Going for Two: Week One Wrap Up

I scared my poor cat by yelling at the TV during the Philly loss to Atlanta. My friend's boyfriend, DeMarco Murray, got two touchdowns, but a penalty and a missed field goal made it that much harder for the Eagles to overcome their 2-point deficit. They held Atlanta to 3 and out, and hope was in the air, but an interception sealed the deal. I'm 10 for 15 right now.

I won't be awake for the end of the Minnesota San Francisco game, but from the first possession, I predict that I'll wake up without another correct pick. The 49ers took a page out of the Ravens playbook and donned black uniforms for tonight. The uniforms are so black that they're blue, and Kaopectate's arm tattoos look even stranger. They not only marched down the field, but Kaepernick is looking like a real quarterback. Sure, that blocked field goal was exciting, but Minnesota couldn't put any points on the board.

Detroit lost to San Diego, and maybe Minnesota will lose to San Francisco. In the other game on the West Coast, Cincinnati defeated Oakland, but my cat could defeat Oakland.

----- an hour passes -----

There is no score yet, despite all of the cray back and forth. The Santa Clara 49ers made some really good plays. I just want someone to score. Please.

Going for Two: Week One Not-So-Surprising Upsets

I spent most of today with spreadsheets, one of which you can read about in the previous post. Around 2 or something, I finally turned on the games to see an extreme amount of disappointment in Houston fans as they trailed KC by... lots of points. From the Talking Heads, a KC interception early in the game was a major blow to the Texans, proving how important a good, or even mediocre QB is for a team. KC showed why it deserved to go up 5 places, while Houston demonstrated why it fell 3 places in my new calculation. Not to mention that all love was being poured on my old Boyfriend, one Alex Smith.

The Rams, who went up 4 places, managed to defeat the Seahawks, which was also surprising, but also not surprising. The Rams, in my life, have never been great, but they make an impact as spoilers, creating the 1 for the 15&1 2011 Packers and contributing a third to the 1996 13&3 Packers, if I recall correctly. Then there was Indianapolis and Buffalo, where I predicted Colts, but the Bills win instead. I don't know how that one happened, but it means that I am 5 for 8 for the first half of Week One.

Right now, at 5pm Central, I'm watching Denver and Baltimore. I really can't describe my observations of Manning - I can't put words to the general concepts there - but they're not good. He has managed to lead his team into field goal range three times, but they're trailing by one point after the Vashda Nerada intercepted a pass and ran it in for an easy touchdown. It will mean being wrong, but I won't mind a Baltimore win here.

Going for Two: Optimized Calculation

After my first post, I began working with my calculation more, then put the numbers into the charts for each week to see how the season might shake out. The results made for a very even distribution of records, with a couple teams having perfect seasons and just as many not getting a win at all. The top two teams, my prospective Super Bowl teams, were the Arizona Cardinals for the NFC and the Miami Dolphins in the AFC.

I mentioned this to two of the people that did my Peer Reviews, and one said, "I will give you $100 if Miami gets to the Super Bowl," but had more optimism about the Cardinals. This prompted me to make more changes. I changed up the numbers that went into the charts for each week by rounding the value to the nearest whole number and added the points from my ranking to the weekly chart through Week 8, but reducing the point value by 10% each week. This rounding and prolonging the effect of those initial points helped by making the final records of each team fall into a more normal distribution. I also hard coded a win for New England to get them from 8&8 to 11&5, because yeah. I may hate the Patriots, but I'm not stupid.

The other major change was to add more data, including Depth Chart Rankings and the ranks for Offenses, Defenses, and Special Teams. This change took considerably more time, both from data entry, figuring out how to weight the different values, and then combining the information into a single number that still fit my 16-point scale. Oh, and I pulled all of that into its own spreadsheet, the apparently simplicity of which masking all of the hours that were poured into it.

This moved the team ranks around, but did not change the Bottom 5 teams. WAS, and JAX made the last of the 20's, and TEN, OAK, and TB received 30, 31, and 32, respectively. New England, Green Bay, and Seattle bounced around a little, but ended up in the top 3. Most of the other top ranked teams from my simpler calculation remained up at the top, but Arizona was the biggest loser, going from number 8 to 16.

Given all the work that I did on my spreadsheet, I'm not about to work on describing it any more, or copy the results into this post. I will say that, after all of that work, Miami still makes it to the Super Bowl.

