Kyle Shanahan? More Like Kyle Changahan

I decided to post about the Super Bowl after everyone has had their say about the outcome.  Oh man, this is very much like deja vu right now.  If you read my last post about my pick for the Super Bowl, "Super Bowl Champions: Chiefs or 49ers?", I said this on the bottom. (The red shows that I called for the comeback to happen!)

"It is for this reason that I think the FPI has taken a lot to favor the Chiefs because of their recent showing of overcoming adversity very well.  Not to mention, that the 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan was the offensive coordinator for the 2016 Falcons when they played the Patriots in Super Bowl 51.  That is the famous Super Bowl where the Falcons were up 28-3 against the Patriots and lost 34-28 making it the biggest choke I have ever seen in my life.  Perhaps the same thing could repeat again but with the Chiefs now against Kyle Shanahan?  I mean, the Chiefs have been doing phenomenal comebacks throughout the playoffs.  So why not the Super Bowl as well?" 

If you haven't read this post, you can press on this link.

Anyway, I was seeing that the same type of thing was going to happen to Kyle Shanahan again.  In his first Super Bowl, he blew a 28-3 lead against the Patriots.  Now, he blew a 20-10 lead against the Chiefs.  I guess they improved on the margin of the comeback that they gave up. But still, it is just ridiculous.  The meme that described this circus perfectly was this image:

I mean, I picked the Chiefs to win and I loved that they did.  They are practically my favorite NFL team now.  But what the crap 49ers!  I don't hate the 49ers, but sometimes I can get upset at a team for losing a game that they could've easily won if they were just not being downright stupid.  I mean how can you lose an NFL game when you are up 20-10 when there is 11:57 left in the 4th Quarter, and then you give up 21 points in a 10:55 time-lapse!  Don't get me wrong, the Chiefs have been doing this throughout the whole playoffs. They are perfectly able to do something like this.  To go on record, the Chiefs have outscored their competition 100-14 whenever they start their comebacks during the this season's playoffs.  But what I want to focus on is how the 49ers could've easily avoided this if Kyle Shanahan didn't get Changnesia.

I'll explain what I mean.  This explains why I called this post "Kyle Shanahan? More Like Kyle Changahan."  There is a comedy from NBC called "Community."  It is a funny show and I recommend it highly.  The term Changnesia came from one of the characters named Ben Chang (played by Ken Jeong).  In part of the show, he does something horrible to the other characters and disappears for a while.  He then appears later and claims that he has "Changnesia" which means that he is having amnesia but can't remember his life as Ben Chang.  I won't spoil how the rest of that story arc goes so that you can find it out yourselves.  But right here in the Super Bowl and Kyle Shanahan seemed to have suffered from Changnesia.

Don't worry, I'm getting there to why I'm saying this.  I'm saying that he seems to suffer from this because he did the exact same thing that made him lose his first Super Bowl against the Patriots.  What he did is that he forgot that his offense is good at running the ball. 

I will break this down for Super Bowl 51 when Kyle Shanahan was on the Falcons playing against the Patriots first.  We see that it is 2:06 in the 3rd Quarter and the Falcons have the ball while they are ahead 28-9.  If you don't know, the clock can stop if you throw an incomplete pass or run out of bounds if you don't what to use your timeouts.  If you just run the ball, the clock doesn't stop.  The Falcons are up 28-9 and if I was the coach, I would want to burn down the clock and get the job done.  But no, the Falcons have a 3 and out from 3 passes where 1 was incomplete and a sack.  1 incomplete pass is pretty much a timeout to help the other team have more time to catch up.  They only burn 2:15 off the clock.  Then the Patriots take 5:07 off the clock to score a field goal.  The score is now 28-12.  The Falcons still have a good lead so they don't have to worry much if they just play smart.  They do for the first 2 plays since they run the ball to start their next possession.  But then they pass and then there's a sack-fumble and the Patriots recover!  Falcons only burned 1:20 off the clock.  Patriots then burn 2:28 off the clock to score a touchdown and a 2 point conversion to make the score 28-20.  The Falcons then get the ball back with 5:53 left in the game.  At this point, if you are a Falcons' fan, you should be a little worried.  But your team is still up 28-20.  All they have to do is run the ball, burn down the clock, and they can hoist that Lombardi Trophy.  But no, they pass the ball 4 times and ran the ball 2 times this next possession!  1 pass is incomplete and 1 pass is a sack.  They only burn 2:26 off the clock which leaves 3:27 on the clock for the 4th Quarter.  The Patriots score a touchdown burning 2:33 off the clock while scoring another 2 point conversion to tie the game at 28-28.  The game goes into overtime and then the Patriots win it 34-28.  The Falcons were good at running the ball.  They averaged 5.8 yards per rush attempt in the game but just steered from that at the end.  They threw the ball 9 times and only ran 4 times!

