knows one thing extraordinarily well: the no-huddle up-tempo offense. He ran it at Northwestern with Randy Walker, and that's how OU killed people this year. They have all these great athletes, they have solid schemes, and they go so fast they mow you down. I have to think Chizik envisions this kind of result.

2. The Urban Meyer/Florida Gator Offense. Money quote:

Just click the link already.

3. Discussion of OU's drubbing of Texas Tech. Money quote:

Further, [one] storyline is that Stoops, Venables, and others basically have Leach's number, they've figured his out, and don't expect all that stuff to work against them. Stoops even reinforced this storyline after the game, by noting that most games between Tech and OU haven't been close. But this too is overblown. The game wasn't a referendum on the offense, it was a battle between two teams. OU clearly has a talent advantage of some kind, and although the offense didn't do nearly enough to even approach winning, it was only a few bad drives before the game was 21-0 and was basically out of reach.

That said, there's a kernal of truth to Stoops' theory about knowing that offense. As I've pointed out before, Leach ran his offense at OU exactly how he wanted. If OU does "get" Leach's offense, he doesn't get it in a way that another team could just pop in the tape and pick up. The Airraid, as much as it is certain schemes -- and no doubt OU's defense sat in zone a lot of the night working on their ability to pattern read the traditional Airraid concepts -- but the Airraid is an approach to football as much as it is an offense. If the OU guys have this heightened familiarity, it's not just schemes, it's knowing how Leach runs a practice, how they practice screens, indeed, how he approaches the game. Again, I don't think OU has the offense or Leach figured out once and for all (I mean, Tech did beat OU the year before and scored over thirty on them), but I can't completely discount this.

4.What does (should) it mean to be crowned National Champion?(Another self-explanatory one).

5. Probabilities, Pragmatism, and Football. Money quote:

"They say statistics are for losers, but losers are usually the ones thinking that. Statistics are great. Our whole game plan is based off statistics. Our management of the game is based off statistics. Our recruiting is based off statistics. Everything we do is analyzed. Is that the bottom line? No. You can't analyze the heart of Tim Tebow." - Urban Meyer

6. Auburn's offense might be bad, but don't call it the spread, the Airraid, or the Tony Franklin System. Money quote:

To highlight the absurdity of this situation, let's think of the last time a big name school hired an offensive coordinator to run the Hal Mumme offense: Bob Stoops, when he went to Oklahoma from the U of Florida, hired Mike Leach as his offensive coordinator. Why? Well as defensive coordinator with Florida, Stoops said that they only team that had an incommensurate level of success against them was Kentucky. Stoops noted that UF's talent level was far superior, yet stopping Kentucky was maddening for Stoops. So Stoops said: I want that.

Compare this to what is happening with Tuberville and Franklin. Back in 1999, Stoops hired Leach and gave him free rein to install his offense. (In fact, I have a coaching clinic talk where Stoops said that he ordered Leach not to change anything that first year, because he wanted exactly what he saw with Kentucky.) And who was Leach's QB at OU? A noodle-armed guy named Josh Heupel. And their receivers were a bunch of converted running backs and defensive backs. Yet I didn't hear the same cry that "Oh, we'll spread it out when we get the athletes." (News flash: if that's your approach, it'll never happen.) Now, I also observe that Stoops too wasn't entirely comfortable being a spread it all the time guy, and Leach happily went on to Texas Tech where he could be as much of a mad scientist as he liked. Yet OU stuck with the exact same system the next year with Mark Mangino as OC, and won a National Title. But Stoops knew what he was getting when he hired Leach, and most importantly he let him do it.

7. Not me, but everyone should read EDSBS's Orson Swindle on Rick Reilly's status as walking gag-reflex inducer. Money quote:

Tough call, but I gotta go with

Also, we never read Reilly growing up and don’t read him now, since he largely comes from the school of hackneyed one-liners (occasionally scoring) and the aesthetic of Mitch Albom’s School for Guys Who Ponder the Beauty of Life, Put One Hand on Cheek, and Lean On Said Hand Wistfully.

