The Mothership - Super Bowl Edition

Happy Monday, friends, and congratulations to the New Orleans Saints on their impressive victory in Super Bowl XLIV.  It was a total team effort, and I'll have a lot of observations to share to that effect.  I had planned for this to be short-ish, but the party I was planning to attend got canceled, due to a sick kid.  I had another invitation, by a friend who lives in the trendy Warehouse District in downtown Cleveland, but I decided to just make some shrimp jambalaya (which was awesome), watch the game from home, take good notes, and write a robust edition of The Mothership.  Let's get this thing underway, then.  Ready..... BEGIN!!!!

1.  Drew Brees won the MVP award for the Super Bowl, and he played a great game, and deserved it.  The real star, though, was Head Coach Sean Payton.  The Saints got behind in this game pretty quickly, 10-0, and the team's poise improved a great deal after a shaky start.  That's not what usually happens when you go down 10-0 to the Colts; most teams get that "here we go" feeling, and the rout is on.  The Saints got their act together, and played the way they can play.

A key moment in the game was when Payton elected to go for it on 4th and goal from about 1.5 yards away.  There were just under 2 minutes to go, and both teams had all three timeouts.  I loved the call, and judging from my Twitter feed, I was about the only one.  Of course, I understand clock and situation management very well, and most people don't.  It was the right call, without question, and I am going to explain why.

First of all, there is the concept of expected return, which is used in finance, in portfolio theory and other applications.  According to this research, you have between a 60% and 70% chance of making it in from the 1 1/2.  We'll call it 65% for this purpose, since you can't tell exactly from the graphical representation, and I don't have the source data.  What that means is, if you go for it, there is a 65% chance you'll score 7 points, and a 35% chance you'll score no points.  The math is simple.  You multiply the probability by the outcome, for each outcome, and total them up, as below.

According to this simple math, which is not particularly theoretical or cutting edge, your expected return is much better in going for it.  In fact, the research indicates that you should always go for it on 4th and goal, if you are inside 4 yards.  (An expected outcome of less than 2.94 points would require a TD probability of 41.86%, which happens at around the 4 yard line.)  Payton made the right call by the numbers, just like Bill Belichick did against the Colts a few months ago.  

There was a deeper reason it was the right call though.  If you don't make it, the Colts take over at their own 1 yard line, with little time, and three timeouts,  The Saints also had three timeouts.  Peyton Manning isn't going to be lining up in the shotgun, and throwing downfield from his own 1.  The play is going to be a run, or a low risk screen pass, so you can play for those plays on defense.  Starting from your own 1 yard line with any amount of time left gives you a low probability of scoring.  Doing it under 2 minutes makes it extremely small.  The Colts' goal was to run the clock down, and go to the half with a 10-3 lead, unless they break a longer run, in which case, they can go to their 2 minute package, and try to score.

If Payton kicks the field goal, and cuts the score to 10-6, he's reasonably assured that the Colts are going to start from their own 25-30, with about 1:35 and three timeouts.  Best case there is Manning probably drives to a field goal, and you go in down 13-6, which is the same as being down 10-3, as far as I'm concerned.  Worst case is he gets a TD, and you're down 17-6.

The Saints played the Colts well on defense, and got the result they wanted.  The Colts punted, and the Saints got the ball back near midfield.  They moved into field goal position, and went into the locker room down only 10-6.  That's a positive outcome for the Saints, and a negative one for the Colts.  The Saints clearly won the last two minutes of the first half, which is interesting, because the Colts almost always win that part of the game.

When you add this victory to the very smart use of the surprise onside kick to start the second half, you can see pretty clearly that Payton's aggressiveness and smart game management played a huge part in winning the game.  I know some will say that the onside kick was only smart because they recovered it, but it's successful about 60% of the time, and stealing a possession against a team like the Colts is worth that 40% risk.  You may give them a short field, but they had a good chance of scoring to open the third quarter anyway, regardless of the starting field position.

Payton's offensive play-calling and aggressive game management will get a lot of attention, and deservedly so.  Many who fawn over it won't even really understand, but that's not a problem for Smarter Fans like us.

2.  Some observations from the game:

a.  I really liked the play of the Saints CBs and LBs in pass coverage.  The Colts hit some passes, but they're always going to.  The coverage was very good, and it prevented explosive plays.  I especially thought Scott Shanle did a fantastic job on Dallas Clark.  That's a very tough assignment for a LB, and Shanle was in his pocket.  Several of the throws Manning hit to Clark had to be (and were) perfect throws.

b.  I was feeling all clever about having spoken favorably of Tracy Porter a few times this year, and about how I was going to credit him for doing a great job against Reggie Wayne all night.  Then, he jumped a bad route, picked off a bad throw, and announced to every Target bookseller in the world that he's turned into a really good player in his second season.  Have you ever liked a band before they got big, and everybody jumped on the bandwagon?  Yeah, well that's where I am with Porter, because the bandwagon is going to be huge after tonight.  He improved a great deal from his rookie year to his second, which gives me a some hope for the Broncos' Alphonso Smith.  (I also still love his skill-set.)

c.  I wouldn't exactly call Jonathan Vilma underrated, but he he played bigger than his reputation Sunday night.  He was striking guys, and he made a couple big-time tackles for losses, that put the Colts in unfavorable down and distance situations.  He also had great downfield coverage on Austin Collie downfield in the 4th quarter, forcing a field goal attempt, which would ultimately be missed.