You think that after that traumatic event that Kyle Shanahan would learn from his mistakes and run the ball more when he is in that similar situation. But wait!  He repeats the same mistakes!  This time he ran the ball only 3 times and passed the ball 5 times that resulted in 3 incompletions!  He basically gave the Chiefs 3 timeouts by doing that.  I'm glad he did because I was rooting for the Chiefs, but come on! It is Super Bowl 51 again.  He does this in the exact same situation.  This happened during the time lapse in the meme above, except I only covered from the time that they were up 20-10 and then they were down 24-20 because it could've all been avoided if it wasn't for the stupid play-calling.  Kyle Shanahan suffered from Changnesia because he did not remember his mistakes from the first time around.  He was also averaging 6.4 yards per rush attempt which was even better than his average of 5.8 yards per rush attempt in Super Bowl 51.

But anyway, Go Chiefs!

Super Bowl Champions: Chiefs or 49ers?

It is that time of football season once again.  After getting through a week of not caring about the Pro Bowl since none of the players actually try in that game, we finally get to the biggest game of them all:  The Super Bowl. 

I am a big fan of this Super Bowl because it is a Super Bowl that we've never had before: Chiefs vs. 49ers.  We have Patrick Mahomes vs. Jimmy G.  Andy Reid vs. Kyle Shanahan. This is gonna be good. 

If I am going to pick a team, I will pick the Kansas City Chiefs.  For one, I think it is finally time for Andy Reid to win a Super Bowl.  Andy Reid has 221 wins including the Regular Season and the Playoffs total in his career.  That is 6th all-time which makes him the winningest NFL coach in NFL history from the Super Bowl Era without a Super Bowl win.  The time could finally come for Andy Reid to hoist the Lombardi Trophy.  Also it is time for him to have that fast food buffet in the White House with Donald Trump.

Comparing the Super Bowl Opponents

I am now going to go over some of the stats for each team that shows the comparisons between them.  The Chiefs in the Regular Season scored 28.2 points per game which is 5th in the league and allowed 19.3 points per game which is 7th in the league.  The 49ers in the Regular Season scored 29.9 points per game which is 2nd in the league and allowed 19.4 points per game which is 8th in the league.  When it comes to these numbers, these teams look pretty even.  However, they run very different offenses. 

The Chiefs are a lot more pass heavy.  They averaged 281.1 pass yards per game which was 5th in the league while the 49ers averaged 237 pass yards per game which was 13th in the league.  This will show then that the 49ers ran the ball more effectively.  The 49ers averaged 144.1 rush yards per game which was 2nd in the league and the Chiefs averaged 98.1 rush yards per game which was 23rd in the league.  These are just their stats from how they have been performing during the regular season.  The FPI can tell us more about how to predict this match from past performances.

The FPI now has the Chiefs winning it all with a 64.8% chance.  The FPI takes into account many factors to how a team can win.  It can be if it is a home or an away game, who is starting, amount of rest for each team, past performances, and even things like how long of a distance of travel does a team have to make that affects the team's preparation.  In my opinion, I feel that the past performance is what is affecting this FPI rating.  Let's look at the these teams more recent performances. 

In the past 8 games, the Chiefs have scored an average of 31.6 points and allowed only 15.5 points per game.  The 49ers scored an average of 31 points and allowed 23.9 points per game.  So far, the Chiefs look more impressive during this run.  Not to mention that the Chiefs are 8-0 in this run and the 49ers are 6-2.  But maybe I'm the dummy by not looking at it at a different perspective.  The 49ers during that run were 6-1 against teams with winning records.  They scored 32.3 points and allowed 22.3 points on average for those games.  Kansas City was 3-0 against teams with winning records.  They scored 36.3 points and allowed 23.7 points on average for those games. 

