I'll admit it. As the ball bounced off the forever-puffed out chest of Odell Beckham Jr. and rolled harmlessly to the turf, I - like a vast majority of the those watching confused from their couch - laughed at the idea of the New York Giants ignoring what's been common sense in football circles since the inflation of the first pigskin. When you take into account that they've spent the first seven weeks making an almost unimaginably bulletproof case that a buffoon like Ben McAdoo was totally blameless last season (relax, he obviously wasn't), I didn't think it was out of the realm of possibility that Pat Shurmur simply misread the scoreboard when he called for a two-point conversion while down 8. Given their inability to win any games as of late, I didn't for one second consider that they, of all teams, actively decided to play the numbers game in using an advancement in analytics to manage their decision-making. I suppose that's on me, although - as anyone who has watched the Giants play this year (which is everyone, since the NFL refuses to take years of hard evidence into account and admit they are unwatchable when scheduling primetime games) can attest - their offense only seems formulaic if the solution you're looking for is a nap. As it turns out, what they did wasn't as mathematically moronic as it seems. Unfortunately, refusing to factor in something else that has hopefully also been discussed internally, the players responsible for multiple seasons of catastrophic offensive ineptitude, into the equation absolutely was. You can talk percentages all you want, but if Eli Manning and Co. can manage to defy the presence of multiple transcendent talents then what makes anyone, most notably their head coach, believe that they aren't capable of defying a little arithmetic?
All men (and women) are created equally, but the Giants corpse of a quarterback and their offensively offensive line serve as proof that all athletes are most certainly not. So, while I'm not some analytics truther that is blind to the importance of probabilities in professional sports, I also didn't need to do much homework to learn a stat as simple as some teams suck more at scoring than others...
We are talking about a team that, while having zero timeouts remaining the last minute of a game in which they needed two scores, called for the QB sneak - which is probably the most high percentage play in the sport when run by someone who doesn't have the mobility of molasses - and failed...twice. So, I must ask of the analytics community, is this really your King?
The New York Giants' decision making is a lot of things right now, but defensible ain't one of them. I can promise you that the math dorks will eventually have their day, but trusting the New York Giants to keep safe your statistical evidence is like asking a homeless person to hold your beer. Simply put, it's not doing anything to hurt the stereotype that the smartest people lack a little in common sense.
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