The Ovechkin Renaissance Won't Last Forever

           Alex Ovechkin came crashing down to Earth on Sunday night.  His three goals in the two previous games were parlayed into zero points and a -3 performance against the Flyers.  Ovechkin’s only highlight came when the Capitals fearless leader turned the puck over in horrendous fashion behind his net that led to a Flyer shorthanded goal.  Granted it was the Capitals’ third game in four nights, but they had the Flyers dead to rights and they let them slip away.  A big part of that had to do with Dmitry Orlov’s hit on Brayden Schenn, but in a game where the announcers were comparing it to a playoff atmosphere it is no surprise to Caps fans that Ovechkin was nowhere to be found.  Call it fatigue, call it an Olympic hangover finally setting in, or call it teams defending Ovechkin and his line mates harder than the rest of the team.   Whatever the reason for Ovechkin’s lack of success in highly adverse situations, the continued prevalence of these performances now raises the question; would another first or second round playoff exit this season mark the beginning of the end for Ovechkin’s ability to win a Stanley Cup as an elite goal scorer?  Ovechkin’s scoring renaissance over the last two years has carried the Capitals through the regular season, but it maybe masking an inevitable meeting with an inescapable foe that could forever hinder Ovechkin’s ability to carry a team through the playoffs in the future. That foe is time.    

            If the Capitals fail to make the playoffs, or have an early exit yet again, that means they will begin next season with a 29-year-old Alex Ovechkin who hopefully will be coming off his first 50 plus goal season in four years.  Jewels from the Crown has a great spreadsheet of all the players who have ever scored 50 goals in a season and the age at which they achieved that feat.  The success of the players who have done it at age 29 and older may give Caps fans a reason to press the panic button.  Only 20 players in NHL history have put up 50 goals in a season at age 29 or older and shockingly none of them are named Gretzky (his last 50 goal season was at 28).  Alright, maybe more than you were thinking, but only eight of those players had a fifty goal season past 30: Marcel Dionne at 31, Phil Esposito at 31 and 32, Mario Lemieux at 31, Bobby Hull at 33, Jaromir Jagr at 33, Joe Sakic at 31, John Bucyk at 35, and Joe Mullen at 31.  All others had their 50 goal seasons at age 29 or 30.  Of the twenty, only five had multiple 50-goal seasons at 29 or older: Marcel Dionne (3), Phil Esposito (4), Mario Lemieux (2), Dave Andreychuck (2), and Bobby Hull (2).  All of this means that when Ovechkin starts next season at age 29, he may not have very many years left to lead the Capitals with his scoring touch, and the Stanley Cup numbers out of this group of twenty is cause for even more concern.  Seven of these players were able to win Stanley Cups after age 29: Phil Esposito, Brett Hull, Dave Adreychuck, Joe Sakic, John Bucyk, Joe Mullen, and Lanny McDonald.  Five of them did it with the team they had their fifty goal seasons with: Esposito, Sakic, Bucyk, Mullen, and McDonald, but only three did it in a season where they scored 50 goals.  Those were Sakic with the Avalanche in 2001, Mullen with the Flames in 1989, and Esposito with the Bruins in 1972.  So not only are Ovechkin’s chances at having these 50 goals season limited, his chances of having these seasons translate into post season relevance are dwindling as well.  This means that the Capitals’ success this season is of dire importance to the continued scoring revival of Alex Ovechkin, and it will be a key factor in his evolution as team captain and whether or not he can lead the Capitals to the Promised Land.             

            Ovechkin’s season thus far makes one think that he should be playing with a chip on his shoulder, especially after the Russians’ debacle in Sochi.  If he doesn’t win this year, or at least make it to the conference finals, it may spell disaster for the Caps’ chance at winning a Cup with Ovechkin at the helm.  It would mean that even with a reborn 50 goal scoring Alex Ovechkin the Capitals still cannot achieve post season success.  With history telling us that those 50 goal season maybe coming to an end it is hard to imagine a Capitals team hoisting the Stanley Cup any time soon unless things begin to change.  Ovechkin needs to realize that he must evolve as a leader to help his team win in ways other than scoring, and the Capitals must realize that they need to start putting the right pieces around Ovechkin to supplement his scoring as it inevitably decreases.  If not then the Capitals can take pride in having a top goal scorer for maybe another two to three years before his scoring declines, and we can continue to talk about how the trophy case in the Verizon Center continues to lack the most important piece of them all

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Williams's Legacy, Wilson's Destiny, and Griffin's........?

