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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Studying the Raw Materials of Chip Kelly’s Up-Tempo Offense
With Chip Kelly going to the Eagles, there’s been much hand wringing about whether Chip Kelly’s offense will work in the NFL, whether he’ll bring it to Philly verbatim, and so on. I honestly don’t know the definitive answer — I am not sure Chip does — but I’m certainly looking forward to watching. Nevertheless,…
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Capital One Bowl: Does Nebraska Have Enough Magic to Defeat Georgia’s 3-4 Defense?
Although being in a New Years Day bowl game is not quite the marker it once was — back in the pre-BCS era when the first day of the year was a final, spasmodic orgy of college football — it still represents the heart of bowl season, when (for the most part, at least) worthy…
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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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Combining the shovel option with a sprint-out pass
One of my favorite recent evolutions in offenses has come from the rise of “combined” or “packaged” concepts, which might combine both a run and a quick pass play or a quick shovel screen and a quick pass into the same play. Part of the motivation behind such concepts is that they are simply good…
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New Grantland Blog: Draw It Up: Army-Navy and the Flexbone Offense
It’s up over at the Triangle Blog: Niumatalolo and others at the academies, however, have evolved the offense by not just lining up in the same flexbone set and running the veer triple and the midline option 40 times a game. (Although they’re happy to do that, too, if you don’t defend it well.) Instead,…
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Smart Links – Strategery Round-Up: two-tight ends, the 3-4 defense, rocket toss and “Iso” – 12/8/2011
Old school Green Bay Packers’ use of two-tight ends: – Two good links from Ron Jenkins: Base combination concepts for any passing offense The multiple West Coast passing offense – Wisdom from Woody Hayes: [W]hen I first starting coaching listening to Woody Hayes talk about designing an offense. He talked about you start with your…
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The simple, wonderful, inexpensive speed option
The speed option may be the best run play in football. The pro guys don’t like it because your quarterback can be hit, but, whether under center or from the shotgun, it’s an exceptionally useful play to have in your arsenal. There are three basic reasons why the play is so effective and useful: Simple:…
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Smart Notes – Trick passes, Rich Rodriguez, Emory Bellard- 2/12/2011
This has already gone everywhere: There are two lessons to this: (1) this kind of trickery doesn’t always translate well to actual playing time, and obviously playing quarterback requires a lot of skills beyond this sort of thing and (2) this is still great stuff, but, related to (1), the football being an extension of…
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Combining the “midline lead” and the zone read
The evolution of the traditional zone read to include “midline-esque” concepts like reading the interior linemen is a hot topic, so I’d like to throw open the comments to what you think the next evolution or wrinkle might be. I’m game to anything; for all the talk about the pistol offense, I see this subtle…
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