By Peter Schrager
Photo illustration by Eric Gillin, art from iStockPhoto
Ed. Note: This is the third installment of Peter Schrager's weekly football column, which runs on Thursdays. You can read his archive here.
When in the heat of battle, it seems rather counter-intuitive to voluntarily help an opponent out. Whether in chess, trial law, or American Idol, giving your foes a chance to practice, re-group, and then try again at no cost whatsoever simply doesn’t make much sense.
Yet, NFL head coaches are doing precisely this, calling last-millisecond time outs in an attempt to "ice" the opposing kicker, inadvertently giving the other team a free practice shot at a field goal. The idea, of course, is to tire the kicker, to get inside his head, to force him to miss. But over the past two weeks, Icing the Kicker 2.0 has already backfired twice.
Two weeks ago, Dallas kicker Nick Folk missed a game-tying kick, but unbeknownst to the fans in the stadium, Arizona Cardinals head coach Ken Whisenhunt had whispered a timeout call into the line judge's ear a split-second before the attempt. Given second life, the Pro Bowl kicker split his next attempt through the uprights. This past Sunday, it happened again, when Raiders interim coach Tom Cable called timeout just before Jets kicker Jay Feely clanked a field goal off the goalpost. On his second go at it, Feely nailed the 52-yard attempt, sending the game into overtime.
Ironically, Feely thought Icing 2.0 actually helped him out, telling reporters after the game: "I heard the whistle before I started, which is an advantage to the kicker. If you're going to do that, do that before he kicks. I can kick it down the middle, see what the wind does and adjust. It helps the kicker tremendously."
I spoke with a guy who knows a little something about pressure kicks -- four-time Super Bowl champion and future NFL Hall of Famer Adam Vinatieri -- earlier this week. "The coaches calling timeouts at the last possible second -- I think that's something that will be addressed by the NFL Rules Committee," says Vinatieri. "Sometimes, though, it may be a good thing. It gives us an opportunity to actually see the ball on the ground, kick the ball and have another shot at it."
So why do coaches do this? Because it works, at least from the small statistical analysis that's been done. According to Michael David Smith at FootballOutsiders.com, "In a 2004 article in the academic journal Chance, two statisticians studied every field goal attempt from the 2002 and 2003 NFL seasons, and isolated all the 'pressure' kicks -- those that would tie the game or give the team a lead within the final three minutes of the game. The statisticians found that kickers were more likely to miss those pressure kicks if the opposing team had called a timeout beforehand."
But that's old-fashioned icing -- after all, Bill Parcells called a timeout before Scott Norwood's infamous miss in Super Bowl XXV. This last-second Icing 2.0 concept only began in 2006, when a rule change gave head coaches the right to call timeouts from the sideline. Denver coach Mike Shanahan became the first to employ Icing 2.0 early last season in a win over Oakland. Raiders coach Lane Kiffin liked it so much that he pulled the move the very next week in a victory over Cleveland. Suddenly, it was all the rage.
Only, it hasn't really "worked" since.
University of Florida coach Urban Meyer tried Icing 2.0 against Auburn last year -- Auburn's kicker nailed both of his attempts, as shown in the video above. Buffalo Bills coach Dick Jauron tried Icing 2.0 last year against the Cowboys. The aforementioned Folk made both kicks in that situation, too.
Those who look beyond the statistical analysis (and who probably don't subscribe to the academic journal Chance) think "icing the kicker" is just plain absurd. Writer Stefan Fatsis spent a year with the Denver Broncos, actually suiting up at kicker during the team's 2006 training camp for his best-selling book A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-Foot-8, 170-Pound, 43-Year-Old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL. "Kickers usually miss kicks because they struck the ball a quarter inch above or below, to the right or the left of where they should have, which can happen in the first quarter as easily as it can in the fourth," explains Fatsis. "Snappers and holders play a role here, too, don't forget. So coaches and media and fans can believe what they want, but kickers miss 52-yard field goals because it's not easy to kick 52-yard field goals. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
Factor in the chance to go through all the motions and actually have a practice kick in a pressure situation and it's tough to figure out why opposing coaches even consider Icing 2.0 anymore.
But from the looks of it, the latest fad in coaching doesn't appear to be going away anytime soon. As current St. Louis Rams and former Seattle Seahawks kicker Josh Brown told me this week, "Thank God there are only three time outs. I think coaches would do this all day long if they could."