What the FPI is probably taking into account too is also how these teams have endured adversity recently.  Let's look at these two teams' playoff games so far this season.  The 49ers were able to easily handle their playoff games easily by scoring 32 points and allowing 15 points per game.  The Chiefs though had some adversity to overcome.  They were down 24-0 against Houston and down 17-7 against Tennessee during their playoff games.  But once they turned it on, there was no going back.  The Chiefs went on a 51-7 scoring spree against the Texans after down 24-0 to win 51-31.  They then went on a 28-7 scoring spree against the Titans down 17-7 to win 35-24.  If you were to just take in the scoring numbers for Kansas City for when they did these comebacks, they scored 39.5 points and allowed 7 points per comeback.  The way that they have responded to adversity in the playoffs has just been staggering. 

It is for this reason that I think the FPI has taken a lot to favor the Chiefs because of their recent showing of overcoming adversity very well.  Not to mention, that the 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan was the offensive coordinator for the 2016 Falcons when they played the Patriots in Super Bowl 51.  That is the famous Super Bowl where the Falcons were up 28-3 against the Patriots and lost 34-28 making it the biggest choke I have ever seen in my life.  Perhaps the same thing could repeat again but with the Chiefs now against Kyle Shanahan?  I mean, the Chiefs have been doing phenomenal comebacks throughout the playoffs.  So why not the Super Bowl as well?

To me, the best champions are the ones that usually do well.  But when they are faced with adversity, they do it in a spectacular performance.  I just love that touchdown run by Patrick Mahomes against the Titans.  It shows his toughness and grit to get his team to win.  I'll end this post with a video I made that compares this run to a similar one done by Steve Young in 1988.

Once again, my choice is the Chiefs.  My record so far for this NFL season has been 56-33 which is 62.9% accuracy.  Let the football game and Super Bowl commercials begin!

The Best Ever?

This week was when the National Championship between Clemson and LSU happened to determine the National Champion of College Football.  There were points of the game where I thought Clemson was going to pull it off, but then LSU would put on all gears to embarrass them to a 42-25 beating.
Over the course of this week, I have been hearing from radio shows and on the TV about how people are ranking this LSU team compared to other greatest teams in college football history.  I even heard someone say that Joe Burrow is the greatest college football quarterback to every play the game.  Since this is MathSportsGuy, I need to really see the numbers in order to really make a good indication on these claims.  Let us go over some numbers.

Team Stats Per Game

LSU this year was able to score 48.4 points per game and their defense allowed 21.9 points per game.  Their offensive points per game was 1st in all of college football rankings and their defensive points was 32nd in all of college football rankings for the 2019 season.  If you are wondering, the record for most points scored per game was set by Army in 1944.  The record that they set was 56 points per game.  The record for least amount of points per game for defense was tied for 0.8 points per game by Duke in 1938 and Villanova in 1937.  Of course, the stats by these teams from the 1930s and 1940s are impressive, but football was way different back then from what it is now.
Let's take a look at the size of the offensive linemen just to see how different the game is now compared to back then.  In the 1930s, the average weight of an offensive lineman was 220 pounds with a height of 6-foot-1.  In the 1940s, the only difference is that the average offensive lineman weighed 221 pounds.  In today's college football, the average offensive lineman is 6-foot-4.3 and weighs 305.4 pounds.  Just by looking at these size differences in just the offensive linemen, we can see that the game has definitely changed just by size of the players.  If any of the football teams from the 1930s and 1940s were to play today's football teams, they would get slaughtered.  This in turn shows that to comparing LSU's 2019 season to average team stats ranked from the greatest stats ever, it won't be a good comparison because a lot of the best stats are ridiculous ones from the 1930s and 1940s.

