Football analysis and strategy from Chris B. Brown
Smart Notes — Christian McCaffrey’s Halfback Option, Holgorsen’s Power Football, Belichick on Marv Levy, Emory & Henry Formation
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Smart Notes — Christian McCaffrey’s Halfback Option, Holgorsen’s Power Football, Belichick on Marv Levy, Emory & Henry Formation
McCaffrey’s Y-Stick, Halfback Option Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey narrowly missed out on the Heisman trophy in one of the most competitive races in recent years, as McCaffrey, Clemson’s Deshaun Watson and Alabama’s Derrick Henry each had remarkable seasons, with Henry taking home the trophy. But McCaffrey might be the most intriguing one of the bunch as he has tremendous…
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Long live the Air Raid! The Air Raid is Dead?
The Air Raid offense — the pass-first attack developed by Hal Mumme and Mike Leach from the old BYU offense — is seemingly everywhere. In the last couple of weeks, Cal hired former Leach and Mumme assistant Sonny Dykes as well as his offensive coordinator, the mercurial Tony Franklin; Southern Miss hired Oklahoma State’s nouveau…
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New Grantland: The Development of Geno Smith
It’s now up over at Grantland: Everyone points to the spectacular plays, but it’s making the system’s simple, routine plays that puts Smith in elite company. As Tom Brady is fond of saying, good quarterbacking is often as much about minimizing mistakes and making good plays as it is making great ones. “It really goes down…
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New Grantland: Post/Wheel and the Latest Wrinkles in Holgorsen’s West Virginia Offense
It’s now up: It worked. The receiver outside of Austin, J.D. Woods, ran a post while Austin ran a wheel up the sideline. The post-wheel route combination is one of the oldest in football, but it has increasingly become one of Geno Smith’s favorites. A big reason is that the routes aren’t static; although one…
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New Grantland — The Future of Playcalling: “Packaged plays,” Tecmo Bowl and a revolution in how we define “football play”
It’s now up on Grantland: Admittedly or not, most fans think of real-world play calling as a slightly more complicated version of this “Tecmo Bowl model.” The offense’s job is to “keep the defense guessing,” and the defense must “guess right” to make a stop. On some level, even with their lengthy play sheets and reams…
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The Air Raid Offense: History, Evolution, Weirdness – From Mumme to Leach to Franklin to Holgorsen and Beyond
The personal story of the rise and development of the Air Raid offense, the story of the men who developed and mastered it — its originators, Hal Mumme and Mike Leach, as well as coaches like Tony Franklin and Dana Holgorsen — has been told many times and told very well. The offense itself, however — its raw structure,…