Kendall Wright and not drifting away from the ball out of a cut. Matt does a good job of discussing the difference between drifting away from the ball after a receiver makes a cut while still having different “types” cuts, like “flat” breaks and “speed cuts.” A lot of scouts have an instinctive reaction to speed cuts, claiming the receiver “rounds off his route,” but that’s actually what you teach on certain timing patterns; you don’t want the receiver to lose speed out of his break which he will on any true “flat” break.
– Peter King on the growth of Eli Manning. Also, it’s worth revisiting Michael Lewis’s piece on the “Eli Experiment” from a few years back.
– Indy Football Clinic Spread Offense Notes.
– “Bench Wren,” a great boundary defensive pressure concept.
– The best negative book reviews of the year.
– NFL quarterbacks and their backups.
– Why Success Rate is not as important in football as it is in baseball. Note that one of the few useful applications of Success Rate is with respect to individual runningbacks, which was discussed here.
– The physics behind music. Interesting piece.
– Inside Instagram. I’m not convinced that the goal of all of these start-ups should be to “get big fast” via venture funding, but different contexts require different approaches.