Looking forward to the game.

What does (should) it mean to be crowned "National Champion"?

There is much debate now whether Utah or Texas ought to share in the college National Championship in some way, though it is unlikely that they actually will). From the WSJ's Daily Fix:

[I]n an open letter to the 72 members of the media who choose the Associated Press No. 1, the Washington Post’s John Feinstein makes a strong case for them to place undefeated Utah at the top of their ballot.

“The reason to vote for Utah is simple: This is the one and only way you can stand up to the BCS bullies — the university presidents, commissioners, athletic directors and the TV networks who enable them — and, to renew a catch phrase, just say no,” Feinstein argues. “Say no to this horrible, hypocritical, feed-the-big-boys system. Say no to the idea that fair competition doesn’t matter. Say no to all the hype surrounding the power conferences and power teams. To co-opt yet another catch phrase, say yes to change.”

Feinstein isn’t the only one who thinks Utah didn’t get a fair shake at the national championship. Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel agrees, pointing out that some voters in the Harris Interactive poll, which determines the title-game participants, admit they didn’t see the Utes play at all this season. “Even by the absurd standards of the BCS, having voters not bother to watch an undefeated team play a single game is a new low,” Wetzel writes. “Whether Utah deserved to be ranked No. 1, 2 or 25 isn’t the point of this argument. The Utes deserved to have voters at least see them.”

But not all agree:

Gregg Doyel disagrees that Utah deserves to be No. 1. “People, please. Utah is the same team that beat Michigan 25-23. Michigan went 3-9 this season,” he writes at CBS Sports. “Utah is the same team that beat Air Force 30-23. Air Force went 8-5. Utah beat Weber State 37-21. Weber State isn’t even in Division I. Utah beat New Mexico 13-10. New Mexico went 4-8.”

I'm not sure if, given a vote, I would vote Utah #1, but Doyel's argument seems bizarre to me. There's a lot of weaknesses with arguing that, because, say, USC beat the Citadel by 20, while Ohio State only beat then by 10, then USC is better. And his argument is just a series of those assertions. I mean, that kind of thing happens all the time and no one believes those predictions because they are entirely unhelpful. All the time one team gets blown out only to turn around and beat a team that blew out the team that originally beat them. Some teams just match up differently; football teams are complex, and some just match up with others better. To paraphrase Herm Edwards, it's about who won. Nevertheless, we saw some of this reasoning this year with Oklahoma and Texas, where Texas's win over Oklahoma eventually counted for less than the subjective impressiveness of Oklahoma's victories down the stretch.

But, more fundamentally, all this made me wonder what the designation "National Champion" is supposed to capture, anyway. The baseline that everyone -- including the President-elect -- seems to push for is a playoff. So we can use that to ask about each view.

Doyel's argument seems to be that Utah doesn't deserve to be #1 because -- "People, please" -- you wouldn't really expect them to beat Texas, OU, or Florida, right? I mean, just look at all their bare victories over mediocre or mid-level teams. In other words, one could phrase the Doyel view as the "National Champion" is the team that you think is the absolute best team in the sense that, were they to be matched up against any other team in the country, they would always be favored to win.

That can't be right, though. That's not at all what a single-elimination playoff gives you. Had the 2007 Giants played the 2007 Patriots the week following the Giants' Super Bowl win, would Eli and Co. suddenly have become the favorite? I think not. In March Madness, with teams playing every couple of days, do we really think that the better team always wins each game? No, and that's kind of the point of a playoff.

Indeed, series-based playoff systems, like with MLB or the NBA, are presumably based on the very idea that one-game is not enough to determine the best team. So, if we still think the playoff is the best solution, then it makes no sense to say that Utah can't be the National Champion just because you think the other teams might actually be better overall. Though, if you subscribe to the Doyel view of "National Champion," then the BCS probably does a better job for you than a playoff would, because the system is all about crowning the perceived best overall team. Although it lacks the precision of a playoff, it gives you fudge-factors so that Florida's and Oklahoma's (though not Texas's) losses can be overlooked.

