The Dumbest Team In Football

Jim and Theresa live near Philly.  We went to visit them and take in some nearby sights and sites.  A few days prior to our arrival, Jim called and asked, "Wanna go to the football game?"

"Why not?" I answered.  There were several reasons, but we ignored them.

We went to the Bills-Eagles game at Lincoln Financial Field.
If you are an Eagles fan, does the sponsorship mean you use Lincoln Financial?
Is it real advertising, or just vanity?

Those white spots you see are  my pupils.

The smallish bags you can carry in are smaller than this picture.
This limitation begets employees holding signs,
which is part of the "create jobs" initiative in Philadelphia.

This is the sign you see clearly on the way back to your car
to dump your large bag.

I root for the dumbest team in football.  Yes, there are fans of many other teams that might want to claim that distinction, but l will provide a data point to confirm this assertion.  Those of you who follow the NFL already know this:  The Buffalo Bills have not had a team good enough to make the playoffs for 16 years.  Thats a not-soon-to-be-broken record!  I rest my case.

Nice stadium!
Our seats were off the corner of the end zone, but really not bad.
If the dollars paid were 4 digits instead of 3, maybe we would have been on the 50 yard line.

The pylons are out to guide the Eagles to the field.

But first, an interlude provided by the cheerleaders.
December 13, and they were wearing their Miami Dolphin cheerleader-wannabe outfits.

The Eagles came out through the pylons as the cotton rises.
Oh wait.  Maybe that's smoke.

The smoke drifts to the north, guiding the Eagle players to the proper sideline.

Fly Eagles, Fly!
They play the fight song throughout the game.
All the fans know the words, and the video helps those who read English.
Great fun to see everyone so enthused.

I wonder where about the location of the closest wild eagle.

Not the biggest of flags for the National Anthem.

The weather remains balmy!

The game commenced.
The woman in front of me was playing defense.
She tried to grab Sammy Watkins of the Bills as he caught a pass
and sprinted into the end zone,
but he slipped through her fingers.

Can you tell what is going on?
That's correct.  It's ballet.

This is another dance number.

But about penalties.  Not all penalties assessed by the referees are bad.  In a situation where the star receiver is about to catch a pass for a sure touchdown, there may be a good reason for an infraction.  Pass interference is better for your team than a 90% chance of a touchdown.  Holding by an offensive lineman is occasionally justified when the huge hulk of a defensive end that just beat him is about to blindside the quarterback and end his career.

However, most penalties are not in that class.  Almost all are stupid.  They reduce the efforts of your squad in a slowly bleeding "death by 1000 cuts" manner.  Particularly when your team commits many of them.  The Bills?  15 penalties and over 100 yards in this game.  A key game.  A game that in the over-used parlance of the gurus of the artificial world of sports was a "MUST-WIN GAME."

That brown thing in the center is a ball.
Inflation pressures were not publicized.

I don't think you can go wrong with a Philly Cheesesteak Sandwich at the stadium.
There are many reasons to go to a football game.

If you're not so much into watching football,
there is plenty of other entertainment.
The orange shirted security guys were escorting someone out
so they could better discuss the Eagles' strategy.

This time the Bills lined up without doing something dumb.
Yet.

How do you know the Bills are not doing something dumb?
It's their bye week.

This pass resulted in a reasonable gain of yards.
It was probably wiped out by a penalty.

The standard measures of the "dumbness" of penalties is measured in number of infractions and total yards penalized.  This does not tell the whole story.  I want better and more complete stats...like these:

--- Number of Penalties
--- Number of Dumb Penalties.  How are these determined?  By reviewing the degree to which the penalty hurts the team, or the by the degree of "unnecessariness." Lining up in the neutral zone?  Are you kidding me?  "Gosh, you mean that those lines that cross the field at regular intervals are there to provide a reference so I know where 'behind the ball' is?"  I'm not saying football players are dumb, but shouldn't someone being paid well over the minimum $435,000 salary in the NFL (more for those who last beyond their rookie year) be able to figure out where they are standing or squatting?
--- Yards Assessed Against the Team Due To Penalties.  Over 100 yards in this game.  The length of the field.  A touchdown drive, if you put them all together.  And they lost this game by less that the margin a touchdown would have provided.
--- Yards Assessed Against the Team Due To Dumb Penalties.  A subset of the above, this statistic makes the distinction between the somewhat reasonable and really dumb.
--- Team Stupidity Index.  A simple calculation which divides Yards Assessed Against the Team Due To Dumb Penalties by Yards Assessed Against the Team Due To Penalties.  The scale runs from zero to one, with higher values indicating more stupidity.  The Bills?  Highest index in the league.
--- Yards Gained Wiped Out by Penalties.  Many times a good offensive play is called back because of a penalty.  I want to see the stat that adds all these yards up, because the cost of the penalties is more than just the assessed yardage.
--- Yards Gained Wiped Out by Dumb Penalties.  Sometimes the reason for the yards gained is the fact that a blocker held a defender, or a receiver shoved the defensive back to get enough space to catch the ball.  These activities don't qualify.  This category is filled by activities like a block in the back on a punt runback when the runner is already upfield from the site of the infraction.

