The Sports Truth

If you’re a fan of ESPN.com’s Gregg Easterbrook, a.k.a. the Tuesday Morning Quarterback, or have had the misfortune of watching a Sunday of football with me, you probably already know what I’m going to write about:

Punting. Its rampant overuse, the poor decisions coaches make in terms of when to punt, when not to punt, how underrated going for it on fourth down is and how overrated “field position” is.

For those of you familiar with the topic, David Romer, a professor of economics at the University of California-Berkeley wrote a paper in July 2005 about the inefficiency of punting. As a scholar of economics, Romer used his paper to evaluate the effectiveness of NFL teams in maximizing their profits and to do so means winning football games.

Romer takes it to an extreme, but in short, indicates that so long as the play is fourth and 10 yards or less to go for the first, statistically it is in a team’s favor to go for the first down versus punt, regardless of field position.

Now, it certainly takes some chutzpah to go for it on fourth and nine from your own six, but NFL teams are abusing the use of the punt. I’m not going to list the numerous egregious situations where teams should have gone for it on fourth down, say, in opposing territory down in the fourth quarter - for a comprehensive week by week list of those moments scan through any TMQ article. But, I’d like to try and point out a loose correlation between teams winning games, not punting, and going for it on fourth down.

It would probably surprise no one to learn that the best teams in the NFL don’t punt the football. The logic stands to reason that teams that are scoring points and winning football games are not punting as much because they’re not even facing fourth down as much. That the Colts, Cowboys, Chargers and Patriots are teams 1 through 4 in least amount of punts probably doesn’t shock anyone.

That’s not to say these teams don’t punt often, they’re just not “forced to punt” as NFL broadcasters would like you to think, because they’re not facing fourth down as often. However, the Patriots, Colts, and Cowboys are in the bottom third of punts inside the 20. Does this mean they have poor punters? Probably not, all three teams are in the bottom third of punts for touchbacks. More likely, these teams are only punting on fourth and long from within their half of the field (the Chargers, inexplicably, have 47 punts, 24 of which have landed in the end zone).

The bottom line is that the punt is vastly overused and vastly overrated as a tool of winning football games. On to this week’s picks…

[Home team in CAPS. Spreads accurate as of Friday, 5:30 EST]

LAST WEEK: 8-8 SEASON: 86-100-7 LUKE’S LOCKS™: 3-7

PITTSBURGH (-7.0) over Cleveland
One of the fun things about the Thursday night games, for me at least, is to comment on the game after I’ve picked it. Thank you, NFL Network.

If they pay attention to Sportscenter at all, or use ESPN as any sort of barometer, last night’s midnight Sportscenter could not have been encouraging news. Instead of starting with the Thursday primetime NFL game, Sportscenter first gave us the mouth-watering news that Barry Bonds had resigned with San Francisco and then highlights of the Suns-Nets game (which was, in all fairness, phenomenal) and then the riveting Browns Steelers game was the third story and *gasp* after a commercial. I really couldn’t imagine a more disastrous start to their package.

Atlanta (-3.0) over TAMPA BAY
Tampa Bay has fallen to the point where you can’t pick them, even as a home underdog, even against the inimitable (in a bad way) Michael Vick. I can’t even pretend to have an enthusiasm about this game.

Minnesota (+1.5) over DETROIT
How does Matt Millen still have a job? Okay, Roy Williams, good pick. Your second leading receiver is Mike Furrey, a former safety? The third receiver is Cade McNown, a former quarterback? How embarrassed must Mike Williams and Charles Rodgers be? They were number one draft picks and can’t even beat out former safeties and quarterbacks for a wide receiver position.

LUKE’S LOCK™ ALERT!!
Tennessee (+1.0) over HOUSTON
The Titans are 8-4 against the spread this year, including 7-2 against the spread when Vince Young starts. Somehow, they’re only giving one point to the Texans, who stink. I don’t get it either.

New York Giants (+3.0) over CAROLINA
There is one way to neutralize Steve Smith that we all forgot about - get rid of his quarterback. Does any non-Giants or Panthers fan even know who Delhomme’s back-up is? It’s career record of 1-15 Chris Weinke! That’s all I needed to hear.