So, maybe instead of crowning as National Champion the best team in absolute terms, that distinction is a reward for having the best overall season. I don't really watch racing, but that seems to be what they go for with their points system. And many BCS defenders say that it makes "every week a playoff," so the best overall season gets rewarded (let's just pretend like that is true). Well, a playoff doesn't give you that either: Exhibit A - the 2007 New England Patriots. They played unbelievably all year, blew everyone out, and then lost. No one -- not even them -- tried to argue that they should get a share of the Super Bowl via media vote or whatnot.

And that sort of thing happens all the time in playoff systems. It seems like a lot of the recent Super Bowl winners haven't been that great overall, or certainly were not considered the best teams going into the playoffs. Even when the Colts won the Super Bowl, it was with arguably their worst team in something like four or five years. Luck and circumstance play a huge factor, and again, the playoffs are decided by single, permanently binding, contests.

So what does a playoff give you, and why is it probably a better solution for crowning a National Champion? Let me say first that I think it would be a better system than the current BCS morass. But the advantage the playoff gives you is not anything metaphysically correct. It probably does not crown the best team. And it does not reward the best season (sorry Utah).

It merely gives you relative certitude. It's not perfect -- some clunker teams can be crowned, some historically great teams will get the relative shaft -- but, before the season, during the season, and in the playoffs, everyone knows what it takes to be the champion: you must get into the playoffs, and you must win every game once you're there. The Patriots couldn't lobby for votes, they couldn't say that they got jerked around, and they even couldn't say that they didn't get their chance. They played and they lost. They were probably better, they might only have had a bad day, but hey, you knew what you were getting into.

Which is really the issue here. No one has any idea what being "National Champion" ought to mean -- especially in college football where you have over a hundred D-1 programs and no team can come close to playing all the others. A playoff would simply lay some ground rules people could follow. As it stands, without a playoff, everyone may mount their high horse and argue past each other.

Update: Rocky Top Talk and the good Senator both weigh in on this issue. And Bill James says that all self-respecting statiscians should boycott the BCS, because the computer side of the BCS is irrational, incomprehensible, and, worse still, used only to justify the coaches poll: "Throughout the 11 years of the BCS, whenever the 'computer' rankings have diverged markedly from the polls, the consensus reaction has been, we have to do something about those computers. And they have; whenever the computer rankings don't jibe with the 'human polls,' they fix the computers."

Probability, Pragmatism, and Football

I recommend Joe Nocera's recent New York Times Magazine piece on the failures of Wall Street's risk models and overall risk management. It's a worthwhile read of its own right. But I see a football angle.

I've long been a proponent of more rigorous analysis of football, and in particular its associated probabilities. But -- and this is why I am posting this article here -- football is simply so complex that there are limits to our current understanding. With baseball and the "sabermetric" movement, there are attainable gains: the game can be modeled largely as batter versus pitcher, and, within this dynamic, there is only so much change and a finite number of extra variables to control.

With football, however, you have twenty-two players, a variety of formations, receivers, combination blocks, movements, and areas to defend. The game itself follows a dizzying path to completion, with score changes, possessions, downs, field positions, yards to first down, and so on. It's not impossible to model, and there is much we can and have learned, but with football -- as with Wall Street -- what appears certain in your models and statistics may not tell the full story.

"Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital." - Aaron Levenstein

And, I am sorry to say, that when I read this article I did not think of the excellent work being done that is very useful to coaches and real practitioners, but instead of one group in particular: Football Outsiders. Now, I don't want to be too harsh. They do some great, interesting work, they have illuminated a number of subjects, and, if nothing else, the sheer breadth of what they have addressed will pave the way for more sophisticated analysis. And maybe criticism is unfair, as much of their current stuff is not focused on real football or what might bring real knowledge to the game, but instead on aiding the fantasy football player.