Forty-eight hours ago (as I write this on Monday Night), Doug Williams held the distinction of being the ONLY African American quarterback to win a Super Bowl.  After the Seahawks’s dismantling of the Denver Broncos on Sunday, that statement must be amended to the FIRST African American quarterback to win a Super Bowl.  And let’s be honest Redskins fans.  When Robert Griffin III was drafted everyone of you thought it would be Griffin who would carry on the legacy of Doug Williams and be the next African American quarterback to win the Super Bowl.  Alas it is Russell Wilson who has become the Buzz Aldrin of this mission, leaving Griffin to watch from afar in the orbiter like that other guy.  It is funny how fate can come together sometimes, and a look into the history of Williams’s Super Bowl, Wilson’s Super Bowl, and the fateful Griffin/Wilson game almost a year ago makes one wonder if this is all happening by accident.

            A comparison between the careers and Super Bowls of Doug Williams and Russell Wilson lead to some eerie similarities that makes one wonder if Wilson’s win was destiny.  We all know that Wilson was drafted by the Seahawks to back up Matt Flynn, who made his career off of one good game, and Wilson was quickly elevated to starter after Flynn was seen to be inadequate.  But did you know Williams replaced a quarterback with an equally dubious resume?  Jay Schroeder had one start in college for UCLA that was famous for an improbable game winning pass that landed him a third round selection by the Redskins in 1984.  Schroeder had success with the Redskins and led them to an NFC championship in the 1986-1987 season, but he was benched for Williams towards the end of the ‘87-’88 season because of injury and inconsistent play.  Unlike Wilson, Williams was far from a second year quarterback, but Williams’s Super Bowl XXII start came in his second year with the Redskins.  OK, that was a stretch, but do you remember how the Seahawks won their conference championship? One of the best corners in the league deflected a pass in the endzone to ice the game.  Do you know how the Redskins won their conference championship in 1988?  A hit by Darrell Green on a 4^th down pass from the 6 yard line forced an incompletion in the endzone and the Redskins iced the game.  Starting to get weird, right?  What is even weirder is that both Super Bowls were played in stadiums that had never held a Super Bowl before that game.  And in both games the Broncos set records for scoring fast.  In Super Bowl XXII the Broncos scored the fastest touchdown in Super Bowl history (at the time) 1:57 into the game.  Sunday they set the fastest score ever in a Super Bowl with their bad snap.  Oh, and did you know that Peyton Manning was the league MVP this year?  I only bring that up because the league MVP for the ’87-’88 season was in attendance Sunday night to watch his former team get pasted like they did 26 years ago.  That’s right.  John Elway was the league MVP the year Doug Williams and the Redskins ran him out of Jack Murphy Stadium.  I can probably find some other flimsy pieces of evidence for this notion, but suffice it to say that there are strange parallels between Russell Wilson and Doug Williams that make it seem like Wilson was destined to finally carry on Williams’s legacy.   He did so by vanquishing the one Redskins fans thought would carry this legacy not but one year ago, and that fateful game could be a microcosm of how one career soared while the other flamed out.

            I was at Fed Ex field on January 6, 2013 when Wilson met Griffin for the first time.  Up to that point both quarterbacks had been heralded as the future of the quarterback position, and their shared success through the season pointed towards careers that would be inextricably intertwined towards success.  That game, however, put Robert Griffin and Russell Wilson on divergent paths.  One came out of that game with a career altering injury that led to a myriad of questions throughout the subsequent season that evolved to the point of questioning his ability to lead a professional football team.  One came out of that game heralded as a game winner.  He may not put up monster stats, but he makes the necessary plays to put his team in a position to win.  Now Russell Wilson finds himself at the highest peak of his profession while Robert Griffin if left to figure out how to rebuild a dysfunctional 3-13 team.  It is funny how one instance in time can drastically change the fate of two individuals who seemed to be headed in the same direction.  Before that game on January 6, 2013, most people would have said that either Griffin or Wilson could be the next Doug Williams and win a Super Bowl.  On February 2, 2014 one fulfilled that destiny.  The other is still waiting to fulfill that destiny in the city where it all started 26 years ago, and left hoping that that game on January 6th was not a harbinger of bad things to come.

