Happy Monday, everyone.
The NFL season ended last night, making this a solemn day for most fans. Most of us have been living Sunday-to-Sunday since September, now finding ourselves with a football-sized hole in our calendars. Come April, I will be longing for seven hours of commercial-free football.
That’s a perfect segue into the point of today’s newsletter: the Champions League knockouts begin tomorrow! If you loosely followed soccer in the past (outside of the World Cup), the Champions League is the best annual competition.
Need a team to support? Want to learn about a few players? Some bets? The Lukas Review Champions League Primer has it all and more.
Champions League Primer
I designed this primer to appeal to both hardcore and novice fans. If you want to read more, I would suggest two Athletic articles:
Champions League Tactics Breakdown by American Manager Jesse Marsch
A Deeper, Statistical Dive into a Few of My Highlighted Players
What I Watched Last Week
The Los Angeles Rams rallied back, in the end, to beat the Bengals in a tightly-contested 23-20 victory. First, I wanted to address coaching. Both Zac Taylor and Sean McVay made some puzzling playcalls.
Ted Nguyen of The Athletic wrote a fantastic piece leading up to the Super Bowl on how both coaches shifted away from an outside-zone rushing offense. It seems that McVay forced their inside-zone rushing attack despite limited success. On first down, the Rams’ halfbacks rushed 19 times for 30 yards, leading to more difficult conversions on later downs.
To be fair, the injury to Odell Beckham Jr. and the absence of Tyler Higbee coupled with the consistent doubles on Cooper Kupp made a compelling case to establish the run. Still, we all witnessed far too many Cam Akers halfback dives for a one-yard gain.
McVay pivoted away from the rushing attack as the game progressed. The game-winning touchdown drive saw the coach put the ball in the hands of Matthew Stafford, who, in turn, fed Cooper Kupp. Kupp amassed four catches and 39-yards on that drive alone to secure his Super Bowl MVP honors. This throw to Kupp may go down as one of the best in Super Bowl history.
On the other side, the Bengals’ Zac Taylor called a poor series of plays in the game’s biggest moment. In particular, the third-and-one halfback dive made little sense. At the Rams’ 49 with 48 seconds left, Taylor rushed Samaje Perine directly into Aaron Donald. According to The Athletic, “Perine had 56 carries on the season (playoffs included). And he had four short-yardage (defined as third or fourth down with 2 yards or fewer to go) rushing attempts all season. Those resulted in 2 yards and two first downs. Mixon had nine first downs on 18 short-yardage rushing attempts on the season. He also had 15 carries for 72 yards (4.8 YPC) in the game. But he wasn’t on the field.”1 On the next play, Perine stayed in the game.
How does Perine not dive for that pass? Inexcusable coaching and execution.
I was impressed with the Bengals’ protection in the first half, but they regressed after the intermission. Protection issues have been omnipresent for the Bengals, forcing Burrow to overcome 51 sacks in the regular season. In the Divisional Round, Burrow withstood an onslaught of nine sacks versus the Titans.
According to Next Gen Stats:
Aaron Donald generated a team-high 7 pressures and 2 sacks on 40 pass rushes (17.5% pressure rate).
Rams Defense (Super Bowl LVI)
🔹 41.5% pressure rate (season-high)
🔹 17.1% sack rate (season-high)
Often, I write that football is a game of inches. Well, the pressure Donald forced on Burrow during the final play prevented a Bengals touchdown; the dots:
And a still frame:
Ramsey is beyond beat on this play (bottom of the image). If Burrow has an extra second, the Bengals win the Super Bowl. A game of inches… and milliseconds.
Donald could retire tomorrow and be mentioned in the same breath as LT and Reggie White. And, yes, I would have given him Super Bowl MVP.
I wanted to finish this section off with some praise for Eric Weddle. He went from enjoying retirement to relaying the defensive calls (green dot) in the Super Bowl over the course of a few weeks (this profile from The Athletic is 100% worth reading). Further, Weddle played every snap — even after sustaining a torn pectoralis (pec). A true warrior. Congrats to the Rams.
Thanks for reading!
What I’m Reading
*** Must Read
** Very Good
* Recommended
Sports
Meant to be? How Eric Weddle interrupted his retirement to help lead the Rams to the Super Bowl ***
Where this season’s Champions League last-16 ties will be won and lost, according to Jesse Marsch ***
How the NFL’s tiniest scouting staff built the Bengals into the next big thing **
Eight Champions League players to watch, including Diaz, Vinicius and Locatelli **
A Gambling Sharp Breaks Into the N.F.L. **
Manchester United are asking Harry Maguire to be something he’s not *
Don’t look down: the battle to avoid the drop *
The cautionary tale of James Harden getting what ‘The Beard’ wants, nicks and all *
Why more MLS players were sold abroad this winter than ever before *
My game in my words. By Tyler Adams *
Business
In Siberia, a crypto boom made of ingenuity, defiance and DIY **
A $140bn asset sale: the investors cashing in on Big Oil’s push to net zero **
Business Rapper Was Bad at Bitcoin Laundering **
This Is the Only Goldman Banker Standing Trial for 1MDB *
Sri Lanka on brink of sovereign bond default, warn investors *
Sequoia’s invisible hand: How Roelof Botha became one of the most powerful people in venture capital *