New Orleans (+7.0) over DALLAS
Just feels like it’s time for Tony Romo and Dallas to come back to earth again. By the way, we’re also at one of my favorite times of the year, playoff scenarios. I love the ways the Saints can clinch a playoff birth this week:

1. A win, a Minnesota loss or tie and Carolina and Philadelphia both lose.
2. A win, a Minnesota loss or tie and N.Y. Giants and Atlanta both lose.
3. A win, a Minnesota loss or tie and Philadelphia and Atlanta both lose.

Buffalo (+3.5) over NEW YORK JETS
Feels like it is about time someone made the Jets pay for their porous run defense and I hope that the Bills, with a stud RB and a shaky QB, are smart enough to run the ball 30-40 times. Could, and should, be a big day for McGahee and maybe even Anthony Thomas. On the flip side, if the Jets won, they’d be in very good shape to make the playoffs and allow us to destroy Vegas by betting against Chad Pennington on the road in a playoff game.

LUKE’S LOCK™ ALERT!!
Indianapolis (-1.0) vs. JACKSONVILLE
Don’t want to jinx the 3-0 record, but we have to ride out this wave of coin flipping luck. Jags are tails, Colts are heads.

Flip #1: Heads! Colts take the opener, lead 1-0
Flip #2: Heads! Sacagawea is as confident in the Colts as I am in my coin flipping.

The pick: Indianapolis (-1).

Philadelphia (-1.5) over WASHINGTON
I guess that, if we all stop and think about it, Jeff Garcia playing well with the Eagles isn’t all that surprising. At one point, he was, albeit a long time ago, a really good quarterback who basically had his career derailed by the worst person on earth, Terrell Owens. Considering Owens almost killed McNabb too and has now torched two franchises and is one Tony Romo bad game from ruining a third, we probably should have given the guy a little slack. That said, apparently Vegas doesn’t respect him much.

Oakland (+11) over CINCINNATI
Some people are going to rave about Cincinnati’s defense recently and how they are really going to shut down the Raiders this weekend and cover easily. That Bengals defense also shut down the Ravens (wildly overrated) and Browns (it’s almost to the point where you should be playing stellar defense against them). Congratulations. The Raiders have had no defense all year and managed to cover games.

SAN FRANCISCO (-4.5) over Green Bay
Am I the only one who wasn’t blown away by the Brett Favre era? I mean, the guy was obviously a good quarterback, he’s got the numbers to back it up, but he just never did it for me. Unfortunately, it’s clear this is his last season (how could anyone come back to this mess) and I never connected with the Brett Favre era the way sportscasters and apparently other millions of fans did. I dunno, East Coast bias?

New England (-3.5) over MIAMI
I’ve sat here for five minutes and can’t come up with a single interesting thing to comment on for this game. And the Patriots are my favorite team. There’s nothing to say. They’re the Patriots, they’re 9-3, they’re winning games, and they’re awful. We don’t even have good reader emails to go to here in the crunch (come on people, step up!) and there’s only so many times I can vilify the Red Sox for J.D. Drew. Let’s just move on.

Seattle (-3.0) over ARIZONA
A week after ripping Arizona for showing absolutely nothing that would convince me they could win, more or less cover a game, they thrash St. Louis. Apparently this spooked Vegas a little bit too, but could the Cardinals possibly win two games in a row? Seems unlikely.

Chicago (-6.0) over ST. LOUIS
I know, I know, that’s what I get for picking the Rams as a lock. Big mistake, I’ve learned. Thus I’m taking yet another road team. Sadly, I know I can’t go undefeated this week because I can’t imagine only one home team covering a game this week, but I just can’t figure out who will.

Denver (+7.5) over SAN DIEGO
As good as LaDanian Tomlinson is, there’s no way he could match what he did versus the Broncos in Week 11 (105 rushing yards, 74 receiving yards, four touchdowns). Even considering how well he played, they would have only covered the Week 14 spread by a half of a point. Jay Cutler can’t be worse than he was last week and a rookie quarterback like him should only improve (let’s just say that if he doesn’t improve, benching Jake Plummer, as bad as he is, was a huge mistake).

Posted in NFL