What Does it Mean to be a Fan - and Other Meanderings on a Saturday Morning

 

I am learning that if I want to be a sports fan, I'm doing it wrong.

Which, as it turns out, is liberating. It frees me up to consider myself an analyst – if not among that particular club of Analysts. An analyst by definition only, then – because what I really want to do is watch and observe the game, the League, and (now that I have inserted myself among them and come to the conclusion that I am not one of their number) the fans.

It's weird that I have to give myself permission to do this in these pages. How many writers do that? I imagine the number is asymptotic. Though, thinking of it, I'm sure most authors don't need to give themselves authority their publishers do that for them. Paychecks go a long way to making us think we're doing something right with our time, don't they?

I'm hearing the Robot Devil in my head right now. “Your lyrics lack subtlety! You can't have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!”

I imagine that's what the vastest majority of people who visit these pages go through. Or something like it.

What does it mean to be a fan?

As far as I can tell, fandom is a lot like Brand Loyalty.

We have a frankly maddening amount of choices that we have to make among different “brands” of product every day. Everything we use, everything we see and touch and taste and – you get the idea. Everything is branded. Everything – our music, our television shows, our sports teams.

Fandom, in that way, seems to be a higher degree of Brand Loyalty.

I've never heard of people getting into heated Twitter arguments about which toilet paper brand is better. There doesn't seem to be an entire entertainment-media industry around Instant Rice. I have to admit that I haven't looked or found myself in those circles, though. I didn't know there was enough interest for a reality show about people who obsess over coupons, either - until I did. But sports, music, moving pictures... these seem to be things that people Identify through.

What that means is for my philosophy blog.

The only “brand” as such that we were loyal to in my household growing up was the Miami Dolphins. So, as I made my journey to and as I am making my way through adulthood, I have learned to view brands objectively: as the sum of their products and the corporate dickheads who finance them. ...Except for the Dolphins.

I fell in love with the NFL through that doorway: the magickal 2008 Wildcat Season – listening to the Dolphins radio station daily – before it was the podcast it is today – and obsessing over every single piece of information I could find about the roster, the coaches, the front office, the owner. But when I tried to engage with Dolphins years later, I found that most of them were perpetually pissed off about everything – where I was usually optimistic.

Listening to the coaches and players (from within and without Miami) about the game and the flow of a season – and really just trying to understand the game so I could talk about it with other fans, I'd been satisfied if disappointed with everything Miami had done between 2007 and 2019. But no other Dolphins fans I met or talked to were ever satisfied, and literally every sports fan who found out I was a 'Phins fan, the first thing they would say to me was, “They suck, don't they?”

That used to perplex me. I mean, it perplexed me for six years right up until last night.

I follow a bunch of Dolphins fan clubs on Twitter now – entirely by accident. And I've learned my mistake.

My mistake is assuming that everyone views the game the way I do – the way I was conditioned by my father to view it to a certain extent, but predominantly that skepticism which has guided my other brand preferences.

There seem to be three sorts of sports fans: the fans who love every decision their team makes and end every season heartbroken but happy to return for more; fans who hate every decision their team makes but identify through their fandom so can't divorce themselves from it; and the fan trapped in the middle who genuinely wants to know why their team is either good, not great, or winning Super Bowls, but who also doesn't have the time or energy or drive to devote to answering the question. There also appears to be the semi-casual fan. I'm thinking specifically of Rachel Bonnetta and how she attached herself to the NFL for employment and became a fan of the game and the Browns as a result.

I'm writing to understand, and I just need to accept that I don't need either to understand or to try reaching for everyone. Not everyone wants to be reached. So I just need to keep my head down and say something people want to hear. And I need to figure out a format they want to read. Or I need to get enough of my personality through these pages that my lack of polish doesn't matter so much. Visualize the day people are hipsters for my early work, before the numbered lists – He's a sellout; he gets paid, now.

Don't tell them how you feel, Vincent. They don't like that.

Yeah, yeah.

So what have I “analyzed” that brings me here today?

The revelation I've already captured. But I figure that what I've already got can't count as a post. Who wants to read my journal? I mean, people I didn't know used to read my LiveJournal when I was in high school. I can't understand everyone's motives.

I think television writers and sports teams have a lot in common. I understand a little bit about what it is to be a television writer – I've listened to a lot of them talk about their professions over the years. It's something I've dreamed about but know I don't have the skill for. I'd need a team to people of extract and express the ideas I have, which is only how art works when you're one of the greats, not when you're just some asshole from rural Ohio.

Kind of like how I need your patience as I extract this idea.

Television and sports are a week to week or performance to performance entertainment medium. Show writers and football coaches are perhaps uniquely afforded the benefice of feedback from their audiences throughout their seasons. It's an interesting interplay, that between audience and performer. A TV show will announce itself, offer trailers, performer and director interviews – and sports teams follow this model through the offseason, right?

Then the coaches and the writers sequester themselves in their offices until the season is over. Rather, they have that opportunity. Coaches have media availability responsibilities which TV writers often don't, but particularly well-known show runners can spend their time as much talking about their shows as actually running them. Sports analysts are very well familiar with coaches' tendency to say nothing in their pressers, though. It has a name: Coach Speak.

