Is Andy Reid a Big Fat Idiot?

Anyone who watches enough professional football inevitably comes to the same conclusion. "These coaches are morons. I could clearly do a better job." Most of the time it's an easy enough assertion to refute. There are 53 players on an NFL team, all with unique skill sets and roles. An offensive and defensive play book the size of a phone book that has to be created, then taught to an army of assistants, followed by direct oversight of said assistants as they teach it to an army of players. 16-18 hour days, 7 days a week for months on end. Most of us are perfectly willing to admit that we're not only under-qualified for the job, but that it probably isn't all that much fun, either, given that 2 bad weeks in the NFL will have a lynch mob waiting outside your house.

Why, then, can't Andy Reid, someone who has had an undeniable amount of success in the NFL, make an incredibly simple decision correctly?

Let me take you back to week 9 of this 2009 NFL season. The Eagles are losing 20-13 with 4:30 left in the fourth quarter, and they have no timeouts. They are facing 4th down with 11 yards to go from the Dallas 34 yard line. Dallas' offense had been mediocre, but they would only need one first down to essentially end the game. Their premier running back, Marion Barber, should really be nicknamed "The Closer" for the way he punishes tired defenses in the fourth quarter. And even if Philadelphia did think they could stop the Cowboys offense, a field goal really doesn't help much, as they would still have to score a touchdown on the ensuing drive. All of this is ignoring the fact that 51 yard field goals aren't exactly automatic. Clearly the Eagles should go for the first down, and even if they are unsuccessful, they will have the opportunity to stop the Cowboys and get the ball back. It's the only remotely acceptable decision.

But Andy Reid didn't have me on the sideline. He kicked the field goal.

The kick was good, and the Eagles were only down by 4 (hooray?). The Cowboys recovered the kickoff and ran for 2 quick first downs before running out the clock. All of this happened while I was cackling profusely at such incompetence. "What a moron! I'm just some guy, and even I wouldn't have done that. Doesn't this idiot have someone telling him how dumb this is?" This did, however, force me to consider the reasons the sort of person who makes these poor decisions would still be employed. After a great deal of consideration, I have come upon two.

Reason #1: Nobody is good at everything.

This may sound like a cop out, but it's really just an objective fact of life. Andy Reid is great at nearly every task expected of a head coach. Across 10 full seasons from 1999-2008, his record is 97-62-1. The Eagles made the playoffs 7 times in that span, 5 times going to the NFC Championship Game, and once to the Super Bowl. He has done this despite having 3 relevant offensive players for 9 of those years (Brian Westbrook, Donovan McNabb, and Terrell Owens), despite having his starting quarterback miss 21 games in 9 seasons, despite the realities of the salary cap, injuries, and the inherent disadvantage of poor draft position that comes with success. His teams get by with lesser offensive talent through scheme, turning players like Brian Celek and L.J. Smith into viable weapons. The defense is consistently one of the most feared in the NFL, blitzing on an astonishingly high percentage of downs to keep pressure off of the defensive backs. He has lost only one significant game playoff game in 10 years to an inferior team (the 2008 Cardinals). He is, quite simply, largely responsible for the success of one of the most consistently excellent franchises in the NFL.

And yet, despite all of the praise I have heaped upon him above, he has had two glaring weaknesses: Short yardage offense, and clock management. The first could have been solved by finding a running back who could handle a stacked line and gain 2 yards, but alas, to date this still has not happened. This is significant, but somewhat explicable. Teams have limited resources, and any decent running back ought to be able to gain 2 yards when his team needs him to, not to mention the blame the offensive line deserves.

The second, though, is baffling. Surely this is a correctable problem. I'm fairly certain that a short book could be written outlining the essentials of managing an NFL game clock, and the difference in even one game would make it a worthy read for Andy. It surely could have made the difference in Super Bowl XXXIX, when the Eagles, down by 10 with 5:40 to go, spent almost 4 minutes on a touchdown drive that left them unable to score again. He wastes timeouts on awful challenges routinely (he has been successful on 15 of 46 attempts, 5 of 26 in the last 5 seasons). The instances of poor clock management are innumerable, whether it be failing to run a play before the 2 minute warning, not using timeouts correctly, calling plays that won't stop the clock, not being able to execute a hurry-up offense...or kicking a field goal down by 7 with 4:30 to go.

