It's the 50th anniversary of the 1960 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team's Gold Medal victory in Squaw Valley.
It's the 30th anniversary of the 1980 Miracle on Ice.
Is America's third Gold Medal in Men's Ice Hockey in the cards?
Well, two weeks ago, everyone thought it was impossible. One week ago, everyone thought it was improbable.
Twelve hours ago, all the doubts disappeared faster than Miikka Kiprusoff.
One week ago, the Americans, youngest team in the tournament by an average of four yeas, shocked the Gold Medal favorite Canadians on their own ice, in their own country. They did it by Ryan Kesler, Jaime Lagenbrunner and Zach Parise skating faster than the Canadians. They did it by Tim Gleason, Brooks Orpik and Ryan Suter blocking more shots than the Canadians. They did by Bryan Rafalski, the tiniest player on the ice, threading shots through the Canadians. And most of all the did by Ryan Miller, making the saves they needed him to make.
Against the 2006 Silver Medal winning Finns? The U.S. chased Miikka Kiprusoff, a Vezina trophy winner, after four goals in about 10 minutes. His backup, Vezina nominee, Niklas Backstrom, he gave up two goals in the span of 15 seconds.
Ryan Miller has played about 110 consecutive minutes without giving up a goal.
No team has taken less penalties in the tournament than the Americans.
Most remarkably, at no point of this tournament have the Americans trailed.
They've been an American classic in an Olympics full of them.
While this all could end magically or horribly tomorrow afternoon, one thing should be sure: the whole nation will be rooting for them.
However, in Pittsburgh, this certainly isn't the case. There's a shocking amount of Pittsburgher's rooting for Team Canada. They've abandoned their American heritage and hopped on the Canadian bandwagon in favor of one player: Sidney Crosby. Now I'm most certainly not a xenophobe (I think Al Gore is the most fascinating politician of the last 20 years), but I find this incredibly insulting and unpatriotic. And I love the Pens and Crosby.
In sports, we follow teams, not players. It's a rarity in today's sports landscape that a player stays with one team for their entire career. As much as we'd like to think otherwise, in the end all they care about is the money. Now I know this is borderline heretical, but what would happen if Sidney Crosby left the Penguins, and say went to Montreal or Toronto or the Rangers. Would all these fans stop being Penguin fans and start rooting for the Leafs, Habs or Rangers? I think not. We've even seen this in Pittsburgh already. Jaromir Jagr, while always second fiddle to Mario, was nonetheless a Pittsburgh treasure for nearly 10 years and helped reel in two cups. Without Mario in the lineup, Jagr was arguably the best player in the league. It took one messy contract dispute for Pens fans to turn on him. It's why you root for the team over the player.
Do I want Crosby to succeed? Sure. Most of all, I want him to stay healthy. But no matter what I feel about Crosby or any player, I'm an American, not a Canadian. The Olympics are one of the few events in the world where you can unabashedly root for your nation without political or religious subtext. As an American, it's hard not to get goose bumps watching the American crowd during the waning seconds of the Miracle on Ice, a nation united. We've got all got different view points in our every day lives, but the Olympics are one of the few venues we're united. To go into Canada Hockey Place, and beat the Canadians on their own ice at the game they invented, would be a national moment.
To not root for the scrappy, underdog, undersized, Americans playing for Olympic Gold with house money, well that's just plain absurd. It's a great story. And truth be told, I bet if you asked Sid himself, if you were an American, he'd tell you to root for Team U.S.A.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Fran Tarkenton Is a Pot?
Last week, former Vikings/Giants great and HOF QB Fran Tarkenton chastised Brett Favre's play (and untimely INT) in the Vikes 31-28 NFC Championship loss. It's true, it was a bad, bad play. He shouldn't have made the throw, and may have cost his team a championship. But look who's talking...
For those of you who don't know, Fran Tarkenton was Vikings QB for 3 of their 4 Super Bowl losses (remember, they've never actually won). Mind you, it was Joe Kapp who was at the helm for the then-humiliating Super Bowl IV loss, but still, take a look at Tarkenton's career playoff numbers: 149-292, 219 yards, 11 TD, 17 INT, 58.8 rating. Sure, this was from a different time, but Tark's postseason rating is a solid 20+ points lower than his regular season rating. Also of note is Tark's performances in big games - specifically Conference Championships and the Super Bowl: 78-157, 888, 3 TD, 9 INT, 49.5 rating. That's over 6 games. That's really fucking bad, even by 1975 standards.
