I can’t remember if I was ever remotely good at picking Big 12 games off the lines last year but they’re pretty interesting in terms of gauging sharp expectations for teams heading into the season. So for that reason I’m going to dive into the week one lines and what I think of the national … [Read more…]
Over at SB Nation I’ve got a preview up of the season opener between Texas A&M and UCLA. My sense of the 2017 Texas situation is that it’s not good. At all. They still have talent, plenty of it, but they’ve had tons of talent for much of this decade and typically managed to piss … [Read more…]
There’s not a lot of evidence that I’m particularly good at picking the playoff teams. Maybe no one is, but my track record isn’t great. Last year I apparently picked Michigan, Alabama, Oregon, and Florida State. FSU got derailed early by injuries and Francois wasn’t as good as I expected. Michigan was a solid pick but … [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…]
That was surely the number one concern in the back of every Oklahoma fan’s mind when Lincoln Riley was promoted to head coach. “Will this Air Raid guy make us go soft???” I’ve been disinclined to think that was a likely issue given Riley’s background with Ruffin McNeil and his deep embrace of the Sooners’ … [Read more…]
Over at Football Study Hall I surveyed some of the better OL units of this decade in college football and what sorts of parts went into their assembly.
This week I had Jamie Plunkett (@FrogPreacher) and Melissa Triebwasser (@TheCoachMelissa), the managing editors of FrogsOwar.com to preview TCU’s 2017 season. Amongst our topics were whether Gary Patterson was going to rebuild his once legendary defenses, how he might do so, the current trust level in Kenny Hill, and the long-term vision for the team … [Read more…]
I wrote a big piece on that is now up at SB Nation as part of our preseason preview. Going into that piece I figured I more or less knew the subject matter like the back of my hand since the emergence of the nickel defense is something that has defined the game since I … [Read more…]
Preseason is the time of eternal optimism, when every question mark about every team is one that could break positively or negatively and it’s hard to be sure of which. I find you often get the clearest picture by assuming that the question marks about a given team will break about 50-50. If you do … [Read more…]
I think it’s possible that Tennessee moving on from Joshua Dobbs could actually boost their offense if Quinten Dormady makes good on some of the potential I’ve seen in him. Dormady was a 4-star “pro-style” recruit from a San Antonio suburb (Boerne) that missed his junior year with an injury from baseball and managed to collect … [Read more…]