Strength of Schedule

In today's world of college football, the teams are mainly ranked now by the College Football Playoff Committee.  They take heavily on the rankings on who did each team beat.  LSU in the 2019 season was able to beat ranked teams like (with their rankings at the time) Texas 9, Florida 7, Auburn 9, Alabama 3, Georgia 4, Oklahoma 4, and Clemson 3.  Those teams' current rankings are now Florida 9, Auburn 12, Alabama 13, Georgia 5, Oklahoma 4, and Clemson 3 (Texas is no longer ranked).  LSU was able to beat 7 teams that were ranked in the top 10 when they matched them up during the season.  But in reality, they were able to beat 6 teams that are currently ranked and 3 of them are in the top 5.  When you take into account of when it was this first set of ranked teams that included Texas, LSU beat them all by an average of 15.4 points together.  When LSU played Georgia, Oklahoma, and Clemson, who are ranked in the top 5 now, LSU beat them by an average of 26.3 points.  Whenever the conversation about LSU playing well against good teams, they on average would beat them by a little more than 2 touchdowns each.

What if LSU played a former greatest of the greats?

ESPN recently released a list of the 150 greatest college football teams ever since this season was the 150th season.  Their list put 1971's Nebraska as #1.  That year, Nebraska did beat the ranked number 2, 3, and 4 teams of that season.  You can say that that Nebraska team does have a good argument of being the best team because they had a dominant season against good teams.  You can see the rest of the ranks from this link.  Remember what I said earlier that size can be the difference here.  In the 1970s, the average weight and height of an offensive lineman was 255 pounds and 6-foot-3.  I said earlier as well that the average size of an offensive lineman now weighs 305.4 pounds and is 6-foot-4.3.  LSU's offensive line for this season was 6-foot-4.4 and 323.4 pounds.  When it comes to a size difference this big, I would definitely take LSU over Nebraska here.  I emphasize the offensive linemen because they are the most important part of the offense.  They help block for the running backs and give the quarterback the time he needs to make a play.  To win a game, you need to score points.  Without a good offensive line, it will be very hard to score any points on offense.  Of course special teams and defense could make some points here and there.  But, most of the points are scored by the offense.
Just watch the plays that even the offenses made for the Super Bowl contenders Chiefs and 49ers did last Sunday.  Their offenses were able to score because of the blocking orchestrated by the offensive line.  Look at these run plays by the 49ers against the Packers.

Watch this TD for the Chiefs from last Sunday.  Watch how the offensive line works to block for the quarterback.  One of the linemen pancakes a guy!

Whenever you watch any more football games, just watch how well the offensive line battles to get the offense working.  Therefore, the size of LSU's offensive line will determine how badly they will beat Nebraska's 1971 team.  Because of LSU's resume of beating a ton of highly ranked teams and beating some of them by a lot, it is a good argument that this team could be the greatest college football team ever.  They went 15-0 which makes it more solidified because the College Football Playoff kind of confirms how well these National Champions are because they have more chances to beat the best teams.

What about Joe Burrow?

Joe Burrow probably had the best season that I've ever seen by a quarterback.  I mean he put up some big stats.  He made a new record of 60 passing touchdowns for the season and a new record of total touchdowns which he made 65 of.  He also threw 5,671 yards which is 3rd all-time.  He also had a 15-0 record and won the National Championship.  I heard on ESPN radio from Jim Rome and on Sportscenter from Kirk Herbstreit that he is probably the best college football quarterback that they've ever seen.  I mean, he probably had the best season ever, but the best college football quarterback ever?  Let's look at some stats from former quarterbacks.

The winningest quarterback for college is Kellen Moore who had an impressive 50-3 record.  Did he do well in the NFL? Nope.  He became an assistant on the Cowboys staff.  The quarterback with the most touchdowns responsible for is Case Keenum with 178.  What is he doing now? Starting a very mediocre Redskins team that finished 3-13 in 2019.  There are 3 QBs that I remember that have won the National Championship multiple times.  Tommie Frazier for Nebraska, A.J. McCarron for Alabama, and Tim Tebow.  How is Tommie Frazier? He never played in the NFL.  What about A.J. McCarron?  He's Deshaun Watson's backup on the Houston Texans.  How about Tim Tebow?  He just got married and is a commentator on SEC Nation but only had one year of excitement in the NFL.  What I'm saying is that Joe Burrow had probably the best season ever.  But, I think it will solidify him even more depending on how well he does in the NFL.  If he does well, he can be considered one of the greatest ever.  Just imagine if he was playing with LSU his whole career as the starter?  It would have boosted his career stats better instead of most of them being from this last season.  He was a graduate transfer to LSU.  