Fantasy Life: The Fine Art of Trash Talk on Fantasy Football Message Boards
The fantasy football message board is one of the last relevant forms of direct communication left in our society. Text messages have replaced the phone call, Blackberry pings have replaced the long-form email, and Facebook has replaced the need to actually have real friendships.
But the fantasy football message board? It's still there, as strong as it's ever been, an irreplaceable part of everyday life. Waiting for a text about your wife's impending pregnancy? Put it on hold. An update about layoffs at work? It can wait. You got a ping that someone's offering Steven Jackson for your #2 wide receiver? That's what we call a #1 priority.
Of course, the fantasy football message board has a second function, too -- it's also a way for five-foot-two, passive-aggressive weenies to talk shit without fear of retaliation. Without the consequences that come with face-to-face interaction, things no man would ever say to another magically find their way into public forums.
In my league, I've seen it all. Attacks at an opponent's mother and her dental hygiene (or lack thereof), incriminating pictures from forgotten Saturday nights of yesteryear, even transcribed voicemails left on ex-girlfriends' cell phones during dark and lonely times. Nothing says "I want to get back together" quite like seeing it posted in Arial 10 font for all your buddies to see -- somewhere under a photoshopped picture and a list of last week's waiver wire pickups. "What's this? A Facebook photo of my ex-fiancee with her new husband on a gondola ride in Venice right under a note about Team Dunghole signing BenJarvus Green-Ellis? Oh, nice. Thanks for that." It's all common practice on your average fantasy football league message board.
Someone should probably draft up an Official Fantasy Football Message Board Code of Conduct. Or perhaps, a Ten Commandments. You know -- "Thou Shalt Not Break News of Friend's Wife Seen With Another Man At Local Applebee's" -- stuff like that. Or, just a general rule of thumb: "If you wouldn't say it in person, don't post it."
Then again, that would take away most of the fun.
Got some good message board trash talk? Send it my way -- to PeterSchrager@gmail.com and if we get any good ones, we'll post it here over the next few weeks.
Three Questions with Pete Radovich, Producer of Inside the NFL
This week, we spoke with Pete Radovich, producer of Showtime's Inside the NFL. A winner of 10 Emmys, Radovich steers the ship on cable television's longest running show, which made the move from HBO to Showtime this off-season.
NFL studio shows tend to be a circus of canned laughter and forced friendship. Inside the NFL doesn't seem that way. How come?
I think what helps makes us different is the fact that we are not a live show. When you do anything on live television you tend to rehearse a lot, but there is a downside to rehearsing -- you lose spontaneity. For example, the first time somebody makes a funny comment on the set, everybody usually laughs hard -- but it's a genuine laughter. The second and third time the laughter usually isn't as authentic. By the time you go live-to-air you've now heard that joke as many as four or five times and the laughter can sometimes seem forced or canned, as you say. At Inside the NFL we don't rehearse. We have a meeting outlining what we'll talk about, and in that meeting I make sure that the guys don't give away any of their best material until we start taping. The idea is to have the audience and our guys hear the material for the first time together. I promise you this -- any reaction on our show is genuine.
You played a role in hand-picking the current show's cast of characters. You went with Simms, Collinsworth, James Brown, and Warren Sapp. What went into those decisions?
Anytime you put together a group of announcers that haven't all worked together before, it's like setting up people on a blind date. You start thinking things like, "I wonder how they would get along" and "would they have good chemistry together?" But in this case it was pretty easy. Phil Simms and J.B. were already both working together at CBS Sports and J.B. and Cris Collinsworth already had a great history together. We had, without question, three of the best and most respected guys in the business. So once we had those guys locked in, we felt we needed a more recent link to the league. Preferably, a recently retired defensive player, since Phil and Cris both played offense. A player with great on-the-field credentials, and a player that wasn't afraid of saying things that might piss people off. Enter Warren Sapp. He was perfect. A no-brainer.
The show picked up some real buzz when Warren Sapp called out Al Davis a few weeks ago. Did the other on-set guys know that bomb was coming?
When I first met Warren, I told him he might lose some friends in his new job. His response was, "I only have three friends in this world my man, and I don't give a shit about anything else." That's when I knew he might make some noise at some point. Keeping with our format, he didn't give away any of his material in our meeting that morning. Nobody knew what to expect that day, myself included. I just remember right before we taped that segment I asked him, "Are you about to make some headlines?" He just looked at me, smiled, winked and walked to the set. I believe that the reaction and buzz that that segment created put Showtime's version of Inside the NFL back on the map. We still have 16 more shows to go this season and there's no telling what else Warren will say. I love it.
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