Going for Two: Just Before Regular Season Start

The 2015 regular season of the NFL starts next week and I'm starting with my first post for it today. I selected the name for these posts, "Running the Football" "Going for Two", based on the fact that this is the second consecutive season that I have committed to blogging [nearly] every week and created a spreadsheet to pick winners during* the season. In other words, this is possibly the start of a "streak", synonyms for which are period, spell, stretch, run, and patch. Of those, run relates most to football, hence "Running the Football".

I've been enjoying pre-season games for the last month and opened up my spreadsheet this weekend for the first time since March, when I entered in the Free Agency "Grades" as identified by CBS Sports. I made edits to the spreadsheet, including splitting the Master sheet into two and changing my "Ideal" ranks. Then I started making a calculation to determine the expectations this year based on performance last year and activity in the post and off seasons.

• 2014 Wins: All 2014 Regular & Post Season wins (Ties count for .5) and 1 point for getting into the playoffs.
• Free Agency Performance: Number out of 8 points based on a percentage identified by the Free Agency Grade, assuming that the grades are given based on an American college scale, with 1-2 percentage points gained or lost based on whether experts at the NFL identified the team as a "Winner" or "Loser" during the free agency period.
• Draft Performance: Number out of 4 points based on a percentage identified by dividing the number of points awarded in the NFL's Draft Class Power Rankings by 290, the points given to the highest ranked team.

It took a few passes to get to those decisions, with first giving a total possible 8 points for Free Agency and Draft, and giving whole number points from 1-8 for each grade (e.g. 8 for an A, 7 for a B+). After a conversation with a friend about the perils of the draft, I reduced the weight of the draft numbers to half of those for Free Agency. While Free Agents have played with NFL rules, college players have not. A well-rated college player's performance is less known. 

Next, I looked for additional rankings of Free Agency performance, but only found those "Winners" and "Losers" sites. Without a better ranking, I decided to apply a percentage to the grades so I could award points to the winners and losers without "bumping up their grade".

After entering these numbers, I sorted the points to determine how the teams will do this year. 

Team Rank		Points		Team Rank		Points
1	New England Patriots	14.81		17	Minnesota Vikings	10.01
2	Green Bay Packers	14.56		18	Buffalo Bills	9.97
3	Dallas Cowboys	14.39		19	Cleveland Browns	9.95
4	Seattle Seahawks	13.89		20	Carolina Panthers	9.60
5	Denver Broncos	13.09		21	San Francisco 49ers	9.59
6	Indianapolis Colts	12.99		22	Atlanta Falcons	8.94
7	Baltimore Ravens	12.67		23	New Orleans Saints	8.91
8	Arizona Cardinals	11.94		24	New York Giants	8.77
9	Cincinnati Bengals	11.91		25	Chicago Bears	8.68
10	Pittsburgh Steelers	11.51		26	New York Jets	8.38
11	Detroit Lions	11.39		27	St. Louis Rams	7.85
12	Houston Texans	11.26		28	Washington Racists	7.67
13	Philadelphia Eagles	10.62		29	Jacksonville Jaguars	7.59
14	Miami Dolphins	10.59		30	Tennessee Titans	6.61
15	San Diego Chargers	10.45		31	Oakland Raiders	6.58
16	Kansas City Chiefs	10.21		32	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	5.66

I've had a couple peer reviews of these rankings and while those peers put some teams higher or lower, there is general approval of the overall picture. I can only offer my apologies to Oakland and Tampa Bay.

These numbers will be used for the first five week of the season, in diminishing importance each week (e.g. 100% for Week 1, 80% for Week 2, and down), before total wins and losses are the only ranking factor.

*I didn't pay much attention to the 2013 season due to other factors, but I did create a spreadsheet and fill in the information, including my likely 'gut' picks. Because I didn't know the outcome of most of the games, those picks were somewhat accurate, but it is likely that they skewed more accurate based on what I did know. I tried to focus only on the number of wins for the team and who Football Locks identified as the favorite. 

Back to Football: Sports Interviews

One year and two days ago, I shared this image on Facebook with the caption, "Truf," after I saw it posted by a friend. It went around a little more after that, because you can't deny my caption.

This was shared from a group called 'No Filter'. 7 likes, no comments.

Two days later, the Seattle Seahawks defeated the San Francisco 49ers, in part because they are a good team, in part because San Francisco can't actually win "the big game", and perhaps, just perhaps, because Richard Sherman was so angry with Michael Crabtree that he could not LET them win. Sherman deflected a possible touchdown pass that was then grabbed by another Seahawk, securing the Seahawk trip to Super Bowl 48, where they later outscored the favored* Broncos by a factor of 5.375.

