Ted's Analysis
Fat Camp: Thoughts on the no-huddle and balanced offense
A new way of playing offense has come to Denver, one that’s new to us, anyway. When they went without a huddle Sunday night, the Broncos became unstoppable.
When you combine the brilliance of Peyton Manning with the altitude of Denver, you’re cooking with gas when you can sustain no-huddle drives. I’m not in complete agreement with Doug’s article from Monday, and I want to give you a slightly different take. First, I want to clarify the no-huddle, and second, I want to touch on some strategic offensive thinking.
I want everybody to understand the no-huddle better than it’s presented to them by the average talking head on TV. There’s a significant amount of misunderstanding about the no-huddle, so let’s start with three key points, to level-set the discussion:
1. The no-huddle offense is not the same thing as the hurry-up offense. Going without a huddle allows an offense to snap the ball quickly, but it doesn’t require it to do so. When an offense plays hurry-up, it will usually go without a huddle, but going without a huddle gives the QB wide latitude on when to snap the ball. Peyton Manning often waits until the play clock runs down, and I’ll explain why shortly.
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You Got Served: Thoughts on the AFC South and AFC West
Happy Football Wednesday, friends. I’m back with some thoughts today on 2 more divisions, and my plan remains to stick to the following schedule.
Tuesday: AFC East, AFC North
Wednesday: AFC South, AFC West
Thursday: NFC East, NFC North
Friday: NFC South, NFC West
Tonight, the season kicks off with the Giants playing the Cowboys. Also, Vice President Joe Biden speaks at the Democratic National Convention. Joe’s comments 4 years ago in Denver went a long way toward getting the dumbasses on the Hall of Fame veterans committee to consider his Syracuse classmate Floyd Little, and ultimately, to elect him. Whether you like his politics or not, it was cool to see a Vice Presidential nominee, and soon-to-be Vice President, take up for a great Bronco, and help right an egregious wrong. I don’t think Joe knows Randy Gradishar, though, so if you want to just watch tonight’s game, that’s cool.
Edit - 7:52 PM : Biden doesn't speak until Thursday night. My mistake - I should have checked before I used his speech to set up my joke/complaint about Randy Gradishar. TB
Anyway, on to analyzing a couple of divisions. I promised the AFC South and the AFC West, and I’m going to deliver. Ready… BEGIN!!
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You Got Served: Thoughts on the AFC East and AFC North
Happy Tuesday-which-feels-like-a-Monday, friends. It’s Football Eve, so I decided to give you some NFL-wide football thoughts the rest of this week, two divisions at a time. Here’s the tentative schedule:
Tuesday: AFC East, AFC North
Wednesday: AFC South, AFC West
Thursday: NFC East, NFC North
Friday: NFC South, NFC West
I don’t want to go all Peter King, and try to predict the result of a Super Bowl that’s five months away, because that’s a stupid and pointless exercise. I am going to try to give you some more general insight, though. Ready…. BEGIN!!
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You Got Served: Taking stock of the Broncos roster
Happy Football Thursday, friends. As the preseason comes to a close, we’re left to ponder the value of tonight’s game, which begins after my bedtime. All I can really think of is that it gives the underdog lovers something to get all excited about.
I’m continually interested in how fans latch on to some late or undrafted player, based on a play here or there, or his name, or where he went to school. That underdog is going to be a major player, maybe even a star! He’s a diamond in the rough, and I’ve been down since Day 1. When the IAOFM crew was chatting during the Bears game, we were having a laugh about how Xavier Omon hysteria was about to be upon us when he made a few good runs against third-stringers. Well, it came, and it went. No other third-string defensive line that the Broncos played was sorry enough to be blocked by the Broncos' third-string offensive line.
For the Broncos, the value is that it gives them a chance to make a last-minute decision on who makes the team, and maybe more importantly, the practice squad. For the most part, the decisions have most likely been made on the larger body of work, though. If you think about it, tonight’s game is going to end around 2am Eastern. Cuts to 53 have to be completed by 9pm Eastern time on Friday. That leaves very little time for deliberation.
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Bite-size nuggets: Re-thinking the coach’s challenge
Happy Monday, friends. Yesterday’s game got me thinking about coach’s challenges, and I wanted to share those thoughts with all of you. I’m a big fan of the new rule that mandates that all turnovers be automatically reviewed, in addition to all scoring plays. Those are the high-leverage events which tend to swing football games, and I applaud the NFL’s commitment to get them correct, to the extent that their scab officials are capable of doing so.
The rule change necessitates a re-thinking of challenge strategy, though, because in the past, coaches would save their challenges for scoring plays and turnovers. Since those plays aren’t challengeable any more, they’re going to be looking at lower-leverage plays. That will lead a smart coach to figure out what kind of play is even worth risking a timeout for. I came up with a few that I think are worth it, and a few that aren’t.
