NFL: Pre-game observations, 2d week of the season---Broncos vs. Falcons // MLB: Winners & Losers---Colorado Rockies, a good ball club in spite of the standings.

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“SPORTS NOTEBOOK” will post columns every Monday and Friday during the NFL season, otherwise Tuesday and Friday of each week---Ed. & Publ., Marvin Leibstone.

NFL:   FOR those NFL teams that won big during the 2011 season and lost during week one of the 2012 16-game string, losing during week two could mean some loss of initiative, but none of these top teams will be “out of the race” for post-season contention, as has been suggested by analysts. Past seasons reveal that with 14 games left to play, anything could happen for them---paths of recovery will still be open, the season still in its youth.

However, dividing a season into four quarters, well, losing three or four of the first four games of an NFL season, that’s to worry about.

From last week’s outcomes, the Indianapolis Colts are probably a team that will be fretting next month, but the past week performances of last year’s top winners have shown, even if they won last week, that week two could go up or down for either, and that with whatever happens the scores won’t be widely apart. If the New York Giants get to 38 points, its opposing team will probably be finishing with only a few points less than that .  .  . 

and, a good guess is that Monday night’s Atlanta Falcons/Denver Broncos match can be exceptionally close in low-score mode if Atlanta’s QB Matt Ryan can continue his Peyton Manning-style game as effectively as Denver’s Peyton Manning can. Both have the advantage of having lightning-fast receivers who can intuit where to be and when for the pass-catch link that converts gained yards into first downs.

The no-huddle QB’s Manning and Ryan, and their receivers, can execute pass and rush drives better than most NFL QB-receiver units, and so on Monday night the defense squad that is better at infiltrating and defeating the other team’s pass protection and disturbing a QB’s rhythm and plans, meanwhile getting between the football and receivers, that’s where the Falcons/Broncos game will be won, in that the game will belong to the QB-led offense given the greater number of defense-built turnovers for driving the ball forward for points.

It’s a fair guess that there will be several exchanges of leads between the Falcons and Broncos, and that the clock may be that which decides the winning team, the victor likely to be only a few points ahead (think of an NBA game, the winner by two, maybe three points).            

            Yes, all predictions about NFL games are iffy---football’s an enterprise of uncertainties, more so than with other sports. That’s because football is a game with lots of players afield simultaneously, each having to do a job that affects the performance of others. The more participants that exist, the greater the likelihood of an imperfection occurring on one side of the ball becoming an advantage for the other end, e.g., the bad throw by team A’s QB, then an interception by a team B cornerback, team B’s cornerback suddenly off with the ball as if challenging Usain Bolt in a 100 meter heat, demonstrated last week when Denver CB Tracy Porter intercepted Pittsburgh QB Ben Roethlisberger’s throw and quickly completed an 80+ yard TD run.  

MLB:   AS of Monday last, a fourth MLB franchise reached 81 wins over its losses. Should the four teams having done that lose every game that they have left to play in the 162-game season, they’ll still be .500 or .500+ as the season comes to a close. Presently, they are “the winningest MLB clubs of 2012,” three of them in first place of their respective divisions: the Washington Nationals (NL East), Cincinnati Reds (NL Central), Texas Rangers (AL West), the Atlanta Braves second place behind the Nat’s.

Yet the four teams at the very bottom of both leagues (Minnesota Twins, Colorado Rockies, Chicago Cubs and the Houston Astros), should they win every game that they have left to play in the season (as of Monday last, around 20 left per), they’ll probably still be under .500, the worst of this fallen quartet being the Houston Astros, which on Monday had only 44 wins against (Ugh!) 97 losses, average, .312, likely to be the only team finishing the year with more than 100 lost games.

            What’s to be learned from the above? This: during September, the last full month of an MLB season, those teams that have won half of a year’s required number of games can rise further in the standings, or they can coast---they’ll still finish “above the margin (those 81 games),” while those ball clubs failing to have won around two-thirds of the 81 (60 or  61) games, they’ll still be the bottomed-out four teams even after winning many of the 20 or so games that they have left to play.

So---once teams reach a certain height, they can keep rising, and if they do not and drop back some, well, it won’t matter greatly for they’ll remain a winning ball club (.500 or above, having won 81 or more games)---yet once teams fall below a particular “low,” they’ll surely remain, as the expression conveys, “Dead Meat.”

Meanwhile, and this is comforting for anyone preferring that the major leagues be as fair as possible and include a proper dividing line between "best" and "all the rest," the 22 ball clubs between the top four and the bottom four, they can reach or surpass .500 by winning around two-thirds of their games left to play (as of Monday last, 20 or 21 games), though not by much---still, the strong likelihood of this happening is enough to say "the major leagues are alive and well," for 26 of the MLB’s 30 teams will have reached, or gone higher, than the accepted margin of .500, where the winners separate from the losers, an outcome that has been possible year after year, give or take an additional team or two above or below .500.

Of course, staying ahead of other MLB teams requires lots of wins “early” in a season, which can lead us to ask, “What constitutes ‘winningest teams,’ what is it that helps these clubs rise early on?” At first shot, we might answer, “Those are the teams that have the best players.” But the year’s likely top hitters, the standout starting pitchers/relievers/closers, the best fielders, the first All Star picks, the likely MVP’s, usually only a smattering of these belong to a year’s top four teams.

And, how could the Colorado Rockies still be in last place of the National League West when it has produced results throughout the season often associated with the top MLB clubs, an immediate example being that the Rockies just won a series versus the San Francisco Giants, the number one NL West team?

More significant, across June and July of this year the Rockies won four of seven games vs. MLB first place team, the Nat’s. Were those seven games a World Series or a league championship, well, hey--- ????

Also, the Rockies have won games vs. the remaining top four MLB teams, the Reds, the Rangers and the Braves.

Too, the Rockies have delivered on “streaks,” having won five games straight across late May and early June, another five straight in August, and four straight and three straight in August, while only being swept during five of the more than 40 series played as of Monday last.

Moreover, the Colorado franchise has a low record of losses to double-digit runs accrued by an opposing team, and one of the lowest number of losses after having put double-digit figures on the board in a single game.

In addition, the Rockies have had a high number of upper double-digit wins, e.g., 18-4 vs. the N.Y. Mets in April, and 17-8 vs. the Giants, same month.

Commendable is the number of multiple hit games achieved by the Rockies individual hitters, LF Carlos Gonzalez leading 13 other players with 46; and, CF Dexter Fowler and catcher Wiln Rosario are holding on to leading hitting positions within the National League and re. all of 2012 baseball.

Add the number of runs that the Rockies have accrued during its 80+ losses and you’ll find a total number greater than the total number of runs gained by more than half of the teams currently holding .500+ averages.

It will probably take many weeks of analysis to determine just why the Rockies have been so far behind during the MLB season, the informed guesses of today being that April through mid-August the team suffered from a weak starter rotation, plus line-up injuries May through July, demanding team reconstruction, in effect, a line-up of new players, Gonzalez and Fowler often becoming the only past-season Rockies players afield.

As for what constitutes “winningest teams,” the informed guess is that they’re the teams that are most “consistent” when it comes to having a starting rotation reliable enough to sustain low ERA’s and high strikeout percentages, along with fielders and catchers preventing bat/ball connects from becoming hits, plus a line-up consisting of numerous on-base and extra-base RBI hitters, not so much reliance on a home run king, emphasis being on, “Overall team prowess almost at peak level throughout April and May,” hard to maintain but a lot easier than having to endure and enact a mid- or late-season comeback.

END/ml