STFU, Francis.
More absurd talk from loud-mouthed, old, football players: TO has stated that if he had played with QBs as good as Montana and Young, he would be close to Jerry Rice's records. Now, Owens is really saying two different things at once here: (1) Garcia+McNabb+Romo+[name of shitty former-Bengal redacted for the sake of not mentioning his name in the same sentence as any of these guys] were not as efficient at getting the football to him as Montana and Young were at getting it to Rice. Or perhaps, more aptly, he didn't get thrown to as much as he would have with Montana and Young at the helm. (2) He is as good as (or at least comparable to) Jerry Rice, career-wise.
Let's hit the first point: I think we should start by noting that people threw more in 2003 than in 1990. Although Rice played in an unusual offense for his time, more passes have been thrown by Owens' QB than by Rice's.
Rice:
1985 - 16 GP - 550 pass attempts - 60.2% comp - 7.2 yds/att - 3,987 yards - 27 TD - 49/927/3
1986 - 16 GP - 582 att - 60.7% - 7.4 y/a - 4,299 yds - 21 TD - 86/1570/15
1987 - 12 GP - 501 att - 66.8% - 7.9 y/a - 3,955 yds - 44 TD - 65/1078/22
1988 - 16 GP - 502 att - 58.4% - 6.9 y/a - 3,675 yds - 21 TD - 64/1306/9
1989 - 16 GP - 483 att - 70.2% - 9.5 y/a - 4,584 yds - 35 TD - 82/1483/17
1990 - 16 GP - 583 att - 61.7% - 7.5 y/a - 4,371 yds - 28 TD - 100/1502/13
1991 - 16 GP - 522 att - 62.3% - 8.0 y/a - 4,167 yds - 29 TD - 80/1206/14
1992 - 16 GP - 480 att - 66.5% - 8.4 y/a - 4,054 yds - 29 TD - 84/1201/10
1993 - 16 GP - 524 att - 67.6% - 8.2 y/a - 4,480 yds - 29 TD - 98/1503/15
1994 - 16 GP - 511 att - 70.3% - 9.0 y/a - 4,362 yds - 37 TD - 112/1499/13
1995 - 16 GP - 644 att - 67.1% - 7.4 y/a - 4,779 yds - 29 TD - 122/1848/15
1996 - 16 GP - 550 att - 65.1% - 7.0 y/a - 3,859 yds - 24 TD - 108/1254/8
1997 - 2 GP - 432 att - 64.4% - 7.7 y/a - 3,432 yds - 20 TD - 7/78/1
1998 - 16 GP - 556 att - 62.4% - 8.1 y/a - 4,510 yds - 41 TD - 82/1157/9
Owens:
1996 - 16 GP - 550 att - 65.1% - 7.0 y/a - 3,859 yds - 24 TD - 35/520/4
1997 - 16 GP - 432 att - 64.4% - 7.7 y/a - 3,432 yds - 20 TD - 60/936/8
1998 - 16 GP - 556 att - 62.4% - 8.1 y/a - 4,510 yds - 41 TD - 67/1097/14
1999 - 14 GP - 560 att - 57.9% - 6.3 y/a - 3,526 yds - 14 TD - 60/754/4
2000 - 14 GP - 583 att - 62.8% - 7.9 y/a - 4,400 yds - 32 TD - 97/1451/13
2001 - 16 GP - 506 att - 62.8% - 7.0 y/a - 3,559 yds - 32 TD - 93/1412/16
2002 - 14 GP - 571 att - 62.0% - 6.3 y/a - 3,576 yds - 23 TD - 100/1300/13
2003 - 15 GP - 511 att - 58.5% - 7.0 y/a - 3,566 yds - 25 TD - 80/1102/9
2004 - 14 GP - 547 att - 61.4% - 8.0 y/a - 4,208 yds - 32 TD - 77/1200/14
2005 - 7 GP - 620 att - 54.4% - 6.3 y/a - 3,903 yds - 21 TD - 47/763/6
2006 - 16 GP - 506 att - 61.3% - 8.0 y/a - 4,067 yds - 26 TD - 85/1180/13
2007 - 15 GP - 520 att - 64.4% - 7.8 y/a - 4,290 yds - 36 TD - 81/1355/15
2008 - 16 GP - 547 att - 60.0% - 6.7 y/a - 3,448 yds - 26 TD - 69/1052/10
2009 - 15 GP - 441 att - 58.0% - 5.2 y/a - 2,789 yds - 17 TD - 55/829/5(Totals prorated, based on games played in a season)
Rice - 206 GP - 6,917 att - 64.4% - 7.9 y/a - 54,522 yds - 366 TD - 1,139/17,612/164
Owens - 204 GP - 6,728 att - 61.4% - 7.1 y/a - 48,318 yds - 342 TD - 1,006/14,951/144
So, what does this say? Well, Rice definitely had the better QBs. But really not by all that much. If you look at each player's career, they caught, roughly, every 4th pass thrown by their respective QBs. Now, that's a pretty impressive number - if your QB is completing 20 passes per game, you're catching 5 on average (80/season). You can make arguments that Montana/Young may have been better at getting the ball further downfield that Young/Garcia/McNabb/Romo/Bills, and to some extent it's true. Yards/completion have Montana/Young with about a .5 y/c lead. So, let's run with these assumptions:
(1) Owens catches 1 ball for every 4.103 completed by the QB on his team (presumably indicates how often he was open).
