One of the very difficult things about prognosticating in the Big 12 is how close the mid-level teams are to one another. This decade has typically included 3 teams at the top that were safely better than most of the league (generally OU plus 1-2 other squads) and then a wide morass of mid-level teams … [Read more…]
Over at Inside Texas I was describing the great riches of experience and talent in the Longhorn secondary returning next season ($) and included some research I did on B12 secondaries over the last five years. What I found was that the defenses that have ranked in the top 40 per S&P+ in the Big … [Read more…]
We now take a brief interruption from my breakdown of every Big 12 recruiting class (only one to go, Baylor) so that I can highlight something fun I just posted up at SB Nation. I ranked the undefeated teams and another squad that I think would have been the most likely to win in the … [Read more…]
I overlooked TCU in my preseason prognostications of the 2017 Big 12 football season. I probably oversteered a bit for having missed West Virginia the previous season and I also underestimated Gary Patterson’s ability to fix the defense with so many returning starters and Sonny Cumbie’s ability to mold Kenny Hill into a good game … [Read more…]
My main intention with this series was to dive into the differences between varying types of 4-2-5, 3-3-5, and 3-2-6 defensive formations but I hit 1500 words in a hurry explaining how teams will still play true 4-3 and 3-4 structures against the spread so I decided to split this into multiple parts. Today we’ll … [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…]
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…]
A few years back I wrote a really popular post called, “TCU’s Baylor problem” in which I explained that Baylor’s offensive scheme (which is now gone but has influenced the rest of the league) presented major stresses to TCU’s 4-2-5. Everyone had a Baylor problem, really, but TCU’s 4-2-5 was designed to allow them to … [Read more…]
I speculated back when Doug Meacham left TCU for a fairly unimpressive gig at Kansas that TCU was looking to change things up on offense once again. Obviously the switch to the Air Raid was very good for them and resulted in back to back 10-win seasons. But the big key was that the switch … [Read more…]