Tim, myself, and @joshrosen had an illuminating, albeit brief, conversation on Twitter Sunday night regarding the Browns’ apparent switch to a 4-3 Defense.
Ever since the possibility of this transformation came up, I’ve been asking myself a simple but important question.
Why?
Why do the Browns want to become a 4-3 Defense?
Is the 4-3 Defense more effective than the 3-4 Defense they have been running?
Does Pat Shurmur only understand how to coach a 4-3 Defense?
Does Tom Heckert only know how to supply players for a 4-3 Defense?
What, really, is the point?
This is a crucial question because obviously the two kinds of defenses need different types of personals. In the simplest terms, the 4-3 needs one more starting end than the 3-4. The 3-4 needs one more starting linebacker than the 4-3.
This means that a personnel overhaul is coming. Free agents will be signed. Draft picks will be used. Trades could be made.
And for what?
If the 4-3 was really more effective than the 3-4, you would think that the two teams competing in the Super Bowl this Sunday would be deploying it.
They are not.
The Browns had a bunch of weaknesses already. Now they have one more - defensive players who are not suited for the 4-3.
If Pat Shurmur only knows how to coach a 4-3, I’m not sure what to say. As a former Offensive Coordinator, ostensibly, he should understand both types of defenses. And since there isn’t going to be an Offensive Coordinator on this coaching staff at all, I don’t see how Shurmur will have any time to spend on the defense as is.
So what was it? Heckert can figure out 3-4 personnel, can’t he? He did so last year. Was Dick Jauron such a can’t miss hire that the Browns had to have him - and Jauron, we know, has a history coaching the 4-3?
This seems unlikely since they did, after all, interview other candidates.
When Tim, Josh, and I were exchanging messages about this, Tim made what I thought was a great point: “Any time a coach preferentially imposes a system w/o considering strengths of his personnel it is mistake.”
While I would hesitate to use the “always” that is buried implicitly inside of Tim’s tweet, I largely agree. If a coach is going to demand his team play a certain style or within a specific system that runs counter to the personnel he was given he better make a compelling argument for why.
Here, in Cleveland, we’re watching this movie already. Byron Scott came in and kicked out Mike Brown’s offensive and defensive systems, simply for the sake of his own familiarity. Sure, Scott has had success running the vaunted Princeton Offense before, but he did so with superstar point guards Chris Paul and Jason Kidd at the helm. A carbon copy of either one of those two point guards is not on this team.
So, I ask, what was the point of installing a new system? Because Scott liked the Princeton Offense more?
This is a classic mistake by upper management. We all have our preferences, but our preferences must serve a purpose or they won’t be effective at anything beyond making ourselves feel more comfortable.
Which, when your job is winning games, shouldn’t really be at the top of the priority list.
Ultimately, changing systems means re-education and changing personnel - and it probably means some amount of regression. In the case of the Cavs, this has actually worked out well, since it is better for the organization in the long run that the team is tanking this badly this quickly.
When it comes to the Browns, however, another year of regression is unacceptable. Otherwise, why bother firing Eric Mangini if you’re just planning on getting worse anyway?
You don’t. You fire Mangini to get better. And there is reason to wonder if switching to the 4-3 will make getting better in 2011 at least slightly more difficult for the Cleveland Browns.
Adam Schefter is reporting that the Philadelphia Eagles have decided to franchise Mike Vick and trade Kevin Kolb.
More importantly to us, sources are listing the Browns as one of the teams potentially interested in trading for him.
You’re not going to find a bigger proponent than me of the notion that until your NFL team has a quarterback, they’re just not important. You’re also not going to find anyone more unsure than me about whether or not Colt McCoy is the real deal at the position.
Then why am I adamantly opposed to the possibility of Holmgren & Company dealing for Kolb? Two simple reasons.
First, by almost every statistical category I’ve checked, McCoy was better than Kolb last season. From our friends at Advanced NFL Stats:
2010 COLT McCOY vs. KEVIN KOLB
Games played: 8 vs. 7
Win Probability Added: -0.18 vs -1.02
Expected Points Added: 16.5 vs 4.4
Completion %: 60.8 vs 60.8
Pass Yards per Game: 197 vs 171
INT per Game: 1.125 vs 1.0
% of Pass Attempts Over 15 yards: 20.3 vs 19.6
Adjusted Yards Per Attempt: 4.2 vs 3.8
In summary: McCoy played one more game than Kolb last season, but apart from throwing .125 more interceptions per game, was as good or better in every way.
