You Herd Me!: I'll Say It If Nobody Else Will (13 page)

Luck played behind one of the worst offensive lines in the league. His running game was almost nonexistent. He had one good veteran receiver, Reggie Wayne, but receivers alone don’t have much impact. We promote them and are amazed by their athletic abilities, but they are wholly dependent on the people around them. Calvin Johnson is the league’s most gifted receiver—Detroit finished last in its division. Larry Fitzgerald and DeSean Jackson finished last, too. Success in the NFL starts with the protection of the number one asset, the quarterback. Green Bay is a perfect case in point: the league’s best quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, has struggled to win playoff games after winning the Super Bowl for one reason—his offensive line is dreadful.

And it’s not nearly as bad as the one that lined up in front of Andrew Luck.

Luck spent a season running for his life behind a porous offensive line and getting little to no help from a running game. RGIII
spent a season being protected by one of the league’s best offensive lines, one that helped an unheralded rookie running back, Alfred Morris, run for more than 1,600 yards. Griffin’s game plans were devised by Mike Shanahan, one of the most respected offensive minds in the game, while Luck had an interim head coach, Bruce Arians.

A poor offensive line, a nonexistent running game, and an interim head coach—can you think of a worse situation for a rookie starting quarterback?

And yet take a look at the statistics: Luck was forced to throw 230 times more than RGIII and completed 80 more; he threw for almost 1,200 more yards, had more touchdown passes, more yards per game, more yards per completion, and 600 more all-purpose yards.

He was also more durable, and it’s worth noting that availability is the best way to judge ability. RGIII was unable to finish three games because of injury.

Throughout the season, ESPN’s sharpest analysts provided keen insight into the reasons behind RGIII’s lack of interceptions. He was running a simpler offense and asked to take fewer chances. He made fewer—and easier—reads downfield.

One of the greatest compliments a coach can pay a young quarterback is to increase the amount of offense he’s
allowed
to run. The playbook grows with preparation and readiness. Luck is a Stanford graduate who played four years in a pro-style offense. Arians told me Luck was so brilliant he was able to open up the entire playbook by the end of the preseason.

RGIII is obviously a smart kid as well, but his transition was far different. Baylor ran a spread offense during Griffin’s three seasons there (he missed one with an injury) and was given an offense with limited options—mostly a slicker version of the one he ran in college—to make his rookie year easier.

They’re both great young quarterbacks who could be the faces of the league for the next decade, but the difference in responsibility they were given is not insignificant. If you’re a parent of two kids, you don’t love one more than the other, but if you send them both to the amusement park, you’re going to pick one of them to hold the money.

You love ’em both.

Both good kids.

One holds the money.

So let’s review the who-holds-the-money question as it pertains to Luck and Griffin:

Griffin’s better completion percentage is a by-product of an offense that relied on safer, easier throws. He had better quarterback rating, but that isn’t the be-all, end-all stat some would like you to believe it is. For one thing, John Elway’s QBR is sixty-third all-time, behind Chad Pennington, Jeff Garcia, Shaun Hill, Marc Bulger, Brad Johnson, Neil O’Donnell, and Dave Krieg. In many ways, the quarterback rating has all the accuracy of an online hotel review.

This takes us on our long and winding path back to the “dreaded” interception, another statistic that tells you roughly as much about quarterbacking as someone’s opinion of the color of a bedspread tells you about the Ritz-Carlton.

This isn’t a mystery within the game. Phil Simms loves to tell stories about his former boss, Bill Parcells, and the gruff advice he
gave his quarterback. Before one game, Parcells told Simms, “If you don’t throw two interceptions today, I’m going to be pissed.” Parcells, the only coach in NFL history to lead four different teams to the playoffs, understood that passivity was the enemy of the quarterback. He knew that Simms needed to get out of his comfort zone, be aggressive, and take chances downfield in order for the Giants to succeed. He knew that big games are often won by off-the-script plays made downfield, often in traffic, and those plays aren’t made by dumping the ball off to a back in the flat.

Parcells, whose coaching tree includes Tom Coughlin, Sean Payton, and Bill Belichick, once scolded Simms at practice for dropping the ball off to a running back.

“Were you worried it would hurt your completion percentage?” he yelled.

Parcells’s lack of fear is borne out by recent history. Of the last eight Super Bowl–winning quarterbacks, seven threw a significant number of interceptions. Eli Manning has won two Super Bowls—he has averaged almost 17 picks his first eight years in the league and threw 23 touchdowns and 20 picks during his first Super Bowl year. Ben Roethlisberger, a known risk-taker, has also won two of those Super Bowls—he had 17 touchdowns and 15 interceptions the only year he played all sixteen games. The great Peyton Manning has had eight years with at least 15 interceptions—one with 28.

Need more? Brett Favre is the all-time leader in interceptions thrown. Joe Namath threw more picks than touchdowns in his career.

Since interceptions are so bad, how in the world do these guys keep winning?

How is it even possible?

Well, it’s possible because nobody has ever cared enough—or
taken the time—to analyze the interception. It’s possible because the NFL’s marketing and hype has led us to accept the idea that the league is an aerial circus, where the last team with the ball wins and every change of possession can swing the outcome of a game. The facts—NFL teams average roughly twelve possessions per game and score on fewer than four of them—don’t back up the PR campaign.

