Author Archives: gee4213

Rams, Broncos, Bengals and Pre-Season Reps

21 Sunday Aug 2016

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It’s not only the players who need preseason reps, and in week 2 I am already fighting to catch up thanks to a very busy week at work. Still, I have managed to get all of week 1 watched and caught up with episode two of Hard Knocks as well as the Bengals second game.

The Rams got off to a rocky start in LA, given that on the opening kick-off they gave up a one hundred and one yard touchdown return, which the fans must have been hoping was not a predictor or things to come. In fact, the Rams had a slow first half with them going into half time 24-7 down.

The thing that would be worrying me if I was a Rams fan, was that the defence was not looking that solid despite arguably being the stronger half of the team, with the young Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott looking very good, and you would imagine some Cowboys fans will be already feeling a little better about their backup quarterback situation going into the season after the disasters of last year.

It was also a frustrating evening for Jared Goff who started off looking like a rookie, threw a couple of incomplete passes and got sacked to give him the sore shoulder which cost him some snaps. It is too early to take anything significant from his performance, but as a first round pick the attention is going to be focussed on him all through the preseason, and will continue if the Rams don’t win or if Case Keenum starts to struggle.

If the defence didn’t set the world alight, neither did the offence, and whilst there was some flash from Tavon Austin, and Goff finally threw a couple of pass to Tyler Higbee to demonstrate that a tight end is often a young quarterback’s best option, they will need to improve.

However, in the second half the Rams did manage to drag themselves back into the game and ultimately won it, and whilst preseasons records don’t matter, for a team trying to get back to a winning record this season, this could be an important habit to get into. If there is an area of strength for the Rams on offence it looks to be running backs, with several players looking good in Gurley’s absence and late on receiver Nelson Spruce made a number of catches to push his case to make the team.

I am very much looking forward to seeing the next game and how things progress with this team and watching the games alongside Hard Knocks.

After asking for suggestions, and taking into account the story lines following their Super Bowl win, Dan and I settled on the Denver Broncos as the third team for this year’s preseason, and in their opening game they got off to a good start with a shutout win over the Chicago Bears.

The strength of the Broncos team was defence last year, and they looked good again despite a number of players moving away, as they gave the Bears protection issues all game, racking up a number of sacks to go along with their shut out.

However, the big question for the Broncos after Peyton Manning’s retirement and Brock Ossweiler’s move to the Houston Texans is who is going to play quarterback for them this season. They opened the game with Mark Sanchez, who looked good initially but just as I was beginning to think they might be okay Sanchez threw into coverage and was intercepted. This pretty much seems to sum up Sanchez’s career. Next up they had Trevor Sjemian who looked okay as he ran the team and definitely demonstrated some promise. However, even Paxton Lynch was able to demonstrate some solid play for a rookie, and my big worry for this team would be that if they have a pair of quarterbacks fighting it out for a starting spot for too long, then they might not end up with a true starter going into the season.

Still, with a blocked punt giving them a touchdown, and a safety, the Broncos found multiple ways to score and whilst you can never truly to tell from preseason, it looks like the Broncos are set to make a strong defence of their title.

Finally, I can move into the second week of the preseason, with the Bengals running out to a solid win in Detroit against the Lions.

The offence seemed to move the ball well for the Bengals, although another tackle has picked up an injury which is not a great sign. However, the Bengals depth seems to be holding for the moment and neither Cedric Ogbuehi nor Jake Fisher’s injuries are long term. The more positive news is despite the losses of Jones and Sanu in the offseason, plus free-agent signing Brandon LaFell fighting a hand injury and not catching a ball yet, the Bengals’ receivers are still showing up well. I am particularly impressed with rookie Tyler Boyd who caught another touchdown this week and seems to have settled into the top of the rotation with surprising ease whilst Brandon Tate caught passes with the first team again.

The defence gave up yards to the Lions, but were able to restrict them to field goals until the fourth quarter. The early signs to me is that Golden Tate and Marvin Jones are going to be good pairing for Matthew Stafford, and the offence looked to protect him pretty well against  the Bengal’s pass rush. However, the Bengals defence got enough pressure to win the game and it does seem that they will be competitive again this year.

Things are beginning to heat up as cuts loom on the horizon, and I’m hoping for a smoother week so I can really dig in as we get closer and closer to the regular season, but with people playing for jobs, there’s plenty of competitive football for us to watch already.