Down by contact on a possible lost fumble: If the call on the field is a turnover, the play is automatically reviewed. If the call on a fumble is that the runner was down by contact, the coach may still challenge the play. The key is that the coach of the defensive team would only want to do so if the ball was clearly recovered by his team.
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More face-palms, more brain trauma
Happy Saturday, friends. I’m back for Part 2 of Holding John Clayton Accountable for Sucking Fest 2012 (here's Part 1). Some of you complained and criticized me for undertaking such a project yesterday. Your concerns are noted, and are being taken under advisement.
Today, we continue our slog through the Chad Pennington Division, and then make our way into the Hit or Miss Division. If you can believe it, the reasoning gets worse the further we go. To wit:
Alex Smith hadn’t yet put together a complete effective season before last year, so Clayton rated him 28th. That was reasonable, though I’ve always liked Smith, and would have had him a bit higher. My issue with this paragraph is that Clayton treats the movement between last year’s ranking and this year’s ranking as an event. Look here, John - you made a statement based on some evidence, ultimately got proven wrong, and now you’re making a new statement based on additional evidence. Smith just played good football, stayed healthy, and showed himself to be a winning player.
Face-palming my way to brain trauma
I almost never read John Clayton’s articles on ESPN, because they tend to be horrible. They call him the professor, but really he’s a sniveling little toolbag who doesn’t know anything about football. He’s basically equivalent to Mark Kiszla, but he got lucky, by getting picked up by ESPN way back when. Anybody who knows anything scoffs at this dude.
Every year, Clayton writes an article ranking QBs, and I just know it’s going to be a steaming piece of crap, but I read it anyway. It’s kind of like rubbernecking to see a car accident, knowing that you’re being a jerk and holding up traffic behind you. (In all likelihood, they’ll rubberneck too.)
Well, I read the annual trainwreck yesterday, and I decided that I should go all Drew Magary on it, and make the perfesser my own personal Mr. Lofty Acela of Beernerdness. It’s not so much that I feel hostile because Clayton’s writing is awful (though it is); it’s more that his inability to think consistently or intelligently is shocking, no matter how many times I see it.
Here’s the spot where some of you ruminate on how arrogant I am, and how I think I am the biggest brain in the room, because I am about to pick on Clayton. You know what? Bite me.
Bite-size Nuggets: Trading picks for players is often a smart thing to do
I agree with what Doug wrote yesterday about Maurice Jones-Drew not being worth trading for - not for the Broncos, and not for anybody else, either. While driving the last two days, I’ve heard all kinds of “trading for MJD” talk on Sirius, and I was thinking about how I’ve meant to do an article for quite a while about trades for veteran players.
More often than not, it’s a good idea to trade draft picks for proven veteran players. A draft pick is a derivative asset, in the sense that it has no definable value, in and of itself, other than the fact that it confers upon the holder of it the right to acquire a football asset at a point in time. A player is a football asset that’s more or less known. There’s some uncertainty to how he’ll perform in a new place, while being a year older, but there’s less risk than with a guy straight out of college.
Whether it is a good idea to trade a pick for a player almost always hinges upon the reason why the player is available. MJD may or may not be available, but if he is, it’s because he wants more money. That’s almost never a good situation from which to acquire a guy.
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You Got Served: Are the Broncos using the right defensive scheme?
The question of the day is whether Mark Kiszla knows what he’s talking about, when it comes to football.
Are you done laughing yet?
I’ll wait.
Okay then, welcome back. Since we know the answer is that he doesn’t know anything beyond the most basic level, we can pat him on the head like a good little dullard, and at least explore whether the basic point he was making is valid.
Kiszla thinks the Broncos have better personnel to play a 3-4 than they do a 4-3. If you’ve read this site for long, you know that there’s no monolithic 3-4 that half the NFL uses, and there’s similarly no monolithic 4-3 in use by the other half. There are 3-4’s that play like traditional 4-3’s (such as Houston and Dallas), 4-3’s that play like traditional 3-4’s (like Seattle and Miami), and then there are teams that play both fronts, most notably New England and Baltimore.
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Bite-size nuggets: Pontificatin’ on officiatin’
Happy Monday, friends. As I did my morning commute today, I was thinking about bad officiating and the lockout of the real NFL officials. Since I got so much practice analyzing labor actions last year, and since I’m trying to serve up some bite-size hors d’ oeuvres (pronounced “whores divorce” in my best Andrew Dice Clay voice) I decided to scribble some thoughts in purple crayon for y’all.
First things first – the officiating has been atrocious in every preseason NFL game I’ve seen. They’ve been getting a lot of stuff wrong, from spotting the ball, to speaking into a microphone, to being able to see the game at the speed at which it’s played.
It’s a mess, and it’s not these underqualified officials’ fault, really. Mark my words: If they’re still officiating games come the regular season, they’re going to negatively affect playoff positioning.
The question is whether the evident suckitude of the officiating gives the locked out refs any leverage. I initially thought it might, but it seems like it isn’t having that effect. The dynamics in play are clearly pretty different than they were with the players.
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