Bill Barnwell on career do-overs

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9842765/bill-barnwell-carson-palmer

I liked the piece, mostly because I'm a Bengals fan and agreed as it pertained to Carson Palmer. But I liked the part at the beginning where he cited the Bill James "Can I try this career over?" section of the baseball abstract. Any other football players this would apply to? Off the top of my head for guys who we didn't find out until late in the game what they could do (Priest Holmes, Rich Gannon) and guys whose bad luck led to underachieving (Carson Palmer, maybe Trent Green).

 

How many Bill Barnwell columns have you posted here, Bill?

 

I think 3, and I'm not Bill Barnwell. (Or Bill anyone, for that matter)

 

Barnwell's not one of my favorite writers, and he's really bad on that Grantland football podcast, but I did like this piece, and the one before on the injury woes of the Giants. (I do wish he had went a bit deeper though and figured out whether the Giants' injury woes were unusual as compared to the rest of the league.) It's not like he posted the link to Simmons' weekly picks or something else of that nature.

Regarding the topic of the column itself, Robert Edwards was someone who jumped to mind, probably because he had a similar career circumstance (bad knee injury that limited his abilities). Bo Jackson, same reasons.

When it comes to non-injury reasons, I'm always fascinated by whether more back-up quarterbacks could have been starters, but just never got the chance. For some reason, Brian Hoyer didn't get a really shot until he landed on the Browns this year, and then, it was only because of injuries to a bunch of other guys. For every guy like him, it seems like there are a lot more Matt Flynns and Joe Webbs, but still, I've always thought that NFL coaches were a bit too conservative when it came to sticking with QBs who were clearly poor to middling, as opposed to at least trying a guy who might have a chance to be good.

 

Bill Barnwell's Thank You For Not Coaching articles are great.

 

Bill Barnwell is the voice of the out-of-touch millennials who have no sense of history or perspective, those who prefer Madden the video game to Madden the coach/TV personality. In his narrative, the provocative gets broken down into pointless minutiae. Other times, he just misses the point completely.

"Imagine Washington keeping Robert Griffin on the sidelines all season last year so they could start Rex Grossman for 16 more games. That doesn't happen in a sports-blog-driven world."

Right. Because if the blogosphere didn't exist, RGIII would have sat the bench. The bloggers set the rookie QB's free. Really?

Say nothing of Mike Shanahan, RGIII's insane talent, the talent/knowledge advantage of today's rookie quarterbacks compared to a decade ago, Dan Snyder's expectations, the fact the Redskins traded up to get RGIII, the urgency of Washington to develop a first-rate QB for the first time since Mark Rypien...none of that matters. It's a "sports-blog driven world," and we're all just living in it.

 

But his TYFNC articles are great.

 

Maybe if Bryan Curtis wrote them, or Simmons himself, or even the guy from Rolling Stone who referred to Brett Favre as an "elderly dong-waver" and Jim Kelly as a "Buffalo Christ-figure."

 

You did a really good job here of pinpointing what is probably my problem with Barnwell. I think he's good when he sticks to criticizing coaches for being too conservative, and using advanced stats in a non-wonky way. The part you excerpted is kind of the mode he's in constantly on the podcast, in which it almost seems beneath him to be commenting upon football. I kind of wonder what his background is; I only know of him from his work on Football Outsiders and Grantland, and while that's not a bad thing in this day and age, he's mostly gone from a niche publication to one with a much bigger audience.

Also, he really, really needs a new headshot.

 

His podcasts are awful because he talks down to the listener constantly and is otherwise boring. The coaching stuff is good, although a bit repetitive at this point.

 

He talks down to the audience on Twitter, too. And in many of his stories. There are parts in everything he writes that are interesting and thought-provoking, but the only thing of his that I truly enjoy is Thank You for Not Coaching.

But he's created his niche, so good for him.