Football is Back

14 Sunday Aug 2016

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And we are back.

I’m sorry this blog has been quiet over the offseason, but it turns out that publishing a book is a lot of work and so whilst I was following the offseason as usual, there wasn’t much time to delve deeply into free agency or the draft and I didn’t have the time to dive into my usual football/coaching offseason reading.

If you want to take a look at what I was up to, head over to gavinneale.com where I have been writing about the publishing process and getting my first children’s book out into the world.

However, it has been a refreshing break and I am eager to get into the new season and we already have our first round of preseason games and the training camp documentary Hard Knocks has aired its first episode as they follow the relocated Los Angeles Rams.

I will be scaling back my preseason watching this year as I haven’t been able to cope with the number of team’s I’ve tried to follow previously, so I will be focussing as usual on the Bengals, following the Rams’ games in parallel with Hard Knocks, and will be picking an as yet undecided third team, although I’ll need to pick someone soon.

The first episode of Hard Knocks was relatively quiet; we discovered that head coach Jeff Fisher doesn’t want to go 7-9 this season. The fact that this is what his teams often do is possibly not lost on him, but I will be curious to see how they get on in the coming weeks.

Aaron Donald is one of my favourite players (admittedly I do have a lot of those) and we have already discovered that’s he is pretty competitive (hardly a surprise in a professional sportsman) and that he’s pretty damn good at table tennis. The number of players who were having problems with the sun rising in the east and setting in the west was kind of scary, and let’s hope Jared Goff learns quickly as the Rams have bet a lot in their trade to get the number one pick and get him. We also learned just how close quarterbacks have to get to their centres, and the tank top obsession starting centre Eric Kush that featured heavily in the arrival footage.

Moving on from the Rams, I’ll pick up the Bengals first preseason game as that’s the one I have watched so far, and will pick up the others in the future.

The big question coming into this preseason is surrounding the receivers after the loss of both Marvin Jones and Mohamed Sanu.

However, my initial take was that Andy Dalton looked pretty good in his opening series, completing his first five passes as the Bengals drove the ball well and then missed a field goal.

Thankfully this was preseason, as having lost the game 17-16 to the Minnesota Vikings that miss could have proved critical, although Marvin Lewis did use this game to try going for two rather than kicking an extra point at the end of the game that would have tied it.

If the first team offence looked good, with my own real worry being an injury to starting running back Jeremy Hill’s finger, the first team defence was downright scary, producing a pressure, sack, pressure, and a punt for the Vikings first offensive series of the game. Both Michael Johnson and Geno Atkins got in on the sack, with Atkins generating the pressure on the first play of the drive, and Carlos Dunlap getting pressure on the second.

That was pretty much it for the first team defence and we saw the depth play out for the rest of the game. The Vikings found it easier to move the ball, and you could tell that the Bengals have been banged up in the secondary as the quality of coverage did slip earlier than you would have liked in this game, although this was only the first of preseason.

That said, a couple of newer names caught the eye on defence, in particular third round linebacker Nick Virgil who seemed to be in the right place often and stuffed a run either at the line of scrimmage or for a small loss. Second year defensive tackle Marcus Hardison caught my eye with lots of good penetration and seemed to play well next to undrafted free agent rookie David Dean.

The probable star of this game was another undrafted free agent rookie in receiver Alex Erickson who caught a touchdown pass from AJ McCarron shortly before halftime and returned a punt for a touchdown in the fourth quarter to setup the Bengals’ failed two point conversion.

Erickson was not the only receiver fighting for a roster spot to play well, with rookie draft picks Tyler Body and Cody Core both making several catches and looking good in the process, along with a number of practice squad and lower in the depth chart receivers also catching balls.

I said the big question for the Bengals this preseason would be a receiver, and this game demonstrated that there looks to be a lot of good options. Whilst I certainly wouldn’t want to make a pick as to who will make it this early in the preseason, I am feeling a lot happier about the position already and that is a pretty good outcome from the first preseason game.

Onwards then, to the rest of the preseason games as the start of the season finally comes into view.

