The Jets: The Prediction

“And when are you going to post your prediction, Dad? You’ve got to post a prediction.” So the blogger’s son, shortly before disappearing into his room to listen again to the new Vampire Weekend record. (As the dated Dad insists on calling it.) Predictions are for fortune-tellers, the Dad intends to calls after him as the door closes. But he’s right. You, readers, are owed a prophecy.

But before I begin to prophesize, as Isaiah used to say, let me add, on the Mike Francesa front, that Mike did, on Thursday, try and clarify his alleged Jet-hating. He explained that it was really a continuation of his feud with Bill Polian, the Colts’ general manager, and that Mike was not bashing the Jets, but boosting the Colts, who were denied their chance at a perfect season by the Polian-endorsed decision to pull their starters against the Jets. (True, that.) Mike ended—directing this comment at the Jet fans who wrongly deny that the Colts would have won—with this arresting Zen formula: “To say otherwise is disrespecting what they didn’t get to do.” The notion of not being sufficiently respectful of what didn’t happen is a rich one, and from now on the Blogger intends to apply it to all areas of life.

The prediction! Well, let it be said that the predictive field, as we might call it, seems, after a survey this morning of the on- and off-line sources, to break down in this way. First, The Superciliously Analytic: All the highbrow number-crunching sources agree, essentially, that the Jets were beaten every which way by the real Colts when last they met, and though there are now newly inspirited Jets and ever-more dubious Colts the Jets aren’t that new nor the Colts that dubious. And in any case, what’s mood got to do with it? Phil Simms was mocked some for saying last week that in the NFL only the kicker really has to think about what he’s about to do, while everyone else just reacts—but this surely is so, and the purpose of the great coaches (Walsh again) is to make the right reaction so ingrained that it just takes place “naturally”. The whole end of coaching is to make what is taught at length happen in an instant. Which means that there is no mental space or time in football to brood on past disses and inner doubts—and that is why the better team covers the spread. Or, as Damon Runyon put it so perfectly, the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way they’re betting. On one side, the greatest QB of all time; on the other, a rookie. Take the Colts and the spread.

But against this must be weighed the approach of The Cunningly Anthropological: Does Ryan not invest his charges with self-confidence, and did the Colts organization not fatally undermine theirs? This is easy for the analytically-minded to scoff at—but I have always wondered if analysis back-stopped by anthropology, or at least by psychology that goes a little deeper than “we got in their heads,” might be the key to game time prediction. The underlying reality of pro sports, after all, is that there is no swift, there are no strong; that the players are all about the same size and weight and skill level—they’re all outliers. The differences, though reflected in variable performance, isn’t caused by variable athletic skill, but by variable mental states (which of course is reflected in variable performance). In plain English, when they say it’s a question of character, that’s true—though character in this sense meaning not moral superiority but the ability to work together decisively and without undue stress. There’s a reason the New Jersey Devils win games with minimal talent while the New York Rangers fail with one Messiah after another; it’s expressed in the analysis of physical acts, but the physical acts are caused by psychological states. All that character stuff sounds like bullshit—so we assume it is. But anyone who has ever played a sport knows that a disciplined scheme and a cool head can beat superior talent in beach football, for God’s sake, so what can happen when the talent isn’t, actually, significantly superior?

All of which is to say that you never know, that detached analysis cannot always trump anthropological intuition, and that I fully expect to see Manning rip them apart while Sanchez, kept in the pocket by the Colts quick line, throws picks. But, if the game isn’t essentially over by half time, then mind will trump matter, Mark will trump Peyton—and the Jets will win.