d.  The Saints ran a very interesting screen pass in the first quarter, which gave them their first first down of the game.  It was a max protect screen to Reggie Bush, which is another way of saying there were no blockers releasing to get out front of him.  Bush caught the ball, made a man miss, and got the first down.  You almost never see a design like that, where it's a designed blockerless screen.  It helped sell the play, and had the second level players back-pedaling in their zones.  Typically, they'd see blockers set up, and attack the play.  Bush's ability to make the late-coming underneath man miss made the difference in the play, and he got 16 yards on third and 5.

e.  I didn't really like Malcolm Jenkins coming out of college, but he looked like a useful guy on Sunday night.  He made a couple very sure tackles, and had good coverage in the slot throughout the game.

f.  The Saints played a lot of 30 front stuff early in the game, but got back to their normal looks more as the game wore on.  I was very impressed with Gregg Williams' game plan and in-game play-calling.

g.  Manning was his normal self, hitting throws in small windows, but I do believe that the pressure and hits he took eventually led to the interception.  He really hurried the ball out on that play, and didn't get enough on the throw.  He wasn't sacked, but he did take some solid hits in the game. 

h.  Pierre Garcon's stats were more modest than I expected, because it seemed like he had a big game.  He made Usama Young look like a fool with his pants on the ground on the TD.  Young tried to jam him, and whiffed completely.  The very good Jabari Greer had just gone out with an injury, and I know Peyton Manning loved that matchup when he saw it.  Garcon's drop was huge, but I wouldn't say it was any worse than Marques Colston's in the first quarter.  Each team lost a promising possession as a result of a drop.  That's even Steven, if you ask me.

i.  Joseph Addai ran really well again, in keeping with his recent strong play.  I was pretty down on him in the regular season, but he's been running with some authority and toughness lately.  Donald Brown only had 4 carries, but he looked good on those plays too.  For all the stuff about the Colts being last in rushing, they can run the ball when they decide to.

j.  Gary Brackett had a great game for the Colts in defeat.  I was impressed with Antoine Bethea too, but I usually am.  He's an outstanding open-field tackler.

k.  An underrated difference in the game was between the two placekickers. Garrett Hartley came up huge for the Saints, hitting 3 field goals, from 46, 44, and 47 yards.  Matt Stover hit from 38, but missed from 51.  I would say that that kick is out of his range, and represented a bad call by Jim Caldwell.  Stover hasn't hit from more than 50 since 2006, and it's not like he's ever been the strongest-legged guy.  The thing to do would have been to try a higher percentage pass than the aforementioned one to Collie, and try to at least get in a little better range.  That was the time for a square-in to Garcon or Wayne.  

That miss was basically the game, because the Saints went down the field, scored a TD and 2 point conversion, and burned 4:57 after that.  It was another play that the Colts didn't make, while the Saints seemed to make every play available to them.

3.  I just want to write a quick paragraph, and make a quick point, as I near my midnight deadline.  I am a big believer that you can't always judge the quality of coaches on past results.  History is not always very indicative of their abilities, and this game featured some good examples of that.  Jim Caldwell failed badly in his only other head coaching opportunity, at Wake Forest, if you judge him by his record.  He was 26-63 at Wake Forest, with only one winning season (7-5 in 1999, his next to last year).  On the one hand, you could say that Wake Forest was a terrible situation, but the next guy would point out that Jim Grobe has greatly outperformed Caldwell there, going 59-51 over 9 years, and establishing a very credible ACC program.

Sean Payton was basically run out of New York when he was the offensive coordinator for the Giants.  The offense struggled in 2002, and Jim Fassel stripped him of his play-calling duties.  He was ultimately hired by the Cowboys as assistant head coach and QBs coach, but if he hadn't left for that promotion, Fassel was likely to fire him anyway.  Payton rebuilt his reputation working under Bill Parcells, but it took a hit in 2002.

Gregg Williams didn't hack it as the Head Coach of the Bills, and hasn't drawn much consideration for another chance.  Larry Coyer was fired as defensive coordinator of the Broncos after the defense underperformed in the second half of the 2006 season.

The point is, morons in the MSM will make judgments about whether a guy can coach or not, based upon measurables, but those measurables often don't tell the whole story.  A lot of good coaches don't win or put up huge numbers due to factors outside their control.  Others improve after failing early on. Life is a continuous learning experience, you know?  There was a lot of coaching redemption on display Sunday night, while a lot of blue-bloods were doing something else.  

Next time you hear or read some a-clown reporter criticizing the hiring of a "retread", remember this Super Bowl.  It was a battle of retreads, after all.  Lessons from failure are often more valuable than lessons from success.

4.  Floyd Little and Dick LeBeau both look great for their ages.  (Floyd is 67, and LeBeau is 72.)  When Floyd was a rookie, in 1967, they played in a famous preseason game, when LeBeau's Lions traveled to Denver to play the AFL doormat Broncos.  Alex Karras famously said that he'd walk back to Detroit if the Lions lost, which they did.  (He flew, if you were wondering.)  It was only a preseason game, but it served to give the AFL a sliver of credibility in the pre-Super Bowl days.  I think it's great that both men are going into the Hall together, and I wonder if there will be any story-telling from that game.  I bet it's Floyd who tells it, if there is.

That's all I have at 12:05, friends.  Have a great Monday, and come back tomorrow.