As the offseason has gone along, there have been some new changes to the roster makeup of the various teams across the league. The transfer market has extended deep into the summer for a lot of players, in part because of Covid, and then there’s always the normal attrition that can take place. I already … [Read more…]
In the last post I went over the top 10 Big 12 defenses of the 2010s based on scoring defense within league play. That gave us the following list: I like the 2017 TCU Horned Frogs, 2010 Nebraska Cornhuskers, and 2017 Iowa State Cyclones from that list for their performance and/or innovative impact on the … [Read more…]
These three schools all share the common trait of being fairly distantly removed from the biggest metro areas of the Big 12. Those major metro areas and talent hubs are, in order by population: Obviously D.C./Baltimore and Pittsburgh are irrelevant for everyone in the B12 save for West Virginia but they very much matter for … [Read more…]
This has been about as impressive an offseason in Stillwater as I’ve ever seen, and I can readily recall another recent doozy. Heading into 2017 the Cowboys had Mason Rudolph and James Washington coming off big 2016s and both seemed likely to be NFL draft picks. Instead, they both returned along with a healthy Marcell … [Read more…]
Everyone should keep up over at Football Outsiders where I preview every week’s top six games and make picks against FEI’s projection model. This week I’ll have Bedlam and Farmageddon amongst the games that get previewed and picked. But I wanted to hit on a few different smaller topics around the league that I couldn’t … [Read more…]
Week 10 was destined to be one of little consequence for this season in the Big 12 unless disaster befell some team or another. I guess there were some disastrous events for the TCU Horned Frogs, but they weren’t a team of much consequence for this season save for as a potential spoiler, a role … [Read more…]
I may have to take back some of my comments about Les Miles’ errors in pulling the scholarship from Jax “the destroyer” Dineen. There’s two arguments in favor of Miles’ decision that have made it an apparently justifiable move. The first is that by accepting the transfer of his own son, Ben Miles, as a … [Read more…]
Ian Boyd: Coach, last year with the new defensive coordinator, you brought a lot of pressure, finished 10th nationally in sacks, but gave up 32 and a half points per game. Will the approach on defense change this year in year two to something more conservative or will you guys run it back and look … [Read more…]
Last Friday at Football Study Hall I broke down OSU’s evolving approach to offense and contextualized it somewhat within their plan for attacking the Cyclone Inverted Tampa-2 defense last season. That post started as me determining to look back and try to fully grok how it was that OSU was able to drop 42 points … [Read more…]
Mike Gundy is, in my estimation, one of the most clever strategists in the Big 12. His program management is clearly high level and the Pokes are regularly anticipating developments around the league and putting themselves in position to be at the cutting edge of evolving tactics. Recently that has meant stockpiling actual, dual-threat TE … [Read more…]