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…]
The old “Mack Brown wanted prospect X as a safety” meme is pretty much dead and gone now that Texas is on their second post-Mack coach, but the ultimate example of Mack’s QB eval problems just went no. 1 in the NFL draft. Back in the day before that meme got going things were chugging … [Read more…]
Last night I went on the “Phil in the Cap” podcast to talk Texas, Oklahoma, and Big 12 football in 2018. Included in there are some nuggets on the upcoming Texas season, my theories on how OU could face a steep fall this season by dying a “death from a thousand paper cuts,” and my … [Read more…]
I studied Iowa State’s 2017 run game pretty carefully this past week for a post over at Football Study Hall on whether it can propel them up yet another level in 2018. Iowa State is a “smashmouth spread” in every sense of the word, using pass concepts that create vertical stress and running them off … [Read more…]
…decides to play baseball? I broke down some of the OU spring game, first with an eye towards the play of the QBs Austin Kendall and Kyler Murray. I used some of my observations there in this recent post at SB Nation exploring the possibility that his baseball potential could pull him away from Norman … [Read more…]