I’ve spent a lot of time breaking down the state of the Oklahoma defense on this blog which should be pretty important to the story of the 2018 Big 12 season. I’m highly skeptical of the post-Mayfield Sooners in general but I’m not an insane Texas homer that think they’ll be terrible on offense with all … [Read more…]
Oklahoma was abjectly terrible on defense in 2017. I recently had a fun debate with Allen Kenney and Rufus Alexander over what went wrong and why but there wasn’t any debate over whether the defense played at an acceptable level. The 2015 Oklahoma defense was one of the better units they’ve had of late, which … [Read more…]
Over at Football Study Hall I explain the tite-robber defense, the ascendancy of base dime defense, and how base dime personnel will look once this becomes a mainstay across the country. As I explained on Twitter recently, and really bears repeating here and probably again with greater depth in a future article, Texas’ defensive breakthrough … [Read more…]
Over at Football Study Hall I did a post explaining how West Virginia is tapping into market inefficiencies in recruiting by taking program guys from the Midwest while leaning on the transfer market for their feature talent. You’ll notice that there are some team angles here that are the same as for the legendary Nebraska … [Read more…]
It happens basically every other year for someone. The league is driven by QB play and everyone is always either at the heights of being led by a star junior or freshman signal caller or waiting for the next guy to grab the reins. I looked back at the league’s history of replacing top QBs … [Read more…]
The internet is a strange place sometimes. Yesterday I threw out the contention that the 2017 Texas defensive backfield was the fastest in Big 12 history… Contention: The 2017 Texas defensive backfield (secondary and LBs) was the fastest the Big 12 has ever seen. Keep in mind that they played a dime package and the … [Read more…]
Yesterday some vegas odds on total wins for the Big 12 came out and had Twitter and the message boards alight with people mocking Vegas for their silly numbers. Big 12 win totals from @BetDSI pic.twitter.com/j95sPMXuW2 — Tom Fornelli (@TomFornelli) May 7, 2018 My original reaction was dismay and scorn for a lot of these … [Read more…]
If you haven’t heard from fans of other conferences, the Big 12 hasn’t been doing so well in the NFL draft of late. This was a big story in 2017 when only one player (Pat Mahomes, Texas Tech) was drafted from the conference into the first round. I figured that the league would rebound strongly … [Read more…]
Even Ohio State is coming to be more influenced by it after hiring former Kelly QB coach Ryan Day last year as their new QB coach and then this year making him the real OC over Kevin Wilson. I broke some of that transition down over at SB Nation. Chip Kelly is going to go … [Read more…]
That’s been one of the big lessons in the NBA this year. Sure, Utah got a lot of mileage out of trying to guide ball handlers to Rudy Gobert all year but that’s reaching it’s limits as a strategy against the three-point hunting Houston Rockets. And yes, a few teams won round one series by … [Read more…]