There are more categories, but the names for each of them contain expletives, so I will refrain from including them in this PG rated blog.

The Eagles receiver near center is dropping a pass that would have been a sure touchdown.
The Bills were using their "probability defense."
Hey, they're not going to catch them all!

You can see Bills head coach Wrecks Ryan walking on the sideline with his head down.
Head down is the appropriate bearing for any coach during this debacle.

And then there is play-calling.  It's easy to be the armchair coach and talk about woulda, shoulda, coulda, but when the trend is to mysteriously not try what has been successful previously, one has to wonder.  Or when a strategy, for example, like not rushing the league's best quarterback, is failing completely, stick with it and don't make any changes at all.

I could go on and on here, but I'll spare you the rant.  You can thank me.  But I am going to have to think of statistical measures for play-calling stupidity.  Suggestions welcome.

More entertainment.
Looks like great fun to be in the Eagles Drum Line.
Making noise in the end zone...I wonder if the Bills were watching?

Another perspective on the Drum Line.
As poorly as they played, you can see that the Bills were still in the game 'til the end.

Balmy breezes blow by the Bikini Boogie in the end zone.
In December!  Pinch me again!

We're not going anywhere for the next hour.

After the game, you might think there would be some people to help guide you out of the parking lot.   You would be wrong.  They already have your money.   Though it's the least they could do considering the $40 collected for the privilege of occupying their asphalt for a few hours, you're on your own.  Then again, the extra hour or so spent waiting to get out of the lot increased the bang for our bucks, so perhaps I should be thankful.

It would have been much less of an issue if our 5+ hour drive back home that night was not weighing heavily on our minds.

I wish we could fly like eagles.

Today I kicked the ground

Kicking the ball on a nice day in December.
What could be better?

It was at noontime soccer.  I had possession and had just looked upfield to see one of my teammates open and in a fine position to advance the ball toward a good scoring opportunity.  Everyone else wearing a white shirt was either hiding behind a person in a dark shirt, or looking at the ground with hands on knees, gasping for breath, and not doing so as a ruse.

I pushed the ball away into striking position with the outside of my right foot, thus keeping the defender on my back as I prepared what was certain to be the best pass of the match.  Looking up once more to see that my teammate remained in good position, I wound up with my left and returned my gaze to almost where the ball was.  Then I proceeded to smash my foot into the ground.  Hard.

Really, it's not my fault.  It's the dastardly condition of the noontime soccer pitch.  It is a great concave patch of earth with occasional clumps of grass, and additional uneven features.  Where I placed the ball for kicking was an uncharacteristically flat spot with some real grass on it, so I could not be expected to locate the ball in the usual fashion.  

My foot bounced over the untouched ball.  As usual, unintended whiffs make excellent fakes, and the opponent who was guarding me froze.  I was able to wimpily play the ball to a suddenly open closer teammate before the pain set in.  Falling to the ground, I did the near-fetal roll-around grabbing my ankle, both wanting to cry and to not violate the unstated macho "reaction to injury" code of conduct at the same time.  

I'm not sure which desire won.  Regardless, I had done a nice job stretching the ligaments in my ankle, and later I realized that the shock had also transferred to my knee.  But the worst injury of the whole affair was the bruise to my ego.

One kick, dual ice packs.
I've had some experience with this.
The ice packs...not so much with the ground kicking.

Maybe I'm just getting too old for running around kicking soccer balls.  There is a finite life to all futile human pursuits, and this one is no different.  Perhaps I should hang up the cleats and knee brace and knee pad, and...and...and...

One of the aging athlete's best friends.

Oh well...I've done much worse to myself.  I know what to do, and the ice and ibuprofen are helping.  This too shall heal.  Except, of course for the ego bruise.