I would highlight Completion Percentage, Percentage of Pass Attempts over 15 yards, and Adjusted Yards per Attempt in this comparison, because they illustrate that McCoy and Kolb are both West Coast style quarterbacks. In other words, both are equally well-suited toward the type of O that Pat Shurmur is going to run.
Add to the above that we were bombarded with report after report about McCoy’s leadership ability and presence in the huddle as a rookie, and I just don’t see a logical argument for the idea that Kolb is a superior quarterback.
This leads us to the second reason that I’m against the idea of a trade: compensation. If memory serves, the Eagles are supposedly asking for multiple picks, including at least one first rounder, for Kolb. The Browns need talent all over the field, with the possible exception of RB and the center to left side of the O line. Given that reality, shipping off multiple picks in order to acquire a quarterback who is not markedly better than your incumbent seems like about as good an idea as wearing capri pants to a UAW bar.
So while I’m not yet sold on McCoy, I hope the Browns brain / mustache trust recognizes that they need a talented, deep draft class more than they need another unproven quarterback.
In yesterday’s post, Tim wrote some things that I didn’t wholeheartedly agree with (it happens from time to time). I’m overgeneralizing a bit, but his argument was essentially that, of the three major professional sports, the NFL is the most friendly to small market teams, citing competitive balance as his measuring stick.
There are, of course, different ways to gauge competitive balance. The easiest way - which doesn’t necessarily make it the best way - is to look at the number of different teams that have won championships over an extended period of time.
In the past thirty years then (since 1980), here is the breakdown:
NBA: 8 champions NFL: 15 champions MLB: 19 champions
As you can see, Major League Baseball - despite Tim’s assertion that its system is “out of whack” - has produced the most different champions of any of the three professional sports.
Admittedly, MLB, NBA, and NFL have gone through multiple collective bargaining agreements over this time period. MLB’s revenue sharing system has been in place since the year 2000. In those 11 years, there have been 9 different World Series Champions.
Not bad.
In relation to this, I thought it was worth looking at some poll numbers CNBC’s sports business reporter Darren Rovell tweeted earlier today. Here are the favorite sports amongst US fans, according to SportsBusiness Journal and Daily:
NFL: 31% MLB: 17% College Football: 12% Auto Racing: 7% NBA: 6%
These numbers suggest that competitive balance - as measured by percentage chance your favorite team has of winning the championship - probably has some significance when it comes to the favorite sports of Americans.
There are obviously other factors to consider, as well. Tim commented on the notion that MLB and its season, which consists of 162 3 hour games, doesn’t fit with the speed of life in the 21st century. I would agree. That may be why, according to Rovell via Harris Interactive, MLB has had the greatest drop in popularity over the past 25 years (a 6% decline).
On the contrary, America’s most popular sport, the NFL, has only 16 games in its regular season, all of which are played on the same two days of the week, each weekend, for 17 weeks (minus the odd Thursday night games). This implies that the NFL necessitates a time commitment that is right in line with what the country is willing to give. Needless to say, the NBA and its 82 game season full of 2 and a half hour games isn’t much better than baseball … except for the fact, maybe, that a large portion of the NBA season occurs during the winter when there is less to do outside in most parts of the country.
Race, I would argue, is another factor in all of this, albeit one that is less spoken about. There is certainly a school of thought that says black, tattooed basketball players - the most visible of all the pro athletes - project an image that not all white sports fans are comfortable with.
And we can’t forget the games themselves. Football has a lot of dead space, maybe as much as baseball. Possibly more. Definitely more than basketball. But when the action starts it is typically fast, violent, and unpredictable. The bar culture - and NFL Sunday Ticket - which allows people to go to one place and watch all of the games … and all of the players on their fantasy teams … simultaneously is another boon to pro football.
Side note: college football would be smart to emulate this program by allowing fantasy football, which to my knowledge, they do not.
Ultimately, I think we have to acknowledge that winning championships - and the notion of competitive balance - may not be the be all end all for the majority of sports fans in America. An easy to watch sport, without an excruciating time commitment - event programming, if you will - may be the biggest advantage of all, especially since the NFL can have an equally simplistic fantasy component that allows some of that competitive spirit to be transferred directly to the fan.
After all, might it be more compelling to see if YOU will beat your friends in fantasy football than to see if some guys you don’t know but root for anyway beat some other guys you don’t know but choose to root against?
