Shortly after the Camping World Bowl between Iowa State and Notre Dame, which was a disaster for the Cyclones, TE Charlie Kolar announced he’d be returning for 2020. That was probably the right call, Kolar has NFL talent but he’s still developing his tool box. He ended up with 51 catches for 697 yards and … [Read more…]
The Shanahan O is probably one of the more poorly examined and least understood offensive systems in football. It doesn’t even really have a name other than the general “zone run game” tag that isn’t always particularly useful since a lot of teams run zone but don’t run the offense developed by Mike Shanahan. The … [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…]
You could argue that Baylor was the story of the 2010s in the Big 12. Oklahoma obviously dominated most of the decade, winning 6.5 Big 12 titles, making four playoff appearances, and putting up the following record against the rest of the league: A completely inability to deal with Oklahoma was truly the primary obstacle … [Read more…]
I’ve been trying to find the right words and analogies recently in order to explain why it is that I’m so confident in the emergent supremacy of spread passing offense, particularly pro-style spread passing. The Big 12 and Flyover Football is often dominated more by smashmouth spread systems that emphasize the run game in order … [Read more…]
I’d never have guessed that this was going to be a major topic in the Big 12, not even in the week or so after Matt Rhule left for Carolina, not until his name was explicitly mentioned for the Baylor job. For starters, Dave Aranda has never necessarily seemed to be a future HC kind … [Read more…]
Many TCU fans were disappointed to learn that Gary Patterson’s big offseason shuffle on offense was to bring back Doug Meacham, move old OL coach Jarrett Anderson back, and then bring in Jerry Kill in an off field role. None of that promises to result in particularly big changes to TCU’s often overly conservative approach … [Read more…]
Once Deshaun Watson dethroned Alabama in 2016, I began to develop my theory that spread passing wins championships these days at the college level. I then began to look around at the 2017 rosters for teams that could mimic Clemson’s method and take down Alabama, settling on the Sam Darnold USC Trojans who were returning … [Read more…]
Greatest college offense of all time? There’s no question that that was literally the hardest offense to defend that we’ve ever seen. The way their passing game attacked the full field while giving Joe Burrow options and answers to most any problem the defense could present made it the most complete and fully modernized system … [Read more…]
I wanted to accumulate everything I’ve written on this National Championship game in one place. At Football Outsiders I have a big preview while tabling the stats and analytic projections for the game. Here’s a piece on Clemson’ adapting the inverted Tampa 2 to stifle Ohio State. I broke down how Clemson doubled down on … [Read more…]