Most fans long ago gave up trying to figure out why football coaches insist on losing football games with a "prevent defense" at the end of the game. Assume, for example that your team (in my case, it is the Dallas Cowboys) is ahed six points (it is even worse if lead is 2 points, where a field goal will beat you) with a minute and a half to go. The other team gets the ball on their own 25 year line with 3 timeouts left.
Too many coaches, in this situation, play a "soft" defense (dropping back defenders to prevent a long pass) to keep from getting beat with a single play. What happens? Often the team behind simply goes straight down the field, in about 10 or 15 yard increments, and wins the game by a number of passes in front of defensive backs protecting against the long pass (instead of winning the game with a single, long pass, which can happen, but rarely does). In the worst version of this "prevent defense", the team ahead stops trying to rush the passer, especially with any kind of blitz and sometimes reducing the rushers to only 3, so as to be sure and drop back the maximum number of players into the "prevent" coverage. That gives the quarterback, usually, massive amounts of time to pick out a receiver for those passes moving his team right down the field (almost like playing catch).
Why do coaches do this, when they have seen it fail so often. A team gets a lead playing a certain style (usually an aggressive defensive style), and then changes that style with a lead (even if it is a precarious lead). I can tell you why. It is fear.
Coaches would rather try to explain why they lost the gave with a prevent defense than try to explain why they took a risk with a blitz, or pressure coverage, and lost the game on a long pass. After all, a majority of the time the team ahead will win Even if it is obvious to almost everyone that the prevent defense loses more games than a more rational strategy (everyone would use a prevent with only time for a single play or two left), it is just psychologically difficult for coaches (and players, who may play "softer" themselves, than even the coach wants) to face losing the game on a single play As I said, it is fear--fear of something dramatic happening that not onlymakes you look stupid, but makes you feel absolutely sick. If the other team drives right down the field, you can always rationalize that it was just good play on their part. If they score with a single long pass, that is hard to swallow as anything but a preventable event, even if it happens less often than a loss because of the dreaded "prevent defense".
This Wall Street bailout, and the attempt to sell fear (counterproductively--see first entry today), is the result of fear. Paulson, Bernanke, President Bush, and politicians in Congress (ultimately) just could not face the risk, even if it was a small risk, that our whole financial system would collapse. Socialism, and government panic action, is their way of at least preventing the "long pass" (collapse of the system).
Many of them may realize that this bailout is likely to be very bad. They may even realize that it is likely to be worse than less government invtervention. This is the equivalent of trying to "insure" against immediate disaster, even if it means a longer term collapse is more likely (as the stock market tanked over the entire week, despite the bailout--see first entry today).
This may be psychologically explainable (even I admit to some temptation to avoid a risk of the entire financial system going down), but it is still a failure of leadership (as it is with coaches who use the "prevent defense").
If politicians prefer the illusion of doing something to prevent disaster, to the reality of making ultimate disaster (losing the game or ultimate severe economic distress) more likely, then we are doomed. Even if we luck out this time, our politicians (and Wall Street, and everyone else) will do the same things next time (that is, the same panic to government action, even though the details of the crisis may be different).
The "prevent defense" based on fear will fail more than actions based on confidence. It is worse in the political arena. The "prevent defense" may work in individual games in the NFL True, that will make it more likely that the coach will use it next time, but failure is not inevitable. With government and our economy, failure is inevitable once we go down the roadof fear provoking an ever more assertive, and socialistic, government "solution". In football, the result of failure is just losing a single game, whichever approach you take. In government, the failure of the central planning, socialistic approach is catastrophic, beyond the failure that results from a more decentralized approach (represented by our free enterprise system).
Nope.. Politicians (and Wall Street, and regulators, and everyone) who act out of fear are more analogous to football coaches who react out of fear than you might think. Fear almost always makes you do the wrong thing, if you let it rule your actions, and this Wall Street bailout is based on fear.
P.S. I do want to announce the winners of the Flying, Fickle Finger of Fate this week, although the full entry, and award ceremony (in the imagination) will not take place until tomorrow. The winners of "the Finger" this week are: Fox News, Fred Barnes, Nancy "Total Failure" Pelosi, and Harry "Dirty Oil" Reid. If you read the above entries, and the entries over the entire week, you will certainly see why these are the winners this week. I will explicitly tell you in tomorrow's entry.
No comments:
Post a Comment