Aliens, Ghosts, 4th Downs and Life-Changing memories (Mailbag Pt. 2)

This is Part Two of a sprawling offseason Mailbag feature. You can find Part One here; it covers most of your meat-and-potatoes NFL questions. Part Three, which will cover some of your more controversial questions, will arrive later in the week. This edition discusses some salary cap questions, a little bit of analytics history, a few personal queries which I will answer evasively, and some fun miscellany.

Looking forward to the new Almanac. I've been following FO since the early days. Is Aaron Schatz the Bill James of pro football? – Mitch L.

Yes! In fact, the New York Times all-but gave Schatz that title waaayyyy back in 2004. 

I am proud to still be part of the Almanac team after (dear lord) 22 years of grinding out chapters and player comments. The FTN Football Almanac (pre-order now!), formerly Football Outsiders Almanac and Pro Football Prospectus, is more important than ever in this age of AI slop and unapologetic clickbait. It’s a thoughtful, trustworthy source of NFL information and analysis at a time when much of what you see on the Internet is neither.

Related question: Did NFL teams have their own internal Aaron Schatzes before the Almanac first came out? I believe it's undeniable that prior to James' Baseball Abstracts no MLB teams had anyone internal doing such work. – Big Richie

Let’s note here that Bill James started in the 1970s, when computers still looked like ENIAC, and crude spreadsheet software was a daring cutting-edge innovation. So it’s no wonder that something as relatively simple as OPS looked and sounded like molecular chemistry to sports dudes. This oft-retold tale about the Cowboys discovering computers in the 1970s provides a little insight into the state of the NFL at the dawn of the Information Age.

NFL teams weren’t doing “analytics” in the early 2000s, when Aaron founded Football Outsiders, despite the advancements in technology. They were doing “quality control,” however. Bottom-of-the-rung coaches assembled information like third down and red-zone tendencies. Sometimes, this information came in the form of a film cutup, but it was often accompanied by data. Bill Belichick knew Peyton Manning’s third down tendencies and stats against blitzes. That’s analytics. It just wasn’t very formalized.

Okay, Mike, I'll bite. Now that you're on Ghost, does that mean you're "ghosting" us? – Dwight Jon Zimmerman

That would be awful for my career!

When choosing my new platform, I told representatives of Ghost and its competitors that I wanted to be swaddled and carried like a baby from Substack to my new home. Verbatim, more-or-less. Such is the level of my technological anxiety. The emissaries all made various promises while setting some reasonable limits on my expectations. When I finally chose Ghost, I was told that the representative assigned to swaddling me was on vacation, so I would have to wait a few days.

All I could think was: why the hell did I trust a company whose name means we don’t return your texts and emails?

All is well that ends well. I am learning the quirks of the new platform as I go. I am happy to be free of Substack’s sociopolitical baggage, and Ghost takes a much smaller cut of your subscription dollars!

Question about the salary cap: What happens if a team goes over the cap? Do they have a grace period if they are over after signing player A and before cutting/renegotiating player B? – Pat Gill

The NFL must approve all contracts. Any contract that results in a cap compliance issue can simply be disapproved. 

The cap only becomes official at the start of the league year in March. When we say “the Ravens are $65 million over the cap for 2027,” we’re talking about their theoretical budget. They can be a trillion dollars over the future cap, so long as they are under the 2027 cap by March of 2027. 

I believe there is a seven-day grace period to account for the fog of war that hovers over free agency. A team that fails to achieve cap compliance in time risks having the contract that caused the problem voided. The NFL also forfeits draft picks for teams that commit “accounting errors.” This happened to the 49ers in 2024. The league can also fine teams significant sums.

The owners police each other on the cap, and the NFLPA polices them, so there are a lot of safeguards in place to prevent funny business. 

Salary Cap discussions usually make me wish for a simpler topic. (NCAA enforcement, maybe?), But I'm genuinely curious and confused about the impact of trades on Cap calculations. 