This is understandable, since fantasy football provides ready benchmarks and fantasy footballers are a much broader and more accessible audience than are football coaches. But if we want to be honest about what we're doing, then, to me, we ought to be honest that many of these statistics are for fans and do not actually help anyone (coaches, players, GMs) make decisions.

Football Outsiders' big stat is called DVOA, or Defense-adjusted Value Over Average. It's a nice stat, and certainly it is an improvement over just trying to compare Jimmy and Joe based on their total yards or yards per carry or whatever else. But it's a bit of a fan's statistic, and, further, there's a tendency to adjust it and use it in a way that reinforces what we already know. If DVOA doesn't tell us that Tom Brady and Peyton Manning are the best quarterbacks, then it gets revised until it does, or is rejected until a different measure tells us this unassailable truth. Same with teams: DVOA helpfully tells us that the 2007 Patriots, 1999 Rams, and 1996 Packers were all very good. And, all too often, as Brian of Advanced NFL stats has observed, Football Outsiders far too often "use[s] statistics like a drunkard uses a light post, for support rather than illumination." (Quoting Mark Twain). (One exception: Mike Tanier, though at times his analysis is a bit shaky, is clearly coming into his own and the fact that he has access to NFL film and his practice and diligence is starting to show through.)

Don't get me wrong, I adore statistics and, even more than stats, I think probabilities are the key to understanding almost everything about the world around us. I don't like dealing in absolutes. (Though some seem to vigorously disagree with me when I say that.) If I have to choose between what can only be referred to as the neaderthal view:

"We don't worry about numbers here. Statistics are for losers. I'm not a stat guy. I'm not interested in them, because you can do anything you want with numbers, you can manipulate them, and work around with them. Look at all the financial [problems] we're having in Wall Street right now. That's all those guys lying and playing with numbers. And now all of us are suffering. So I don't believe in numbers, because any crook can play with numbers....It angers me. You know? That's the whole thing, people play with numbers."

- Washington Redskins defensive coordinator Greg Blache

And what I consider the modern view:

"They say statistics are for losers, but losers are usually the ones thinking that. Statistics are great. Our whole game plan is based off statistics. Our management of the game is based off statistics. Our recruiting is based off statistics. Everything we do is analyzed. Is that the bottom line? No. You can't analyze the heart of Tim Tebow."

- Urban Meyer

Then clearly put me in the modern camp. So I really don't mean to denigrate the work of Football Outsiders or anyone else doing progressive work -- we certainly need more of it. Coach Blanche brings up the financial crisis, but it's not like -- even there, where the problems have been widespread -- that numbers and stats can just be dismissed out of hand. They are still useful, but you embrace the limitations: even if your statistics are imperfect, they are often better than nothing, and you must simply recognize and be aware of where the pratfalls are in how they might aid or hinder your decisionmaking. This was lost on the finance world recently, but it applies equally to football decisionmaking.

And, because I also consider myself something of a pragmatist, I nevertheless ask of those doing this work is the same question I would ask of any other idea (because the value of football statistics is simply another permutation of an idea about the value of statistics):

Pragmatism asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?"

- William James, Pragmatism (1907).

So to me, there's a grand opportunity for these statisticians to change the way decisions are made and overall just improve the game -- to make a "concrete difference." Some statisticians have done this, most notably David Romer. His work is so far thorough, practical, and challenging.

I'm not a true statistician or econometrician. And, as I said above, one of the difficulties with doing real, relevant football statistics is that the game is quite complex, and one needs to understand it to model it (and those who understand usually can't model, and those who can model usually don't understand). One of my goals with this site is to try to help bridge this gap.

Nocera's piece begins with this quote from Peter Bernstein's book, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk.