Feleipe Franks from Florida is a graduate transfer to Arkansas.  He was the starter for the Florida Gators.  Cross my fingers that he repeats Joe Burrow's season with Arkansas.  Woo pig!

Football Season is Nearly at an End

Man what an end to the college football season.  It has been awhile since I have posted anything about football because of holidays and I've felt....lazy.  But, the college football season is over and now I can tally my results of predictions for the season.  On my earlier post called "Bowl Games and NFL Games", I made predictions for all of the bowl games for this season.  Now that the National Championship is over, I can give my full tallies now.  For bowl season, I went 29-11 which is 72.5% correct for my predictions.  I think that I was doing pretty good since most of these games seemed to be evenly matched.  So, that means that my season total got to 89-23 which is 79.5% correct for all predictions that I've done on the season.  I think that is pretty good so far for my first try.  I hope to be able to improve that for next season.

Now, NFL season is still going on and it is just getting really hot with these games now.  I was just shocked as anyone by seeing the Titans in the AFC Championship! They beat the Patriots at home (which I loved so much!) and then they embarrassed the Ravens at home as well!  My favorite meme that I've seen so far from this impressive run by the Titans was:

I am just wondering if this can continue for the Titans when they play the Chiefs in Arrowhead this Sunday.  And talk about the Chiefs game!  When I saw that the Chiefs were down 24-0 to the Texans, I just thought that it was over.  But then after that, they went on a 51-7 point run and then they broke a lot of records.  I've heard that the Chiefs staff ran out of fireworks during the game because they scored so much.  The best post from this game was:

The guys that make these memes deserve a lot of money for this gold.  If you have been reading my posts so far, you may have noticed in an earlier post that I made a prediction for the Super Bowl back in Rivalry Week of College Football in November.  Don't laugh, but my prediction was Ravens vs. Seahawks.  Now, my prediction is poo doo.  So now what we have left in the playoffs is just Titans vs Chiefs and Packers vs. 49ers.  I'll try to not make early predictions for the NFL like that again because, it just makes me look like a fool.  I mean, these next images show the predictions for the seasons for the 49ers and the Titans from an "expert" on NFL Network.

I don't want to look like a fool like this guy looks now.  When you make predictions, you need enough statistical evidence to really make a good argument.  Make predictions in the very beginning of the season to prediction the whole season will just do this to you.  I always like to make predictions seeing what the FPI on ESPN shows because it is a computer program of all the information about the teams that makes 10,000 simulations of each match-up.  So the FPI can give good info on who might actually win.  Also use it on weekly predictions and not seasonal or you'll look like this fool.  

So, that means I'll make my NFL predictions for this week.  So far, my running total is 54-33 which is 62.1% correct.  Now my predictions are:

Titans vs. Chiefs.  Winner:  Chiefs

Packers vs. 49ers.  Winner:  49ers

The Super Bowl will be Chiefs vs. 49ers which is a Super Bowl that we've never had before.  The Chiefs haven't been to the Super Bowl in 50 years and the 49ers haven't been there in 7 years.  Even if this isn't the Super Bowl, we also have the Titans that haven't been to it in 20 years and the Packers haven't in 9 years.  We have a group of potential Super Bowl Champions that have not even been to the Super Bowl in a while.  This means that this will be the first Super Bowl that I am actually going to enjoy since Super Bowl 50 because it was Panthers vs. Broncos.  What I am saying is that the Patriots will not be in the Super Bowl which is so relieving.  This last image will explain what I mean after the Titans beat the Patriots in Wild Card Weekend.

Fantastic Beasts (2016): Jacob Kowalski Laugh after Newt Descends into H...

This is my reaction after seeing Chad Morris get fired.

The Force Part 3 (Nerd Post)

Here it is! Another nerd post about Star Wars and the Force.  If you haven't read my other posts about this series of parts about me talking of the Force, here are the links to The Force Part 1 and The Force Part 2.

If you aren't aware, I have recently seen Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.  The last post about the Force which is The Force Part 2 with the link above had me talking about bringing ultimate balance to the Force and how Rey and Kylo Ren would do that.  I did enjoy the movie a lot, but there are perhaps some things that I would change that would make things make more sense. 

Spoiler Warning! You have been warned.

