Breakdown Sports

 It’s a question regularly asked, “ Why is my favorite team constantly running to the short side of the field ?” People really do not enjoy jet sweep to the short side . In almost every sport you are taught the concept of using the sideline as an extra defender, and in football it is no different. And in the current era of football, the idea of space is emphasized as much as it has ever been: you have extra wide WR splits, you have light personnel groupings, stretch the field not just horizontally but laterally. So then why does it always feel like the runs aren’t utilizing that space? Space is a fundamental source of success in modern football, but it is not only the offense that controls space and how it can be used; defense also plays a role. Space is also only a single fundamental facet, others include leverage and numbers. And when you take all those traits into account, that will explain why runs into the boundary are run as often as they are. Let’s take a ...

Alright, fine, let's talk the concept du jour. What's the concept du jour? It's the play of the day. But really it's about RPO - Run-Pass Option. Ever since the 2018 Super Bowl football has been all about the RPO. I've talked about it a little bit in the past, first with Illinois , and then tagged onto an OSU post recently . But I want to provide a little more depth because there still seems to be some confusion and misconceptions. And to do that, I want to first lay the ground work for the basics. This first post is going to try to set a foundation with explaining "the read game".

History has a tendency to repeat itself. In football, that means something gets invented, iterations are formed, it gets tucked away for a while, and then it reemerges in a new form but with the same constructs. In this way, we can also predict how defenses will attempt to adjust, and how offenses will likely adjust to their adjustment. And this piece we are going to look at the history and evolution of the veer and belly run plays.

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT MAIZE N BREW Introduction There are many odd and unique things about Northwestern. They're the only team in the Big Ten that is private. They wear purple. Their home games are every other teams Chicago home game. These guys have been the most annoying team that hasn't been that good but somehow has been good over the past decade. They have two quarterbacks capable of starting... and they're nothing alike. I introduce to you: Kain Colter aka The Runner and Trevor Siemian aka The Passer. In the words of Vince Lombardi, "What the hell's goin' on out there?" Well, I guess I can at least try to explain some of their spread offense and how it starts to differ with their two QBs. The rest, well, not so much. The Run Game Bear with me, I just spent an hour thinking up bad section title puns from classic movies (‘Citizen Kain' anyone?) then spent the next hour trying to convince myself that they weren't as stupid as they seemed....