It’s been interesting to see the Shanahan offense enjoy a resurgence in the NFL game. It’s never really gone away, receiving various tweaks and updates over the years, and the last two NFC champions in the NFL employed modern takes on the original Mike Shanahan offense. First the Sean McVay LA Rams and then the … [Read more…]
Someone asked Bill Connelly a really good question on Twitter yesterday in response to his article about how the spread has “won” in college football and is now the strategy. I have a lot of thoughts on this, indeed I wrote an entire book before the season on the topic of what’s been driving offensive … [Read more…]
My old colleague Bill Connelly has a piece up on ESPN.com today about how the spread has “won” in college football. That’s the thing now, spread offense. I’ve been writing, arguing, and explaining as much for the last several years. LSU’s dominant 2019 run obviously established this pretty firmly. Before the LSU title run and … [Read more…]
Every year there’s always a lot of debate around various quarterback prospects. There’s a ton riding on these guys, if you pick the right one you may have set your franchise up for a decade and a favorite strategy these days is to take advantage of having a solid quarterback on a rookie deal to … [Read more…]
Today’s largely accepted wisdom is that you build a National Champion by recruiting the best players in the country, regardless of their location, and assembling your team out of the best of the best. Alabama started to employ that model as the Nick Saban program got going, Ohio State got there as well, and Clemson … [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…]
Over at Football Study Hall I propose that the G5 get out ahead of the coming shifts and changes in college football and establish their own playoff to determine a national champion.
Over at Football Study Hall I chronicle how things are going for the various Briles-tree coaches around the college game. The situation in Houston is pretty interesting. If you’re a fan of conspiracy theories there’s some reason to believe that the pro-Briles Cougar boosters are working a hostile takeover of the program. First pushing Applewhite … [Read more…]
Over at Football Study Hall I did a post on the increasing use of iso run schemes amongst smashmouth spread teams. The smashmouth spread in general is starting to evolve into just becoming “spread-iso” football. By that I mean that the goal is basically to spread teams out, find the weak spot, and hammer it … [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…]