Will Maryland End Up Being The Jealous Divorcee?

            Maryland’s split with the ACC is turning out to be an ugly divorce.  It has everything you want in a classic bitter separation; money grabbing, name calling, vindictive withholding, creative lawyering, secret conspiring, petty social exclusion, and lawsuits aplenty.  The most recent lawsuit from Maryland claims and embodies all of these characteristics in an attempt to get out of the $52 million exit fee required by the ACC, and to recover the roughly $16 million in conference revenue the ACC is keeping from them to pay off this debt.  Tarhheelblog does an amazing job of detailing the ins and outs of this lawsuit that has only one certain ending.  Maryland is going to pay.  Even if they win everything in this lawsuit, which they won’t, they will still have to pay.  Please read the Tarheelblog for the long version, but here is the short version.

            Maryland is claiming the raising of the exit fee to be invalid due to breach of contract and unreasonable restriction of trade.  Maryland states that the ACC is in breach of contract by not taking the proper steps outlined in the ACC bylaws to notify Maryland of the exit fee amendment to the ACC constitution. They also state that by raising the fee the ACC is unreasonably restricting the trade and commerce of conference membership, which makes the fee unlawful and entitles Maryland to damages three times the exit fee under Maryland Law (§§11-209 and §§11-204).  The breach of contract may fly but I’m sure the ACC has a good counter argument, and the second one is just ridiculous.  How can you say trade is being restricted when four schools (Pitt, Syracuse, Louisville, and Notre Dame) knowingly accepted the exit fee when they joined the ACC?  Plus, it is not like we are getting Len Elmore to preside over this case.  The case is being heard in North Carolina.  I’ll let a My Cousin Vinny quote illustrate Maryland’s situation:

“Stan, you’re in Ala-fuckin-Bama.  You come from New York.  There is no way that this case is not going to trial.”

There is no way a judge in ACC country is going to award Maryland $156 million under a Maryland statute on a specious anti-trust argument, but lets just say the judge is a softy and buys the breach of contract line.  Maryland would probably still be held to the original exit fee, which amounts to about $17-$20 million.  This is where the withholdings make a huge difference if Maryland is able to lower the exit fee.  Maryland’s rosy financialassessment conducted this past summer stated that Maryland’s Athletic Department budget would not start turning a surplus until 2018, and once it does 50% of that surplus will be used to pay back the money the Athletic Department borrowed from the University.  That assessment was based on the Athletic Department borrowing upwards of $36 million because they would not get the conference revenue from last year or this year.  Maryland knows that they are not getting this year’s conference revenue (around $20 million) because they have legally filed their official notice of withdrawal this past June, which makes them ineligible to receive their share of conference revenue.  The dispute now is over the $16 million from last year’s revenue that is being withheld and the definition of the word “file”.  The ACC bylaws state that in order to voluntarily leave the conference, a school must “file” an official notice of withdrawal with all other school and the commissioner.  Maryland claims that the announcement to leave the ACC in November 2012 did not constitute an official notice of withdrawal, and because of this they are entitled to that $16 million owed to them from 2012-2013.  Obviously the ACC does not see it that way, so Maryland has once again placed the balance of their argument in the hands of a judge who may or may not have a miniature replica of the Old Well on his bench.  All of this means that unless Maryland hits a one outer and is awarded damages from their anti-trust argument, they are looking to be out anywhere from $20-50 million dollars depending on the final exit fee and the ruling on the withheld conference revenue. 

Doesn’t Maryland sound like a wife who recklessly spent money during a marriage and now is trying to bilk her husband out of more money to pay off her own debt?  And while the marriage was on its downswing Maryland cheated on the ACC with a better looking and wealthier guy in the Big 10, and now the scorned husband is trying to stick it to his cheating wife?  And isn’t Maryland a little too cocksure that she will forever make her ex husband jealous by driving around in her new Ferrari that is the Big 10 TV money?  I was one of those people who thought “Big 10.  Big Money.  Maryland wins.  ACC screwed.  End of story.”  Not that I liked that narrative (I will forever hate the Big 10 no matter how much money we get) but it is the one that seemed the most plausible.  A closer look, though, at some revenue numbers coupled with cryptic dealings should make people wonder what the ACC is up to, and could they make Maryland regret leaving the conference they founded?

