The NFL is frustrating (a lament after an Eagles loss)

NFL football is absolutely the best sport in the world to watch, even if you’re not a die-hard fan of the teams playing.

But it is also the most frustrating sport to watch if you are.

Why? Because too often it does not come down to who’s the better team, or who performs best on a given Sunday, or who has the stronger will to win (or any of those phrases commentators like to throw out).

No, too often it comes down to dumb luck.

In Sunday’s second Eagles-Cowboys matchup of the season in Philadelphia, the former division-leading team and their fast-paced (no, strike-quickly) offence desperately wanted the ball first, so they could put points on the board as soon as possible (and duplicate what they did on Thanksgiving in Dallas) and thus put the Boys in desperate mode right of the bat.

Lucky them, they won the opening coin toss (a 50-50 flip of which there is no more direct embodiment of luck in sports). They chose to take the ball (as opposed to deferring, which has become a very curious trend in the NFL, but a topic for another day).

But that good luck flipped completely around when the ball, kicked short, didn’t bounce forward as expected and Josh Huff was unable to get to it and Dallas was able to recover in what was essentially a successfully unintentional onside kick (something I don’t recall ever seeing before).

Please, please, please don’t try to argue that it was a great play by Dallas, or that it was what they planned, or that they saw some flaw in the way the Eagles lined up for the kick. The ball took a lucky bounce, and Dallas was lucky to land on it (just like is the case pretty much ANY time a fumble occurs).

It was dumb luck that the Cowboys got the ball first in the Eagles’ red zone and scored, just as it was dumb luck that late in the game after the Eagles had more than gotten back into the game and Brent Celek made a nice catch and fought for a first down, that when the ball was punched out of his arm while he was lying horizontally on top of a defender who was lying horizontally on the ground, that no part of his body that is deemed to be the part of a body that causes a player to be ruled down by contact whence touching the ground was not actually itself touching the ground. (A little wordy, yeah, but all that to say that even when logic should dictate you're down, a whole bunch of lucky or unlucky factors come into play.)

I’d even argue that it is lucky that the referees called pass interferences penalties that allowed Dallas to extend drives and score TDs on their first three, while they missed others (I’m not saying the referees were biased or that the calls went more the Cowboys’ way, just that pass interference – which may be the most frustrating thing about watching the NFL – is not always a fair representation of what is actually happening on the field and more about the exact angle of where the referee happens to be standing on a given play. Ie. Referee calls = luck.

It’s also bad luck for the Eagles that Nick Foles, who started the season 5-2 behind a patchwork offensive line, broke his collarbone and that his replacement Mark Sanchez, who had an offensive line restored with Pro Bowlers, went 3-3 in his starts and was unable to keep his team in first place, just as it was bad luck for Cardinals that Carson Palmer blew out his knee when his team was looking in such good shape for a big post-season run (déjà vu for him going back to his Bengals days). Arizona actually clinched a playoff spot with the Eagles-Cowboys result, but does anyone really think they have a shot at becoming the first team to win the Super Bowl at home this February as they head into their matchup with the Seahawks with the 3rd-stringer and possibly 4th-string quarterback preparing to go under centre?

As a poker player, I know that “luck” is part of the game if you’re talking about any given turn of the card. But if you play long enough, the luck evens out and it becomes all about the skill.

That’s just a mathematical fact, but the trouble is, in a sport where the season is just 16 games, it’s often not enough for the luck to balance out. Luck plays too high a role, and it’s hard to swallow.

Now, as an Eagles fan, it’s perhaps ironic that I’m hoping for another type of “Luck” to play in our favour next week, when the Colts visit Dallas. I need their star QB Andrew Luck to lead Indianapolis to a win, and then for the Eagles to NOT get unlucky against two inferior teams in Washington and New York.

Then maybe I can return to the excruciating practice of watching my team try to land on the right side of luck in the one-and-done post-season of the NFL.

Oh, to be a football fan.

On the day that Mark Sanchez prepares to face the Green Bay Packers, I've looked back at some of the reactions to his first start with the Eagles in place of the injured Nick Foles and hearing them has me thinking people might be getting just a little carried away with his 300-yard, two-touchdown, so-called "mistake-free" performance. And I wonder if people are suffering from short-term memory.

I've heard some calling him things like the "new" Mark Sanchez and it immediately makes me scoff.

Now before I continue, let me just say, I have nothing against Sanchez. In fact, I like him. I like his attitude, his competitiveness and many of his skills, and he displayed a lot of that on Monday night, in primetime, in front of the unforgiving Philadelphia sports fans, no less, in his first start in a couple years for a team with high expectations this year.

But may I remind people that Sanchez has one of the worst career completion percentages for an established starter at just over 55 per cent -- and last Monday night he actually had a Cmp% WORSE than that (54). And that was against a bad Carolina Panthers that turned the ball over to him five times.

Sanchez committed no turnovers himself? Technically that's correct, but the player who committed the most turnovers of any player from 2009-2012 (the period when he was the Jets starter) with 89 (69 INTs, 20 fumbles lost) wasn't exactly sure-handed as he bobbled a couple of snaps and fumbled twice (he fortunately quickly picked them up) and if not for a toe on the sideline he would have registered his third interception in seven quarters under center for his new team.

Also, it really should be noted that his near touchdown pass to Brent Celek that led to a McCoy 1-yard run into the end zone would have been an easy score for tight end (who had already established plenty of separation) if it was not underthrown by Sanchez (just like the deep one to Maclin last week that had everyone gaga from the get-go).

I'm not saying he played badly – he actually played very well, and was nearly flawless on one long scoring drive in which he also showed the type of mobility that the Eagles will never get with Foles. But what I am saying is he is exactly what he'd always been with formerly defensively-focused Jets. Give him some support – and five turnovers along with two return TDs certainly qualifies – and he'll look good. But he will never be the kind of quarterback that can shine over long stretches like Foles did last year en route to one of the best QB seasons in NFL history.

And any time anyone mentions that Sanchez played better than Foles in the preseason it makes me cringe. Even my 13-year-old son is quick to say that Sanchez got to play against all the backups, while Foles was playing against starters and had nothing to prove while Sanchez did. It's an apples-to-oranges comparison, and I can't believe it carries any weight with anyone.

Am I being too nitpicky on Sanchez? Maybe. It was a very respectable debut as starting QB for the Eagles, but let's see how he does against the Packers at Lambeau. But if he plods along and the Eagles keep winning while he does nothing particularly special, I just can't believe the Eagles would be ready to move on from a guy in Foles who has shown the ability to be completely mistake-free over long stretches, and to put up truly spectacular performances – like the record-tying, seven touchdown gem against the Raiders last year – for a guy who has already had four seasons to prove himself and failed. That would truly be putting all your eggs in one Sanchez.

Oh and by the way, in an example of apropos timing, Sanchez was the No. 10 "Quarterback Tease" on an episode of NFL's Top 10 this week on the NFL Network (defined as a QB who did "just enough to get a team to commit to him thinking he'll lead their team to the promised land, and then completely disappoint.") That's a perfect description of what Sanchez did with the Jets! Are the Eagles about to make the same mistake?

I certainly hope not.

Returning after a long hiatus

It has been over six years since my last post here. I took a hiatus because I was blogging in my day job and just didn't feel like splitting my time/creative juices. But I am now in a new job with less writing and more managing/analysis. And something that is happening with my favourite football team that just has me needing an outlet again. We'll see if this gets me going on a semi-regular basis again...