A novel notion of "balance"

[Victor Steinbok]

I thought about that possibility but

1) the usual use of "balanced attack" in the context of American
football is the relatively similar distribution between pass and run
2) the Patriots have used three or four running backs regularly for the
past decade--the names have changed, but not the scheme
3) if they normally use four running backs (which I agree that they do),
it is unusual to have two featured to this extent (balanced would have
been 18, 10, 10, 4, or something like that)
4) 24 and 14 don't look particularly "balanced" even though both are
unusually high for 1st and 2nd most on the team, respectively (see (3)
and (2) above)

In any case, I did not want to make it about football so much as just
pointing to a grabbing headline that gave potentially questionable
information.

     VS-)


On 1/12/2014 1:51 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> On Jan 12, 2014, at 1:11 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>
>> At 1/12/2014 12:50 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>>> I thought the "balance" referred to the substitution of runners: Ridley had
>>> 14 carries, nearly as many as the leading Colts rusher, and Blount had 24.
>>>
>>> It is rare that the second most frequent rusher has as many as 14 carries.
>> Dan has information I didn't, and associates "balance" (correctly, I
>> take it) with the runners rather than the runs.
>>
> And going into the game (when I assume this was written), the reference would have been to the fact that the Patriots regularly use three running backs in significant ways--Ridley [their original started, who was benched for a while because of fumbling problems], Blount [who has emerged recently], Shane Vereen [who plays on third down and catches a lot of passes]--and a fourth running back, Brandon Bolden, has played a bunch too.  An unusually balanced running attack, in other words.
>
> --LH (in Pats' country)

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