The Department of Education lists the revenues of different sports for almost all schools that have college sports.  I think it is best to look at revenue more that profit because profit is based on revenue plus expenses, and different schools can count different things as expenses (just ask Maryland’s swim team) but they cannot fudge the money coming in.  A comparison between football and basketball revenue between the ACC and Big 10 leads to some interesting numbers.  I factored in Maryland as a Big 10 school and Louisville as an ACC school.  The Big 10 outstrips the ACC in football which is not a surprise.  All Big 10 schools generated $586 million in total revenue while the ACC could only muster $411 million.  Basketball, however, is a different story.  The ACC’s basketball revenue is $211.5 million while the Big 10 is only $189.7 million.  You must also remember that the Big 10 revenue is largely based on the success of the revenue generated from the Big 10 network.  The ACC does not have that luxury to factor into their revenue stream, so all things considered the gap is not as big as one might think.  But overall the Big 10 is the big winner, which could culminate in each school possibly getting $40 million per year when the Big 10 renegotiates their TV contract in 2017.  So Maryland is the winner, right?  Not so fast.  John Swofford and the ACC have made some weird dealings over the last 2 years that make one wonder what they are up to.

In May of 2012, seven months before Maryland’s announcement, The ACC locked themselves into a more binding contract with ESPN through 2027 that gave ESPN more rights to the games for a smaller per school payout than any other conference in the country.  When Maryland announced their departure in November 2012 there were rumblings that the only other school to vote against the exit fee increase, Florida State, would be on its way out to pursue more money, signaling the beginning of the end for the ACC.  But that was not the case.  This past April all ACC schools, including Florida State, signed a grant of media rights, meaning that if any school leaves in the next 14 years the ACC would retain the rights to broadcast their games and they would keep the revenue from it.  This equates to way more than a $50 million exit fee, which essentially means no one is leaving the ACC anytime soon.  Florida State decided to sign this based on a meeting they had with commissioner John Swofford and a representative of the Wasserman Media Group.  Based on that meeting, Florida State was so impressed that they decided to stay in the ACC.  What could have been said at that meeting to convince Florida State to stay for less money?  And what caused all schools to sign this grant of media rights that locks them into a TV deal that could be worth $20 million less per year than some of the higher paid conferences?  What am I missing here?  The answers may lie in the fact that Maryland may have left a sleeping giant who, if it plays its cards right, may outdo the Big 10’s TV deal.

            With the addition of Louisville, the ACC now has the top three highest revenue generating basketball teams in the country (Louisville, Syracuse, and Duke) and four of the top seven with UNC.  They have the reigning national champion in football.  They have Notre Dame contractually obligated to play five ACC games per year.  Four of the last 10 national basketball championships reside in the conference.  They have a rabid lacrosse following with three of the top five men’s lacrosse teams, and six of the last 10 national champions.  Couple all of this with a relatively nascent conference network that contains within its footprint more top 30 TV markets, more households with TV’s, and a greater population base than any other conference and you have a recipe for an advertising juggernaut.  Think about it:  ACC football may not be as attractive as Big 10 or SEC, but it will still hold its own on the East Coast.  But what happens when football season is over?  Is a cable company going to pay top dollar to carry an SEC network where they need to sell advertising for Auburn vs. South Carolina basketball?  What happens to the Big 10 network in the spring when it needs to sell advertising for niche sports to its subscribers?  The ACC has positioned its network to produce high quality product to the largest audience in the country with the teams they have incorporated into their conference.  With a high revenue for sports outside of football, the ACC may produce a network more attractive to cable companies and advertisers by having must watch live games throughout the year.  Think of the advertising they can get with the basketball teams they have.  Lacrosse may not be the biggest sport, but in the northeast it is huge and it is not far fetched to think that they get subscribers who want it solely to watch some of the best lacrosse in the country throughout the spring.  Think of that branding tactic.  “The ACC Network: No Offseason”.  Genius right, and it would be true to form.  Maryland may get more money from this divorce in the short term.  The Big 10 stands to gain a windfall in their renegotiations.  But will Maryland find that their new partner does not draw the same fervor from their fan base, and become jealous when their ex husband gets his crap together and starts making the money they thought they would have when they were together.  Only time will tell.

