There’s a running joke that Bill Belichick likes to trade out of the first round of the NFL Draft, acquiring a larger number of late-round picks. This joke depends on his identity as something of a passionless rogue thinker. So after he used his first round draft pick last night to draft an actual football player, I decided to look back at his history as Head Coach (and de facto General Manager) of the New England Patriots. Here’s the full list of what he did with first round picks:

• 2000 (#16): Sent to Jets as compensation for his own hiring
• 2001 (#6): Drafted Richard Seymour
• 2002 (#32): Traded up to #21, drafted Dan Graham
• 2003 (#14): Acquired via trade for Drew Bledsoe, traded up to #13, drafted Ty Warren
• 2003 (#19): Traded down to 2nd round plus 2004 1st round
• 2004 (#21): Acquired via above trade, drafted Vince Wilfork
• 2004 (#32): Drafted Ben Watson
• 2005 (#32): Drafted Logan Mankins
• 2006 (#21): Drafted Lawrence Maroney
• 2007 (#28): Traded down to 4th round plus 2008 1st round
• 2008 (#7): Acquired via above trade, traded down to #10, drafted Jerod Mayo
• 2008 (#31): Forfeited as penalty for SpyGate
• 2009 (#23): Traded down to #26 plus 5th round, then traded those for a 2nd and two 3rds
• 2010 (#22): Traded down to #24, then again to #27, drafted Devin McCourty
• 2011 (#17): Acquired via trade for Richard Seymour, drafted Nate Solder
• 2011 (#28): Traded down to 2nd round plus 2012 1st round
• 2012 (#27): Acquired via above trade, traded up to #21, drafted Chandler Jones
• 2012 (#31): Traded up to #25, drafted Dont'a Hightower
• 2013 (#29): Traded down for 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th round picks
• 2014 (#29): Drafted Dominique Easley

So in the past fifteen drafts, he’s drafted 13 players in the first round (including 2 after trading downward within the round and 4 after trading upward) and got out of the first round entirely 5 times. Draw whatever conclusion you like, but that doesn’t seem like a particularly strong trend to me. From 2007-2011, however, he traded down or out with 5 of their 6 picks – I wonder if that’s where this reputation originated.

The following records have been set in the first two weeks of the 2011 NFL season:

• Most total yards passing in a game by both teams - Brady and Henne, week 1 (906)
• Most yards passing by a rookie - Newton tied it week 1 (422) and then broke it week 2 (432)
• Most yards passing in the first two weeks of a season - Newton (854), and then a couple hours later Brady broke it (940)
• Most total touchdowns by all teams in the first two weeks of a season (172)
• Most total passing yards by all teams in the first two weeks of a season (15,771)
• Most consecutive 400+ yard passing games - Newton and Brady tied it at 2
• Most QBs with 300+ yard passing games in one weekend - week 1 (14)
• Longest field goal - tied by Janikowski (63 yards) week 1
• Most penalties by both teams in a single game - Raiders vs Broncos (25)

There’s more if you count near-records. Brady’s week 1 performance of 516 passing yards was a team record and a Monday Night record, but only the fifth-best ever. And his 940 passing yards over two games was the most in the first two weeks of a season, but was five yards short of the record for any two consecutive games.

So far, a weird high-scoring season. It’ll be left to be seen if this is just a result of the shortened offseason (thanks to the lockout), or bigger strategic changes across the league.

NASCAR uses about 6,000 gallons (of 110-octane E15 fuel) per race week. The United States averages 386 million gallons of gasoline per day. NASCAR runs 39 races per year (including the pre-season and All-Star races), so their usage only accounts for 0.000166% of fuel consumption in the United States (or about one out of every six-hundred-thousand gallons used).

Cowboy Stadium spends about $200,000 per month on utilities. If we assume that’s mostly electricity, that’s about 25,000 MWh, or the equivalent of an 80,000 person city.

A gallon of gas contains about 35-40 kWh of energy. So Cowboy Stadium consumes 32 times as much energy as all of the cars in NASCAR.

Yesterday, the Patriots went into halftime with a 14-10 lead. They didn’t score once in the second half, and went home on the wrong side of a 14-28 game. I said at the time that it reminded me a lot of last year. I pulled up some numbers to be sure. (The following stats are for all of 2009 and 2010, including both regular and post-season games. That’s a total of 19 games.)

• In regulation over that period, we were 11-7-1. The one "tie" went into overtime and the Broncos won on a field goal. (Don't get me started on sudden death overtime.)
• If the games had ended after one half, we would have been 14-3-2 over that period. If they'd ended after three quarters, we'd have been 14-5-0.
• Our total point differential has been 154 points in the first half, and -28 in the second half.
• The point differentials have been 38 in the first quarter, 116 (!!) in the second, 3 points in the third, and -31 in the fourth quarter.

Maybe we can lobby the league to switch to a 45-minute clock when they go to a 20-week/18-game schedule?

Here’s a trivia question (to which I currently do not know the answer) inspired by the Red Sox’s recent World Series win and what I can only hope is soon to be the unbeaten 9-0 Patriots. If you take the 4 major American team professional sports championships (Stanley Cup, World Series, Superbowl, NBA Finals^[1]), what’s the longest streak of consecutive championships in one metropolitan area?^[2]

^[1] - Is it just me, or does basketball not have a very recognizable term for its championship? ^[2] - I’m willing to be relatively flexible with the definition of “metropolitan area”.

Update: Answers below the fold!

There are a number of issues that make this question less than straightforward to answer. Firstly, before 1915, the Stanley cup was only contested on a challenge basis (similar to the way that chess and boxing are done today). Since the challenges weren’t annual, and there were a lot of times that the challenger was crushed outright, I’m going to ignore those years. Second, the question of how far back to look comes up. There’s never been a streak of more than two consecutive championships in the same area as long as all four contests have existed in their current form (the Superbowl, started in 1968, is the youngest).

Not counting pre-1915 hockey, there have been three times that there have been streaks of three. In 1906-1908, the Chicago White Sox won the World Series once and the Cubs won twice, and none of the others existed. In 1927, the New York Yankees won the World Series, and then in 1928 the Rangers won the Stanley Cup and the Yankees won again. In 1932-33, New York repeated the feat with the Yankees, Rangers, and the (baseball) Giants.

There has almost been one streak of three since 1968, but it requires that we make the cognitive leap to assuming that San Francisco and Los Angeles are a single metropolitan area. And I think that in terms of sports affinity, it’s a hard case to make. But in 1988, the Lakers won the NBA Finals, the Dodgers won the World Series, and then in early 1989 the 49ers took home the Lombardi Trophy.