NFL playoffs

The NFL playoffs begin this weekend, and no one really cares. We live in Canada, and we love football, but we love Canadian rules. We largely do not care about the watered-down, slow game that, over the objections of the rest of the world, the Yanks insist on calling football (you have to give it to the Americans, they are really good at doing things over the objections of the rest of the world). We love the wacky rules, we love the wacky plays, the fumbled interception that is recovered, fumbled again, kicked into the endzone, and then kicked back out. As befits our great nation’s heritage of free land, the field is bigger. As befits our socialist leanings, the game is not over until the last whistle; there is always a chance that the underdog can come back. (I love hearing the announcer say “All they need is a touchdown, a two point convert, a recovered onside kick, and field goal.” And they are serious!) Also, in the CFL the uprights are at the front of the endzone instead of the back, so there is always a chance that someone is going to run into them.

I have a confession to make, a confession that is too shameful to speak anywhere but into the anonymity of the Internet: I like American football better. I have for some time now. I remember when it began. I was watching the St. Louis Rams in around 1999. Kurt Warner dropped back to pass, but several very large gentleman, intent on doing him harm, rushed toward him. Sensibly, he ran away toward the right sideline. As he ran to his right, he threw the ball (across his body, against his momentum) toward the left corner of the endzone. The ball travelled sixty yards in the air, and came down in the arms of a receiver. The receiver was ‘double covered’ (that is, two highly skilled players were being paid vast sums of money to prevent the catch) but the ball went over the head of the short cover man, and under the arms of the deep man. The receiver caught the ball without breaking stride, and stepped across the goal line for a touchdown.

Of course, it is impossible to recreate the drama of this play in written prose. I just want to stress, the quarterback was running to his right, and threw to his leftt. The ball was thrown at a moving target, a space about the size of a basketball hoop, sixty yards away. (Sixty yards is further than most athletes can kick a football.) I had seen a lot of football. I had never seen anything like that play before.

That moment was a reinforcement of an obvious truth that had lurked for years in the recesses of my mind: the players in the NFL are better. They are faster, they are stronger, they make better decisions. The athletes in the CFL are very good, but they are not good enough to play in the NFL; that is why they play in the CFL. If you want to see someone run into the uprights, or catch an interception after the ball bounced off of the intended receiver’s helmet, the CFL is your game. If you want to watch the best athletes play football at its highest level, you need to watch the NFL. If you want to watch almost inhuman feats of athleticism by top tier American athletes, you will enjoy the NFL. If you want to watch second tier American athletes and a Canadian place kicker, the CFL is a perfect fit.

Some will protest, “But the NFL game is too slow! They run the ball too much!” In the CFL, teams are given only three downs to gain the ten yards needed for a first down. In the NFL, teams are given four downs. It is easy to see that a slow, plodding offense will be more successful in the NFL than in the CFL. What people who make this argument seem to forget is that in the CFL, the defense has to line up a yard away from the line of scrimmage. In the NFL, to gain a yard, you need to run through the defense. In the CFL, you get a whole yard of empty space to gather momentum, so running against a CFL defense is much easier. Because the defense has to line up a yard away from the ball, the offense has the privelege of an uncontested yard on every down. If you take those three yards away, the CFL team has to gain 7 contested yards over the course of three downs, where the NFL team has to gain 10 contested yards over the course of four downs – on average, the CFL game favours a slow, plodding offense!

The neutral zone is most obvious in short yardage situations. In the CFL, when a team faces third down with a yard to go, they will always go for it, and almost always get it: there is no one to run through to get the requiste yards, so all you have to do is not fall over and you are going to get your first down. In the NFL, to gain a yard you have to run through the defense, so in every fourth down situation, every goal-line stand, there is a chance that your team will be unsuccessful. In the recent NFL game between the New York Giants and the Oakland Raiders, the Raiders ran four plays from their opponents’ one yard line; four times they were stopped. It is important to remember that the Oakland Raiders are an incompetent, awful, lazy football team, but the distinction between the NFL and the CFL is obvious. In the CFL, a play from the one yard line is successful nine out of ten times. When your team gets to the one yard line, you might as well stop watching, because nothing exciting is going to happen. In the NFL, every yard is contested, and as a result, it is exciting.

CFL games, I confess, do feel a lot faster. The reason for this has nothing to do with the actual play of the game, but with the rules with regard to the clock. In the CFL, teams have 27 seconds to run every offensive play; if you take any longer than that, your team is penalized for delay of game. In the NFL, teams have 40 seconds. Those thirteen seconds are never put to good use; the team just takes its sweet time lining up, and the game drags between downs. That’s why fans of the CFL complain about the pace of the game – it has nothing to do with the number of running plays.

Miscellaneous rules:
• In the NFL, a receiver has to control the ball with both feet still in bounds. It’s very exciting to see a player running full speed catch the ball, stop the momentum of his lower body to tap both feet inside the boundary marker, and then smash uncontrollably into some poor photographer. In the CFL, one foot is good enough. Why is this? The field’s wider! They should have plenty of space to get both feet down. But as anyone who has watched the NFL knows, it is really hard to get both feet down in bounds, and I guess our boys aren’t up to it. Advantage: NFL
• In the NFL, the uprights are at the back of the endzone, so the kicker has to kick the ball further to score a field goal, making field goals more difficult. (Of course, the kickers are better in the NFL, so this is a bit of a wash: Sean Fleming’s effective range is about 20 yards. Yes, he got better toward the end of the season.) The downside of moving the uprights to the back of the endzone is that you never see an NFL player tracking the ball across the sky, arms outstretched, running full speed into a huge steel obstacle in the middle of the field. That happens in the CFL. Advantage: CFL
• The Canadian field is wider. This gives the offense more room to work: an obvious advantage. The Canadian field is also longer, meaning the offense has to move the ball further to score: an obvious disadvantage. I have not undertaken any sort of a statistical analysis, but it seems to me that NFL scores are comparable to those in the CFL. No advantage.
• The CFL has all sorts of wacky rules about kicking. I’ve been a fan for years, and I still don’t understand them very well. It is very unpredictable. I once saw a game where one team tried a field goal, and their opposition kicked the ball back out, so we kicked the ball back in, and they kicked the ball back out, through a crowd. And that was the end of the game. It’s like a bizarre, unpredictable circus, and you never really get the hang of it. Advantage: CFL


Washington over TAMPA BAY (-2.5)
Jacksonville over NEW ENGLAND (-8)
CINCINATTI over Pittsburgh (-3)
Carolina over NEW YORK GIANTS (-2.5)