The Turgeon Compromise

Sunday night’s loss to Florida State has officially put Mark Turgeon’s head coaching tenure in question.  The loss to the Seminoles marked the second straight game in which the Terps lost by 20 or more points and allowed the opposing team to shoot over 60% from three, over 50% from the field, and hold the Terps to under 35% shooting from the field.  Not a good sign for a third year coach looking to make his first NCAA appearance.  If these games are a harbinger of what this ACC season is to be for the Terps, Turgeon may not have too many friends in College Park come March.  But friends are a fickle bunch in college basketball, and there are coaching triumphs outside of winning that can keep the natives from getting restless for a while.  Two of the most important of these triumphs are recruiting and building team chemistry. 

Think about it.  If you are landing big time recruits there is always hope that the next season will be better regardless of where you stand this season.  Recruiting may not always work, however, which is where building chemistry comes in.  If the fans can see that you have built teams in the past that could overachieve or compete in the face of adversity to reach post season play or win a championship, there is always hope that you can create the same magic with a different group of players in the future.  Turgeon has opted for the recruiting route to buttress the burgeoning fissures that have been forming throughout his tenure that question his ability to create team chemistry within his talented group of recruits.  I can sympathize with their sentiments, but a look at the lack of intangibles Turgeon has on his team may keep the Terps fans’s discontent in perspective long enough to grant Mark Turgeon some leeway, regardless of how this year plays out.

Jay Williams decided to place the blame for the baby seal clubbing he was witnessing on Sunday night on the intangible aspect of “leadership”.  Williams stated that Maryland does not have a bona fide leader, or go to guy, that can carry them through tough stretches in games.  While I agree with him, as I hold back my vomit with every fiber of my being for saying that, there are underlying deficiencies in the composition of this roster that have hindered Turgeon’s ability to develop any form of chemistry or leadership. 

Deficiency #1:  Lack of Seniors.  Here are the list of seniors Mark Turgeon has had the pleasure of coaching over the past 3 years: Sean Moseley, Berend Weijs, John Dillard, James Padgett, Logan Aronhalt, John Auslander.  Yikes.  Deficiency #2:  On the current roster, only Nick Faust and John Auslander have played more than one full season together under Turgeon, and Auslander is averaging a whopping 2.8 minutes per game.  Deficiency #3:  Turgeon has three first year players in regular rotation in Roddy Peters, Jonathan Graham, and Evan Smotrycz.  So out of the nine players in Turgeon’s rotation there are no seniors, five players with one year playing together, three new players, a three year Junior starter, and all of whom (except for Faust) have played with a grand total of one four year senior starter in their career (Faust has played with 2).  This shows that this team has not previously had the strong senior leadership or the proper amount of time necessary to coalesce as a group and learn how to play with one another effectively.  This may be the cause of some of the horrendous plays we have seen in the more team based areas of the past two games, i.e. transition defense, defensive switches, moving without the ball, setting up plays on offense, and overall mental fortitude.  Some point to the idea that Turgeon may not be a good enough coach to maximize the talent that he recruits, but that is the compromise we may have to accept in order to land these recruits.  

I do not believe Turgeon is a bad coach.  I do think that he may be a better recruiter than he is an “in-game” coach, and that is something that Terps fans may have to come to terms with.  We killed Gary for not being able to land the big recruits, especially the ones that came out of Maryland.  We finally get a guy who has been able to recruit beyond our wildest dreams.  Now we are beginning to get restless because he is not able to win in the short term with a young team with limited experience, but that is the compromise we must accept.  Turgeon has worked the recruiting angle well enough to get at least one more year, especially with a top 10 recruiting class coming in.  Terps fans must see this team for what it is: Highly talented, but under experienced, and realize that Mark Turgeon has us pointed in the right direction with recruiting.  Now, can he get us going in the right direction with coaching?

