Schedule Letdowns

Stan has firmly believed in the importance of spotting "schedule letdowns" over the years. You examine a team's schedule of games and try and find a situation where a squad will be looking ahead from this week's game for a big matchup the following week, or alternatively a team ready for a "down" game after a series of tough matchups. You can find these situations (horse racing folks like to call it a "bounce") several times a season. The Cowboys had an eventful 1996, not made any easier by their brutal schedule -- in one stretch they played at Miami (the big emotional showdown with ex-coach Jimmy Johnson), lost a tough divisional game to Philly when their game winning pass was intercepted, went into San Francisco where they squeaked out a 20-17 victory and then came home for a Monday Night Special with Green Bay which saw them once more dominate the Packers in winning 21-6. Whew! Stan is exhausted just thinking about it. Well, the Cowboys must have felt pretty good about themselves after knocking off Miami, the 49ers and Green Bay, and next up for them was the "pushover" New York Giants...or so they thought! Caught in classic schedule letdown circumstances, the Cowboys, nine point favorites, fell to the lowly Giants by two touchdowns.

So you say, it's easy in hindsight, but how do you spot the letdown beforehand. The general tip-offs as far as Stan can tell are as follows -- you have a good team, who probably think they're one of "the big boys", taking on a poor team, who are easy to overlook. The good team is favored by a bunch, often playing at home (in an away game the hostile opposing crowd will often shock a team out of complacency) against the "sad-sacks", thus making it very easy to slip into the comfortable rest-up for the one that counts mode. Generally the good team will have a "big" game the following week, although sometimes, as in the Dallas example above, the "letdown" will come after a series of "big" games.

The "Horrible Defeat Syndrome"

Ah yes, we venture into territory which is well-known to any Tampa Bay fan -- the agony and demoralizing effect of the unendurable, the unimaginable...the sheer debilitation that comes from the "Horrible Defeat". Now a horrible defeat is not simply losing a game where you were favored, or one where you had a lead. No, rather it is losing a game where one or even a couple of plays just stab you in the side, reminding you of an ineptitude or a misfortune that surely if it could only be replayed would turn out right.

The classic horrible defeat is one any NFL fan must have seen replays of several times over the years -- back in the seventies, a game matching the New York Giants with the Philadelphia Eagles I believe, where the Giants found themselves ahead by oh four points, with the ball and perhaps forty seconds left on the clock, and with the Eagles having no means to stop the clock. In those days the kneel-down play was considered "unsporting", and so the Giants elected to run the basic sure as sure can be hand-off up the middle. Now as we all know, and as Damon Runyon often expressed, when a team finds itself in a spot such as this, there is not one wit who would remark as to asking at what price he may lay on the Eagles, since everyone knows that there is no possible way the Giants could lose except for what happened which is that there was a screw-up in the transfer of the football, such that it bounced out of the halfback's hands to be picked up by an Eagle defender, who literally mustered no more than a jog in coasting into the end zone for the score to the amazement of all who were watching. The bewilderment and anguish on the faces of the Giants players told the story -- "The horror! The horror!"

Now while that may rate as the most horrendous case of a team "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory", there have been many notable recent occurrences. Three seasons ago for instance the New York Jets were not as woeful as they are now and actually found themselves with a respectable 6-5 record as they played host to Miami. They were ahead 24-14 and the New York faithful were murmuring "playoffs", but Marino started a comeback. A touchdown cut it to 24-21 and then the Dolphins got the ball back with time running out. They drove down into Jets territory, into field goal range, and then with the clock-running, Marino hustled the offense to the line of scrimmage for a presumed spike to stop the time. Well, the only problem was that Marino faked the spike as the Jets defenders were all standing around, and then lobbed a little pass to a wide open receiver for the game winning score -- "the horror!". Perhaps this is something peculiar to New York teams you say. Anyway, the Jets lost went into a tailspin, fired their first year Coach Pete Carroll, who turned out to be a defensive genius with the 49ers, and hired...uh...Rich Kotite.

The real interest for us though, is the after-effects (aftershock) of a horrendous loss, which manifest themselves in two ways -- first, in the next week, the defeated team will perform far beneath the standards it is capable of, since the awful taste of the previous game will still be gnawing at them and leaving them re-living the plays over and over in their mind at the expense of what is happening on the field this week. Second, when the team faces the "Miracle Win" nemesis again at the same location, they will rise up to eradicate their loss and enact revenge. This is what happened for the Jets, who lost the last four games of that season both straight-up and against the spread back in '94, but then proceeded to produce one of the few happy moments for Rich when they beat the Dolphins 18-17 as ten point underdogs at home the next year.

Let's provide a few more classic moments of NFL history. What would be considered the worst loss of 1995? I would venture that it was Dallas' loss to Philadelphia in the game to be forever remembered as showing Barry Switzer's genius at his best -- facing fourth down and one in his own territory, with the game tied and time running out, he elected to go for it, and be stuffed, not once but twice, leading to an easy Eagles field goal to win it. Now Barry took immense amounts of heat for this rather embarrassing maneuver (I believe his reasoning was that he "didn't want to punt into the wind") and the Cowboys struggled mightily the next week as fifteen point favorites against the Giants, although displaying the mark of a great team they did eke out a 21-20 win. Of course, the next time Dallas was in Philadelphia featured a slightly different outcome...a solid Dallas win and cover.

Another bitter loss to take in 1995 was the San Diego at Kansas City Monday night game. In this the Chargers were ahead by seven with the two minute warning already passed, when inexplicably they went into the softest prevent defense you could imagine and allowed Bono to throw completion after completion for ten yards a pop until the Chiefs were in the end zone and had sent the game in overtime. The OT period was equally good at inducing distraught emotion in Chargers fans, as they wasted opportunities of their own, dropped an easy interception, and then ended up losing when some upstart rookie (Vanover) ran back a punt for a touchdown. Well, the following week the obviously still overcome Chargers played horrendously in losing to the Cowboys 23-9. The good news for us "in the know" types was that San Diego ventured back to Kansas City on November 24th in 1996 -- I marked my calendar, for the "Bolts" would surely be ready to play...and they were! The Chargers dominated the Chiefs 28-14.