The story that I have to tell is marked all the way through by a persistent tension between those who assert that the best decisions are based on quantification and numbers, determined by the patterns of the past, and those who base their decisions on more subjective degrees of belief about the uncertain future. This is a controversy that has never been resolved.

And it will remain controversial -- in finance as well as football -- because the future will be paved by numbers and judgment, marching, somewhat awkwardly, hand in hand.

Links of the Moment

1. "NFL kickers missed 700% more PATs in the 70s."

2. News Flash: Sports prognosticators don't know anything you and I don't also (and preseason predictions are meaningless). Exhibit A (Good job, Mark May) (hat tip - Wiz of Odds):



3. Who were the luckiest teams in the NFL this season?

4. Utah deserves a quarter of the National Championship (or it should be ignored entirely).

5. Surprised Favre melted down this season? I wasn't, and neither was Advanced NFL stats. (Answer: in 2007 Favre's Green Bay receivers did much to make him look artificially good. This is an important article.)

6. High School team eschews punting (only punts twice for entire season) and wins state championship.

7. Texas Tech's Mike Leach on 60 Minutes: The Mad Scientist of Football

Colts-Chargers

Football -- and particularly the NFL -- is a percentages game. The storylines coming out of this game will be manifold, but to me it was quite simple.

• On the Colts side of the equation, they had the advantage in turnovers -- zero to the Chargers' two. That was huge for the Colts, and they probably would not have been in the game without that advantage.
  
  
• On the Chargers side, the Colts spent the entire game trying to start drives from what seemed like their own half-yard line. And we know that, when you have the ball far on your own end of the field -- even on first down -- your expected point value from the drive is negative: namely, the other team is still more likely to score than you are. So that was quite bad for the Colts.
  
  
• But those two effects sort of canceled each other out in this game. The final tiebreaking probability push was the coin flip, which in the context of overtime is a fifty-fifty gamble where the winner gets a +10% increase in their chance of winning in an otherwise evenly matched game: the team that wins the coin flip wins the game roughly 60% of the time. (And the situation we had in this game, where one team wins the coin-flip and wins it without the other teams' offense taking the field, happens about 30% of the time.)
  

For the Chargers, two out of three ain't bad.

Peyton's Favorite Pass Play: Levels

Peyton Manning just won Associated Press MVP of the NFL for the third time, and -- love him or hate him -- he's pretty decent at that whole throwing the ball thing. And this year he has done it without a lot of help, as he and offensive coordinator Tom Moore have had to put together their own particular brand of sorcery to generate yards, points, and wins. And they've done it.

In this article I want to discuss one of the Colts' favorite pass plays of the last several years, which they run as much as any other: the two-man levels concept.

Breakdown

Both Peyton and Tom Moore have both stated that their favorite pass route is one known in many coaching circles as "levels." (The Colts have their own unique lingo, but "levels" gives you the gist.) Most other pro teams use it too, including the Patriots, but no one does it as well or as often as the Colts. At the college level, Oklahoma State (Mike Gundy and Gunter Brewer) and Arkansas (Bobby Petrino) both use this concept with some regularity. And June Jones has used a three-man version of levels for some years at Hawai'i and now SMU.

The concept is simple: the outside receiver runs a five-yard in route, and the slot receiver or tight-end runs a ten-to-twelve yard square-in (with a slight outside release). On the backside, the Colts have the outside guy run a take-off (or sometimes a comeback at eighteen yards) and the backside slot or tight-end runs a "divide" or seam-read. As explained previously, the divide route involves a read by the receiver: against single-high defenses like Cover 3 (also known as middle of the field closed), the receiver keeps it up the hashmark in the open void in the seam; against middle of the field open defenses (like Cover 2), he will break on a post route into the open void in the middle.



The quarterback begins by "peeking" or getting an "alert" read of the divide route. If that route comes open or the safeties get out of position, the quarterback throws the ball on rhythm at the end of his drop for a big-play. If it is not open, he goes into his normal 1-2-3 progression.

