A reader writes:
The Patriots have had a lot of success with a lot of white guys on their team. More specifically, they let white players play positions most commonly handled by black players: running back (Danny Woodhead), defensive back / kickoff returner (Julian Edelman), receiver / punt returner (Wes Welker). They're almost the Duke of the NFL.
Those three played at obscure to formerly obscure college programs: Div. II Chadron St., Kent St., and Texas Tech. And they're all under six feet tall, too. They look more like Mark Wahlberg starring in an inspirational sports movie than real life Super Bowl players.
On the other hand Rob Gronkowski, the Patriot's 6'-6" 265 lb. superstar tight end who was hobbled with a sprained ankle, looks like the college football player in a 1940s joke:
Professor of Philosophy [peeved at the intelligence of scholar athletes recruited by the college's football coach]: "Mr. Gronkowski, can you tell us who is the author of The Critique of Pure Reason?"
Big Dumb Football Player [sweating, clueless, and apologetic]: "Professor, I can't ..."
Professor [surprised]: "Correct!"
The Giants, on the other hand, are a prototypical team with black players in black roles (RB, WR, D line) and white players in white roles (line, special teams, QB). They also have pretty good call and response chemistry:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyNPeLJBo7Y
The racial angle wasn't played up because Eli is white, but the Giants have far superior athletic talent. If you gave a Martian a book about the last 20-30 years of American sport, especially football and basketball, and then showed him the roster of each team, he'd have no choice but to assume the Giants are 2 or 3 touchdown favorites.
The Patriots came close, but it will be interesting to see which approach wins out over time.
With the exception of Brady and the two young tight ends, the Patriots looked like a team that has been drafting late in each round for most of the last decade due to their winning records. It looked like a roster brilliantly scrounged together from overlooked leftovers.
Way back in 2005, Inductivist looked for me at the won-low records of NFL teams over the last 2.3 years to see if there was any correlation between teams' performance and their racial makeup. He found correlations around zero for starters, suggesting that teams were not overlooking white starters: i.e., no market inefficiencies caused by racial bias for starters.
On the other hand, he found positive correlations between the number of white nonstarters and wins. Perhaps white second stringers tend to be more versatile, or are less poisonous to the locker room atmosphere when they aren't starting or whatever. I never heard if anybody redid this study to see if the effect remained true. This is just not the kind of thing that people talk about.
Or maybe NFL coaches had noticed their oversights and rectified this market inefficiency. This year's Patriots certainly looked like their ruthlessly intelligent coach Bill Belichik was trying hard to find cheap but effective football players who don't look like the stereotypes. Over the last 11 years, New England has averaged better than an 11-5 record in the regular season, and 13.5-2.5 over the last two seasons. It's very hard to keep a dynasty going in the NFL where the system is rigged in various ways for parity. It looks like possibly one of the ways they've stayed in the hunt is by exploiting market inefficiencies in utility players. But it's hard to tell without doing another statistical analysis. You might think that in this age of Moneyball that this type of analysis would be done all the time, but then you wouldn't under this age of Moneyball.
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37 comments:
The game highlighted the difference between the intelligent athletes and the physically gifted ones. Each had their roles in the outcome.
There's actually a plausible reason why white backups might be correlated with winning. It stems from the overconfidence of coaching staffs. They draft more black players because they are on average better athletes, with the idea that they'll be "coached up" once in the NFL. That fails more often than not (if a player can be coached up, a decent college coach would have done it). So you end up with a lot of athletic talent on the roster that can't translate to on-field success.
"The Patriots came close, but it will be interesting to see which approach wins out over time."
LMAO! The Giants have won twice now over a 5 year span, and won in the regular season also.
"The game highlighted the difference between the intelligent athletes and the physically gifted ones. "
You mean like Brady giving up 2 points for intentional grounding, or Ninkovich getting called for offsides?
"Perhaps white second stringers tend to be more versatile, or are less poisonous to the locker room atmosphere when they aren't starting or whatever."
The Giants have been pretty good at expunging the poison/drama from their team in a race-neutral sort of way. For example, tight end Jeremy Shockey, who was an incredibly gifted athlete but impulsive and disruptive (and white), wasn't on the roster during the Giants Super Bowl four years ago due to an injury, but watched the game from a luxury box after the Giants coaching staff banished him from the sideline. He was off the team soon after.
An example with a black athlete is Plaxico Burress, the WR who would show up in the NJ papers periodically when his wife called the cops on him. Then he famously shot himself accidentally in a club in NYC, and Mayor Bloomberg had the prosecutors throw the book at him. When he got out of jail, the Giants didn't re-sign him.
