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…]
My recent book, Flyover Football… …begins with Clemson’s victory over Alabama in the 2018 National Championship game. It explains why Clemson’s emphasis on spread passing allowed them to win the day over Alabama with their own powerhouse offense and NFL talents. From there I told the story of how and why the spread offense really … [Read more…]
Over the last couple of years, particularly while researching and writing my book… …I developed a theory that the college football playoffs essentially come down to which teams have the best spread passing attacks. I reference this theory all the time here, at Football Outsiders, and at Inside Texas but I haven’t fleshed out the … [Read more…]
LSU vs Auburn, Tigers vs Tigers, was a big moment in the history of the spread offense’s inexorable march across the game of football. We’ve seen a few big time spread battles in the SEC before. Texas A&M introduced the Air Raid back in 2012 and had a pair of big seasons with Johnny Manziel … [Read more…]
Week 2 didn’t have a ton going on across the Big 12 and what good matchups there were largely went sideways for the conference. In a major reversal of years of tradition, LSU came into DKR and put on a clinic for modern spread passing offense. I’ve really only seen a handful of Big 12 … [Read more…]
There’s no beating the South for college football. The Midwest takes the game very, very seriously and the Big 10 has started to catch up again with the SEC since hiring Urban Meyer and slowly integrating the spread offense across the rust belt and plains. Still, there’s a number of factors working against the B1G … [Read more…]
LSU shut the freaking door on BYU’s defense this last weekend while fielding a defense of Houston kids. I broke down how they mixed an old school 4-3 Under defense with a 2-4-5 nickel sub-package to wreak havoc on BYU’s pro-stylings on offense over at Saturday Down South. I think their “confuse and clobber” offense … [Read more…]
Over at Football Study Hall I explain the philosophy of offenses using unbalanced sets, fullbacks, tight ends, and multiple RB formations to try and confuse opponents before running them over. The main idea with this style of offense is to use a variety of formations, sweeps, and multiple ball carriers to obscure the fact that … [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…]