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Aside from free-throw shooting, no accumulated stats in any team sport stand alone. Yet, for the last, oh, 35 years, leagues and the media — TV, radio, print — have presented, misrepresented and invented individuals’ stats as explanation, as bogus answers to questions no one asked.
Soon, it’ll be NFL Red Zone season. Red Zone stats, cited by media and even head coaches as highly significant, suffer from one, small problem:
Few know how they work, how they’re accumulated, what they mean. Nor should they know. Or care to know.
Do Red Zone data applications begin only on first down? What if a team crosses the 20 on first down, or has a third and seven from the 18? It’s in the red zone, no?
What if a team has first-and-10 from the 16, but is penalized to make it first-and-15 from the 21, or first-and-20 from the 26? If you’re in the Red Zone, then removed, does the next play count toward Red Zone stats? And why am I capitalizing Red Zone?
Danged if I know. And danged if I care to know or find out. You? If so, why? Last season the 49ers finished an awful 30th in Red Zone “efficiency,” three teams worse than the 2-14 Colts. Should it matter that the 49ers were 13-3? Nah.
Apparently, kicking field goals from the red zone (lower case, from now on) — as opposed to scoring TDs — is a bit of a red zone bad.
But how many times have we seen teams attempt winning field goals from the red zone, and often before fourth down? How many times has a field goal been the plan? How many times have we seen QBs take a knee in the red zone to kill the clock and end the game?
Failing to score a TD or even a FG from the red zone is often part of a successful plan, yet red zone stats include such successes as failures!
A field goal from the 20 — a 37-yarder — is worth the same as a field goal from the 3? A TD from the 2 is equal to one from the 19?
I do know this: First-and-goal from the 1 is given the same red zone statistical value as first-and-10 from the 20. In-game, highly relevant circumstances are removed from red zone stats. And that’s absurd.
But it’s too late. The NFL’s TV networks’ databanks already are loaded with red zone stats, and they’re headed our way, to be posted, read and spoken as significant, fact-based info from which to draw dopey conclusions.
Even if there’s no difference between the red zone and the Twilight Zone, stupid is here to stay. Enjoy!
Class is out for Bradley
Defending PGA Championship champ, Keegan Bradley, St. John’s man, could use some grace lessons.
Sunday, after he won the World Golf Championship — primarily because Jim Furyk collapsed — his first words to CBS’s audience were to claim that his recent switch to Srixon balls made the difference. Ugh.
Not only didn’t he express sympathy toward Furyk, one of Furyk’s sponsors is Srixon. And the tournament’s title sponsor was Bridgestone, also a golf ball-maker.
Incidentally, the first shot of a man playing golf in the PGA on TNT’s live, first-round coverage, yesterday, was not of Bradley, not of the leader, and it wasn’t live. It was tape of three putts by Tiger Woods, who was four back.
* Mike Francesa’s back. Tuesday, he lectured John Mara on what it takes to build and maintain a successful NFL franchise. Mara provided the desired replies: “You’re right, Mike.”
*The woman watching women’s Olympic beach volleyball on NBC asked a good question, one that likely included the answer: “Instead of wearing almost nothing, why not tank tops and gym shorts?”
* As per Olympic sexploitation, what a relief that someone at NBC, before yesterday’s U.S.-Japan soccer final, apparently reached analyst Brandi (can’t spell Brandi without bra!) Chastain to convince her to quit shrieking.
Kay what? He gets one right
Good things do happen for those who wait.
This week on YES, Michael Kay, habitual reciter of all stats before him, actually applied context to debunk one.
When talk turned to how Detroit’s Prince Fielder’s 19 HRs have included 14 solo shots — a tacit, silly suggestion that he’s less than clutch — Kay stepped in and up with this: “Well, the guy in front of him [Miguel Cabrera] has hit 27.”
Exactly! And Kay might have added that Fielder had been walked more than 50 times!
* Paul O’Neill strikes us as a guy who would scoff at some of the nonsense he hears on baseball telecasts. So why would he speak nonsense on Yankees telecasts?
This week he excused Robinson Cano’s latest disinclination to observe the first and simplest fundamental of winning baseball — running to first base — as evidence of his “disappointment” in not getting a hit.
Well, no kidding.
But that doesn’t take into account the “disappointment” of opposing players after booting, dropping or losing a ball, or after throwing one wildly. And if Cano runs to first, he has a better chance to force such disappointments.
➤ As featurered yesterday on “Boomer & Carton,” John Sterling, Wednesday in Detroit, shattered a major league record for bad guesses and pure invention — on just one pitch.
1) He called a pitch to Casey McGehee a swinging strike. Wrong; way off.
2) He next changed that to tell us that McGehee actually hit a fly ball down the left-field line, foul and out of play (Sterling went oh-for-three on that one).
3) He next noted that McGehee was on second, being held by the throw.
4) He next reasoned that McGehee reached second on a grounds-rule double (then why/how the throw to second?). Wrong, again.
5) He and Suzyn Waldman then said the ball must have crossed third fair, then first hit the ground in foul territory, thus it was fair (pure nonsense; that’s a foul ball).
One pitch, six wrong radio calls. What really happened? McGhee doubled down the line.