How in God's Name Do Hail Marys Work?

For the fourth time this season, I witnessed a game tying or winning Hail Mary throw into the end zone yesterday in the Packers-Cardinals game. Down seven with five seconds left, Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers scrambled away from a withering Arizona rush and flung the ball past the goal line, as everyone on the field, in the stands and watching across the world knew he would.

It's as if God hears a Hail Mary and answers the prayer of the hopeless cause. Maybe the throw should be called a St. Jude. Though, honestly, Mother Mary's results are astonishing.

The gentlemen defending on this play are the globe's greatest American football players. They are athletic freaks in size, strength, speed and agility. They are experienced in the art of defending against the pass. One of the offending defenders, Patrick Peterson, is an All-Pro, which is to say he is among the six or eight greatest pass defenders on Planet Earth.

And yet neither he nor his compatriots can figure out how to knock down this up-for-grabs heave.

I am completely at a loss over how this happens. I am unathletic and middle-aged; I stand 5'9" 160 pounds. I haven't defended a pass in two decades. And yet I know how to prevent a receiver from catching a rainbow. Just get in the way!

In this particular case, Packer receiver Jeff Janis slid in front of the defenders as the ball began its ascent from Rodgers's hand, 41 yards downfield. I could see he was going to catch the ball as soon as the camera panned to the goal line scrum. There was plenty of time for Peterson or Rashad Johnson to slide in front of him. What they did instead, was a colossal, epic, jaw-dropping fail.

And it's becoming pretty common.

So, I implore you, dear reader: leave a comment, explaining how this desperation measure entirely absent a strategy, ever works. Any theory you've got is a step up from my current state of bewilderment.

Long Games and Low Scoring? Think Football, Not Baseball

People who don't understand baseball complain that a game takes too long and produces insufficient scoring. While the pace of the game is often unnecessarily sluggish -- weighted down by ceaseless pitching changes and bizarre batting rituals -- this criticism is more reasonably leveled at America's most popular sport.

Exhibit A this weekend was BYU's unfathomable 33-28 thriller over Nebraska. In case you missed it, the Cornhuskers led all the way until a last-second Hail Mary heave that they somehow failed to defend.

Sounds like riveting viewing, right? Except it suffered from all the maladies attributed to "boring" baseball:
1. The contest was completed in regulation and took three hours and 45 minutes.
2. Every single play was followed by, as George Will has pointed out, a committee meeting.
3. The final score was, in baseball terms, 5-4.

It's counter-intuitive but true: football involves less scoring than baseball. It just obscures its offensive anemia in two ways. First, when a team fails to do the equivalent of plate a run, it has a back-up option: kick a field goal. This is akin to baseball teams getting credit for half a run every time a runner reaches third.

Second, it awards crooked numbers for its scores. So Nebraska, which tallied four touchdowns (and four of those formalities called extra points, which are the equivalent of a butt slap from the third base coach), boasts a 28-point outburst. When a baseball team manufactures four scores per game, we decry their middling offense.

For its part, BYU crossed home four times (skipping the formality of the tushy touching at game's end) and reached third twice, for the margin of victory. Yawn.

That the game ended with a blown save by the defensive secondary in the most dramatic fashion shouldn't obscure the fact that the game suffered from the very characteristics that dog baseball in the public's eye.

Was that game an anomaly? At the very same time, , Alabama spent more than three hours defeating Wisconsin 4 1/2 - 2 1/2, Auburn held on for a three-hour-plus 4 1/2 -3 1/2 victory over Louisville, and Notre Dame needed more than three hours to smother Texas 5 1/2 - 1/2. And because there's a clock limiting late game possibilities, utter futility attended an entire quarter of that game. 

And all those yards they chew up? Cubbie third baseman Kris Bryant's latest bomb accounted for 185 yards on one play alone. Baseball is exciting. Football needs to speed up play.

What Happened To Baseball This Year?

As the first strains of Commissioner Bud's swan song begin to play, ESPN, FOX and other media outlets have been wondering aloud what happened to baseball. Why, they've asked, has the game receded from our consciousness this year?