Despite this, I'm willing to absolve these sins. Ignore them completely. Why? Because Andy Reid is good at almost everything else. He isn't the best defensive coach, so he hands most of those duties off to his coordinator. The aforementioned army of staff is there to fill in his weaknesses as much as anything else, and it makes sense. None of us is equally excellent at all aspects of our jobs. All of us have some manner of mental Kyrptonite, something we simply cannot grasp fully. Yes, the occasional person masters all of a coaches' tasks, but coaches such as Bill Belichick and Bill Parcells are in terribly short supply. Being a head coach in the NFL is ridiculously demanding and difficult, and Andy Reid seems up to almost any task.

It does raise one important question, though: why not simply have one of the numerous assistants help Andy in this regard? Better yet, there is no salary cap on coaches; the Eagles could hire the best Time Guru money can buy. But they haven't, and neither has any other team. Clock management problems are as old as the NFL itself, so why has there been no change? Why doesn't Andy Reid have an assistant in charge of clock management?

Reason #2*: The NFL is an old, stubborn league that is slow to accept change, and the coaches in the league are constantly in fear of losing their jobs.

This may seem like two reasons, but they are really one in the same. It is a pretty well accepted fact that on 4th down with 2 or fewer yards to go, it is nearly always correct to go for the first down rather than punt. The probability of successfully converting the attempt is about 70%. When you factor in subsequent scoring opportunities versus the potential loss in field position due to not converting the attempt, the expected value of going for it is much higher than not. Despite this, many coaches punt when the decision is unconscionably bad. Why? 

Because that's the way they have seen it done in the past, and it presents the illusion of playing correctly. "Of course we punted, it was fourth down! So what if we were down by 10 with 5 minutes to go?" Statistics even out over time, but small sample sizes can fluctuate dramatically. If a team fails to convert multiple 4th down opportunities and loses, the coach will be blamed for not punting, no matter how correct the decision was. This might mean the coach being fired, or worse, damaging his reputation to the point that he won't be hired elsewhere.

What football needs is a statistical revolution, and a dramatic one. Baseball managers still do stupid things, but they are much more sensitive to the logic of the new information available to them. Once it was widely known that stealing bases was only effective if your rate of conversion was about 75%, teams stopped recklessly attempting to steal bases. Once they knew that On Base % was a lot more important than Batting Average, lead off hitters stopped being guys who never got walks. There are plenty more examples, but the point is simple: the math nerds got the athletes playing more correctly and efficiently.

Basketball is undergoing a similar revolution with Darrel Morey. The GM of the Houston Rockets has a team of nobodies playing incredibly well, largely because he's a statistical savant who knows what players have to be able to do to in order to succeed. More teams have followed his lead, and where 10 years ago the idea of a 6'5" power forward was a cruel joke, undersized players are now seen as an advantage at times because of their versatility.

The NFL is lagging behind terribly in this regard. Amusingly enough, it isn't the players who require correcting, but the coaches. NFL players have so little autonomy that there is little to correct with regards to their play. Rather, the change needs to occur tactically, the responsibility for this lying with the coaches. The cries of the stat geeks for less unnecessary punting and an understanding of clock management go largely unheeded because the NFL has such a sense of superiority about itself. "We're the NFL. Who are you? Where did you play? Where did you coach? I thought so. Go away, nerd." And as long as that's the attitude, and the fans remain ignorant of the statistical truths governing their beloved sport, what choice does a coach have? He certainly can't expect any fan or owner to objectively say, "It's OK that we lost, we know the numbers will even out". People are happier to lose by 10 punting than 20 trying to win. Even if Andy Reid were a clock savant, he would almost certainly take more blame for his failures than praise for his successes.

At some point, an owner might stand by his coach on these decisions through thick and thin...but not now. Not when the NFL is dramatically behind the MLB and NBA with regard to accepting new statistics and their usefulness. Not when people don't understand playing to win as opposed to playing to save face. Not when losing by less is somehow more important than playing to win. And certainly not when some people still don't understand that if you're down by 7 with 4:30 to go, going for it on 4th down and 11 to go is correct, even if you probably won't convert.

So don't blame Andy Reid. He's just a big fat idiot who wants to keep his job.

(*Note: Reason number 2 is worthy of extrapolation, and my article next week will further explore the difference between the 3 leagues' use of modern statistics.)

Image via Adamcorolla.com

You can email Chris with questions or comments at TheSportsKiosK@gmail.com