<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"FacebookPinterest\n\nWhile reading one of my favorite weekly football recaps, Stewart Mandel\u2019s College Football Overtime, earlier this season, I was struck by a telling quote in one Mandel\u2019s responses to a letter about the Ohio State-USC game: &amp;quot;As I wrote Monday, Ohio State\u2019s staff is not properly utilizing Terrelle Pryor\u2019s talents. I\u2019m no X\u2019s and O\u2019s guru...&amp;quot; What? How does Mandel know Ohio State\u2019s staff is not using Terrelle Pryor properly if he doesn\u2019t know how the X\u2019s and O\u2019s in Ohio State\u2019s plays work? Is it because Pryor is not putting up the gaudy numbers that his athletic ability seems to promise? If that\u2019s the only proof required, couldn\u2019t anyone draw the same conclusion? But Stewart Mandel is not just anybody; he professionally writes about football for a major sportswriting venue and his analysis should theoretically be more incisive. How much football knowledge should readers demand of their favorite football writers?\n\nThis is not an idle question. As with any sport, success in football depends on the innate ability of the athletes playing it. Because of the way it\u2019s played, however, with discrete plays rather than fluid continuity, success in football depends to an extraordinary degree on the way teams set up before plays start. The implications of play designs are so central to the game that we take them for granted: we know that shotgun plays are conducive to passing or that running plays with many blockers on short-yardage downs are safe bets for small gains with big rewards (ie, first downs).\n\nBut we forget what these foregone conclusions necessarily mean, which is that most potential outcomes for certain plays are precluded before the play ever happens. Defensive coverages take away certain passing options. Defensive overloads diminish the probability of success on a given side of the line. Most of the work in football is done before differences in athletic ability ever show themselves. Failing to do this work makes a huge difference in games, and it is work that is often illegible to fans unschooled in the arcana of football strategy.\n\nMoreover, football positions are highly specialized, and technique matters as much as pure athletic ability. A linebacker will be a better blitzer using certain moves on certain opposing linemen, for example. The kind of preparation this requires is also invisible to the average fan.\n\nSo shouldn\u2019t sportswriters be able to tell us how teams and players fail at this ecution? They often don\u2019t. Instead they draw conclusions from stats available to everyone, fanning the flames of off-field drama, or compiling arbitrary rankings.\n\nOne might take the side of Gregg Easterbrook, who thinks that playcalling\u2014and by extension, coaching\u2014are overrated in football. But from this article it doesn\u2019t seem that Easterbrook has a problem with the importance of playcalling in the game so much as the facile and specious analysis that invokes &amp;quot;playcalling&amp;quot; to support its position. If anything, Easterbrook shrugs in the face of the inscrutability of football playcalling, and is merely calling other commentators poseurs.\n\nKnowledge of X\u2019s and O\u2019s could enrich fans\u2019 enjoyment of the game by laying bare all the moving parts that have to come together to make football plays work. Two weeks ago, the New Orleans Saints blew out the New York Giants. Both teams were good\u2014at least both had won more games than they had lost\u2014and the Giants defense has a reputation for excellence, so the margin of victory was especially eye-opening. A studious football writer might have pointed out that the Saints benefitted from the superior play and use of their offensive line, that something as small as the technique a tackle like the Saints\u2019 Jermon Bushrod uses against an edge-rusher like Usi Omenyiora had a huge impact by giving quarterback Drew Brees an exceptional amount of time to throw the ball. One football writer did. But it wasn\u2019t a pundit for a major outlet. It was Doug Farrar writing for Football Outsiders.\n\nPeter King, the doyen of the mainstream football writing establishment, instead marveled at Brees\u2019s numbers: &amp;quot;Brees, in his 5,069-yard passing season last year, was phenomenal. This year, he\u2019s 4 percentage points more accurate, and on pace to throw 35 touchdown passes and five interceptions. Ridiculous.&amp;quot; He mentions the Saints\u2019 offensive line only in passing, as if keeping 300-pound linemen out of a quarterback\u2019s face required no more effort than growing goofy facial hair. Better to keep the spotlight on the star quarterback.\n\nThere is a place for the puff sportswriting that passes for the majority of football analysis. After all, some fans don\u2019t want their sports-watching to be disrupted by tedious details. Sports stories are often the masculine alternatives to soap operas and the Real Housewives of New York. As for me, I\u2019ll keep going to Smart Football (www.smartfootball.com) to get my fix of football analysis."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/do-football-writers-really>