The picture is a little subtler than black versus white. The Giants' black players include some atypical ones, for one thing. Star WR Victor Cruz is Latin. Star DE Joseph Pierre-Paul is Haitian. DE Osi Umenyiora was born in London, to Nigerian parents. OL Mathias Kiwanuka is the grandson of the first prime minister of Uganda. CB Aaron Ross's wedding (to an Olympic sprinter) was fancy enough to make that wedding section in the NY Times, etc.
"You mean like Brady giving up 2 points for intentional grounding, or Ninkovich getting called for offsides?"
Or throwing a jump ball to his hobbled tight end who couldn't jump for it.
There is a more ribald Kant joke.
One NYU philosophy don bails another out of the jailhouse.
'So what happened?'
'I asked the cop for directions to the Kant symposium. "The WHAT symposium?", the cop said. So I told him again...''
Gilbert Pinfold.
Borrowing from Stalin; how many Cornerbacks can Charles Murray burn deep?
Belichek is in love with his system, and his system fine, but if you don't have a credible deep threat, you will not beat the best teams. You need to be fast and athletic enough to run past people because even the dimmest of defenders can usually control what's happening in front of him.
Race and intelligence and their relationship to complexity is a fine field of study, but you can always tell when somebody has made it their Theory of Everything.
It, like most other Theories of Everything, leaves a trail of failure in it's wake.
Pat's owner Bob Kraft in his season ending address:
'The fact we had 18 undrafted free agents...'
So it hasn't gone unnoticed.
http://espn.go.com/blog/boston/new-england-patriots/post/_/id/4717494/season-ending-address-from-kraft
No, I think Coughlin and the Giants caught up with BB and the Pats. Look at LB Chase Blackburn. Cut from the roster, but called back, (he's White), Blackburn played a key role in the playoffs helping a beat up LB corps maintain itself. NY also had an all White LB corps, down to only one after two big injuries in the game.
Also, the WSJ had an article about how the Giants used a stat guy from ENGLAND straight out of Moneyball to evaluate every tendency of every player, their own and their opponents. The direct quote was something like the data (every player, every play, every game) was the most complete they'd ever seen.
Meanwhile the Patriots, likely with ownership meddling, signed Chad Ochocinco (IIRC, two downs, one catch for 7 yards) and the released Albert Haynesworth. Who lasted two weeks.
I'd add that the Giants more than any other team have basically copied the Moneyball playbook of BB's GM role. Gathering players from cut rosters and using the database to find the most effective players, as explained here:
"Pro Football Focus was also keeping track of even more advanced data, that it hoped to sell to media outlets and, perhaps, football teams.
For a pass play, it didn't merely record who threw it, who caught it and how many yards were gained after completion. It kept track of how many seconds elapsed before the quarterback released the ball, where each player stood at the start of the play, which defensive player applied pressure and which blocker allowed it."
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BB is also a poor play caller. I remember he managed time poorly in a game against New Orleans that ended up much like the Superbowl this time. Giving up points for time was a poor gamble, it mandated Brady go 80 yards in less than a minute. And BB blew a challenge, when right in front of him it was clear Manningham had both feet in (BB was literally six feet away watching).
The Giants got healthy quick, used stats to find good role-playing White guys at LB and TE to shore up shaky areas, and had a secondary that was not shut-down but could cover for six seconds to give the pass rush time. If Welker and Company had been open (a healthy Gronkowski would have maybe kiboshed this) in three seconds then likely Brady wins. No running game and no answer the Giants secondary meant a close game that Manning, a quality QB, could win.
The Ochocinco and Hanynesworth signings had Belichecks fingerprints all over them. Ochocinco was brought in to provide a deep threat and Haynesworth to play DT as they switched to a 4 man defensive front. Belicheck is confident enough to bring these types in because the culture of his squad is so strong the diva like players are forced to adapt or perish. Haynesworth didn't work out so they scrapped him and switched back to 3-4.
Ochocinco has a a poor year production wise chiefly for his inability to adapt the the Pats no huddle sets. Interestingly he was deployed as the third WR in the SB and the Pats ran vary little no huddle so perhaps Belicheck erred tactically and would have been better using the smarter Edelman and more no-huddle.
Any Kant jokes that don't rely on people not knowing how to say his name?
'BB is also a poor play caller.'
What are you talking about? Bill O'Brien calls the offensive plays and safeties coach Matt Patricia calls the defensive ones.
