Posts Tagged ‘american football’

Ah, I was so close again! Last year I predicted a Carolina Panthers vs New England Patriots Super Bowl (this was before the playoffs started, not before the regular season). The Denver Broncos beat the Patriots in the AFC championship game to knock me off by one.

This year, I predicted a Green Bay Packers vs New England Patriots. Alas, the Atlantic Falcons convincingly beat the Packers in the NFC championship game to once again knock me off by one result.

Still, it made for a good Super Bowl. The first three quarters were so-so. It looked like the Falcons were firmly in control. But then Tom Brady did a Tom Brady and suddenly we had a game on.

Turn out was good too: six of us, not counting Elina, Venla and Kearny who were all here, but had gone to bed. For once, I managed to make a reasonable amount of food.

The term “franchise quarterback” is thrown around a lot in the NFL. There is an official meaning: teams can use their franchise tag to keep one key player at the club. However, more often when referring to QBs it is used to label quarterbacks who people expect to be at the teams for a long-run without any enforcement.

But who exactly is a franchise quarterback?

Philip Rivers, for example, is probably not the first person to come to mind when you think about the legendary quarterbacks of the NFL. However, Rivers has now been at the San Diego Chargers for 12 years. Only Tom Brady has been at his current club for longer.

Quarterback tenure in data

Below, I have tabled all of the NFL teams and their starting quarterbacks. I have included the year that they joined the club, and the team’s 2016 record.

Note that this is slightly different to the year they became starting quarterback. Many sat on the bench for the first season, for example. However, as it is a measure of how long the teams have kept them around, tracking it from the time they joined the team makes more sense in this instance.

It also does not include how long they have been in the NFL. Alex Smith, for example, was at the San Francisco 49ers for several years before moving on to the Kansas City Chiefs. Again, this makes more sense for what we are discussing.

The data

Discussion

I was expecting to see some correlation between the length of quarterback tenture and the results of each team. However, this was difficult to fine.

Sure, a lot of the play-off teams have the longest-standing quarterbacks. But then, the Chargers and Saints did not make the playoffs, despite having had the same quarterback for ten years.

Similarly, while there are a lot of rubbish teams with new quarterbacks, there are also the Cowboys, with one of the best records in the NFL, who only replaced Tony Romo, their quarterback since 2003, this year.

Here is the data in a graph:

There is nothing there. As with most of the stats in the NFL it probably suffers from the same critical problem: small sample size. When you only play 16 games per year, and those games only involve 11 minutes of actual play, almost anything can be luck.

Over the past four years, I have very much enjoyed blogging on A Brit Talks Football. The feedback was positive, especially around the live game blogs. However, all good things must come to an end, and it is time for me to move on. Therefore, the site has closed.

If you still want updates from me, then you may wish to follow this blog, which is my personal one. It is about family, restaurants, technology and of course, the NFL. You can use the form below to subscribe to weekly updates, or follow me on Twitter at @chrisworfolk.

The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game is a 2007 book by Michael Lewis. I reviewed it in 2014 and in another post discussed my thoughts about the story.

In 2009, it was made into a film, which, after a recommendation from someone, I finally got round to watching. It shares quite a bit in common with the book, while at the same time concentrating exclusively on the relationship between Michael and Leigh Anne.

That is the whole thing. It is not, to Elina’s relief, a film about American football. Nor is it, to my disappointment, a film about economic theory. It is a drama revolving around those two characters, with almost everything else cut out.

I thought having read the book helped me out on a number of occasions during the film. A lot of things made sense to me because I had read the details in the book. You would miss them if you had not, but maybe you just wouldn’t notice.

I was so close! In my pre-play-offs event invite to the Super Bowl party I predicted Patriots v Panthers. Denver beat New England in the AFC championship game to knock my predict off by one.

It was interesting to go into a Super Bowl with no real feelings either way. I think was leaning towards Carolina. They have really worked for it this season. However, it was nice to see Peyton Manning go out on a high (assuming he is going, my guess is that he is). In the end, Denver’s defence deserved it.

The half time show was okay. Chris Martin was really enjoying himself. I am not sure the rest of Coldplay were, possibly because they were probably miming on their instruments. Usually the light show is a big part of the half time show, but with it being in California this year, it was in the daylight. This took out a big part of it for me.

For what I loosely described as a stag do, I headed down to Wembley Stadium for the Jets v Dolphin NFL game.

The seats were okay. We were in the premium club. I have previously wondered whether being in the lower tier would be better, but you do actually get a good view and can see the entire field. The only issue was that being on the north side we had the sun in our eyes, so being on the other side would have been a lot better. That disappeared after the 4th quarter though, and the view improved.

The merch was not run very well. We got there several hours early and they had already closed the NFL shop saying the queue was too big. Why they could not just run it throughout the entire game was unclear. They had other merch shops inside, but they had all run out of caps, missing an opportunity to make a significant buck out of Norman and I who were not prepared for the sun making an appearance.

The game itself was pretty good. It was nice to follow a game I did not care that much about as I could relax and enjoy it. Last time I saw the NFL at Wemeberly it was the 49ers v Jaguars. Obviously, it was the Jaguars, so no chance of the 49ers losing, but it was still a little tense. It got very exciting when the Dolpins looked like they would make a forth quarter comeback but sadly it was not to be.

The food was good too. I had the world’s longest hot dog, which itself was covered in pulled pork. I couldn’t finished it.

A good day all around. Thanks to everyone who came to keep me company, especially my dad who drove there and back!

The line between insanity and genius is often wider than you think.

Life as Drew Brees’ backup.

July saw Leeds Samurai travel over to Manchester for a conference flag day. Ironically, despite it raining on every game day we have had so far, it was only when we went to Manchester, the place where it never stops raining, to have a dry day.

We lost our games to the Honey Badgers and Manchester Crows, but came up good against the Manchester Titans, taking our second league victory of the year with a last minute interception that secured a one point victory for us.

Earlier this month saw NFL Super Bowl XLIX take place in Arizona. Normally I would have supported Seattle because they are great organisation, but I was so annoyed that they had knocked out the Green Bay Packers, I was on the side of the Patriots. Of course, now it’s over, you’ll just have to take my word for it.

It was certainly more interesting than last year which finished with a 35 point difference. This one finished with just 4 and when Seattle were driving in the last few minutes, it looks like they would take it. Only a strange decision by the Seahawks to throw, which ended in an interception, saved the Patriots.

That is not to take anything away from the Patriots though. The Belichick Brady team have now won 4 Super Bowl titles making them the most successful coach quarterback combination in NFL history.

Katy Perry’s halftime show was fine.

The crowning glory of the evening was Elina’s Super Bowl cake, featuring a Moomin making a field goal.