Triumph of the Vick

In the neverending war between jocks and nerds, football remains the stronghold. In baseball, Bill James and his army of sabermetricians have made immense gains in using statistics to understand the game. He has gone from writing obscure journals to a key position in the front office of the World Champion Boston Red Sox. It's over: the Nerds own baseball.

But not football. Statistical understanding of football is, like, 17th-century medicine. We think we have a clue, but the possibility we'll be proven wrong is significant. If you look at Football Outsiders' 2004 Efficiency Ratings, it all makes sense: #1 New England, #2 Steelers, #3 Indianapolis, #4 Philadelphia...check, check, check, and check... Now let's see, where's Atlanta? Ah. #19 - see? Right there next to Seattle.

No one can figure out how to analyze Michael Vick. In November they mocked him. On their proprietary system, he ranks as marginally less effective than Eli Manning. On Dr. X's usually infallible Interception-Adjusted Yards-per-Attempt metric, he sucks. And yet there he is, the sprinting, juking, scoring Goedel's Theorem to our Principia Mathematica, one game away from the Super Bowl. The scientists at the Einstein Insitute for Applied Football Analysis can't make sense of it. It defies reason.

Well, not entirely. He's not playing the modern quarterback position. He's running the old single wing. His running opens up running opportunities for his backs, and the next thing the Rams know, they've given up 327 yards rushing (8.2 yards per attempt). And he does complete some passes - 56% in 2004.

I hope he wins next week. He is the ultimate throwback, the Avatar of Jock-dom, the elemental athletic force. I can't wait to see how Belichick - that grim little rationalist lich of negation - defenses him. And if comes to that, I'll forget my Nerd loyalties for a week and root for Vick.