The Wrong Football Podcast – 2016 Post Draft Special

07 Saturday May 2016

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The Wrong Football podcast is back for a special ‘Post-Draft’ podcast – Dan and Gee give their thoughts on the winners and losers of the Draft, and even make a couple of predictions for next season! And if you fancy taking part in our Pig-Skin Pick’em competition next season, listen in – we’ll tell you how!

Source: The Wrong Football Podcast – The Wrong Football Podcast – 2016 Post Draft Special

An Unexpected Mock and the Real Draft

01 Sunday May 2016

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My offseason on the blog has been quieter than I was expecting as it turns out that self-publishing a book is a time consuming business, but I have still been following along as the offseason progressed. It was however, kick-started into gear when the Gridiron Gentlemen were looking for people to take part in their mock draft, and in the spirit of curiosity I offered to lend a hand for the Bengals.

This was always going to be an interesting experience for me as I am not a college football fan, but I have been listening to college/draft analysis podcasts all season and as a Bengals fan I feel like I have a handle on what the team have been doing to have turned around their drafting fortunes. Gone are the days of spectacular busts, and thanks to multiple years of solid pick they have one of the deepest rosters in the league.

So I tried to model my drafting method on the Bengals own, so I planned to draft the best player available, but taking account of the positions involved. I don’t know much of my biases are based on opinion abut the draft and how much is following the Bengals as a fan, but for me in the first round you focus on key positions that are defined by particular physical traits. The only exception to this is if you need a quarterback as that is always the key position, but as the Bengals have two quarterbacks who won games last season, they were not in that market this year. The positions I would focus on in the first round are corners, offensive line tackles, pass rushers, wide receivers, and defensive tackles. Each of these positions are either particularly based around athleticism, or are hard to find as there simply are not that many athletic three hundred pound plus people on the planet. I did not have time to create my own draft board, so I chose one and focussed in on several players ranked around twenty-four, which is where the Bengals were picking.

Obviously I don’t have my own staff of scouts, but a couple of players had got my attention in the range that I was picking. My first target was Josh Doctson, one of the most complete receiving talents in the draft, and one that Robert Mays, ex of Grantland and now of Bill Simmon’s new venture The Ringer, was effusive in his match to the Bengals need at receiver and what he could do opposite AJ Green. Another was Mackenzie Alexander, who is a bit short the Bengals usual preference for corners, but who was something of a favourite of Fran Duffy both for his play, and for a press conference where he not only broke down one receiver that he had been asked about, but then continued through other receivers in the draft.

This is the graphic of the entire first round pick:

Gents_Mock_Draft

With two picks to go before me I liked three players, and Houston Texans took a receiver I didn’t want for my team I knew I would have a decision to make, but a good one and then the Minnesota Vikings took Josh Doctson. I plumped for Mackensie Alexander, knowing his size was less than ideal for the Bengals, but liking how he had played and I was not worried about the lack of interceptions. The Pittsburgh Steelers then took Eli Apple, who was probably a better fit, but it was my pick and I followed my heart at the position the Bengals eventually picked.

The interesting things is looking at the actual draft where the Bengals took corner William Jackson III so I did get the position right, and Mackensie Alexander didn’t get drafted until the second round by the Vikings, but Eli Apple was picked at ten by the New York Giants.

This is where things get a bit strange. I have no problems with people talking about picks they liked and didn’t. However, much like the free agent period, we are already rushing to pick winners and losers in the draft and to grade teams. The truth is however, that we simply do not know who has had a good draft yet. The jury should be out for a couple of years, and even then what is often termed a bust is not always the team’s fault. Injury plays a huge part in the game of football, and no one can predict who will succumb to a major injury and who won’t. You would hope to get at least a solid starter out of your first round pick, you simply can’t have too many of those not work out if you want to be a successful team, but the problem can be as much with expectation as it is with actual play. I always remember the criticism of Justin Smith before he left the team, that he not produced enough sacks for a top five pick. He was however, a three down player who was playing out of position and still had an incredible career, finally gaining the praise he deserved playing as a 3-4 end for the San Francisco 49ers’ defence.

However, the real reason for the drafts prominence is that it gives us fans a shot of hope in the long dark offseason. We can now start to familiarise ourselves with the new players our teams have picked, watch them sign undrafted free agents, and begin the countdown to their first workouts and the things that really matter: the start of training camp, pre-season games, and how the teams are beginning to shape up as the new season approaches. For now however, it is fun to bask in the glow of hope as it is not so long until players start working and the reality of another seasons starts to make itself known.