(2) With Montana/Young at the helm, 64.4% of passes thrown would have been completed while Owens was playing.
(3) The number of passes thrown would have remained constant.
(4) Owens would have averaged 0.54 yards more per catch, due to the higher quality of QB (15.4 rather than 14.9).
(5) The percentage of TD catches by Owens per reception will be 0.22% higher (14.5% rather than 14.3%).
So the results are this: 204 additional completions by QBs on Owens' team, while Owens is playing. That means, theoretically, Owens would have caught 50 additional passes over his career so far with Montana/Young at QB (new total 1,056 catches). Now, taking into account the 50 additional catches, we can assume that Owens would have had 745 additional receiving yards. Add in the extra .54 y/c, and that's another 570 yards. The extra 50 catches would have also translated to 7 TD receptions. Add in the extra .22% TD ratio, and you'll end up with another 2 TD receptions for his career. So, by my calculations, here are Owens' new, theoretical (although simplistic) career stats, through this point in his career: 1,056 receptions, 16,266 yards, 153 TD. When compared with Rice, he is still 83 receptions, 1,346 yards and 11 TD behind Rice (really, a whole season's worth).
So what does this teach us? Well, yeah, Montana/Young > Old Young/Garcia/McNabb/Romo/Bills. But that seems obvious. However, what also appears to be true is that Owens, though an incredible athlete and, for the first 14 years of his career, not THAT far behind Rice, it nonetheless seems clear that Owens is a distant second. Rice has outperformed Owens by nearly a seasons-worth of production over those first 14 years, and did so at a time when passing was far less prolific and receivers had many more obstacles to making any given catch.
But let's also look at Rice's career stats: From age 37-on, Rice managed to snag another 410 passes, for 5,283 yards and 33 TD. Those numbers are staggering when you think about it, because most players are toast by the time they hit 39 or 40.
So, even assuming that Owens had had the benefit of Montana/Young for the first part of his career, AND he would be able to play until he was 42 (a very tall order for a WR), he would have to average 82 receptions, 1,105 yards, and 8 TD a season to catch Rice. Rice's production at such an advanced age remains unprecedented. Looking at it, I'm actually not sure any other player besides Rice has ever had a 1,000+ season past age 35, nonetheless average 1,100 between 37-42.
So, I guess my conclusion is this: No, TO, no matter who you had at QB, you would not be anywhere near Rice's career numbers at this point. No one would be. In fact, the only way anyone will ever catch Rice is if they can match his longevity. So, until someone finds a way to be VERY productive at age 39, Rice will continue to be alone, miles ahead of the competition.
Back in December, I mentioned that Sid was playing the most dominating hockey of his career. I know I'm biased, but with all due respect to Ovechkin, Sid is the best player in the world right now.
Speaking of the Pens, Scott Burnside said about a month ago that the Devils were locks to win the division, that the Devils, 6 points up with 3 games in hand were uncatchable. The Devils are now 1 point up with 2 games in hand. Little surprised to see Burnside make such an ill-advised comment.
Lastly, I wanted to bring you a video model of what it might have looked like for TO if he had had Montana and Young at the helm:
Without them (but with Brad Johnson):
With them:
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