July 11, 2012
chris brown's magisterial history of the air raid.

This essay might be a bit impenetrable for beginners to football, but for Xs-and-Os devotees, you really can’t beat Brown’s work here. The Air Raid is the dominant offensive philosophy of this era of college football, and it shows that it’s also one of Brown’s real passions. He’s been writing on the subject since I started reading him in 2008, and this really feels like the capstone of the process.

In short: essential reading for college football fans, especially those of you who want to learn more about the syntax, strategy, and history of the game as it stands today.

2:32pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZbAK7yP8-Ly6
(View comments) 
Filed under: college football chris brown smart football air raid sports hal mumme mike leach dana holgorsen lavell edwards tony franklin 
July 25, 2011
"Stand back and watch the human splendor. Really, that’s what it is. It’s like people-watching during a riot. Like if you just pulled up a lawn chair and had a pitcher of margaritas and you just watched a riot happen in front of you, except no one got hurt. He lets people throw rhetorical garbage cans through metaphorical windows. It’s fantastic."

— Spencer Hall, capturing the essence of the Paul Finebaum Radio Network better in my interview with him than I ever could, I’m afraid.

5:16pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZbAK7y7WLBip
(View comments) 
(Notes: 3)
  
Filed under: paul finebaum spencer hall edsbs college football 
November 8, 2010
tigah style.

I noticed, after Bama’s loss to Sakerlina, that Saban’s defense was running a lot of quarters coverage, which is a really simple read-and-react defense that can create quick double-teams on deep receivers.  It’s a really common coverage in college, but one of the things that’s made Saban’s defenses so good, historically speaking, has been their commitment to disguised, tight zone coverage mixed with heavy blitzes.  Saban’s reluctance to try and confuse Steven Garcia (a bizarre choice, given Garcia’s booger-eating tendencies) allowed Steve Spurrier, perhaps the most successful offensive coach ever against vanilla coverages, to isolate Alshon Jeffery in favorable one-on-one matchups, and the rest is history and Dre Kirkpatrick’s shattered pride.

The reason for running such basic coverages had several causes, I’m sure, but it seemed obvious that DeMarcus Milliner’s blown coverage to allow a touchdown in the early seconds of the Arkansas game got caught like molasses in the delicious waffle that is Nick Saban’s brain.  The Ole Miss game featured a more typical diet of Saban Specials (i.e., zone blitzes and rotating zone coverage), largely because a. Jeremiah Masoli is dumb and b. Ole Miss’s offense doesn’t take many shots downfield.  It was a low-risk, high-reward decision, and I wasn’t surprised to see Alabama come out swinging with those zone blitzes against LSU.  Unfortunately for them, it lost them the game.

Read More

11:40pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZbAK7y1Qm_95
(View comments) 
Filed under: lsu alabama crimson tide college football 
October 14, 2010
get your read on, football fans.

Some recommended reading before this weekend:

  • When your team’s season takes a turn for the worse, you might be tempted to analyze and isolate specific back-breaking mistakes.  When it looks like your team will have to drastically scale back its expectations because “a turn for the worse” does not adequately describe it anymore, your reactions to your team might be by turns enraged and poetic.  When you’re a Tennessee Volunteers fan, you recreate your season as if it were a text-based adventure from the 80’s, which is exactly what Rocky Top Talk did.
  • I assume that the rest of you will be joining me in the vitamin-rich wastelands of the Big 10 this weekend; here’s a Buckeye take on this year’s edition of the Wisconsin Badgers, as well as a predictably hilarious Q&A between some Iowa and Michigan fans.
  • I’m not an expert on the Oregon offense and you probably aren’t either, but neither of us would write a nationally-syndicated column about it like Gregg Easterbrook did.  Braves & Birds drops some knowledge on Easterbrook, giving some interesting tidbits on how Oregon’s offense actually is constructed in the process.  (h/t Smart Football).
  • Speaking of Smart Football, here’s Chris’ breakdown of something we saw a lot on Saturday, the fade route against bump-and-run coverage.
  • Pro Football Focus has a lot of detractors, and I strongly doubt its premium package is worth paying for.  That said, its All-Pro Team a quarter of the way through the season should give you under-the-radar guys to look out for on Sundays.

10:34pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZbAK7y1EYyBu
(View comments) 
Filed under: college football nfl 
October 13, 2010
and i’m starry-eyed.

Marcus Lattimore, about to score a touchdown.

It’s only fitting that a week after writing a post giving my condolences to the family of the late, lamented fun of football season, entertaining football would return with a crossbow in its hands and a dagger in its teeth; in other words, with a serious vengeance.  It’s also only fitting that after I mention the sickness unto death emanating from every team facing Alabama this year, the ol’ Lamecocks would show up and give them what for in a football contest.

Read More

11:25pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZbAK7y1E8wHh
(View comments) 
Filed under: college football lsu ess ee see 
October 5, 2010
it’s a terrible love, and i’m walkin’ with spiders.

Sorry, Precious.

As a Saints fan, I’ve become accustomed to the different varieties of losing. There’s the frustrating, where the pain is rooted mainly in the helplessness you feel while watching the tragic unfolding of fate; the humiliating, where the pain comes from the certain knowledge that someone, somewhere, is planning just how they’re going to rub it in the next time they see you; and the agonizing, which combines elements of the first two but saves it for the precise moment when you are at your most breathless and vulnerable, and which leaves you utterly devastated.

Having said all that, I have never witnessed a loss as mystifyingly cruel as the one that befell Derek Dooley and the Tennessee Volunteers on Saturday against LSU.  I have no special love for the Volunteers, who might actually be my most hated team in the SEC whose name doesn’t rhyme with “piss” or “schmarkansas.”  After years of relatively good feelings toward Tennessee due to program-wide decay and the genius of Eric Berry, seeing the dirty chop block on Sam Montgomery, LSU’s promising freshman defensive end, rekindled that hate with interest.  But that was still the most disastrous loss conceivable, a sucker punch that wouldn’t look out of place in Blood Meridian or the darkest machinations of Crazy Old Testament God.

Read More

12:18am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZbAK7y1AMto6
(View comments) 
Filed under: college football nfl 
September 25, 2010
alabam, don’t give a damn.

Saban's defenses are already tough to read; all that meth can't help.

Some predictions for this (pretty great) weekend of football:

ALABAMA at Arkansas:  I’m trying not to base too much of this pick on my first-hand experience of Arkansas’ dishumiliarrassment at the hands of the Tide last year in Bryant-Denny, where the Bama defense (especially Marcell Dareus) completely dismantled the Razorback’s offense while Bama’s offense looked every bit the juggernaut against an outmatched Arkansas defense.  Both teams have changed in the interim, with Arkansas at least appearing to close the gap to some degree, largely due to the secondary talent Bama lost to the draft.

Read More

1:09am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZbAK7y16YN8k
(View comments) 
Filed under: college football nfl New Orleans Saints predictions 
Liked posts on Tumblr: More liked posts »