Overascribing Actions To Rationality

One of the problems with doing analysis via tea leaf is that sometimes you confuse a pile of moldy grass clippings with a stash of Earl Grey's finest.

That's happened to me a couple of times this year already, most notably with the wonderfully successful backup quarterback experiment.  See, I really thought there was a plan behind that decision.  Something along the lines of, "Well, McNabb's donesville here and while we had to give him his shot this season, it's not working out, so it's time to start the education of Kevin Kolb."  I didn't know if that explanation was right, but it seemed to make a lot of sense.

The problem now seems to be that I was ascribing that decision to rationality, when it turns out it was really just the wild flailing of a coaching staff that was desperate to try something -- anything -- to get the team moving again.

Oops.

I wonder if this isn't a pretty common occurence.  Like when Lito Sheppard (and some fans) see ulterior motives behind his lack of playing time, when really it may just be that his unmotivated butt kind of sucks these days.

Or when I concoct these elaborate conspiracy theories in my head in re: Shawn Andrews and why he's still on the roster when it seems abundantly clear he's months away from playing football.  Maybe it does have something to do with the team's concerns about his full suite of issues ... or perhaps it's just that the 0.1 percent chance of Shawn Andrews is actually better than the 100 percent call-up body they'd use to replace him (or, ahem, Winston Justice).

I think something similar might be happening here with the whole "Run Westbrook into the ground" gameplan we saw yesterday.  Yes, it's certainly possible that there's been some big-picture change in Reid's conception of how to win football games...  Or maybe someone different really was calling the plays yesterday...

Or maybe it's just that the Eagles knew that the Burress-less Giants had one offensive trick:  wear down the Eagles defense with its power running game until our smaller, quicker front was completely gassed and there for the taking.  So this was perhaps the one game in Reid's history where he thought time of possession was even more important than scoring points.

Oooooooorrrr, maybe I'm doing it again and none of that is the point.  Maybe running the ball just happened to be working, so they kept doing it.  (Except that it didn't really work early, actually.)

Who knows.  The point is that maybe there's less of a grand plan here than we -- I -- sometimes assume. 

That's not exactly comforting, but it's something to keep in mind.