Surely you must be referring to his clock management?
Like a lot of sports fans, most of the people here are generalizing from the playoffs. It makes no sense whatsoever to look at a team that is averaging over two–thirds wins in regular season games under their current coach and say it's a system that can't beat the best teams. Yeah, and if you think the playoffs mean something more than just being an exclusive, near–crapshoot, they've had plenty of success, there, too.
Last night's game is a perfect example of how much of any given football game is tied up in luck. Anyone who saw Coughlin try his best to screw up the end of that game cannot think the Giants have a better system than the Pats.
Full Disclosure: I'm a Bengals fan, so I know a lot about bad decision making and systems in football.
Anyone who saw Coughlin try his best to screw up the end of that game cannot think the Giants have a better system than the Pats.
Anyone who saw the refs hand the Giants victory in the 49ers game might question Coughlin's genius as well. The reality is football is about luck. The two teams that made it to the Superbowl were probably at best the 5th and 6th best teams in the league. Texans (with a healthy Schaub), Steelers (with a healthy Roethlisberger), Packers, and Saints are all better teams in terms of talent than what we saw Sunday. You could make an argument that the Ravens are at least the equal of both SB teams as well.
"he found positive correlations between the number of white nonstarters and wins": in the international football code, Manchester United used to have a Norwegian "striker" whom they usually used as substitute late in the second half of games. He would routinely score winning goals for them. It was reported that much of his effectiveness came from his analytical abilities: his watching of the bulk of the game would teach him where the opposition's weaknesses were, and then he'd trot on to exploit them.
Are players allowed enough initiative in gridiron football that such a cause could occur there?
Philosphy and football:
Professor is introducing his class to Descartes, writes on the lecture hall blackboard
"I think, therefore I am."
Crewcut and beefy football player looks up, reads the sentence, and...disappears.
In Texas high school football, it is most often the suburban schools who win state championships.
They typically have majority white rosters with a handful of black players at the skill positions. Katy HS outside of Houston is a typical example of this approach.
Of course, on national signing day, it is the majority black high schools -- many with horrible teams -- that have double-digit major-college signees.
In my local district, it is not unusual for an all-black high school that typically wins 1 or 2 games per year to have six or seven Div. 1 signees. No one ever questions why a school with that much talent can't actually win.
Dearieme, gridiron football allows players to substitute in and out on essentially every play (about 100-120 times a game). The "starters" may play only half to two-thirds of the plays when their part of the team (offense or defense) is on the field. Unlike association football, the non-starters don't have 75 minutes of game time to analyze the particular opposing players they would face on the field. (However, a bunch of assistant coaches, both at field level and high in the stadium, are doing that analysis and sharing it with the players).
Here's an irony: Bill Belichick's last name means "Little White One" (Beli meaning white and Chick being the standard slavic diminuative).
Actually, the Pats made it closer than it should have been. The NFC was much stronger than the AFC this year andthe Giants played superior teams, losing to several of them.
As for draft picks--yes, winning relagates a team to low picks, but BB has been a master of stockpiling high picks, and if I am not mistaken, he had 4 very recent first round picks on this team.
Face it, in the end, the game was still a toss up, literally and figuratively. I, for one, am glad the Giants won, but I do wish old Blomberg would see how evil is his decision not to give a parade to returning military while giving one to the Giants.
"And BB blew a challenge, when right in front of him it was clear Manningham had both feet in (BB was literally six feet away watching)."
Disagree strenously.
It was a bang-bang play. While the feet were down, only a review could be sure of that and only a review could confirm that he had possession of the ball while his feet were down and while he continued out of bounds. BB would have been a fool not to challenge for those reasons alone....and also because he's been lucky before with such challenges--the tuck rule of the Ice Bowl.
BB's system has been to utilize about 70 players per season, dropping from and adding to the roster as needs require--not simply to replace injured players. For the Super Bowl, BB dropped a WR (who played in 8 games), and added a DL (1 game). Players dropped can always sign elsewhere, but BB tells them to stay around, stay in shape, and be ready to be re-activated. I works most of the time, but BB has been doing it to a greater extent and for longer than anyone.
Forbes
Amazing. The patriots would have easily won barring an interception (by a WHITE linebacker) and an uncharacteristic (ie, unlucky) drop by Wes Welker, yet somehow their defeat is proof you need black affletes to win? They were leading all the way up until less than a minute remaining in the game, idiots!
"They were leading all the way up until less than a minute remaining in the game, idiots!"