There's always some large cap hit borne by the trading team and it seems like that would become part of the new team's obligation. I get some (maybe all?) of it is prorated bonus payments, so maybe it's fair to stick it on the old team that stretched it out, but is there any scenario where that gets passed on? Could it be passed on if it was part of the trade terms? (e.g. instead of a first round pick, we'll take a second and you take on $40M of cap liability for bonus money that was already paid but not yet "earned")? – Tim

Signing bonus money is non-transferable for cap purposes, because that is money the team already paid (or guaranteed to pay) the player. Allowing teams to trade prorated bonus money would turn NFL accounting from its current state of grounded fiction into Lord of the Rings-level high fantasy.

Just about everything else is negotiable. A.J. Brown was hard to trade because of about $50 million in leftover signing bonus (the Eagles’ problem) and over $100 million in “option bonuses” (now the Patriots’ problem). The Eagles were forced to settle for a 2028 first-rounder because they needed the Patriots to absorb those other bonuses. The Patriots can renegotiate with Brown, and probably will next year (the Eagles are essentially paying Brown this year), but that still puts the onus on the team that acquired the expensive veteran.

Analytics has ushered in a long overdue revolution in how coaches handle 4th downs.

My question(s): Did the fallout from the infamous Belichick decision vs. the Colts in 2009 delay the revolution? And do you think it was a correct decision?

For what it’s worth, I am an avowed Patriot-hater, and in-the-moment I was horrified that they were going for it. I thought it was brilliant then, and I still do. – Sheepnado

Bill Belichick went for it on fourth-and-2 from the Patriots 28-yard line while leading by six points with 2:08 to play against Peyton Manning’s Colts in a Sunday nighter on November 15th, 2009. Kevin Faulk was stopped short of the sticks after catching Tom Brady’s pass; Manning needed just four plays to march 29 yards for the game-winning touchdown.

I don’t want to relitigate the decision itself so many years later. But the decision was the talk of the league all week, and beyond. The Patriots finished 10-6 and got hammered by the Ravens in the playoffs that season; the failed fourth down decision appeared to be evidence that Belichick had lost his magic touch and was starting to outsmart himself.

Belichick’s gamble may also have indeed set back the science of fourth down analytics by several years. Here are the total number of fourth down conversion attempts, by year, from 2007 through 2018:

Fourth Down Conversion Attempts By Year

2007: 533

2008: 491

2009: 557

2010: 484

2011: 430

2012: 451

2013: 444

2014: 420

2015: 441

2016: 459

2017: 445

2018: 526

This is raw fourth down data, which means it should be handled with care. It includes lots of dreadful teams going for fourth-and-10 in lost-cause situations. But the drop in 2010-11 is stunning.

The median number of fourth down attempts went from 18 per team in 2009 to 14.5 in 2010. I cannot find any covariables to explain the sudden decline. Please let me know if I missed something. But it looks like coaches, a cowardly and superstitious lot, got spooked by Belichick’s high-profile failure.

Going for it on fourth down only became really cool again after the 2017 Eagles had so much success with it, particularly in the Super Bowl against the Patriots. Again, it appears that coaches responded to a few high-profile results, not years of analytical evidence. That would be on-brand.

The general tide has turned toward an analytical approach to fourth down decisions. Fans and players now accept fourth-and-short in opponent’s territory as a go-for-it situation, and that probably won’t change. But we might see another pendulum swing if, say, the Rams lose in the playoffs because Matthew Stafford throws an incomplete pass to his third tight end on fourth-and-4 from midfield or something.

