In 1989 I went to see Cleveland play Philadelphia at Wembley in one of the early “American Bowl” pre-season games. Bernie Kosar’s best throw of the night came around halftime when he wandered down the sideline and winged a Cleveland Browns baseball cap into the crowd. And I caught it.
This is how I ended up with an ugly orange Browns hat.
They do, but there’s also a clear difference between coaches and ability, and trying to suss that out is interesting.
For example, I believe Aaron Rodgers has been utterly wasted by the Green Bay coaching staff.
That’s certainly a fair interpretation. My sense of most coaches, however, is that they don’t tweak existing plays on a week-to-week basis to any great degree. Because it confuses players. They establish a fairly solid playbook in which individual plays stay the same, and only the larger game plan is tweaked based on the team they’re playing. I don’t think I’ve ever read of a coaching adjusting individual plays mid-season that way, because all it takes is one player to forget the tweak and the play is botched.
It is standard practice. Heck, they’ll “tweak” at halftime.
It is, and that aspect of the game is ill-covered. Some local markets media do a great job. National media is hit or miss. ESPN is all about stars and headlines, and the “new numbers” of Football Outsiders, which are grossly misleading and essentially don’t tell the story of game planning and coaching; treating the game as a fantasy sport with plug-in players. The Ringer does that as well, with some Lombardi and Simmons cronies added in. For my money, the folks at MMQB do the best job (in articles and podcasts) of going deep on Coaching, systems, game planning, etc. Klemko’s podcast is fnatastic.
As well, the fan site given team at SBNation is worth a listen/read. Very hit or miss though. The Phinsiders (the Dolphins site), for instance is pretty good. On going “deep” on coaching, systems, match ups, etc.
I defer to you guys, but if that’s the case, I’m perplexed why Lombardi would write a piece about it being a big deal – and why no one in that article’s comment section calls him out on it. Athletic readers are not ill-informed, nor are they shy.
Well, doing it, doing it well, and having players who can learn how to do it and are capable of executing are all qualitative variances within the “everyone does it”. I thought he was breathlessly stating the obvious, but agree that McKay does it well, and he did point that out.
Some systems have only limited adjustments that can be applied (Greg Roman’s, for instance).
Is anyone else really anticipating tomorrow’s games? I am a little bit amped.
I mean I’ve already won my pick for the loser bowl. And if all goes well then the Dolphins and Bears stand a chance of being the only winning teams in their division.
So if your ‘Fins can go ahead and beat the Pats, that’d be great.
Well, I am all in, pool-wise as well, this week. I’ll be happy if we just play them tough, even if we lose. Then we’ll be on top of the division, lost one we weren’t expected to win, but showed mettle.
Here are the Week 4 TV Games and Location Maps per 506 Sports.
http://506sports.com/nfl.php?yr=2018&wk=4
The good news is I get to see Cleveland v Oakland for my 4 PM game today.
Me too. It’s Fox’s feature game today. The Browns get a big audience two weeks in a row. It’s a topsy-turvy world.
I want to see the Brownies play a full game. Good opportunity today.
On a different tangent, this came out today and I found it amusing.
Bucs down 28-3 to the Bears.
Fitzmagic is ovah.
So is Miami’s Cinderella story.
Cincy and Atlanta is a fireworks show. 7 touchdowns so far in the first half.
They’re on pace to rack up >1,100 yards in total lack of defense.
So I guess we’re on Trubisky watch to see if he matches the record for most TDS in a game.
Finally a punt in the Bengals-Falcons game (in the 2nd half), and it’s blocked.
Trubisky watch: TD #6. We are now one shy of the NFL record in a game.
We are not even 5 minutes into the third quarter.