Nick Saban and the Fragile Kicker Psyche

Nick Saban may be considered a great football coach, but his special teams decision-making was abysmal in the Crimson Tide's 36-28 loss at Auburn today.

Since the game ended a couple of hours ago, there's been much discussion about Auburn's game ending 109 yard field goal return and the three previous Tide field goals that were either missed or blocked.

The misses and losses weren't Saban's fault, but in my opinion the play of the game was the field goal that Saban elected not to kick. With 6:19 left in the game, and Alabama nursing a 28-21 lead at the Auburn 13, Saban elected to go for a first down instead of trotting his kicker back out for a 30 yard chip shot that would have given Alabama a 10 point, two possession lead.

The CBS commentators acknowledged that Saban might have lost faith in his kicker, Cade Foster, after missing previous attempts from 44 and 33 yards. But in my opinion, kicking that field goal is your only viable option in that situation.

As a head coach, the worst thing you can do to your kicker is to communicate you have lost confidence in him. After a shank or a pull or any other critical miss, the coach simply must send him back out there at the next opportunity if the game situation calls for it. And a FG at the 6:19 mark was exactly what the game situation called for.

You see, kickers' egos are proxies for all that is fragile about the male psyche in general. Kickers are microcosms for all that is insecure and tenuous about our gender.  We are forever wondering if we are still loved after failure. We are constantly questioning our worth as thinking we are only as good as our last success. These assessments, while tongue-in-cheek, are closer to the truth than we might want to admit.

Before the game even starts, kickers walk around wondering if they are really football players. Many of their teammates don't think they are, and it usually takes a tackle or block or fumble recovery or two to prove you are and to gain their peers' respect. Their practices are often spent in isolation working on their craft. The labor day-to-day in relative obscurity, practicing kicks like a PGA Tour pro might knock in 100 three foot putts on the practice green.

Few head coaches understand the kicker and how he ticks.  Placekicking is a mental game that is more like golf than football. Kicking takes place during and within a football game, but it has more in common with chess or skeet shooting that it does with a zone read or cover 3. And the thing about chess and golf and skeet shooting is that you don't have tens of thousands of people screaming while you're trying to focus.  You don't have to rely on two other people (snapper and holder) to execute their jobs perfectly before you can attempt yours. And you don't have to rely on eight other guys to keep up to 11 hostile opponents from killing you.

So with all this baggage the kicker is carrying around, the last think he needs to be wondering about is whether or not his coach thinks he can still succeed. When the game is on the line, when you really need that fragile little almost-football-player to win the game for you, you don't want him wondering whether or not you believe in him.

But Saban erred in two ways today. He lost confidence in Cade Foster, and this lack of confidence in his kicker caused him to make a bad football decision.  Kicking the FG at 6:19 was the only reasonable call to make.  If he gets that call right, then there is no game-ending 109 yard field goal return.

But I'm glad Saban made that call. I wanted Auburn to win and as Nick Saban said, "First time I've ever seen a game lost that way."

First time I've ever seen one won that way either.

Wonder Anew

When a man pledges his allegiance to the Kansas City Chiefs, he embarks upon a gut-wrenching journey of heartache and despair.  He is relegated to a nomadic existence amid a Narnian curse, where it is always winter, but never Christmas.

But it was not always so. Great loss may be experienced only after fully tasting the sweet nectar of success (this sentence was written in homage to Mitch Holthus).  And success indeed marked the Chiefs first decade in Kansas City. And it was the Chiefs’ first decade in KC that closely correlated with my own first decade on Earth.

For my generation, growing up with the Chiefs beget a sort of a Wonder Years love affair with the team. It was a love forged on successes surrounding first and fourth Super Bowls and refined on playgrounds and backyards as we chased and tackled each other while wearing jackets and stocking caps of red and gold. It was a love that blossomed as we learned who we were and from where we had come as we began to understand our place in the cosmos.

