The state of Ohio is particularly strong in the 2016, with 14 players currently ranked as at least 4-star prospects. And while the national prospects who have already committed to or have shown strong interest in the Buckeyes is certainly encouraging for Meyer, it’s not just the talent working in Ohio State’s favor.
As it currently stands, the Buckeyes are slated to lose 13 scholarship players to graduation at the end of next season. Between transfers and what looks like several underclassmen who have a chance to declare early for the 2016 NFL draft, that number could very well double, and it’s not out of the realm of possibility to think Ohio State could have close to 30 scholarships available in its 2016 class.
Factor in a 2015 schedule that sets up to keep the Buckeyes’ infomercial playing until at least late-November, and it becomes clear that Alabama’s five-year run of top-ranked recruiting classes is suddenly in danger. Meyer managed to defeat Nick Saban on the field in last season’s Sugar Bowl, and he’s well on his way to picking up another win over his rival next February.
In light of the terrible first-round games this year and the fact that a team with a losing record not only made the playoffs, but made it to the second round, the NFL appears to be backing away from the stupid idea of further expanding the number of teams that make them:
At his pre-Super Bowl press conference last year, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said that he thought there were a lot of benefits to expanding the postseason.
Among the benefits he cited were a “more competitive” league with better matchups as the regular season nears its conclusion and “more excitement” for the league’s fans. Talks about adding two teams to the postseason never came to a vote with the owners last spring and there was debate about the need to involve the NFLPA, but Goodell continued to sound optimistic about it when it came up in 2014.
He didn’t sound so optimistic about it during Friday’s pre-Super Bowl press conference.
“The possibility of expanding the playoffs has been a topic over the last couple of years,” Goodell said. “There are positives to it, but there are concerns as well, among them being the risk of diluting our regular season and conflicting with college football in January.”
The latter concern wasn’t aired last year and the better matchups that Goodell mentioned would seem to run counter to the risk of diluting the regular season, so it seems significant that they were specified while the positives were left undiscussed. Owners like John Mara of the Giants and Art Rooney II have come down against the idea since it was broached last year and Goodell’s tone may suggest he’s heard likewise from other owners heading into this offseason.
There is absolutely no good reason to expand the playoffs. If anything, they should be further limited; half the teams in the first round were uncompetitive and didn’t belong there. The games are really only reliably interesting at the divisional round anyhow.
Regardless, the current system did manage to not only match up the two best teams, but clarify a pecking order that had been modestly in doubt with regards to the Packers, Cowboys, and Seahawks, and Broncos, Ravens, Colts, and Patriots. It is working, even if the first weekend tends to be a bit boring, so for once Goodell should stop his incessant meddling and stop trying to fix what is quite clearly working.
Fortunately, the fact that the league’s more traditional and influential owners are against it should suffice to kill the dumb idea for the rest of Goodell’s bumbling reign.
This would be the Super Bowl open post. I’m standing by my pre-playoff prediction of New England over Seattle.
UPDATE: 14-14 at half. New England should be winning this, but Carroll’s gutsy coaching is keeping Seattle in it. Great call with six seconds left; that’s plenty of time for a quick shot into the end zone, then kicking the field goal.
But Belichick are making Seattle pay for Lane’s injury. And Wright may be a great cover linebacker, but that’s not good enough to stay with Gronk. Bad matchups on both the Gronkowski and Mathews touchdowns.
UPDATE 2: Patriots 28, Seahawks 24. Crazy game, but fun. Seattle absolutely had it, but Pete Carroll had to get cute instead of simply doing the obvious and winning the game.
I picked Belichick and Brady to beat Seattle in the Super Bowl before the playoffs started. I’m not changing that prediction now barring Brady being ill at gametime; this is their last hurrah, they know it, they’ve got a healthy Gronk, and Belichick has had two weeks to prepare. That being said, I really like Richard Sherman, as for all his flash and attitude, he is far more a hard-working team player than many a fan and media favorite.
I was lucky to be drafted by Pete and John, who assembled around me one of the most talented and diverse defensive backfields in football. More than I want individual success, I want to be remembered as part of the Legion of Boom, which is why all of us are on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine this week. In football, unlike various other sports, it takes a total team effort to be successful.
I can’t perform at this level without Kam Chancellor, the lion of the Legion, the guy who once picked off Peyton Manning by ducking to make it appear as though he couldn’t leap for the ball. He’s also the guy we go to with our problems, who doles out advice about a lot of issues that arise outside of football.
I can’t perform at this level without Earl Thomas—The Example—who can show you how to do the right thing better than he can explain it. When everybody else is joking, he’s locked in, a reminder of what we’re here for.
I can’t perform at this level without Byron Maxwell, our chill guy, oblivious to the pressure. I remember him joking around with Carroll in our rookie camp, saying that if he was allowed to play nickel he’d choke out the slot receiver. Carroll relented and Maxwell delivered, only to get injured in camp. Now he’s the corner on the other side, and his consistently high level of play makes QBs’ decisions very difficult.
