Maybe We Should Try Something a Little Simpler?

Watching the trick play (which I blogged about here) that the Texas middle school football team pulled off led me to recall an episode at one of our Thanksgiving day touch football games held at my brother Rich’s house in Virginia in the late-1990s.

My family has spent a number of Thanksgiving holidays as guests at Rich and Lora’s place. If they ever call in the tab on all the free food and drink I have consumed over the years, I am thinking that I might need to obtain a second mortgage.

During these Thanksgivings,we would often play a game of football while the bird was cooking and after the adult beverages had been flowing. Rich has an expansive grassy lot that is perfect for this. (Note that this was a family-only game, not to be confused with the renowned Hendy Bowl played on Thanksgiving morning by Sam and his friends.)

Steve also joined us at this particular year, so we had a perfect roster of four adults against the four kids in the game. Of course, the requisite trash talking was initiated between the adults and the kids – I recall Steve being the most, let’s see, vociferous. Nothing wrong with a little confidence, but with all due respect to the eldest brother, mine was tempered since:

• We were going to be playing 4 kids (all in excellent shape) between the ages of 10 and 15 or so.
• It’s not as if the adults can just line up and play smash mouth – this is two-hand touch (quickness and athleticism rule the day).
• We were drinking (fairly heavily I might add).

You know how some college and NFL teams script their first 10 or 15 plays? Well, while game planning (drinking) at the kitchen table, Lora and Steve designed a half-back pass play that involved 1) Rich hiking the ball to Lora who 2) was to pass the ball back to Steve who in turn would 3) hit me with a bomb. Got that? I think Rich was going to be the second option (check down) in case I wasn’t open (please!).

Hindsight is 20-20. But this didn’t feel right at the time either. I should of offered my opinion (respectfully of course) with some plea for KISS. But I didn’t. I just put my wide-receiver diva hat on and thought: “I will get open. I don’t care how you do it, but just give me the damn ball.”

If one were to chart the probability of play success as a function of inebriation level and number of exchanges required to execute the play, then I think it would look something like the chart to the right.

The play is considered successful if it is executed without any fumbles or interceptions. A pretty low bar.

In this particular dataset, the profile of the players that are attempting to execute the play included, on average, the following characteristics:

• Middle-aged
• Average physical condition
• Average coordination
• No previous practice time together

Of course not all of the adults on our team exhibited all of those attributes. But, still, the probability of pulling off a three-exchange play while buzzed (as your first offensive play to boot) was pretty low to begin with. This was subsequently compounded since, not content with the vanilla design of the base play, Steve and Lora decided to spice it up even more with an additional wrinkle.

Rather than simply pivoting and pitching a lateral back to Steve, Lora would instead pitch the ball back over her head. I guess this bit of flair was added for the misdirection and surprise effect and was intended to freeze one or more of the youngsters that were trying to cover me. IMHO, it degraded probability of play success down into the dangerous 2-exchange-shit-faced realm. There was no way this play was going to work.

I don’t know what exactly happened. When I came out of my break and looked back expecting the rock, all I saw was Sam running the other way with the ball, escorted by Chris. Steve and Lora were in trailing pursuit.