Unlike errors in baseball or turnovers in basketball—mistakes that are irrefutably bad—interceptions are not created equal. I believe they fall into two distinct categories:

Interceptions are a complex business. There are several variables to consider: where they are thrown from, where they are caught, and where they are returned to. Taking all of these factors into consideration, Luck’s eighteen interceptions don’t look so bad. In fact, just half—only nine—fall into Category A.

This
was the big black mark on Luck’s season?
This
was the defining difference between him and RGIII? Are you kidding me?

Nine
damaging interceptions changed our perception of Andrew Luck?

Look, I understand all of RGIII’s great qualities. He’s
incredibly charismatic, an exciting player with a great personality. I know he played for a historically relevant franchise and had a hell of a rookie season.

I also know Andrew Luck threw the ball 627 times—more than Dan Marino or John Elway were ever asked to throw in a season—behind an offensive line with more holes than Oliver Stone’s version of the JFK assassination. He was aided by a running game so weak, linebackers often dropped into coverage immediately with the snap of the ball. He was led by an interim head coach whose arsenal of weapons consisted of wide receiver Reggie Wayne and a bunch of rookies.

And
interceptions
cost him the Rookie of the Year award?

Clearly, we need a new way of evaluating interceptions.

The Luck vs. Griffin debate underscores that larger point. For as much as we obsess on the NFL, for as much as we bet on it and analyze it and fret over our fantasy teams, interceptions have fallen through the cracks. We, and I include myself, haven’t found a way to see anything other than a black number on a white page.

Someday—maybe someday soon—we’ll come to a better and more evolved understanding of the interception. We won’t toss them all into the same category. As analytics progress, we’ll come to understand the nuances.

But for now, the interception is understood about as well as marijuana was in the 1940s.

It makes you go blind. Or worse.

Reefer Madness
, meet
Interception Madness
.

But maybe there’s hope: if we follow the same evolutionary process, someday we’ll realize NFL teams can use interceptions for actual benefits as well.

About five years ago, I experienced a sudden, unexpected, life-altering event.

I got old.

Fast.

On Saturday night, I was vibrant, alive, seeking new challenges. By Sunday morning, I was craving sliced tomatoes, looking forward to
Meet the Press
, and wondering where I put my glasses.

Things hurt now. I’m told they’re called ligaments.

However, there are benefits that come with drifting into your midforties. The biggest one? Perspective. You start looking at life and—in my case—sports differently in middle age. There’s very little that surprises me anymore. A younger person might be shocked or outraged by what an athlete does either on the field or off, but I’m the one off in the corner, shrugging. It’s just another day at the office, and whatever that guy did is just another in a series of incidents that have taken place on the corner of Bad Temper Avenue and Lousy Judgment Street.

After forty years of watching sports and twenty-five years of covering it, I’d say I’m surprised about once a decade.

Magic Johnson’s HIV announcement tops the list. O.J. Simpson’s car chase was a jaw-dropper. And oh yeah—Andre Agassi did meth. I didn’t see that one coming.

But how anyone can be regularly surprised by the intersection of sports and drugs, sports and sex, or sports and gambling is beyond me. Fame, youth, testosterone, and massive quantities of disposable income create a toxic jambalaya.

The ugly side of sports doesn’t diminish my enjoyment. I don’t base my opinion of an actor’s work on the most sordid details of
his personal life. They’re performers, and some are eccentric. Most have surrendered some vital part of their life to achieve greatness in the arts, and athletes are no different. Once you realize that athletes are nothing more than tall, fast, and strong entertainers, you begin to expect the flaws. It’s just another layer of who they are.

Athletes have it rougher than other entertainers, though. Far rougher. They wear jerseys, and those jerseys have the names of cities across the front. This creates a false civic connection between fans and athletes. Athletes don’t represent the residents of their cities any more than a theater troupe does. The misbehavior of a St. Louis athlete who grew up in Florida and went to college in Alabama has no linkage whatsoever with the people of St. Louis.

Imagine this conversation:

Problems off the field or off the court are a logical offshoot of unbalanced lives. To be great at anything, you’ve generally had to sacrifice something else. Give and take, you know? It’s the same reason there aren’t many top scientists with a killer jump shot.

I give jocks a lot of leeway on my show. I’m more understanding of their mistakes because I see them from a wider angle. Besides, experience has taught me to expect them.

However (and this is a big
however
), there are two specific positions in sports—point guard and quarterback—that bring out
the inflexible, ligament-stressed old man in me. Not coincidentally, this is the one topic that brings me the most heat.

At times, it can feel like a blast furnace.

Quarterback and point guard, the two most important leadership positions in sports. If you play one of those two positions, I will judge you and my judgment can be harsh. Sometimes I think I shouldn’t be as harsh, but then I return to the same question: Do you believe general managers and owners aren’t making those exact same judgments?

These are big-money businesses we’re talking about here, and a blown pick at the top of the draft at one of these two vital positions can set a franchise back several years. You can’t overstate the importance of the quarterback and point guard. They’re the foundation for subsequent draft picks. They need to deal with crises more regularly than any other position and they have to be the ones to stabilize locker rooms during unsettled times.