And Then There Were None

14 Sunday Feb 2016

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And so the season is done, and the Denver Broncos are the champions for the year. I know Dan and I really enjoyed the Super Bowl this, but this kind of defensive battle is not to everyone’s taste.

The aftermath has been dominated by discussions surrounding Cam Newton’s post game press conference and follow up comments, but I am reluctant to get too involved in this. He did not have a good game, Dan and I were commenting that he didn’t look right from the start of the game. The Super Bowl is a huge one-off game, and the Broncos played outstanding defence, which I will look at in a bit. The big talk is of Newton’s final fumble where he didn’t dive for the ball. As ever, the cover up is worse than the original incident. It has to be said that I didn’t particularly notice him not going for it at the time, and in the replay I just saw a player hesitate, which is understandable given that an oval ball bounces in random ways and all I saw a wrong footed player. However, a lot has been made about him stating he was worried about his leg getting hurt as it was in an awkward position.

In this age of over the top praise and blame, Cam Newton is almost the perfect quarterback for the media. He was lauded before the game as a new breed despite us having seen running quarterbacks before, although not ones so large with the ability to run the ball with power so regularly. However, he also has his flaws and some of them came to the fore in this game. He is not a rhythm thrower, in fact his footwork bothers me quite a lot. The fact that is not pretty isn’t exactly the issue, but if you’re feet are not good then you can struggle with accuracy and this can certainly affect Newton. He also seems to have one speed of throw, fast. His arm strength can and does make up for his technique, and you will see him make throws from awkward positions that very few quarterbacks can make. However, this does mean that if you need short sharp throws to counter a defence then you are going to struggle. He holds onto the ball longer than most quarterbacks in the league, and when facing a defence like the Broncos that can cause all sorts of trouble, but let’s look at what the Broncos did so well to win the game.

The Broncos defence has been good to great all year, and a large part of that is there is no weakness at any level of this defence. Yes the pass rush is formidable, but part of that is that their secondary covers very well so it is hard to get the ball out quickly. This was particularly the case for the Panthers’ receivers who dropped a couple, and were open a couple of times and didn’t get balls thrown their way, but the plain fact is that they did not get open often enough in this game. However, a lot of the problems that the Panthers had were caused by their inability to get much of anything going on first down. The Broncos spent a lot of the game in their base 3-4 defence, even if the Panthers were running three receiver sets. Clearly Wade Philips did not want them to be able to get their running game going and they were largely successful at this, forcing the Panthers out of their preferred game plan, and too many times this meant long passing plays that allowed the Broncos to rush the passer. The other structural nuance was how the Broncos rushed the passer. The Panthers run a lot of passing plays where they send fewer receivers on routes, keeping extra blockers in. However, this created two problems for them as the Broncos’ secondary could cover the fewer receivers, and the players that were assigned to the running back or tight end who was blocking would cover the player until they realised they were blocking and then rush the passer on a delayed blitz. This could clearly be seen on the last play before the half when running back Fozzy Whittaker couldn’t help left tackle Michael Oher as Broncos Linebacker Danny Trevathan spotted that Whittaker was blocking and so followed Malik Jackson on the inside pass rush, which allowed DeMarcus Ware to go round Oher virtually untouched to get the sack.

This really was a team defensive performance, but the focus has been particularly on the MVP Von Miller who had 2.5 sacks for the game and forced two fumbles, including the one that led to the Broncos touchdown in the first half.

If the Broncos defence was great, the Panthers defence was really not very far behind. They limited the Broncos offence to fewer than two hundred total yards, generated two turnovers of their own from Peyton Manning, and if they had won the game had their own MVP candidate in Kony Ealy who finished the game with three sacks, a forced fumble, and an interception. After the first drive they bottled up the Broncos offence, stopping them from sustaining drives even when the Broncos broke the odd run for a decent gain. It was even more remarkable to see Thomas Davis flying round the defence with his broken arm, something that media has certainly been quick to comment on given Newton’s mention of worry about a potential injury. The problem however was that between offensive turnovers putting them in bad positions, and the longest punt return in Super Bowl history, they were given too many short fields to defend. Even then they held the opposition mainly to field goals, only giving up one touchdown, but there were too many mistakes by the team as a whole for their great play to overcome.