Have NFL offenses gotten too complicated for their own good? In 2024 Jayden Daniels was fantastic running what was derisively called ‘a college offense.’ Would most quarterbacks, especially young ones, be better served with a less complex offensive system? Or was Daniels’ rookie year an anomaly and defenses would lay waste to simplicity? Thank you. – Brutus Rugburn

We shouldn’t limit the question to offense. Defensive coverage schemes have become elaborate Boolean logic strings. If the offense shifts, THEN this. But IF they shift again, THEN this. If the outside receiver releases inside AND the tight end runs the seam BUT the running back stays in to block, THEN this. The hyper-complexity sounds like the work of a committee of 50-year old men, sitting for hours in a quiet office, watching and re-watching bird's-eye footage, dreaming up new problems for sweaty 23-year olds to try to solve in a fraction of a second. 

I think there's a lot of wisdom in letting young athletes be athletes instead of real-time strategy gamers in helmets. I don't trust the NFL coaching fraternity to have struck the right balance between tactical complexity and just letting the lads try to outrun/outmuscle each other, because NFL coaches are a bunch of sleep-deprived gym teachers who think they are geniuses.

Look at it this way: the NFL’s biggest innovation last year, by the league’s resident genius coach, was “let’s put some extra big guys on the line of scrimmage and run the ball a lot.” The league’s defenses reacted like they were watching a wizard ride a dragon. 

There’s more to the Rams’ three-tight end package than caveman tactics, of course. But it does feel like the NFL’s master strategists stayed up every night for months to design subtle, intricate plans which fell apart the moment the defense was hit in the head with a club.

I'm sure your brain hurt after struggling to come up with Great Moments in Arizona Cardinal History. What do you take for a headache? – George McKelvey

For an actual headache, over-the-counter ibuprofen. For a metaphorical headache, some Crown Royal Black and/or a five-milligram sativa gummy. For a Cardinals headache … well, I got pretty sick immediately after writing that piece, so I have been rocking a lot of Dayquil. 

The biggest headache surrounding that Cardinals feature was omitting Larry Fitzgerald’s playoff game against the Packers. I may have been working a little too quickly on a team that few of us find particularly inspiring.

What five NFL games would you choose as the signature Mike Tanier moments, the games that mark important points in your journey as a fan, a writer, a (sorry) content creator? – Kit Wren

Atlanta Falcons 14, Philadelphia Eagles 13, 1978 Wild Card game. The Eagles lost because punter Mike Michel, who had been filling in at kicker for a few weeks (1970s football, folks) missed two field goals, including a 34-yarder in the final seconds, and an extra point.

I had just turned eight years old and barely understood football, but I understood that letting the punter kick field goals in a playoff game was stupid, and I understood disappointment.

Neighborhood Buddy 38, Me 14, Winter APBA Championship, 1985. I owned two sets of APBA tabletop football cards as a lad: the 1982 set and the 1984 set, the latter of which was purchased with hard-earned allowance money because my pals and I had formed a four-team tabletop league.

The 1984 Dan Marino card was what kids these days call a “cheat code:” anyone with Marino at quarterback could spam Medium Pass Plays, leaving the opposing defense helpless. We gave the Marino card to the youngest kid in the league, and he obliterated us.

That card contributed to my fascination with NFL stats and really undermined notions like “establishing the run” and “defense wins championships.” I don’t really remember the final score, mind you. But getting trounced by an 11-year old over and over again really made me think about the probabilities underlying tabletop football, and by extension real football.

Philadelphia Eagles 12, Dallas Cowboys 7, Week 15, 2004. This is the game in which Terrell Owens broke his leg. A teacher buddy managed to get tickets. We watched Donovan McNabb manufacture a fourth-quarter game-winning drive to clinch homefield advantage for the playoffs, all the while performing mental calculations about whether Owens could make it back in time for the Super Bowl. We wore black armbands to school the next morning.

I was already doing a lot of uncredited freelance writing for a fantasy service. This may have been the last game I attended with a friend, strictly as a fan. 

New York Giants 21, New England Patriots 17, Super Bowl XLVI. My first Super Bowl, I was added to the New York Times contingent at the last minute when the Giants clinched. I was still only about seven months removed from teaching trigonometry.

