4th and 1

I have long thought that the most boring play in professional sports was the punt on 4th and 1. No, not when a team is buried deep in their own territory but when the ball is around midfield and the drive has just stalled a bit and the goal is RIGHT THERE. Why would you not try to go for it? Or at least try a long field goal...something, right?

Conventional wisdom would be that the punt is the 'safe play.' If you fail on a 4th and 1, you are set up worse than had you played it safe.

Of course I am not alone in this line of thinking, there is the highly successful Arkansas high school football coach who never punts. His argument is that giving the ball back to the team when you have an opportunity to score is irrational. He has a record of 77-17. Or there is the highly publicized case of Ron Rivera, the Carolina Panthers coach. After back to back losing seasons, Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers started out 0 and 2, perhaps due to some vanilla play calling. But one thing was certain, Ron Rivera would be fired any day...until he decided to go for it on 4th and 1, the rest of the season; earning the nickname Riverboat Ron and winning the division in the process. Two years later the Panthers would find themselves in the Superbowl.

Now one could argue that the Arkansas team probably just has talented players and would still have a great record with conservative play calling. Never punting with a 17-77 record would surely get you fired. You could also say that 2013 was Cam Newton's third season and the time he finally figured out how to play Quarterback at the NFL level, maybe it's a coincidence. Who knows?

***

Flashback to January of 2009, eight (!!!!!!) years ago. It's a Wednesday, 230pm Eastern Time, so I was probably in my advertising class. Check that. I'll be at my advertising class in five minutes. I was always late. Probably the only thing on my mind was which sorority I was going to invite over to pregame before we went to Crazy Horse (a wine bar) and then Sports (a utopia where Long Island Jews, Frat Guys and athletes hang in peaceful bliss) In the far reaches of my mind I may have been wondering what I was going to do in 5 months. But not really, to consider one's future would be to accept that college was ending.

As the semester went on, I was flown out to all the buzzy corporate jobs I applied for, Target, Kohl's, Proctor and Gamble. I didn't have any idea what I would do at any of those places but I knew I would live downtown in a mid sized city and make $60,000 a year.

I struck out.

But with a last ditch effort, I was able to get into a Kelley (IU Business school) grad program. I figured maybe I could transfer into a JDMBA program eventually and everything would be fine. But instead of making rational life decisions at the age of 22, I continued to sleep until noon in my Senior house, start drinking when I woke up and pretend that the dream wasn't over. Eventually I made half assed attempts at landing jobs in New York and LA before ultimately deciding that I needed to get a job in Chicago so that I could continue to hang out with IU Greeks.

This was a punt.

And it was a shank.

Listen to me when I tell you this, I was offered a job at Kraft, a Fortune 200 company that would have paid for my MBA eventually and I turned them down!!! Why? Because my territory was going to be Kentucky Walmarts and I thought I was above both Kentucky and Walmart.

My dad started his career at Oscar Meyer (now a subsidiary of Kraft) and his best friend that he started off with now splits his time between an Indiana lake house and a beachside condo in Florida.

So I'm in Chicago now and while many of my friends take crap jobs and then parlay them into better jobs I am content to just live in the moment, feeling like something will just be handed to me. But nothing is handed to you in life, except the one time that it was. I was fired for this blog and just so happened to know some guys at a start up that needed to open an LA office.

Moving to LA, people were so impressed. Man, David Moeller, he's really going for it. Chasing his dreams. And while it may have appeared that this was some grand gesture by me trying to grab my future by the horns, it was really more of a bail out pass interference penalty that got me out here. I probably would have never done it on my own. Just like I never did anything on my own.

***

Now it's entirely easy to look at things in the rearview and decide they were a mistake. Alabama probably regrets attempting a 57 yard field goal against Auburn in 2013. They missed, it was returned for a Touchdown and it ended their season.

The Indianapolis Colts probably regret throwing a 4th and 1 screen pass against the Houston Texans a couple weeks ago. The play was a disaster and it ended their season.

And maybe I regret a few decisions i made when I was younger. Had I played it safe, maybe I would be in a better place professionally.  Maybe I wouldn't have been down to my last 7 dollars on Christmas Eve hoping my automatic Netflix bill wouldn't hit my account sending me negative. But I've always been aggressive, I had thought. At least if I went for it and failed, I would always know...well I went for it.

There's this Bill Burr quote I always loved, when I would see photos of people on their wedding day, or going on a vacation I could never afford I would just scream at myself THERE IS A TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF RISK TO PLAYING IT SAFE. I'm going for it, I'm trying to make my dreams happen...

And then one day it dawned on me. I've been playing it safe all along. The last 7 years I spent largely spinning my tires trying to get somewhere but not really being too frustrated because I had attained social success. Hey, I've got a lot of friends, we have fun on the weekends and if Monday - Thursday suck, at least I've got Friday and Saturday. I was distracted from living my own life by trying to keep the party alive. Hey, I may still be getting writers coffee, but yo we've got that ski trip coming up.

And as Mr. Burr says...there is a tremendous amount of risk to playing it safe.

This year is my 4th and 1. Approaching 30 has given me some perspective. People grow up, you have to leave Neverland eventually, and when it's all over will I be a guy who kinda sorta gave it a shot in LA or will I be the success story that so many people are hoping for?

I'm going to try a few things this year:

First, I'm going to write something every day. Maybe not on here, maybe not a script. Perhaps it will be a haiku on how the Indiana Hoosiers latest loss made me feel.

IU Turnovers

Are extremely depressing

Just like Lala Land*

*only the ending really

**no that's not a clever way to say that LA is depressing, for real the last 3 minutes of the movie

But ya, if accountants can...um account every day, then a 'writer' should be able to write every day.

Second, I'll try to be uplifting or at least real. It's fun to be knock off Tucker Max once in a while, but I've found people respond better when I write from the heart, so this year I'm going to stop pretending to be someone I'm not for the first time in my life, and see how it goes.

Third, I'm going to go for it.

Now that doesn't mean I'm going to leave LA or quit the industry if I can't make something happen this year, but I'm going to really commit to being a better version of myself and do my best. Hopefully that's enough. And if it's not, well I'll know I went for it.

***

Conventional wisdom would say that on a 4th and 1 there will be a run play or even a short 2 yard out pattern. As is such the defense will often load the box with as many defenders as possible.

Now often this play will come down to who has the better offensive line. Grown men competing for 3 feet of real estate. Who wants it more, and a run up the middle or even a QB sneak are not uncommon.

But once in a while....every once in a while, the quarterback will have a trick up his sleeve. While everyone was competing for those three feet at the line of scrimmage, people forgot to worry about the deep out pattern.

Why would they? You only need one yard to gain the first down. But the first down is just an incremental goal right, the ultimate goal is the end zone, and of course it is a much higher risk to chuck the ball down the field that to just dive up the middle.

And going deep doesn't always work. But if on 4th and 1 you just keep doing what you've been doing all along hoping for a different result, well isn't that just playing it safe?

Sometimes you have to switch things up and go for all the marbles.

Happy New Year everyone.