We learned simultaneously in those days about two evil forces—perhaps the only two evil forces—in the world: the Viet Cong and the Oakland Raiders. But we learned quickly that even though some amorphous villain named Ho Chi Minh was wreaking havoc half a world away, our true wrath should be directed at the evil closer to home.  An evil that invaded our city at least once a year—evil incarnate with names that we would learn to pronounce but never try to spell. Names like Ben Davidson and Fred Biletnikoff and Daryle Lamonica. There were really no bad guys quite like the Oakland Raiders, and pity the poor chump at High Grove Elementary that even hinted at affections  for the silver and black.

At High Grove we had no official school uniform, but an unofficial dress code existed among the males that some sort of Chiefs gear be donned and displayed proudly during football season. Our bedrooms would be virtual memorabilia rooms boasting pennants and posters and every effort would be made cover our mothers’ hideous wallpaper with licensed and non-licensed Chiefs products. For me one relic survives those years—a round wastebasket featuring the Chiefs’  offensive and defensive starters’ headshots, all placed in perfect “X and O” alignment on the can.

Our finest hour was seeing Johnny Robinson sitting on the Tulane Stadium turf pointing his finger skyward as we claimed number one for the first time. Several months later, that same image of Johnny Robinson graced the cover of “Championship,”  a book we all ordered from the Scholastic Book Club catalogue so that we could ever read about that magical season.

For those of us who grew up during those years, there was never any question whether or not we’d be good. No question we’d make the playoffs. Success was assumed and expected, and we had no reason to believe it would ever end.

But it did. One by one our childhood idols left us as their bodies succumbed to inevitable age or were otherwise casualties of the new Arrowhead “turf,” which was virtually indistinguishable from the asphalt paving in the Truman Sports Complex. So the love that had emerged so many years earlier was tested and tried and refined during years of frustration and futility.

Since that time we’ve had years here and there that gave us a reason to hope. Glimpses of past grandeur emerged every now and then, but our hopes were always dashed by a missed kick or an off day or a superior opponent.

The 2012 season marked the low point in the franchise. The season ended 2-14. I was an eyewitness to Romeo Crennel’s last game as head coach as the Chiefs played the Broncos in Denver (see post from December 29, 2012). It was the worst display of football that I ever witnessed in person. The Chiefs looked like they could not wait for the season to end. I believe they disrespected the Broncos by not giving them their best game.

In Denver, I wanted to tear my Chiefs regalia and cry the football equivalent of “blasphemy!” My disgust at what was unfolding before me sent me to one of the bathrooms at Sports Authority Field at Mile High. My misery increased there as I was confronted by a long line and an Intoxicated Bronco fan who defiantly shouted to me: “The Chiefs suck!” I had no retort, and simply applauded his brilliant and insightful assessment of my 2-14 team. They pay big money for such penetrating analysis on the networks, I thought to myself.

Fast forward to last Sunday night. I had not felt great about the Chiefs nine victories during 2013 and was impressed by the Peyton Manning offensive machine that lay in wait for us. I feared a 35-10 defeat, but was pleasantly surprised at several things I saw from the Chiefs and was assured of the mortality of Peyton and the Broncos. So there was in many ways more satisfaction from a 27-17 loss in Denver than in all of the previous nine victories.

But sometimes the fear of success looms larger than the fear of failure. In many ways the loss last week in Denver was as comfortable as an old shoe. I realized I had become accustomed to losing and it no longer was the bitter pill it was in 1971. I had become too comfortable with moral victories. I had become content speaking in platitudes.

So we look to the Chiefs’ next six games with hope. Hope that we can observe a team that continues to gel, continues to get better, continues to compete, and gets back to the business of winning. And let losing once again leave a nasty yet unfamiliar taste in our mouths.

Although not eternal or essential, I would like for my children to be re-introduced to the Chiefs, and to get to know them as Champions. I would like for them to experience a little Christmas in what has been their long Chiefs winter.

Maybe, just maybe, they’ll see the Chiefs on Broadway next February 2.

And all the wonder will begin anew.