I’ve tried and failed in the past to articulate how out-of-my-depth I was in Indianapolis during Super Bowl XLVI week, and how exhausted I was when the game arrived. Thank heavens, as an in-game blogger who wrote about 20 bylines during the week, I was not assigned a game story for the newspaper! Wes Welker misjudged a Tom Brady bomb, Eli Manning led another comeback, and I raced back to my hotel to soak my blistered feet and wonder if I was cut out for this gig.

Philadelphia Eagles 41, New England Patriots 33, Super Bowl LII. What a difference six years made. By the 2017 offseason I was a seasoned sportswriter who had been to enough Super Bowls to gripe about the weather, shuttles, schedules and food. But seeing the Eagles win the Super Bowl – watching The Philly Special in person, being in the interview room after the game – felt like vindication for 40-plus years of fandom and a difficult career change.

Star Trek's 60th anniversary is this year, but for the first time in over a decade, no new shows are in production or greenlit. Where does the franchise go from here? – Dave Harrell

I fear Star Trek’s fate is tied to both the chaos surrounding the streaming television industry and the politics of the new leadership at Paramount. Star Trek is on a relatively unpopular streaming service in an era of contraction and cost-cutting. It’s also a liberal-leaning franchise owned by a conglomerate that is very up front about its eagerness to cater to the hardcore political right. 

If you love Star Trek, please check out Starfleet Academy. The show is very good but got review-bombed by bad-faith asshats who attack any genre property with a female and/or non-white lead. It was also criticized as Beverly Hills 90210 in space, which is oh-so clever and damning. How dare television producers borrow elements from a show that had such cultural currency that its name is still recognized 30 years later? 

Starfleet Academy does indeed lean into some young-adult fantasy literature tropes, as do X-Men comics, the Harry Potter books, My Hero Academia and many other beloved sci-fi/fantasy properties. But it’s loaded with Star Trek philosophy and ideology as well. 

As Mitch L. pointed out in the comments, Starfleet Academy is greenlit for Season 2, probably because most of the filming is already complete.

Also, check out Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks, two very good series which both deepen Trek lore and serve up plenty of Trek-flavored comfort food.

In honor of Disclosure Day, what are your beliefs about UFOs and aliens? Ever experienced anything out of the normal? – Mothman

I have never experienced anything paranormal, no matter how many drugs I experimented with.

Probability dictates that there is life elsewhere in the cosmos. That probability decreases when we limit the definition to “intelligent life,” then decreases further for “intelligent life capable of interstellar travel.” Such a society (probably) of intelligent beings must then find us and then deem us worthy of contact, shrinking the odds further. They must then choose to contact us by sending manned (for want of a better term) spacecraft directly to earth, rather than parking a probe on the outskirts of Pluto and blasting us with messages from their interplanetary subwoofer. 

So, to have ever been spotted by or interacted with anyone on earth, they must have chosen the most dangerous, expensive, inconvenient way of establishing contact, meaning they must both be both far smarter and far stupider than we are. Then our worlds’ governments, run by an ever-changing cast of pudding brains, would have to keep the whole thing secret for decades.

I will believe that we have made contact with aliens when we start hearing signals from space that anyone with a ham radio can pick up, like in the movie Contact or the David Bowie song “Starman.”

Speaking of Spielberg movies, I was watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind the other night. WTF were the aliens doing with that vacuum cleaner early in the movie? I can imagine how the aliens abducted Air Force pilots. I can wrap my brain around their presence disrupting electrical fields and causing appliances to short out. I think they showed restraint by not abducting Teri Garr. But that vacuum cleaner switched on and began chasing people! How? And to what end?

I have not seen Disclosure Day yet. Maybe it explains that the aliens were a bunch of neat freaks.

COMING SOON IN MAILBAG: You asked some tough questions. I'm formulating some tough answers.