First of all, I would like to do an analysis on how ultimate balance has been brought to the Force from what we got from the movie.  Kylo Ren and Rey's force connection grows ever stronger in the movie.  It gets so strong that they could take or switch out physical objects to each other through space.  The movie mentions that their bond is now a "dyad in the Force."  A dyad means "two individuals (such as husband and wife) maintaining a sociologically significant relationship" in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.  Basically this is saying that what they have would make them soulmates literally.  Near the end of the movie, Palpatine is able to suck some of the life force of their dyad bond since it is as powerful as life itself and hasn't been seen for thousands of generations.  To make this short of how the movie ends, Palpatine throws Kylo Ren into a pit, or Ben Solo because he's good at this point, Rey gets up and calls up all of the past Jedi to help her and then Rey is able to kill Palpatine when she pulls out Leia and Luke's lightsabers to deflect Palpatine's force lightning and he dies.  

Then Rey dies from the effort but Ben Solo comes out of the pit that he was thrown in and brings her back to life when he passes his life essence to her like was foreshadowed throughout the movie.  Since he had to use so much of his life essence to bring Rey back, he dies and becomes one with the Force.  Then the ending of the movie has Rey burying Leia and Luke's original lightsabers at the moisture farm in Tatooine where the whole saga started.  Rey shows that she has constructed a new lightsaber that is a yellow color and then she tells a random old woman near that she is Rey Skywalker after acknowledging Luke and Leia's force ghosts.  Then she looks out to the twin suns and then the movie ends.

From what the movie shows us, this is how I am interpreting how ultimate balance in the Force has been achieved.  For one, the Force was not balanced because of Palpatine and he had to be stopped.  So he was stopped and so there is not a clear light side is more than dark side or dark side is more than light side balance going on now.  Rey dies but is saved from Ben Solo passing his life essence to her.  Since she is alive now and was revived by all of Ben Solo's remaining life essence, it pretty much means that Rey and Ben Solo are physically one being now in Rey's body.  Rey is alive, but she is filled with Ben Solo's life essence.  So now Rey is literally the Ying and Yang dyad since she is the light side and Ben Solo was the dark side of the Ying and Yang.  Since Rey is like this, she balances between the light and dark side equally.  She also has dark side potentially since being Palpatine gives her those tendencies.  She has also been reading about the ways of the Jedi from the sacred jedi texts that Luke planned to burn in The Last Jedi.  From this movie, Wookiepedia reveals to us that the first Jedi of the Jedi Order were the Prime Jedi.  This following image was shown in The Last Jedi depicting the Prime Jedi.

This looks pretty similar to the Ying and Yang symbol.  The Prime Jedi were Jedi that believed in coexistence and having perfect balance between the light and dark sides of the Force.  Rey has been studying the teachings the these Prime Jedi because she has the old jedi texts from that time.  So even if we don't see it in the movie, it can be implied that off-screen she was learning from these books from the Prime Jedi to create balance.  I mean, Luke's first lesson with Rey in The Last Jedi was all about balancing between the light and dark side.  So Rey has been learning all she knows about the Force by Luke's teachings, the Prime Jedi's scriptures, and some training from Leia from what Leia remembers.  But Rey's first understanding of the Force is to have balance between the light and dark side of the Force.  That is probably how she learned how to Force Heal others by passing life essence because it is not a strictly light or dark side ability.  It is strictly an ability that one can have by being balanced in both the light and dark side of the Force.  That is probably why Anakin Skywalker couldn't really learn this power because he was either being swayed to the light or the dark side.  An besides, the Jedi Order at the time taught about no attachments and let the Force do its will on whether people die or not.  The Sith taught about selfishness and would definitely not teach anyway to use the Force by sacrificing yourself to save someone else.  So it was only by having balance that Rey was able to learn that ability.  Since she is now centered like that, it could explain why she has a yellow lightsaber.  

If you don't know, yellow is the opposite of the color purple.  The two colors that make purple are both blue and red.  So this could be implying that Rey is not entirely Jedi blue or Sith red but in between them instead.  Having Rey as a "Prime Jedi" now would mean if she starts another Jedi Order, she would teach about balance like when the Jedi Order was first made.  Maybe those books teach about how those past jedi fell to being all light side and how others went to the dark side.  Perhaps she will teach how to keep that balance to her future students so that there will never be another war between the Jedi and the Sith ever again to ultimately keep that ultimate balance.