It's football, Sport, not horseshoes.
"The racial angle wasn't played up because Eli is white, but the Giants have far superior athletic talent."
The Giants do not have far superior talent. Far inferior players would not make a professional roster. Woodhead is a role player, as is Edelman, so the inferior players would be the black starters that they back up.
Wes Welker led the league in receptions, and was the league leader in receiving yardage for much of the season before Calvin Johnson passed him on the last day of the season. Welker has enough speed to have a 99 yard touchdown this season, so I wouldn't exactly call him slow. He gets open and has plenty of yards-after-catch, so he's doing something right.
"In my local district, it is not unusual for an all-black high school that typically wins 1 or 2 games per year to have six or seven Div. 1 signees. No one ever questions why a school with that much talent can't actually win."
Same here, and I live in the heart of the SEC.
I've also noticed that the black schools usually have horrible black coaches, bad black bands and black cheerleaders who can't dance or stay in rhythm with one another.
It's football, Sport, not horseshoes.
True. "Close" doesn't win games. But luck does. And this is the second time the Giants have gotten lucky as hell in the 'bowl vs. the Pats. They put the ball on the ground, what? Three times, and got it back all three times? And if Welker doesn't drop that ball, they lose. They even admitted as much.
But hey, I'd rather be lucky than good. On the other hand, I was thinking the Giants should've been favored, not the Pats, before the game evens started. The Pats looked weak against the Ravens (and only beat them with an almost finger-down-from-Heaven stroke of luck with that Ravens touchdown-non-touchdown).
Or throwing a jump ball to his hobbled tight end who couldn't jump for it.
Or putting that pass to Welker over the wrong shoulder, and making it a jump ball, when he was wide open.
All those drops in the 4th quarter were nice and multicultural. First the White guy drops one (and, in hindsight, loses the game), then the Black guy drops one, then the "Hispanic" guy.
" And this is the second time the Giants have gotten lucky as hell in the 'bowl vs. the Pats."
Yeah, they were twice "lucky" through a 16 game schedule and 3 playoff games, to get there, too.
Listening to Tom Brady, as a non-American I would have taken him for African American. His accent is certainly not like the kind of talking head I usually hear on politics, academics or culture. Is that the way cool people talk now? Is it a jock thing?
To my ear, his cadence and timbre are similar to Kim Kardashian's erstwhile athlete-husband.
Gilbert Pinfold.
Rob Gronkowski got a 1060 out of 1600 on his SAT's after getting drunk the night before (the good old-fashioned way to take your college boards).
"The racial angle wasn't played up because Eli is white, but the Giants have far superior athletic talent"
they don't. well, the africans on the giants defense are better than the africans on the patriots defense, who are mostly garbage. all season long they were correctly identified as garbage, then after the superbowl was over, it was quickly forgotten that the patriots defenders were crap. statistically, one of the worst defenses of all time. the patriots defense was better 7 or 8 years ago when it had more european players, not less. lots of NFL defenses are 11 scrub africans now, that gets overlooked.
both defenses had a single european starter, at linebacker, and not coincidentally, they are both one of the best players on the defense. as europeans are tremendously discriminated against in the NFL, they have to be far above average to even be allowed to play. this is how individual euro americans finish high in the defense stats year after year. it is always downplayed - jared allen came within a half sack of breaking the single season sack record and there was zero reporting of that - he didn't even win defensive player of the year.
other than that, the teams are about the same. the patriots offensive line is better than the giants offensive line. the giants were dead last in the NFL in rushing, so no advantage there.
there's a reason the giants are usually not much of a factor year after year, while the patriots are. the giants players aren't that good, the patriots players are. the giants end up drafting higher most years.
it does seem like some kind of supernatural force is guiding the giants to get red hot and miraculously beat everybody, as if it knows the patriots are going to be in the superbowl and it wants the 9-7 giants to beat them. first 9-7 team to ever win, so no, it's not a "wait and see" thing. that's never happened before, ever, and will probably never happen again. it will be interesting to see the giants go back to being a non-factor next year - i'll just take as an indication that the patriots won't be in the superbowl, lol.
Truth, the packers won the superbowl last year - they had the most european players of any NFL team. you can clearly do well and win with them. jordy nelson is their best receiver. he wasn't even recruited to play NCAA football. when the patriots had randy moss, they still lost to the giants.
