4th & Forever: Wild Card Follies

A review of this past weekend’s wild card extravaganza led me sadly, but inexorably, to the following conclusions.

One, the present playoff format of 6 teams in each Conference (4 Division winners and 2 wild card teams) should absolutely never ever be expanded to 14 teams or more. I don’t care whether the owners’ already obscenely large coffers would be further enriched by additional playoff revenue, the simple truth is the 4 games played this weekend were snoozers, failing even the basic test of distracting viewers from their post-holiday blahs much less rising to the level of must see TV. One can only shudder at the thought of further dilution where 14, 16, teams qualify for the “tournament” and we are all caught up in a seemingly endless cycle of mediocrity stretching out for weeks. If the NFL gets its what’s-in-it-for-me wish for an 18 game regular season and playoff expansion, the NFL will begin to resemble the college bowl season where it seems every Tom, Dick or Harry gets a bite at the Bowl apple and we are fed a thin diet of Boring U. vs. Incompetence Tech. Ye Gods, the Super Bowl would be played sometime in early March, and CBS could segue breathlessly from football to March Madness to The Masters. As mother used to say: “Merely surviving this life exacts a terrible price.”

Which brings me to conclusion Two, which is that every NFL team be mandated to have a backup QB who passes the basic competency case. Case in point: Joe Webb. Now Joe Webb may be a perfectly nice fellow beloved by all who know him, but on the evidence of Saturday’s little tryst in Green Bay he has no business playing professional football for the Minnesota Vikings, or anyone else for that matter. He was so poor that I found myself musing whether he was actually left-handed and was throwing right-handed merely to be perverse. As one pass after another plummeted to earth in a manner which would have embarrassed a dying quail, I sat in slack-jawed disbelief, groaning in pained astonishment,  while mouthing the words “this too shall pass”, which was clearly something Joe Webb could not. As a sporting contest, the game was like a long and very painful tooth extraction. Long before its merciful end I had retreated to On Demand for more appetizing fare. We can only hope Ryan Mallet would be at least competent if the need arose, but our most fervent wish is for Tom Terrific’s continued good health.

Three, offensive coordinators/coaches are sometimes stubborn, hard-headed and, quite frankly, moronic. Consider the game plan devised by Jay Gruden, OC for the star-crossed and often hapless Bengals. Gruden determined that Bengal salvation rested on the right arm of Andy Dalton, who resembles a fresh-faced, red-headed choir boy. Fair enough you say. Dalton after all had led the Bengals to 7 wins in their previous 8 games and was most certainly not Joe Webb. But mysteriously, Gruden’s plan called for Dalton to completely ignore his most dangerous receiver, A.J. Green, for half the game. In the first half, Green was targeted zero times, and thus not surprisingly had zero catches. Quite what Gruden was hoping to achieve with this devilish ploy of ignoring his most dangerous offensive weapon is a riddle with no obvious answer. In the second half, Green had 5 catches for 80 yards which merely served to underscore the profligate nature of Gruden’s decision. The second curious decision he made was essentially to ignore running back Benjarvis Green Ellis. Now, BGE, as he was known affectionately during his Patriot days, is no Adrian Petersen. He is, however, a very serviceable back who was enjoying some good measure of success on the day. He rushed 11 times for 63 yards for a none too shabby average of 5.7 yards a carry. At the very least Gruden should have used the threat of the run to set up play-action, a necessary ploy when your QB is being swarmed under by Houston’s avenging hordes. Instead, he all but discarded BGE and placed his fate almost solely in Dalton’s hands. The fact that Dalton was 14/30 for 127 yards with 1 interception, 2 sacks and a QB rating of 44.7 speaks volumes for the wisdom of that plan. Dear Lord, give me a paper cut and squeeze lemon juice into it.  Of course, the football Gods punished Gruden for his willfulness as they often do by having Dalton overthrow an open receiver in the end-zone for a potential game-winning TD in the 4^th quarter.  

Four, decisions about a player’s health should never rest with the coach or indeed the player. Witness, Mike Shanahan’s decision to leave a clearly hobbled RGIII in the game to take a beating which might have long term ramifications for RGIII’s career, while later defending his decision by saying the player told him he was good to go. Now I’m no doctor, I haven’t even played one on TV, nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express, but  it was glaringly obvious after being pummeled in the 1^st quarter that his prized QB (a) was playing injured and had aggravated his injury, (b) was, as a result of injury, a mere shadow of his usual dynamic self, (c) was risking further injury to his knee by staying in the game against a very physical Seattle defense, and (d) did not give his team the best chance to win the game. Shanahan’s decision to leave him in the game must also be evaluated against the backdrop of a story in USA Today in which Dr. James Andrews directly contradicted Shanahan’s earlier assertion that he put RGIII back into the Baltimore game, when he first sustained the injury to his knee 4 weeks ago, only after Andrews cleared him to play. Not so, says Andrews, who stated he never evaluated RGIII prior to him being re-inserted against the Ravens. In other words, Dr. Andrews is asserting Shanahan lied. To watch RGIII’s knee buckle in the 4^th quarter was quite sickening. Medical decisions, whether they deal with knees or concussions, should never be left to coaches who want to win at all costs and will apparently lie to cover up their motives, or players who live in a macho male culture where bravery and toughness are valued more highly than wisdom and one’s long term health.  

And so we await the Texans and hope for good health and wise counsel.