XFL Issues -- Part One

I'm a lousy amateur poker player. I'm capable of assessing my cards, doing the math, and acting appropriately. That's about it. Good poker players, on the other hand, can assess my assessment and generate a response based on two-step thinking. Great poker players can even assess someone else's assessment of their two-step assessment. All of that multi-step poker thinking is beyond me. In some ways, this lack of laying out multi-step consequences is one of the problems with the XFL.


Multi-Step Thinking

To flourish or even survive, the XFL must create intense, exciting games with comeback capabilities. They have, in my opinion, come up with some useful rule changes both in terms of player safety (for kickoffs, primarily) and in terms of creating two-minute drill opportunities with clock stoppages after each play. These are good things. The two-minute stoppages are an especially necessary addition in a league where half of the quarterbacks who have gotten starts are not terribly accurate throwing the ball more than 15 yards downfield. The tweaks are designed to increase scoring.

If you look beneath the surface, however, some non-obvious things are actually at work against increased scoring. Most of the XFL quarterbacks are (1) not locked in as auto-starters and (2) are trying to appear competent enough to earn an NFL roster spot. Competent is not a recipe for excitement. It's a recipe for risk aversion. Another issue along the same lines is that some of the league coaches are in comparable situations to their quarterbacks. They are trying to catch on, or catch on again, with an NFL or major college team. So despite punting rules tweaked to increase going for it on fourth downs, very little offensive risk-taking has occurred. We still see punting on fourth-and-middling from midfield, and we are still treated to bomb-shot field goals from the opposition 35. Most of the offensive coordinators and head coaches appear just as risk averse as their NFL counterparts.

The question then becomes, if the coaches and quarterbacks are in these high profile, televised contests trying to not look stupid, shouldn't the XFL have anticipated consistent conservatism? The tweaked rules superficially provide an opportunity for wild and crazy offensive play, but a multi-step perspective would have pointed to different possible consequences and dampened these kinds of expectations.


March 8, 2020
Bob Dietz