Brent Venables’ Clemson Tigers defense got themselves into quite a hole against Ohio State in the playoff semifinal. The score was 16-0 midway through the second quarter and the Tiger offense was struggling to find room to breathe against the Buckeyes between a sudden rash of injuries at receiver and Ohio State’s amazing athleticism. The … [Read more…]
My recent book, Flyover Football… …begins with Clemson’s victory over Alabama in the 2018 National Championship game. It explains why Clemson’s emphasis on spread passing allowed them to win the day over Alabama with their own powerhouse offense and NFL talents. From there I told the story of how and why the spread offense really … [Read more…]
Over the last couple of years, particularly while researching and writing my book… …I developed a theory that the college football playoffs essentially come down to which teams have the best spread passing attacks. I reference this theory all the time here, at Football Outsiders, and at Inside Texas but I haven’t fleshed out the … [Read more…]
You can check out my preseason list here. I like to use different categories than the official ballot when I make my own team. The goal of the media/coaches selections is primarily to recognize the best players in the conference in a given year. I like to make designations that reflect the sorts of roles … [Read more…]
Obviously Oklahoma won the Big 12 championship in 2019. This was the fifth consecutive time they’ve done that and the sixth time this decade (2011-2019). It’s also worth pointing out that Oklahoma drew a playoff berth as a result of finishing 12-1 and that this is the fourth time in five years that they’ve been … [Read more…]
This is a pretty interesting game coming up between Baylor and Oklahoma. This is our third Big 12 title game since they reintroduced it in the round robin era. Overall the round robin era has been a difficult grind that has served to demonstrate the supremacy of spread passing as Oklahoma has been the only … [Read more…]
The last two seasons at TCU have been defined by trying to win games by running the ball, controlling the game’s tempo, and playing great defense. Over those two seasons the Frogs are 12-13 with a 7-11 mark in Big 12 play. The trendy move for someone like Patterson after falling short for a couple … [Read more…]
Since I coined the term “inverted Tampa 2” to describe Iowa State’s defense I’ve been getting questions regularly on how this newfangled anti-spread scheme works. Particularly since Baylor essentially stole it and made it a major part of their package while turning their bust-prone defense into a unit that paved the way for an 11-1 … [Read more…]
That was it, the last week of regular season Big 12 football for the 2019 season. It was an interesting year, we’ll recap it in a variety of ways over the coming weeks including with my All-B12 thoughts and some breakdowns of Baylor v Oklahoma round II. The final weekend spelled out well some of … [Read more…]