Happy Friday, y’all, and welcome to Fat Camp. What I’m envisioning for this series is a weekly short-form essay on the football topic of my choosing. It’s intended to be pretty focused, unlike You Got Served, where I always reserve the right to meander into whatever topic I feel like writing about, whether it be the quality of college basketball game analysis, or my aversion to epaulets in men’s clothing. I hope you learn something each week, or, at least, think about a topic in a different way.
A football topic which has always interested me is clock (and by extension, timeout) management. Everybody likes to opine about it, but it’s one of the most poorly-understood football concepts, and as a result, a lot of smart tactics get criticized, and a lot of dumb ones get commended.
Continue reading "Fat Camp: Clock, timeout, & challenge management"
Have you ever noticed how bad the Broncos are at defending the screen game? Seemingly, for years, it’s been a consistent weakness. The main reason is that they have mostly had to rush more than four men to get any pressure on the opposing Quarterback. A secondary cause is that the Broncos have rarely fielded good tackling teams over the last 25 years or so. Even in today’s victory against the Texans, numerous screens were successfully run against the Broncos. It’s frustrating, isn’t it?
The other side of that coin is how you can frustrate the other team by maximizing the effectiveness of your own screen game. This has never really been an area of strength for the Broncos, either, over the last 25 years. The reason why is the Quarterback, going back to John Elway, and continuing through the recently-ended Kyle Orton era. The Broncos just haven’t ever had guys who were very comfortable or consistent with setting up the screen game, so a potentially devastating weapon has often not been used much.
Hello again, friends, and Happy Friday. I’m back with some stuff about 30 fronts today, on the heels of my last post about 40 fronts.
If you didn’t catch that post, you should read it. Yes, I mean now. Don’t worry, I’ll wait….
OK, welcome back. Today we’re going to delve into the two main types of 30 fronts, and as with the types of 40 fronts we looked at, one is fundamentally a one-gap scheme, and the other is fundamentally a two-gap scheme.
Yesterday, I wrote a post about terminology on defensive fronts. Today, as a follow-on, I want to talk about two of the five major base defensive fronts. These base looks have variants situationally, but they each lean on certain major concepts. As we approach more actual preseason games, I thought it would be fun if we got into some technical stuff today.
Remember, the word “technique” in this concept means nothing more than where a player is going to line up, in relation to the offensive line. The overriding idea behind all of these fronts is that the defense is seeking to dictate to the offense how they want to be blocked. That may not completely make sense at this moment, but as we go, I hope it becomes increasingly clear.
During the simultaneously boring/exciting Hall of Fame game on Sunday night, Al Michaels actually asked a good question. I was as surprised as you are; I mean this is a guy who has made a whole career off of calling the Miracle on Ice, and who usually seems not to even care, at this point.
He asked this good question of Cris Collinsworth, who knows what he’s talking about, and usually expresses himself well on television. Collinsworth, though, completely booted a chance to teach viewers something about the game.
