When I was about 17, I went hunting through all those Greatest TV Shows of All Time lists looking for something to watch.
I stumbled onto The West Wing.
“I’m interested in politics”, I thought, “this will be a searing and interesting insight into what happens in that White House”.
Then I started watching it and it’s just smug losers talking quickly using jargon, behind the backdrop of the most absurdly positive outlook imaginable.
And this was the 90s-2000s with Bill Clinton getting serviced in the Oval and Bush lying about his military record! Not exactly the peak of trust!
I could see the craft, but craft overtook the need for it to be any good.
I thought, what am I missing?
Then I watched The Newsroom, which critics also loved but they were wrong.
It’s Dumb from Dumb and Dumber being right about every news story because he has the enormous benefit of hindsight.
Again, replete with smug losers.
I’ve also seen Aaron Sorkin’s other stuff.
I love A Few Good Men, obviously. But the Social Network is overrated even despite David Fincher’s best efforts.
Same with Molly’s Game.
But despite what seemed to be staring me in the face, all of this tripe was getting incredibly good reviews and, in the case of The Social Network, was being hailed as a masterpiece.
It’s clearly hard to write, but is any of it good?
Nobody bothered to ask that as everyone hailed it as brilliant.
Everything said “masterpiece,” but I saw the opposite. And now, finally, the tide has turned against Sorkin.
That’s a long way of saying: I feel vindicated about the Pies’ defence.
By every metric, even in their swoon before they were dismembered by Hawthorn, the Pies were statistically the best defence in the AFL.
But, like watching Sorkin, the eye test said otherwise.
This is an elite defence.
But it’s one of the frailest elite defences I’ve ever seen.
The Pies defensive system is complicated in a sense, but also not.
They start defending very close to their own goal, fanning out from the ball carrier.
They defend in a V-zone that covers the middle of the ground and moves out from there with all the players maintaining their position in relation to the other Pies.
They’re brilliantly coached, working like an NFL secondary.
That approach tends to force teams wide and, because their ball pressure is generally so good, they make teams to kick long up the line to contests where Collingwood manufactures an extra man at aerial contests.
Because of how they defend the front part of the ground, they’re susceptible to getting burned over the back.
It’s pretty clear that they’re happy to give up the odd goal over the back because they figure they’ll win more than they lose.
That maths has faded over the last month.
For the year, the Pies are the fourth-best front-half and turnover-scoring team, built on intercept marks, quality entries, and pressure from Bobby Hill, Lachie Schultz, and Beau McCreery.
But with two of those players out for extended periods they’ve slipped to 10th and 11th over the past five games.
Because of that, they have no time to set up and get burned by hard running and direct teams who are able to get clean ball movement.
That collapse in front-half pressure has bled into their back-half numbers.
Season-long, they’re second-best at limiting scores per inside 50 and fifth-best at preventing marks inside 50.
In the last five games? 14th and 13th.
They’ve become the footy equivalent of Colonel Jessup, cracking when they lose control.
Hawthorn was the latest beneficiary of that frailty.
Sam Mitchell clearly issued a directive not to bomb long wherever it could be helped but especially around 50.
Whenever they took a mark 60-70m out, there was always a runner, often Jarman Impey, strolling past for a handball so the ball could stay in motion and then he hit a chest for a shot.
Brisbane took a similar approach to their ball movement, again because Collingwood couldn’t force them otherwise.
They took 18 and 13 marks inside 50 against the Pies, respectively.
In both games, as well as the Fremantle game, highly mobile key forwards who get by on movement completely dominated the games because the ball moved quickly and they were able to capitalise on their mobility to take advantage of Collingwood’s frailties.
Simply, Collingwood lacks winners behind the ball.
Their defenders are constantly caught behind leading forwards and have displayed no capacity to win in one on one situations.
You could make an argument about Isaac Quaynor maybe, but last year proved that Quaynor is better as a rebounding player with defensive chops rather than a lockdown player.
The system is built to guarantee help.
It’s what Jeremy Howe and Darcy Moore are best at, but when the pressure ahead of the ball fails, so does Collingwood.
The idea that having an outnumber behind the ball is good isn’t new.
But if I look back to the last two dynasties, both of whom had excellent third man up players in Josh Gibson and Alex Rance then Dylan Grimes, there was always at least a pillar of stability who could win on his own.
The Hawks had Brian Lake and the Tigers had Dave Astbury.
Collingwood has Billy Frampton.
Maybe the pressure gets better with Hill and McCreery back, as well as Jeremy Howe and all is right in the world.
The first 15 weeks of the season wasn’t a fluke.
It would be a silly person to write them off, especially this year given the state of the finals.
But they need to be able to survive the ebbs and flows of the finals series, and I haven’t seen many elite units be less capable of dealing with those ebbs and flows than the Pies backline.
There are certain truths they simply can’t handle.