Football analysis and strategy from Chris B. Brown
New Grantland: Football 101 – Why Power Running Works
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New Grantland: Football 101 – Why Power Running Works
It’s now up over at Grantland: While many think the term “power football” describes an attitude or perhaps even a formation, coaches actually use it to refer to something more technical: the Power-O and Counter Trey run plays, which most coaches simply call Power and Counter, and which are foundational running plays in the NFL…
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New Grantland: Breakdown of Gary Patterson’s TCU 4-2-5 Defense
I’ve been working for a few months on a deep-dive analysis of Gary Patterson’s morphing, multifarious 4-2-5 defense for Grantland, and it’s now up. Patterson’s defense is intriguing on a number of levels, and not only because TCU is ranked #2 in the preseason AP polls: Patterson’s 4-2-5 is custom built for the kinds of…
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New Grantland Bits On Andy Dalton and Ryan Tannehill (and Dolphins OC Bill Lazor)
Bill Barnwell invited me to write some sidebars for his Grantland pieces analyzing Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton and Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill. Check out the Tannehill piece: Ryan Tannehill enters his make-or-break third season with a new offense coordinated by Bill Lazor, a promising but relatively unknown coach. Joe Philbin let his friend Mike Sherman…
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New Grantland: Adrian Peterson and the Lead Draw: The Vikings’ Throwback Play for Their Throwback Runner
It’s now up over at Grantland: The lead draw has a storied history. Dating at least as far back as the Johnny Unitas–led Baltimore Colts, the play had maybe its greatest renaissance when run by Emmitt Smith for the Dallas Cowboys. To this day, Smith — not commonly known for his rhetorical flourishes — waxes philosophical whenever asked…
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New Grantland: Cam Newton and the Diversity of Carolina’s Zone-Read Package
It’s now up over at Grantland: One of them is a play Newton made famous at Auburn — the “inverted veer” or “dash read” play. Unlike a typical zone read where the quarterback reads a back-side defender, the inverted veer reads a player on the front side — the quarterback and running back head in the same…
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New Grantland: Tim Tebow and the Jets
You can find it over at Grantland: This is exactly the role Tebow should have had in the NFL from day one. Former Broncos head coach Josh McDaniels famously traded up to draft Tebow in the first round, an exceedingly high spot for a player that is, and remains, a work in progress. Although it…
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Grantland Blog: Evaluating Alabama’s defense
It’s up over at the Grantland Blog: … Whether pro-style, Air raid, or spread-to-run, we’re living in offense-dominated times. That is, except in the game that (rightly or wrongly) crowns the champion: LSU-Alabama. Indeed, that game features the country’s most dynamic and exciting defensive player in Tyrann Mathieu (who might end up no better than…
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