I was pretty bearish on Mario Cristobal’s Oregon team heading into 2019. Justin Herbert never really convinced me he was elite, the offense seemed overly focused on running the ball behind the offensive line, and the strategy of building Oregon around the offensive line always struck me as a dubious method. Every school is always … [Read more…]
Almost everyone runs the spread now. Using multiple receivers, spacing, and the forward pass as the key components to your offensive strategy is pretty well accepted now as a best practice. The hurry-up, no-huddle (HUNH) is also close to being accepted as a best practice. Obviously Kansas State is out here running A-gap power from … [Read more…]
The NBA playoffs often come down to matchups, as the good pundits are typically fond of noting. The Utah Jazz are pretty darn good when they aren’t playing the better spread/shooting teams like the Houston Rockets or Golden State Warriors. The Rockets make life hard for everyone because they force you to deal with James … [Read more…]
The 2017 Kansas State vs Oklahoma game was a really impressive contest between what I’m now delineating as a “spread-option” team and a “spread-Iso” team. I may have to further adjust those terms but the idea is that OU will create multiple stress points with their scheme and then “send it where you ain’t.” K-State … [Read more…]
I was debating TCU’s offensive direction under Sonny Cumbie on the Inside Texas message board recently and found, as I often do, that the explanations I was giving of the current TCU process and philosophy on both sides of the ball would make for a rather good article. I’ve done so over at Football Study … [Read more…]
Matt Rhule walked into a tough situation, a true fixer-upper if you’ll forgive me, in taking over Briles’ Baylor program. Beyond the acrimony over the scandal that took down Briles and much of the leadership at Baylor, Rhule also came to find a gutted roster and a recruiting class with only a single committed player. … [Read more…]
Those games featured future Big 12 QBs Shawn Robinson (TCU), Charlie Brewer (Baylor), and Xavier Martin (Texas Tech). It also provided a nice contrast between two diverging paths I see for spread-option football. I’ll be posting more on these QBs as I wrap up my breakdowns of the Big 12 recruiting classes but read my … [Read more…]
A huge help to me in getting started in the world of football X’s and O’s and understanding the game’s strategies and developments was reading Chris Brown’s “Smart Football” website and then his Grantland column. He was good enough to send me a free copy of his second book which along with his first catalogue a … [Read more…]
Matt Rhule made a couple of big moves this past weekend when he filled out his offensive staff by hiring Matt Lubick (Co-OC/WR coach for Oregon) and Jeff Nixon (TE coach for San Francisco 49er’s) to be the co-offensive coordinators in Waco. The rest of the staff includes Texas HS fave Joey McGuire from Cedar … [Read more…]