"Belichek is in love with his system, and his system fine, but if you don't have a credible deep threat, you will not beat the best teams"
the patriots lost the superbowl when they had the best deep threat in the NFL, in a year in which brady threw for 50 touchdowns. speed doesn't guarantee you much. that's the raiders way. the way to 8 and 8.
really they just needed gronkowski to not be injured. a record 18 touchdowns for him on the year. take away a skill position player who had a record setting year, the best ever at his position, and yeah, that's a pretty big loss.
the safety was one of the most bizarre calls i've ever seen. have never seen that before ever in over 30 years of watching. not saying it's never happened but i've never seen intentional grounding called on a long overthrown bomb. that changed the game significantly. i talked to some old timers and they concurred, never seen it before. again, doesn't mean it can't have happened. brady has gotten some favorable calls before as well. famously in the tuck rule game.
Like a lot of sports fans, most of the people here are generalizing from the playoffs."
agree. but it's worse in the NBA. that is fire and brimstone revisionism after every single playoff game in a 7 game series.
"The reality is football is about luck."
yep. it plays a huge factor, primarily in turnovers.
the giants were extremely lucky to have both clean strips bounce directly back to them. if 1 out of 2 of those fumbles had gone the other way, it's completely different game. especially that giants fumble near their own goal.
sorry, not sure if my post went through. but i wanted to agree that there's too much analysis after one single game. it's even worse in the NBA.
also, like another poster said, luck plays a huge part in NFL games. primarily in turnovers. the giants were extremely lucky on those 2 clean strips that the ball bounced back directly to them both times. if the second fumble had not, the game is completely different and the patriots probably win.
2 NFL teams can play 10 times with various different outcomes due to stuff like this. you only start to overcome randomness in the other ball sports with their 7 game series format.
" africans on the patriots defense, who are mostly garbage."
"all season long they were correctly identified as garbage, then after the superbowl was over, it was quickly forgotten that the patriots defenders were crap."
Maybe that's because they only gave up three touchdowns?
"statistically, one of the worst defenses of all time."
Uh, no.
"the patriots defense was better 7 or 8 years ago when it had more european players,"
Oh, you mean 2.5 instead of one?
"lots of NFL defenses are 11 scrub africans now, that gets overlooked."
Yeah, including most of those that made the playoffs.
"both defenses had a single european starter, at linebacker, and not coincidentally, they are both one of the best players on the defense."
Attention Hall-of-Fame committee, start working on those "Ninkovich" and "Blackburn" busts now!
"as europeans are tremendously discriminated against in the NFL, they have to be far above average to even be allowed to play."
Yeah, who the hell wants to win games, anyway? It's overrated.
"jared allen came within a half sack of breaking the single season sack record and there was zero reporting of that - he didn't even win defensive player of the year."
Yep he held it down for all those guys who won awards on 3-13 teams.
"there's a reason the giants are usually not much of a factor year after year, while the patriots are."
Uh, they've won two of the last 5 Superbowls, both against the Patriots.
"the giants players aren't that good, the patriots players are."
Always a characteristic of the team that keeps winning!
"it does seem like some kind of supernatural force is guiding the giants to get red hot and miraculously beat everybody, as if it knows the patriots are going to be in the superbowl and it wants the 9-7 giants to beat them."
It's racism, I tell ya! Those Jews in that huge synagouge under the streets of Manhattan put a GPS in Tyree and Manningham's gloves and gave Eli a special ball!
"Truth, the packers won the superbowl last year - they had the most european players of any NFL team."
And I'm guessing you'd love to live a neighborhood that was "only" 40% black"
"you can clearly do well and win with them."
That's why everybody is copying them.
"jordy nelson is their best receiver."
They have another guy who keeps making Pro Bowls, but you're right, he sucks.
"he wasn't even recruited to play NCAA football."
Neither was Jimmy Graham.
"when the patriots had randy moss, they still lost to the giants."
And they lost to him without them, so maybe it's someone else's fault?
-Nah
"the giants were extremely lucky to have both clean strips bounce directly back to them."
They were also extremely lucky Brady threw a jump ball to a guy running like a 3-legged dog. My guess why would be that he read the defense and said, "hey Gronk, if the white guy picks you up, just go deep!"
"if 1 out of 2 of those fumbles had gone the other way, it's completely different game."
Jody, if if's and butts were candy and nuts, every day would be Christmas.
"2 NFL teams can play 10 times with various different outcomes due to stuff like this."
Uh, the Giants won during the regular season too, Sport, in Foxborough. You somehow forgot this?
Once again, my friend, I swear that I did not take more than 5 seconds responding to anything above that I answered. That is how predictable you are.
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