Bounces can beat you in the playoffs

Sports journalism doesn't do a great job at covering the randomness of sports

Another lifetime ago, when I covered the Buffalo Sabres, Lindy Ruff said one of the smartest things I’ve ever heard a coach say.

Ruff, who was in his first run as Sabres’ coach, was talking at a press conference during the playoffs. I don’t remember the specific game, series, or context. But I remember the quote.

“Bounces can beat you in the playoffs.”¹

I love that quote so much. It’s so concise, and so smart. You can play a nearly perfect game, do everything right, but the puck could bounce weird off the board or glance off a rut in the ice and you end up losing.

Bounces can beat you in the playoffs.

It so perfectly captures the essential randomness at the heart of sports.

Which is something I don’t think sports journalism does a good job of reckoning with.

As an example, let’s take the Lions-Vikings game from Week 18. You remember - the Sunday night game that the Lions won, 31-9, to win division and the top seed in NFC.

Coverage of the game reflected the final score. It was a blowout. Headlines from The Athletic used words like “dominant” and “bulldoze” On PTI, Kornheiser and Wilbon referred to it as a dismantling and said that Detroit won easily.

Which they did.

But there’s one moment from that game I can’t shake.

Early in the fourth quarter, with Detroit up, 17-9, Minnesota’s Andrew Van Ginkel came thisclose to intercepting Jared Goff with a clear path to the end zone.

A fraction of an inch the other way, Van Ginkel holds onto the ball and the game is potentially tied. Momentum, if you believe in that sort of thing, swings to the Vikings. An inch the other way and the whole game, in fact the whole NFL playoffs, maybe go a different way.²

Instead, Detroit rolled in the fourth quarter and bulldozed its way to a dismantling. That play is a footnote. You probably forgot about it til just now.

Think about how much in sports is randomness, pure luck, or changed by a fraction of a fraction of an inch. If Ty Johnson’s toe drops just a bit, we’re looking at that Josh Allen throw very differently. A baseball player hits the ball an eighth of an inch too low, and a game-winning home run turns into a harmless game-ending pop out. A three-quarter court shot hits the backboard just high enough to bounce off the rim rather than in. You can think of a thousand examples.

But we rarely think about it like this, and in sports journalism we rarely write about it like this.

Why is that?

A few thoughts.

First off, it’s deeply unsatisfying. Let’s be real. It’s one step above “We scored more points than they did” in terms of analysis.

It takes away all the skill and agency from the players who make great plays. To insinuate that Ty Johnson was at all lucky making that catch detracts from his insane body control in doing so. To suggest the Lions got lucky that Van Ginkel dropped that ball takes away from all the great plays they did make to win the game.

Thinking too much about the margins and the randomness of sports takes away from the magic and the wonder of it.

It also takes away from the stories.

Stories are how we consume and follow sports, and have for a century. In his book, “Legendary Sports Writers of the Golden Age” Lee Congdon writes that Grantland Rice had “a conviction that great athletes were actors in a drama as heroic and meaningful as that of the ancient Greeks” Rice, Congdon wrote, “preferred to uphold their (and by extension our) nobler rather than baser selves.”

This is the root of athletes as heroes, of sports writing as myth making. And it’s the foundation of modern sports journalism.

Bounces can beat you in the playoffs. It’s true. But be honest — it’s not a satisfying story, is it?

1. Yes, bounces can indeed also beat you in the regular season.

2. Granted, this line of reasoning is hurt by the absolute egg Sam Darnold and the Vikings laid on Monday night against the Rams.