I am about to wrap up, but his all ultimately goes back to Anakin Skywalker.  The prophecy mentions that through the Chosen One will ultimate balance come.  This doesn't say "by" the Chosen One but through him.  To me, Star Wars in the Skywalker Saga has been about to finally get that ultimate balance in the Force.  This meant in big shifts of being heavy on the light side or the dark side and making it shift until it is finally balanced.  Anakin Skywalker was integral in the Jedi Purge to bring down the light side since it was too heavy on that side and then killing Palpatine the first time to bring down the dark side to help even out the balance.  Then finally, Kylo Ren and Rey were the last punch to the Sith and the Force to finally bring the Force into ultimate balance.  With Anakin, all of that wouldn't have happened.  Anakin's two children Luke and Leia were Rey's teachers.  She wouldn't have grown in the Force without them and without Ben Solo's help in the balance.  So, through Anakin Skywalker, ultimate balance looks like has been brought to the Force.

Of course, this is just all that I am thinking and Disney and Lucasfilm may have different explanations.  In my opinion, I think I might've changed some things to make it better, but I'll talk about that another time.  Give me any comments and be sure to subscribe and following MathSportsGuy on facebook as well!

Fresh Tomatoes and Rotten Tomatoes. What Do They Mean?

If you are not from this planet, you probably haven't heard that a new Star Wars movie is coming out.  I am about to see it myself in 5 hours right from this moment that I am writing this and I have jitters in me.  During this wait, it is hard to not see maybe some tiny spoilers are a glimpse of what people think about the movie who have seen it early because of our world of social media.  One website that a lot of people use to judge if a movie is good or not is the website rottentomatoes.com.  If you are unfamiliar with it, it gives scores of movies out of 100% according to critics and audiences that put their scores onto the website.  An example of what it looks like displayed is the image below representing the Rotten Tomatoes Score for Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.

The Tomatometer is the score from the critics and obviously the one on the right with popcorn is the Audience Score which gives the score that the audience puts for it.  When you click on the "MORE INFO" button, it shows more in depth about what these scores mean like on the image below.

As explained here, the Tomatometer represents the number of the critics that reviewed the movie with a positive review.  This means that 94% of the critics that reviewed Empire Strikes Back gave it a positive review.  That doesn't mean that that was the average rating that they gave it.  As it shows above, the average rating that they gave it was 8.96/10 which could be a 89.6% out of 100%.  For the Audience Score, it explains for this movie that 97% of the audience gave it a 3.5 stars or higher out of 5 stars.  That doesn't mean that the average rating that they gave it was a 97%.  Above it shows that the average rating is actually 4.64 out of 5 stars or 92.8% out of 100%.  As we can see, the scores that we've been reading on rottentomatoes.com may not represent what the average person usually thinks when they go to this website.  If we were to do a ranking on all of the Star Wars movies based solely on the Tomatometer %, it would go as (with the Rise of Skywalker as of now):

   1. Empire Strikes Back - (94%)

   2. A New Hope - (93%)

   2. The Force Awakens - (93%)

   4. The Last Jedi - (91%)

   5. Rogue One - (83%)

   6. Return of the Jedi - (82%)

   7. Revenge of the Sith - (80%)

   8. Solo: A Star Wars Story - (70%)

   9. Attack of the Clones - (65%)
 10. The Rise of Skywalker - (58%)

 11. The Phantom Menace - (53%)

 12. The Clone Wars - (18%)

Now, if we were to do the average ratings of the critics instead (using percentage for the ratings out of 100%), the rankings would go as:

1. Empire Strikes Back - (89.6%)
2. A New Hope - (87.8%)
3. The Force Awakens - (82.7%)
4. The Last Jedi - (80.9%)
5. Rogue One - (74.8%)
6. Revenge of the Sith - (72.8%)
7. Return of the Jedi - (72.5%)
8. Attack of the Clones - (65.9%)
9. Solo: A Star Wars Story - (64.2%)
10. The Rise of Skywalker - (62.2%)
11. The Phantom Menace - (59.7%)
12. The Clone Wars - (42%)