Not only do these professions have the opportunity of saying or showing nothing more of their product than they want to, they don't have to listen to the negative feedback. By the time you're an NFL head coach, I imagine it's pretty easy to habitually consider yourself the smartest, most football-knowledgeable person in any room. It ended Joe Philbin as HC. I'm thinking of how Bill Belichick can sneer at and condescend to those beat writers who ask him such stupid questions – because no matter how bad his team is, he has to know that he has all the answers and they have none of them. Because precedent says he has.

It gets lesser coaches in trouble, though. But that's not really what I'm talking about.

I don't know that I can make a judgment as to how many coaches change their approach to a season based on feedback from the fans and the media. I can say that I've seen several coaches get themselves fired and make themselves look like fools for refusing to see what the fans and media saw in certain players, packages, schemes, and gameplans. But to that same point, I can absolutely understand refusing to look outside your building and yourself for answers.

Justin Fields and the limited sample size of Trey Lance seem to be the direct result of pressure on the HC's of those franchises - but from the fans, or from the owner - and was the owner pressured by the fans or by his shareholders?

It does appear weak. And machismo is important in the NFL.

There is an adage in the writing community that your readers are always right about what's wrong with your writing but always wrong about how to fix it.

I can imagine being Brian Flores and hearing the inane things he hears from the Miami media and thinking those very words in my head. “You idiots are identifying the problem, but your reasoning is too motivated to comprehend the solutions. Damned fools.”

And see, that's why Jesus said only a fool calls another man a fool – because those motivated to disagree with you, once you've identified their foolishness, will be motivated to destroy you.

Don't try to tell me that Omar Kelly and Armando Salguero and the rest of the idiot Miami media don't have axes to grind within that organization. They have axes to grind within their own industries. How many media markets have four or five newspapers still competing for market share? New York? …?

These papers and these writers are desperate to sell ad space. So, like the brands of Fox News and CNN, they pick a position and market it.

You can find truth this way as an independent thinker, a Seeker After Truth or philalitheia (lover of truth) as my friend Robert Longshore would say. But it is difficult. It is, in the words of everyone's favorite Billie Joe, Billie Joe Armstrong: a lonely road, the only one that I have known; don't know where it goes, but it's home to me – and I walk alone.

I don't actually walk alone. That was needlessly melodramatic.

Hope it got a laugh, though.

If you're going to find truth by reading what these people have to say or watching what particular networks have to say, you have to spend your time reading between the lines. You have to identify what is objective and what is subjective, and you have to learn to identify the author's voice. You need a critical thinking system as intense as making wise decisions in any aspect of adult life, then. And you have to be paying attention. If you're paying attention, you'll notice that these people will say whatever they have to say to continue being employed. Like Cynthia Frelund.

But somewhere in the middle of all the polarization and entertainment, there is Truth. This isn't to say that I've found Her, exactly, but I do think I've snagged a few threads of the hem of Her skirt. Here's hoping She's not naked when I catch up to Her.

What the Hell am I talking about, now?

I'm talking in an extremely roundabout way about Brian Flores and how he insists on saying “Tua's our quarterback. I don't get into rumors and speculation. Tua's our quarterback.”

Omar Kelly is beside himself that he can't get Flores to bro up with him and be more explicit. You can see how butthurt he gets about this topic on his Twitter. Frankly I think it's gross and unprofessional – but I've never thought Kelly was especially professional. He has a particular voice (a voice I'm not going to say he isn't borrowing heavily from Steven A Smith) and a particular audience and a particular identity that I find both false and distasteful; but I've never been into selling a product that doesn't exist. So whatever. This is approaching libel – something he'd know very well about in his own pieces.

Brian Flores is condescending to you, Omar.

I recognize it because it's the fighter's first move in a fight when he knows his opponent is no threat.

Tua is the starter until he's not the starter anymore. We know this about Brian Flores, by now.

I have a saying that I've developed and which has served me well over the years: One time is an incident, two times is a coincidence, three times is a sequence – and sequences suggest patterns. Brian Flores has changed his mind mid-season about his quarterback enough times for us to say there has been a sequence of quarterback changes during his tenure. We went into this 2021 season with Deshaun Watson penciled-in behind Tua Tagavailoa on the Dolphins depth chart, with Nov 2 the date we either use our eraser or go looking for a pen.

None of this should be a surprise to us. And at this point we should be as desensitized to it as we became of the Aaron Rodgers situation. Even fans of their favorite content creators were tired of them talking Aaron Rodgers.

How have we not come to the conclusion this is fake news?

It kills me when Dolphins fans are confronted with the fact that all of the rumors about Deshaun Watson being attached either to Miami or Carolina are coming from Houston. No Miami reporters are suggesting a credible trade. All of them are scratching their heads and saying that their Miami connections are saying a definite no.

Which, as I've already written and am starting to feel like an asshole for promoting, they should be doing. The coaching staff should be saying Tua is the dude to the team and to the media, and to the personnel department saying he's not.

Because he's simply not.