I can’t perform at this level without Jeremy Lane, the scrappy guy from Tyler, Texas. Competition brings out the dog in him; just look at what he’s done to the Packers’ Randall Cobb.
He’s also entirely sound on Roger Goodell. One thing I always pay attention to with regards to public figures is how they are regarded by those closest to them. The men who tend to have the strongest characters are those whose friends and colleagues are loyal and stand by them even when the heat is on. The fact that Sherman, the most famous and outspoken member of the Legion of Boom, doesn’t pretend to be the top dog but instead defers to Chancellor as the leader, helps explain why a collection of fairly low draft picks – one first-rounder, two fifth-rounders, and two sixth-rounders – evolved into the most fearsome defensive secondary of all time.
It’s strange how many people involved in team sports insist on focusing exclusively on individual talents when the evidence clearly indicates that how well you operate as part of a unit is more important for ultimate team success than your individual talents. I suspect it may not be an accident that at least two of the Legion of Boom members, including its leader, are devout Christians. And although Sherman doesn’t come right out and say it, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the original plan had been to put him on the cover alone.
And if the Seahawks do knock off one of the two best pairings of coach and quarterback in NFL history, that will be further testimony to the sum being greater than the whole of the parts. I can honestly say that aside from the original Purple People Eaters and the Buddy Ryan Bears, I haven’t enjoyed watching a defense more than Seattle’s over the last two years. I wasn’t the only one who decided the Super Bowl was over after seeing this hit by Chancellor. Watch the battle between him and Gronkowski for an early clue on how the game will turn out.
A few days ago, in Probability and the Problem of Life, I pointed out that there is no need to precisely calculate probabilities that we cannot possibly know in order to reach logical conclusions about them. Contra the opinions of the misguided math fetishists, logic is the foundation of math, not the other way around, and we can reach perfectly sound logical conclusions even if we are not able to make precise mathematical determinations or quantifiy all of the various factors involved.
Throughout the course of the discussion, it soon became abundantly clear that those who defend the theory of TENS on probability grounds do not actually believe their own position. Furthermore, it is relatively easy to demonstrate that although the very low probability events to which they appeal are mathematically possible, they are so highly improbable that no sane human being can credibly feign to take seriously, as evidenced by their own daily behavior with regards to other, much more likely events.
WRF3 asked me to identify the precise point at which mathematical possibility and belief part company; I said that for me it was somewhere between 1 in 4,165 and 1 in 17,347,225. The latter are the odds of being dealt four aces twice in succession from two properly shuffled card decks; I would not view that as credibly possible and continue to play poker with a machine that dealt out such hands. The absolute outer limit for even the most credible individual is probably 1 in 72,251,192,125, which would be three such unlikely hands.
But the reality is that for the average individual, the credibility ratio is much lower. Consider the recent statistical evidence of the New England Patriots having systematically cheated by deflating the football since the 2007 season:
While speculation exists that “Deflate Gate” was a one time occurrence, data I introduced last week indicated that the phenomena MAY have been an ongoing, long standing issue for the New England Patriots. Today, that possibility looks as clear as day.
Initially, looking at weather data, I noticed the Patriots performed extremely well in the rain, much more so than they were projected. I followed that up by looking at the fumble data, which showed regardless of weather or site, the Patriots prevention of fumbles was nearly impossible. Ironically, both studies saw the same exact starting point: 2007 was the first season where things really changed for the Patriots. Something started in 2007 which is still on-going today.
I wanted to compare the New England Patriots fumble rate from 2000, when Bill Belichick first arrived in New England, to the rest of the NFL. Clearly, one thing I found in my prior research was that dome teams fumble substantially less frequently, given they play at least 8+ games out of the elements each year. To keep every team on a more level playing field, I eliminated dome teams from the analysis, grabbed only regular season games, and defined plays as pass attempts+rushes+times sacked. The below results also look only at total fumbles, not just fumbles which are lost. This brought us to the ability to capture touches per fumble.
To really confirm something was dramatically different in New England, starting in 2007 thru present, I compared the 2000-06 time period (when Bill Belichick was their head coach and they won all of their Super Bowls) to the 2007-2014 time period. The beauty of data is the results speak for themselves:
The data is jaw dropping, and this visual perfectly depicts what happened. From a more technical perspective, John Candido, a Data Scientist at ZestFinance who is a colleague of mine over at the NFLproject.com website and was also involved in the development of this research, comments: Based on the assumption that plays per fumble follow a normal distribution, you’d expect to see, according to random fluctuation, the results that the Patriots have gotten since 2007 once in 5842 instances.
Which in layman’s terms means that this result only being a coincidence, is like winning a raffle where you have a 0.0001711874 probability to win. In other words, it’s very unlikely that results this abnormal are only due to the endogenous nature of the game.
