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YES, I SAID IT FIRST. Weekly Article and Sports Magazine Sunday, September 4, 2011 By Patrick Morand, Senior Editor, “YES, I SAID IT FIRST” We all know who the favourites are, and we are pretty sure which teams will finish at the very bottom, but in a league where one or two games can make all the difference in qualifying for the playoffs it is important to not squander anything. A bad start in September can only force a team to play catch up. A great start and a bonus win (or two) can launch a team ahead of the pack. There will probably not be any undefeated teams this season so a few things are a certainty with every team in the NFL. Over a sixteen game regular schedule each team will lose games they shouldn’t lose. Every team will be guilty of some struggle in games they assume will be easy to win. On top of that most teams will lose games to inferior division opponents just because of familiarity. And every team will win games that they probably shouldn’t. Vindicating the Vince Lombardi quote which goes like this: “If you’ll not settle for anything less than your best, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish...” Teams will win divisions despite looking bad in five, six or even seven games, and some teams will miss the playoffs even if they have a penchant to upset the better teams during the season. That’s the NFL, and while “any given Sunday” is the mantra that makes the game enjoyable and every team should be prepared and ready to try to win regardless of their current circumstances the contending teams still need to know how to make sure to get the job done on even a mundane Sunday afternoon on week four. We know about the importance of the big games when everyone is watching, but what about the game that they also have to win because it is assumed they have it in the bag? Can any team really afford to squander that opportunity? There too they also need to win fully expecting that on some other Sunday down the road they will lose to other good teams because in a league of parity there is a 50:50 chance the other team arrives at the field more prepared to compete. In 2010 Green Bay won the Superbowl, but they didn’t win their division. As an NFC wild card team the Packers were only one more New York Giants win away from missing the 2010 playoffs completely. The Packers had to backdoor their way into the playoffs just to have a chance. Fortunately an uneventful start to the season didn’t hurt them and attention to detail late in the year helped them make their way into the playoffs at the end. The Chicago Bears won the NFC North, but by the conference final playoff game Green Bay had clearly morphed into the better team. People may have forgotten the Bears were the higher seed in that game, and the Bears earned the higher seed way back in September when they vaulted ahead in the division race with a 4-1 start to the season. At the opening of last September all the preseason talk was about how the Pittsburgh Steelers could weather the suspension of quarterback Ben Roethlisberger for the first four games of the season. Conventional banter suggested that the Steeler backups would have difficulty winning one or two games and Pittsburgh would suffer from the early start. Yet five months later there was Pittsburgh playing in that Superbowl against Green Bay led there in part by a 4-1 start to the year, a far cry from the dire expectations of playing without Roethlisberger. In retrospect that early winning helped take the pressure off when their star player returned and they coasted into the playoffs. At the beginning of 2010 three other teams were prohibitive favourites to make the playoffs but as the likes of Chicago and Pittsburgh started hot these other teams struggled early and lost games they should not have lost to teams that weren’t expected to beat them. The Dallas Cowboys started 1-4 and facing the panic of the unexpected losing would go on to tank the rest of their season finishing at 6-10. One of Dallas’ ten losses was against Minnesota Vikings, another Superbowl favourite that started 1-4. Both teams changed their head coaches during the season but probably their moves were too little and too late to salvage a season. San Diego Chargers also missed the playoffs last year even with a 9-7 winning record. I wonder how badly the Chargers regret the 2-4 start that included losses to upstart teams like Kansas City, Seattle, Oakland and St. Louis all before the ides of October. San Diego made a valiant push, it seems they do so every year, but sometimes the hole that is made is too deep to dig out of. In the early part of the 2010 NFL season three overwhelming playoff favourites (San Diego, Dallas, and Minnesota) were derailed in September, a perennial powerhouse (Pittsburgh) won games with their third string quarterback to get a fast start, and a dark horse team (Chicago) took advantage of their September butterflies to advance their way to an unlikely division title. How did it happen and what does it have to do with this season? On every team’s schedule there are winnable games and tough games. They need to win the winnable games and hope for a breakthrough on some of the tough games. It only takes one letdown or bad quarter to cough away a win. September football in a relatively condensed season of just sixteen games may not decide which team will win anything, but it certainly can create losers. Getting off to a fast start of 5-0 or 4-1, the holy grail of September success, takes the pressure off the team and every coach wants that. Sometimes coaches can count wins on the schedule before they play the games. As soon as the schedule is released they know when the tough games are and all about the stretches of more routine games. Last year Dallas had the favourable part of their schedule right away. The Cowboys should have started 4-1, but losses to Washington, and Chicago put them down 0-2 quickly. They had reason to be concerned knowing five tough division games were left, but buoyed by a win at Houston on week three and a bye week to heal and re-focus they seemed pretty comfortable that they would be back at .500 when they faced Tennessee. It wasn’t to be. They lost to Tennessee and then to Minnesota to fall all the way out. If winning is sometimes characterized as contagious, then losing definitely is. One would think from reviewing the experience of the Cowboys, Vikings, Chargers (et al) from last season that September is a very important month on the football calendar. But that is only half true. Except for the very bad teams most teams will finish either 2-3 or 3-2 through five weeks. At one point last October all four teams in the AFC South division had identical records of 3-2. So falling to 1-4 or ascending to 4-1 while a big deal at the time is only one game better or worse than the field. Seldom do teams start 5-0, but it’s a boon to be the team that does. Teams tend to relax more and practice better when they do, as opposed to make panic decisions, like change players when they start in a slump. Green Bay won the Superbowl even though they didn’t start 4-1 like Chicago. But they also didn’t start 1-4 like Dallas or things might have been different. The Packers simply took care of business and weathered September. Most coaches would be happy with that. Head coaches know that once the team settles in to the season with 2 or 3 early wins that they are in the discussion. They also know as Green Bay took advantage of in their championship season that the final four games of the schedule can also make or break a team. When I evaluate a team’s penchant for a winning season I look first at who they have to play since every team has a different schedule, but I specifically take note of when they play the toughest games. To avoid the slow starts it’s nice to see more winnable games early as long as the team actually shows up to win those games. In football injuries tend to pile up as the season progresses so any “business” that can be taken care of early really helps a team.
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Spanish philosopher George Santayana commented that “...those who cannot remember the past are condemned to fulfill it.”