As we can see, the rankings don't really change except for the places of Solo: A Star Wars Story and Attack of the Clones.  But now it gives a little different picture about the scores on these movies.  When we see the actual ratings that the critics gave, you see that some movies did change a bit.  The Tomatometer for The Clone Wars was 18%, but the average rating gave it a 42% which is still not a good movie but not as terrible.  Now when it comes to the Audience Scores, things start to change a bit.  If we were to do a ranking now of all of the Star Wars movies using the percentage for the Audience Score, it would go like this:

      1. Empire Strikes Back - (97%)

      2. A New Hope - (96%)

      3. Return of the Jedi - (94%)

      4. The Force Awakens - (86%)

      4. Rogue One - (86%)

      4. The Rise of Skywalker - (86%)

      7. Revenge of the Sith - (66%)

      8. Solo: A Star Wars Story - (63%)

      9. The Phantom Menace - (59%)

    10. Attack of the Clones - (56%)

    11. The Last Jedi - (43%)

    12. The Clone Wars - (39%)

We can see that these ratings are a bit significant in some part compared to the Tomatometer rankings from the critics.  The critics had The Last Jedi at 91% and then fans had it at 43%.  Critics had The Rise of Skywalker at 58% but the fans had it at 85%.  Now if we accounted the average ratings as percentage for the Audience Score, it would go as:

      1. Empire Strikes Back - (92.8%)

      2. A New Hope - (91%)

      3. Return of the Jedi - (88.4%)

      4. The Rise of Skywalker - (86%)

      5. The Force Awakens - (84.6%)

      6. Rogue One - (81.8%)

      7. The Phantom Menace - (70.4%)

      8. Solo: A Star Wars Story - (68.4%)

      9. Attack of the Clones - (67.4%)

    10. Revenge of the Sith - (62.6%)

    11. The Clone Wars - (58.4%)

    12. The Last Jedi - (54.4%)

Now I will give one final rankings from the data from Rotten Tomatoes.  But this one will be calculated like this:  I will add together the numbered rankings of each movie and then divide the total by 4 since there are 4 rankings in total.  (Example:  The Empire Strikes Back was #1 for all 4 rankings, so I add those rankings together which gives me 4 and then I divide it to 4 like this: 4/4.  Then we get Episode 5 with the ranking score of 1.)  Now the rankings are according to this are:

1. Empire Strikes Back - 1
2. A New Hope - 2
3. The Force Awakens - 3.5
4. Return of the Jedi - 4.75
5. Rogue One - 5
6. Rise of Skywalker - 7
7. Revenge of the Sith - 7.5
8. The Last Jedi - 7.75
9. Solo: A Star Wars Story - 8.25
10. Attack of the Clones - 9
11. The Phantom Menace - 9.5
12. The Clone Wars - 11.75

Now I have given you all the rankings according to all of the data that Rotten Tomatoes has given us.  I did this because everybody seems to base rankings of movies according to this website.  But if it were up to me, this is not the website to do that.  First of all, the best way to know if a movie is good or not is to see it yourself.  Or, you could talk with peers who have seen it before you and get their opinion and then see the movie.  Either way, you need to see the movie to really judge it.  Also, the users on Rotten Tomatoes do no represent everybody who has seen Star Wars.  I have always seen every type of person going to see a Star Wars movie whenever I go.  It can be little children and even old people like someone's grandma.  Do you think that little children or someone's grandma is going to make an account on Rotten Tomatoes to rate it for everyone to see?  Heck my grandma doesn't have wi-fi so I don't really expect that to happen and little children don't judge movies like average age adults do.  

If you really want to get a better score from an audience, try cinemascore.com.  What they do is poll people at the theater and they ask about what score would they give the movie that they just saw.  By doing this they would include anybody who saw the movie.  That could even include those grandmas and little children that see Star Wars as well.  

If you always use Rotten Tomatoes as a way to grade movies, then that is ok.  But what bothers me is when people say that according to the Audience Score, like for The Last Jedi, was a 43% and then the critic score was a 91% which shows that The Last Jedi sucks because the critic score doesn't matter as much.  But then if they see The Rise of Skywalker which currently has an Audience Score of 86% and then the critic score is 58% then they say that that movie sucks, they just need to be quiet.  Be consistent with your judgement.  Quit being mean.  I have spoken!