Unlike most pass concepts which are read deep to short, this play is read short-to-deep. (Though with Peyton Manning -- who likely has an excellent idea of where he's going with the ball on every play -- the difference between "coverage reads" and "progression reads" is blurry.) But the philosophy of the play is to throw the five-yard in route whenever it comes open; they want to treat it like stealing yards and to get the ball into a playmaker. Traditionally this was Marvin Harrison, but more recently you'll see Reggie Wayne run this route play after play.

Broadly, if the defense comes up for the quick in route, the quarterback looks for the square-in behind him. In other words, this is a two-man high-low or vertical stretch concept, which puts the underneath defenders in a bind with a guy in front of and behind them.

More specifically, the play is designed to attack Cover 2. One of the most common routes against Cover 2 is the smash, which is a great route against that coverage. In that play, the outside receiver runs a five yard hitch, and the inside guy runs a corner route at twelve: this puts the cornerback in Cover 2 (who is responsible for the flat) in a high-low bind. Smash has been a go-to play for years, but it has become so common that safeties and inside defenders have learned to overplay the route.

Enter two-man levels. If we lay the smash and levels concepts on top of each other, we see that as the play develops the defense will not be able to tell the difference between them Finally, at the last minute the receivers break unexpectedly:


So the first thing you get with these two plays is the advantage of destroying pattern reading by making your routes look alike. But let's look at who the play is designed to attack in Cover 2: the outside linebacker/nickel back over the slot (coaches just refer to him as "#2"). In smash, the play is designed to attack the corner, so if he is going to get help it is likely to come from this inside defender.

In the diagram below we can see how that player is affected: if he stays home to attack that quick in, the square-in comes open in the void behind him. If he drops back to follow the slot man who releases vertically (which is often what he is taught by guys like Bob Stoops to deal with the smash) then the quick five-yard in should be open.


The last thing is if the middle linebacker (the middle underneath zone defender in a true Cover 2) flows over to take away either the square-in or the quick-in, then the quarterback will drop it off to the runningback underneath.

Now, the other way this play works well is against man. In that case, the outside receiver will try to run his route underneath the slot man such that he will get a rub (not a pick of course, those are illegal and no self-respecting offense would ever use them . . . ) and should come open right in the quarterback's vision.




Below is a diagram of how the Packers have used the play from trips. They use it a bit more as an inside hitting route. Both of the outside guys in trips run five yard in routes, and the inside guy runs his square-in at 10-12.



And below is video of the Packers running their version of levels.



Conclusion

So there you have it: the two-man levels with backside verticals. As with all pass plays, its efficacy is mostly determined by how well the team can pass protect. That said, it is a nice quick-pass, and even against zone-blitzes with three-deep and three underneath defenders the offense can usually find a quick void. It's a great play, but Peyton's continued success will likely hinge on whether his team can keep protecting him.

Top Five* Most Popular Articles of 2008

1. The Florida Gator/Urban Meyer Offense - Self-explanatory.

2. Coaching preview: Alabama's Nick Saban vs. Clemson's Rob Spence - I'm guessing that it was Saban and not Rob Spence that drew in readers.

3. Auburn's offense might be bad, but don't call it the spread, the Airraid, or the Tony Franklin System - This is the part where I have a hand in getting an entire coaching staff axed ... ack.

4. The Divide Route in the Multiple Smash Concept - Pure technical football here; this post won a college football blogger award.

5. The Shotgun, The 'Gun, and the Shotgun Spread Offense - A brief history of the gun and the rise of the modern spread.

* Actually, the second most popular article was one I wrote several years ago, though it is more salient than ever now: Has the Spread Offense Reached Its Apex?

** Two other rather technical and older (2005) articles dealing with a "conceptual" approach to the passing game finished barely behind these posts: Organizing Pass Plays As Concepts and St. Louis Rams Shallow Cross Concepts.