Recently I was talking Oklahoma defensive back recruiting and schematic future under Alex Grinch with Sooners Wire’s Kegan Reneau. It was sparked by this post I did on what Oklahoma and Texas will be attempting to do philosophically to stop all the potent passing attacks the Big 12 will feature in 2020. Reneau asked me … [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…]
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…]
Perhaps the most important dimension to the National Championship game is how well Clemson can hold up against LSU’s precision strikes. A big part of the Big 12 game, at least in seasons when particular teams have good QB play, is the college game’s equivalent of the “precision strike.” That’s a military term for weapons … [Read more…]
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…]
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…]
It’d been maybe a month or two since I chuckled at the fact that Oklahoma ran Brent Venables out of town to make room for “cautious Mike” Stoops. This article was a good outlet for that energy as I ranked the top 5 DCs in college football today. Aranda is the sole representative of the … [Read more…]