Many of the arguments giving the Patriots the benefit of the doubt are evaporating. While this data does not prove they deflated footballs starting in 2007, we know they were interested in obtaining that ability in 2006. (This is something I found out AFTER I performed the first two analyses, both of which independently found that something changed starting in 2007.)
I was skeptical when I first read the analyst’s theory, because he initially used fumbles lost rather than all fumbles; it is generally believed by football statisticians who have considered the question that fumble recoveries are random. And when fumbles rather than fumbles lost are utilized, the Patriots are considerably less of a radical outlier, although they are the only team that plays outdoors that fumbles as little as a dome team.
My first thought was that the anomaly was more a result of New England’s pass-happy offense than statistical evidence of ball deflation. However, a look at the passing statistics showed that New England was pass-happy as early as 2002, when they threw 601 passes, compared to 582 in 2014, and the fact that their plays per fumble from 07-14 increased so dramatically from 00-06 after the rule change that they requested does tend to confirm the analyst’s original suspicions.
But my point is not to take a side in the latest New England scandal, only to observe that for the professional statistician, observation of a successful event against 1 in 5,842 odds is sufficient to indicate the results observed are probably not obtained naturally. And while this statistical evidence is not absolute proof (although it is interesting to see that the statistician’s odds are in the range I suggested should preclude belief), it is enough to indicate that the greater part of one’s efforts should be directed at discovering the precise nature and mechanism of the unnatural tampering indicated rather than on the unlikely natural explanation.
“The bottom line is, something happened in New England. It happened just before the 2007 season, and it completely changed this team.”
Which brings us back rather to my long-held position contra Mr. Sherlock Holmes: Once you have calculated the sufficiently improbable, you must reconsider your assumptions of the impossible.
It looks like things are setting up rather nicely for the expected Patriots-Seahawks Super Bowl. The Packers have the best shot of any NFC team to knock off the Seahawks on paper, but seeing how limited Aaron Rodgers was against Dallas, I find it hard to figure out how the Green Bay offense is going to deal with the ferocious Seattle defense.
In the AFC, I’d be very surprised if New England didn’t simply bulldoze the Colts by handing off the ball 30+ times. What sets Bill Belichick above other clever NFL coaches is that he seldom overthinks his game strategy. He doesn’t assume that his opponent will be able to stop something simply because they are anticipating his attack, he forces them to prove that they are actually capable of doing so before bothering with any adjustments.
(This, by the way, is a very good lesson for any gamer to keep in mind. Never assume that anticipation is accomplishment, either on your part or the opponent’s.)
And, if the Colts do figure out a way to stop the New England running game, Belichick will promptly switch to the pass without hesitation.
Contra SEC loyalist Nate’s assertion, they’re chanting it now. B1G! B1G!
I’m not what you’d call a fan per se of THE Ohio State University, in fact, I think Michigan has better colors as well as the best uniforms and fight song in college football. But back in the day, when there were only two teams playing for the Big 10 title, I tended to favor Woody Hayes, Art Schlichter, and Archie Griffin over Bo Schembechler and the Maize-and-Blue. I have no idea why, but it still astonishes me that Griffin was not a star in the NFL. It didn’t surprise me that Rashan Salaam failed in the pros; all he ever did at Colorado was take a pitchout, beat an undersized cornerback around the corner, and run 80 yards for a touchdown. But Griffin was the real deal in college. Was he simply too slow? I have no idea.
Anyhow, with Harbaugh back at Michigan, Meyer leading a resurgent Ohio State, and both Penn State and Nebraska rebuilding their programs, it should be interesting to see if a rivalry between the SEC and the Big 10 develops. It’s enough to get this NFL fan paying a modicum of attention, anyhow.
Rex in with the Bills, Fox out with the Broncos, most open positions still unfilled… I wonder if Peyton Manning will retire as quarterback and take the OC position under Adam Gase as the Denver head coach?
The New England-Baltimore game was as good as the Seattle-Carolina game was bad. I turned the latter off after Seattle went up 7-0 as it was obvious that Carolina had no chance whatsoever. That pass from Edelman to Amendola was a fantastic call and executed almost flawlessly. John Harbaugh is a very good coach, but Belichick clearly outcoached him yesterday. The chess match was fun to watch; it was the exact opposite of watching a Denny Green-coached team in the playoffs.
Dallas-Green Bay should be a good game too, although I don’t think Green Bay will have too much trouble putting the Cowboys away on the frozen tundra unless Rodgers gets hurt. Dallas’s best option is to ride Demarco Murray hard.
The Denver-Indy game shouldn’t be as bad as Seattle-Carolina, but I can’t see the Colts hanging with the Broncos. The Broncos run better, pass better, have a better defense, and they’re playing at home.
Good game so far in Foxboro. Ravens started hot, but settled down, and Brady has been picking apart the Baltimore secondary with his slot receivers. But the Ravens are getting some solid hits on Brady and that could slow down New England in the second half.