After the game, after Sherman took off his helmet and donned his NFC Champion Seahawks cap, a sports reporter, Erin Andrews, went to talk to him. She wanted him to "take [her] through that last play." Instead of the normal answer of "blah blah blah, stuff we can assume from the circumstances, blah blah blah," he gave us a taste of the adrenaline still coursing through his body and produced something interesting, for a change. I think I heard about it on Facebook and either watched it from another share or sought it out and watched it. When I posted, I included the caption, "Is this ... what?" to reflect my own confusion and amazement.

Erin Andrews was pleased with this interview, and concerned about the racist reactions.

The first comment on my post was from a fellow Packer fan with a similar reaction to the interview, then there were comments referencing a 'lack of class' and another person mentioned that it would cause them to root for Denver. Other friends posted their own, very negative comments on their own Facebook feeds. I was taken aback at this reaction, and instantly recognized the inherent racism, through I didn't have the desire to get into a fray with friends and relatives that evening.

The next day, the country was up in arms about the interview, which sparked a much needed conversation about the politics of respectability**. This article discusses the racism evident in the way NFL player actions are treated in the press beyond the reaction Sherman's interview. I was, once again, happy to hear people in the media giving the arguments that I know almost innately now.

Had there not been the backlash or the ensuing conversation, I might have forgotten the interview, except as an needed change from the ordinary. As it happened, my appreciation for the Seattle Seahawks increased significantly, which is a major triumph, indeed, after that Fail Mary call in 2012***. I'm also now a bit of a fan of Richard Sherman, the player and person, because really, if you want class, go watch golf.

---

* When AREN'T the Broncos favored?
** I've always been more on the side of Du Bois than Washington in this debate. 
*** This Ode was actually directed at the Seahawks coach and his celebration with the OBVIOUSLY WRONG CALL. Sorry, I'm still bitter, whatever.

Back to Football: Divisional Drama

This weekend's games were very exciting and somewhat predictable. I went out on a limb and predicted a Baltimore upset and tentatively picked Denver to win at home, then ended up getting the entire AFC Championship game wrong. Baltimore lost me $50 in a friendly bet yesterday too. The AFC Championship game is going to be pretty boring - certainly in terms of colors. My preference is for Indianapolis to win, but I am not sure that they can defeat the Patriots. 

But the NFC Championship is exactly as predicted - Green Bay is going to Seattle. On one hand, the Seahawks are young, hungry killers on the field. Cocky assholes that can put their playing where their mouths are, and they're awfully fun to watch. On the other hand, they weren't able to blow out the 7&9 Carolina Panthers yesterday, and the Packers came from behind to defeat the possibly-better-than-them Dallas Cowboys. Perhaps, the Seahawks just phoned it in, while Green Bay had to claw a win out of this weekend. Maybe, Seattle has a false sense of security and the Packers are actually ready. I guess that we'll know next week. 

Honestly, I really don't care who wins the NFC Championship next week. Of course, I would love for the Packers to win, then go on to win the Super Bowl, I mean, obviously. But I've developed a major football-crush on this Seahawks team. First, there is "the best corner in the game", not the league, the m&th*#f&*#ing game, who's also got a great sense of humor, then their running back is not only good, he's a bastion of gratitude and generosity too, and their quarterback is from UW Madison. But whoever does win this game, I can only hope they are prepared to take the Lombardi Trophy home. 

Back to Football: Wild Card Weekend

Yesterday, I predicted upsets, but not today. I really thought that Arizona could defeat the 7&9 Panthers, but I had no idea that they were also without their running back. I also recall someone mentioning, back in September, that they thought that Carolina would surprise everyone. Getting to the Divisional Playoffs with a losing record is certainly a surprise.

Honestly, I stuck with Arizona because I wanted them to win, but with the AFC game, I really didn't know. Pittsburgh, at home, is tough to beat, but I had a feeling about Baltimore. They might be the team that goes all the way again. After all, they did beat the Patriots during their last playoff match-up, in Foxborough, even.

As for today, I'm really hoping that my picks are wrong and the kitties take the day. I just don't think that will happen. So far, in the first quarter, horsies seem to be trampling all over the very, very orange kitties from Cincinnati, but those orange paws are pointy.

If it was a beauty pageant between the teams' quarterbacks, Cincinnati would definitely win.