After three games of the 2021 season, we have a sequence to evaluate – no matter how loudly fans will argue that the sample size isn't large enough. It's not large enough. It's never large enough. We're still gathering data about Aaron Rodgers, with the reaction to Thursday as an indicator – and the obsession over Tom Brady continuing to play at all as another example.

I notice a pattern in that sequence of games. High completion percentage, next to no YAC.

Miami's receivers have some of the ugliest numbers I've ever seen. Waddle hasn't gone over 100 yards, yet. Gesicki is the leading receiver by a lot in yardage. Gaskin is number three. That's problematic for a lot of reasons.

Those stats are reflective of Miami's horizontal offense, but they spell out the story I've been telling all season: Miami cannot sustain drives. They're higher than I expected - 14^th place at 41.94% - but a corroborating stat (because that's all this is, right? Confirming my bias that the offense is bad because Tua makes bad decisions?) has Miami in the 28^th position with 27:55 time average time of possession (excluding OT). CLE, TEN, BUF, BAL, CAR, AND DAL make up the top-5 positions. Baltimore and Carolina are tied here. That surprises me almost as much as how high Miami's 3^rd down conversions are. You can readily guess who the four teams behind Miami are.

(For what it's worth, the leaders in third down are whom you'd expect: KC, BUF, LAR, TB, DAL.)

Let's talk about coaching

I have come to the conclusion that my initial thoughts about the dual-offensive coordinator system were the ones I should have stuck with.

Dual coordinators mean that defenses have twice as many tendencies to prepare for. The addition of the quarterbacks coach as playcaller means a third person to prepare for. As far as complexity goes, as far as the mental game of football goes, I like it. Make the opponent think.

This is also the same situation as Mike McCarthy retaining Kellen Moore. Who knows the quarterback and what he's most most comfortable with and what he's most skilled at than his position coach? Miami's run and pass game coordinators from last season were promoted and Charlie Frye were all retained and promoted from last year specifically to make Tua's transition into Year 2 easier. The same people around him, and a scheme tailored specifically to his talents.

No more saying that Chan Gailey's offense never worked for Tua - no matter if he looked better then than now.

This question (who knows Tua better?), and it's presumptive answer – nobody – are why people are looking at Tagovailoa's development and asking whether the coaches aren't the problem. I've written about how it's problematic that the offense falls into tendency breakers without establishing tendencies. And how they call plays like they're up ten when they're down three. But these things are fixed by having a quarterback with a feel for the game and receivers who can get open. And explained by having an elite defense. (I'm bullish. Push me off this hill.)

It's bothersome to me that Gesicki is the only Dolphin with over 100 yards receiving in a game this season (by my research. If I missed someone, be not surprised). Because there's not a team they've played that specializes in stopping the pass.

Fans will then ask why the offense isn't more vertical than it is.

The lazy answer is that the offensive line isn't any good. But the offensive line has been borderline great in pass pro sense Tua came back. Dudes are in positions where they're comfortable, and they're had time to work with one another. Offensive lines take this long to gel, sometimes. That's just football. I remember the Saints were playing competitive football last year well into the middle part of the season and didn't have a consecutive starting lineup. Here's an article that briefly touches on what I'm talking about. I seem to remember during a television broadcast the sideline reporter saying that the 2020 Saints had the record for most-shuffled line ever.

Miami can't move dudes in the running game – but none of the guys they drafted are earthmovers like Penei Sewell or Quinton Nelson; they're all zone-blockers with plus athleticism in the screen game. And that isn't how the scheme works. Myles Gaskin right now is Miami's most dangerous weapon in the passing game. That's attributable to his personal skill and effort, but it's also a reflection of Miami's ability to get blockers in front of him down field.

That's a well-schemed offense.

What Miami doesn't have is half a million YAC yards for Jaylen Waddle – which, if you're not sending him on Gos and Posts every play, you need to be getting him the ball in space with room to run. He is legitimately great with the ball in his hands. A true Number One. And Tua should already be feasting on that connection the way Joe Burrow does with Ja'Marr Chase.

I wonder if there's a reason Waddle said he'd rather have Mac.

Going back and fixing that hyperlink, I am reminded of a throwaway line in that article: he said that over the last four years of Brees's career the Saints went the way of their offensive line. That's an interesting statement, because it's obvious when you think about it but subtle: of course Brees would fluctuate as the pass rush was able to affect him. He's too small.

Tua hasn't faced as much pressure as Jacoby Brissett did. But he hasn't moved the ball any better.

I'm running out of steam. I should come back to this and polish it, but I'll be happy if ten people read it. So I'll be saying these things until I'm so tired of saying them I have to find something else to look at.

Thanks for making it this far. I would not have blamed you if you checked out when I said I was going to keep talking because I wanted to keep talking. Props.

I'll talk at you soon. Tomorrow I get to learn whether anything I've said about these games is going to hold water now that half a week's worth of injuries, illnesses, and roster acquisitions have changed the landscape only marginally. Do I need to put the Game Rankings on Saturday and just ignore the Thursday game? We're all going to watch Monday and Thursday and Sunday Night – that's how football works.

We'll see.