Judging the Impact of Newcomers in Football

With the 2001 football season about to begin, handicappers all over the nation are pouring through magazines, newspapers, and Internet sites of all types in an effort to learn more about each team. One of their main points of emphasis is the potential impact of newcomers.

The first thing to remember is that there are more changes than ever these days in football. Each team becomes a virtual new entity each year, taking on its own positive or negative chemistry. Indeed, many teams even go through several "incarnations" in a season. If football handicappers are going to have success, they have to be ready to adjust quickly. How many so-called "experts" last year predicted that Oklahoma would win the national championship, or that Baltimore and the New York Giants would meet in the Super Bowl?

Sometimes, the worst thing you can do is become "locked in" to a preconceived notion of a team's potential and then fail to adjust when that potential is not realized. Injuries, graduation in college, free agency in the NFL, and "sated" players at either level can make it difficult for a team to return to the previous season's level of success. Just take a look at St. Louis in the pros and Alabama in the colleges, for example.

In the NFL, it's usually the case that a free-agent signing hurts the team more that loses the player than it helps the team that gains that player. There always are exceptions, such as tackle Lomas Brown (from Cleveland), guard Glenn Parker (via Kansas City), and center Dusty Ziegler (via Buffalo), who helped the Giants win the NFC championship last year. But there are far too many Dana Stubblefields (a major disappointment since leaving San Francisco to join Washington) at the other end of the stick, who have a hard time playing up to their elite level after signing a huge-bucks contract. One of the worst things a pro franchise can do is overpay for a player who is on the downside of his career. Ask Jerry Jones or Daniel Snyder.

Another thing to watch out for are major changes in coaching staffs. Most head coaches these days are organizers, administrators, motivators, and PR men. Those who are honest will admit that it takes time and effort to "coach the coaches" if their assistants aren't doing the job. That's why teams that have excellent offensive and defensive coordinators have a much better chance for consistency from game to game and year to year. Good coordinators can make a head coach's life much easier; struggling coordinators often put a head coach's butt on the "hot seat."

NFL teams that must force-feed their high draft choices into action are usually at a disadvantage. In years past, the wise NFL teams used to take a year or two to groom their young players. Now, with the bonuses for the top draft choices so high, the grooming stage has been accelerated to a matter of games, not years. Talented young players are forced to learn on the fly, often without much support from their teammates. It's rarely the best way to go. Look how much easier it was for Daunte Culpepper of the Vikings to step in after a year on the bench than it was for QBs who were force-fed into action as rookies, such as Tim Couch of Cleveland and Akili Smith of Cincinnati. Rookie QBs, offensive tackles, and cornerbacks should equate to red flags raised for handicappers.

The 85-player scholarship limit has greatly impacted the game in college. Even in some of the best programs, just one injury can mean that a redshirt freshman or true freshman will be in the starting lineup the next game, or that one or two players will have to shuffle to another position. In fact, it's frequently the case for some teams in spring football that scrimmages are limited, because a team doesn't have a full second-string offensive line and defensive line to go against its starting units.

Incoming recruits often get a chance to play earlier than ever. More than ever before, blue-chip high school recruits are graduating early from high school, enrolling early in college, and participating in spring practice before having ever played a game for their new schools. The same applies to blue-chip junior college players. Sometimes a new player can be ready to go from the first day of the season, such as juco running back Rudi Johnson of Auburn or true frosh QB Philip Rivers of North Carolina State in 2000. These guys are the exceptions, even though there are more like them every year. Usually, it's the case that a player goes from raw talent, to promising backup, to developing starter, to team leader, as QB Marques Tuiasosopo did with Washington in leading his team to a Rose Bowl victory as a senior.

Don't overestimate recruiting. Even though recruiting is the lifeblood of a successful college program, and even though the number of recruiting services has proliferated in the past decade, handicappers who follow recruiting will tell you that it's not necessarily the answer to success – pointspread or otherwise. In my opinion, that's because many of the top recruits became top recruits because they peaked during their high school years. And (ssshhh, don't tell the recruiting services!) the key to good recruiting is to land players who project into good players in two or three years, not necessarily in landing the most high-school all-Americans. That's one of the reasons why Notre Dame, perennially in the top five in recruiting, has been so disappointing on the field in recent years. Meanwhile, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Washington, Colorado, and even Georgia Tech have all won or shared national championships since Notre Dame's last one, despite ranking down the list in cumulative consensus recruiting (Nebraska, in fact, rarely ranks in the top 10 in recruiting).

The bottom line? Always judge a team by its performance on the field, not by its draft choices, recruits, potential, or past success. If it's winning (and covering), find out why. If it's underachieving, be cautious. And, if newcomers are making an immediate impact, use a little "Kentucky windage" in adjusting their anticipated performance level as the class of competition increases.

Chuck Sippl is the senior editor of the handicapping newsletter The Gold Sheet. For more insights and advice on sports betting, you can subscribe or pick one up at your local newsstand. The Gold Sheet focuses on team chemistry, insider reports, key statistics, pointspread trends, and its widely followed power ratings. If you haven't seen The Gold Sheet and would like to examine a complimentary sample copy with no obligation, call (800) 798-GOLD (4653). You can look up The Gold Sheet on the web at www.goldsheet.com.