Can Gruden resurrect Griffin?

The hiring of Jay Gruden has created a whirlwind of speculation as to what his offense will look like here in Washington and, more importantly, how Robert Griffin will fit into this system and develop as a quarterback.  Gruden’s naming of Griffin as the starter in his inaugural press conference poured more gasoline onto this speculation inferno because now Gruden is pot committed.  Barring injury, Robert Griffin III will be the vehicle for the Jay Gruden offense here in DC.  We can speculate about the details of this offense, but we may be able to get an idea of production output for Griffin by looking at the quarterback who last helmed Jay Gruden’s offensive vision.  Andy Dalton.  Before we analyze stats, lets look at what Gruden was dealing with when he drafted Dalton and what he can expect in Griffin by analyzing their draft profiles as provided by ESPN Insider.  Guess which one is which.

a)  College offense does not translate to the NFL game.  Has a lot to learn about identifying coverage and hot reads.  Has very simple reads. There's not much tape of him checking from one side of the field to the other.  Lack of ideal height leads to some problems seeing entire field at times.  However, is an intelligent and disciplined individual.  Has a great work ethic and is capable of digesting a new system quickly.  

b)  Will have a learning curve coming from shotgun heavy spread-formation offense that feeds him a lot of pre-snap reads from the sideline. But he is a gym rat with very good natural football intelligence. Does a great job of keeping his head down the field when scrambling. Has improved as a decision maker but still makes some questionable decisions throwing into traffic.

Have you guessed? That’s right.  Griffin is A and Dalton is B.  It is interesting that they said Dalton would have a “learning curve” coming from a spread formation.   It was Gruden’s job to make that curve less treacherous, and he turned Dalton’s “learning curve” into 3,398 yards, 20 TD/13 Int, and a 58.1% completion rate on 516 attempts plus a payoff berth.  Not a bad showing, and he has continued to improve in yards, completions, and touchdowns every year under Gruden culminating this past season by throwing for 4,296 yrds, 33 TD/20 Int, and a 61.9% completion rate on 586 attempts and another playoff berth.  So Gruden knows how to work with quarterbacks who come from spread looks, and he is essentially getting one in Griffin.  You don’t believe me?  Reread his draft profile.

            Has Griffin progressed since his days at Baylor?  Needs to learn to identify coverage, only runs simple reads, not good at going through progressions; this looks like it could have been written anytime over the past two years, and it is essentially what Gruden will be inheriting in his future quarterback.  What offset these deficiencies in Griffin’s first year was the information I left out of his profile to not make his identity obvious.  Here is what was left out of Griffin’s profile:

His mobility also gives him more room for error than many other quarterback prospects

Griffin’s athleticism was the sole reason the read option worked so well, and it is also the reason why Griffin has not improved on any of the weaknesses outlined in his draft profile.  It is also something that Gruden did not have at his disposal with Dalton in Cincinnati.  There is a trade off, however, and it is the task that Gruden must complete in the development of Robert Griffin.

Knows how to make progression reads and effectively checks down to second and third targets. Consistently looks off the safeties and does not telegraph many of his throws

This was the omission I had in Dalton’s profile.  It is almost a direct contradiction to Griffin’s current skill set, and the task set before Gruden will be to teach Griffin these skills.  Gruden has given up a quarterback with superior passing awareness for one who has superior athletic ability.  Gruden alluded to Griffin’s athletic prowess as being a major factor in his excitement to work with Griffin, but it is Griffin’s development as a passer that will define Gruden’s tenure here in Washington.  Gruden has proven with Dalton that he can make an honest passer out of a spread style quarterback.  He now must prove that he can do the same with a quarterback whose passing skills have been hindered by the over reliance on his physical ability by both himself and his prior professional coaching staff.  Dalton’s progression under Gruden gives some shape to the hazy picture that is this arranged marriage between Gruden and Griffin.  I think everyone would be elated if Gruden could get Griffin to turn in a season like Dalton had in 2013, and Gruden’s track record in Cincinnati gives us more than blind hope that this could happen.  The speculation will continue to burn out of control until we get to see the actual product in September, but Andy Dalton may give us a glimmer of hope that Gruden can return Robert Griffin to elite status.