There's some truth to the question. The pennant races are heating up and all the chatter is about NFL exhibition games, NFL fantasy leagues, the upcoming NFL season, colege football, the college football playoffs, football, football and football. LeBron and the World Cup dominated the middle part of the baseball season and the NBA playoffs and NFL draft stole the early season's thunder.

So what happened to baseball?

What's happened to baseball is ESPN, Fox and other media outlets. Four networks broadcast every NFL game played. But baseball games are broadcast almost exclusively by local networks. ESPN, the 800-pound gorilla of sports, has a big stake in the NFL and nearly none in baseball. Consequently, they spend more time talking NFL exhibition games than they spend talking baseball. 

They've probably mentioned the name of a quarterback who has yet to play a minute of professional football more times than they've mentioned all baseball players combined.

And when it's not the NFL it's college football. ESPN carries hundreds of college football games. Because, as Marshall McLuhan observed 50 years ago, baseball is best enjoyed at the park; football on the tube.

Well, ESPN doesn't care about the park. They're on the tube. They make their money from TV ratings, not from full ballparks. And they set the sports agenda, along with Fox, CBS Sports and their ilk, so the agenda is all football all the time.

Meantime, baseball fans have enjoyed an overflow of drama. Clayton Kershaw is making his Hall of Fame case while Derek Jeter tops off his. Yasiel Puig and Mike Trout have continued their antics while rookies Jose Abreu and Billy Hamilton are banging them out and tearing them up, respectively. Kansas City has ambushed Detroit while Seattle and Baltimore are elbowing the Yankees out of the playoffs. Milwaukee and Pittsburgh -- two of the smallest markets in baseball -- are challenging St. Louis for Central supremacy. And much of it is coming down to the wire.

And the national sports media are all missing it.

So nothing's happened to baseball. Something's happened to your television.

Bold Prediction: Either New England or Denver Will Win!

Coming up next, expert analyst gives us his picks for the championship ga -- click!

Could anything be more futile and less edifying than this? Consider what knowledge must be willfully suspended in order to care about his prediction:

1. There are two games. Four teams. We all know who they are. Two of them will win. Either Seattle or San Francisco. Either Denver or New England. What can the analyst tell you that you don't know? That underdog Jacksonville is going to surprise everyone?
2. They are more-or-less evenly matched. So even the most insightful observer hasn't the foggiest idea who is going to win. No to put too fine a point on it: give the four choices to a mentally retarded seven-year-old and she would have exactly the same chance of being right as the "insider."
3. It's one game. The best team often doesn't win. So even if you know who's better, you don't know who will win.
4. Games rarely proceed as expected. All the knowledge in the world about what happened before has limited value now.
5. There are external variables that the prognosticator can't know in advance, like weather and injuries. If Tom Brady breaks his leg in the second quarter, do you suppose that might have an impact on the outcome?
6. He's constantly wrong. (Everyone is.) Publicly. And yet people still value his predictions.

Thank goodness for Baseball Prospectus podcasts.

Super Bowl Sidebar

Psst. Wanna make a quick buck? Bet on tomorrow's Stupid Bowl.

I don't know who's going to win or by how much. In fact, that's the point: no one does. That's why you should make my bet.

Have you ever listened to football analysts? They are pigskin encyclopedias. They are strategic savants. They can tell you about dime packages and zone blitzes and all manner of esoterica. But they are no better at predicting game results than a blind monkey with a three-sided coin. They are not only notoriously bad predictors of which teams will win and by how much, but even of the general flow of games.

It's not their fault. In the NFL, past results are not necessarily indicative of future returns. 

So why should the one game tomorrow be any different? The experts can parse this contest down to Reggie Bush's nose hairs, but then some third-string linebacker intercepts two passes. They can atomize the effects of Dwight Freeney's ankle injury, but then some guy you and I never heard of blocks a punt for a touchdown. The game, like the ball, is spheroidal and bounces in strange directions.

So the experts say these two prolific offenses will make the game a track meet and have bid the over/under to 57. I'm sure that's warranted based on the information available. But the only way that happens is if the experts are right, in spades, because that's a boatload of points.

So bet the under. In fact, put some money on under 49, which would yield two-to-one. I'm not guaranteeing you'll win, just that the odds favor you. The line is based on what the experts know, which is far less important than what they don't yet.
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Safermetrics

We take this brief interlude in the baseball season to address some prevailing myths in that other sport involving baseball caps -- football. With the NFL season imminent, I'd like to address how football analysts and reporters whiff on their sport.

The geeks have taken their baseball computers and put them to work on the more complicated game of football, where player performance is vastly more interdependent. You might call this "Safermetrics," if you'd like to imagine that its practitioners are members of the Society of American Football Research (SAFR).

Have you ever heard pigskin analysts intone on the importance of a running game, because teams that run more, win more? They are wrong. They are stupid. They are ignorant. They might as well cover baseball.

The statheads have examined football games and found that teams that run the ball frequently in the first half actually lose more than they win. But once ahead, usually by airing it out, winning teams use the running game to wind down the clock and shorten the contest. Running doesn't cause winning; winning leads to running.

Do great running backs make their blockers look good or vice versa? The answer, according to the historical record, is that lines make running backs much more than the other way around. However, QB sacks are much more a function of the field general than of the line. Quarterbacks who assess situations adeptly and release the ball quickly avoid sacks. Those who don't, fall. Scrambling actually leads to more sacks, not fewer. Of course, it leads to more big gains too.

Speaking of big gains, the research says, eschew running backs who are feast-or-famine kinds of runners. Teams with those kinds of backs get big gains and then run out of downs. Research says slow and steady wins the race, because it moves the sticks steadily down the field and into the end zone. (No, this does not mean that Barry Sanders was a drain on Lion prospects. His gains were so spectacular and numerous, and his losses far enough between, that he was still among the best ever. He was the exception that proves the rule.)

Want to convert on third and short? Research says boring is better than exciting. Running it into the line is more often successful than throwing it. Who knew? This is even true if Peyton Manning is pitching and Marvin Harrison is catching.

The geeks say, don't skimp on your punter. Field position is much more important than people think. If you value the 27 outs you get in a baseball game above all else (as you should), then you can think of first downs as their equivalent. The shorter the field, the fewer first downs your team has to purchase at the first down store. So don't skimp on your kick returner either.

Fumbles shmumbles. Not really, but examining a player's fumbles lost misses half the point. That's because fumble recovery is nearly entirely a matter of which way the odd spheroid bounces. So a running back who coughs up the cookie 10 times and only loses two is likely to cause his team a lot more heartache going forward than a back who turns the ball over on three of his four oopsies.

You fantasy guys will like the next two. Backs who carry the ball 370 times or more in a season often crash the following year. Their yardage gained drops 35%, on average. There is a lesser penalty for guys with 310-369 rushes.

The prospects of high QB draft picks can be discerned almost entirely by two simple stats: games played and completion percentage. The more games they've played, the more likely the scouts are right about their ability. The more they complete passes, the better they are. Where they played, whom they played, how they played, and how many yards they accumulated are all largely irrelevent. Ryan Leaf college completion percentage? Fifty-four percent. Thhhhpppp. Look for at least 60%.

Finally, total yardage is the most overrated measure in football (besides rings, as if one player is responsible for that). A back who runs 350 times for 1,190 yards is not nearly as valuable as one who scampers 1,000 yards in 200 carries. The first guy (3.4 yards per carry) leaves your team in a third and long three situation. The other fella (5.0 yards per carry) made the pole holders walk 30 feet.

The same goes for QBs and, in fact, whole teams. Yards per play or per pass are much more important than total yards. Here's the baseball analogy: Who's more of a slugger, a guy who hits 30 HRs in 600 at bats or one who slugs 25 in 400 at bats?

The nerds responsible for this information call themselves Football Outsiders.

Memorize these research-supported facts and sprinkle the discussion with them next time you meet friend at the local sports bar. The chicks will dig your geekdom and the gentlemen will really enjoy being corrected constantly. I know it's always worked for me!
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