The punt return by Jordan Norwood deserves special mention as it so easily could have gone wrong. Norwood clearly doesn’t call for a fair catch, but was surrounded by Panthers and was even bumped by one. Yet somehow he escaped the coverage team and ran for a record breaking sixty-one yards. It was pretty impressive to see defensive end Mario Addison chase Norwood down to prevent any further gain or even a touchdown. The defence held the Broncos to a field goal, but this game was a slow death filled with these little losses that in the end did for the Panthers.

And so at the end of the game Peyton Manning got his second Super Bowl win, pretty much as a passenger, but this was still a feat of leadership. He came to recognise he didn’t have the tools any more, and contrary to earlier in the season where he was throwing interceptions far too frequently, in this playoff run he limited himself, handed the ball off, milked the clock, and used every bit of his experience to get the win. I really hope that this is the last we see of him in pads as impressive as this was, I can’t see him repeating it and there was very little fun in watching this great player performing in such a way other than hoping he can go out on top.

And so the season has come to an end. The offseason started weeks ago, but whilst I will be following all that is going on, I will be taking a break from the blog. I will be writing other things, and I’m sure it won’t be too long before I will be reading and learning more about football. This year I’ll be doing the odd offseason blog around things like the draft, or if particular things crop up during free agency, but for now it is time to take a rest. Roll on next season, just not for a little while.

Super Bowl 50

07 Sunday Feb 2016

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So here we are, one game left. The week has been full of build up and interviews. The Super Bowl has become one of the biggest sporting events of the year, now viewed around the world, although exact figures are hard to come by. The hype has been there, so has the analysis if you go looking for it.

There is always a tension in where to pitch the coverage of American Football, with twenty-two people carrying out two sets of complex coordinated actions on every single play, there is something going on everywhere. One of the reasons that the game is so fascinating also makes it hard to broadcast. It is pretty much impossible to cover every nuance, and so receivers appear wide open mid-play and the viewer needs a replay to see what happened. That is if the team obligingly is not running a hurry-up offence. The international feed has often featured a simplified commentary aimed at the new people who are drawn into the spectacle of the NFL for this one game that us obsessives have been following for months. You can’t blame the broadcasters, the NFL is not an intuitive game due to its tactical nature and stop start game flow. Plus not every fan is interested in what route concepts are used to attack single high man coverage as opposed to a two deep zone.

I am looking forward to watching the game live, and going through the coaching tape afterwards and then taking a break. I love writing about American Football, but what I like doing is looking at the games and writing about the approach and coaching. I will dip in an out a bit more this offseason, but I am ready for a break. The grind of covering the sport year round must be tough given the competition to deliver news ahead of each other, but we don’t actually know what the affects of the offseason will be until well into September. In fact it can take years for a coach to turn around a franchise, a draft can’t be evaluated properly until years afterwards. I love talking football as much as the next fan, and we all have instant opinions, but the truth is that things take time to develop, and what I enjoy is watching that happen over the long term.

However, today is very much about the here and now so let’s grab this last game and squeeze as much out of it as possible as I take a look at the match up for tonight.

The obvious place to start is the one that has garnered the most coverage in the build up to the game, which is the Broncos defence against the Panthers offence. This is because it is the best contest in the game, with everyone being wary of how effective the Broncos offence will be, but it is also a fascinating tactical encounter. The Broncos defence is strong at all three levels, but will be facing a unique offence. The Panthers run the ball more, and with greater complexity than any other team this season. They have built their offence around the dual threat of Cam Newton, but also use extra blocking players in conjunction with forcing the opposition to account for the quarterback. One of the reasons this causes problems for a defence is historically the quarterback was too valuable to expose to multiple hits and so was unlikely to move the ball himself unless scrambling. The read-option changed this in recent years, but there were still limits to how many hits you would want them to take. Cam Newton is built like a defensive end, and the Panthers are not afraid to repeatedly use him in power running situations. This will cause the Broncos defence issues as they have to account for him in their run defence, whilst being aware that the Panthers also use these run looks to create play-action passes to throw the ball deep. If your safety is stepping up to account for a running quarterback, and that same quarterback then pulls up and throws the ball you have big problems.

The good news for the Broncos is that they have a pair of outside pass rushers who are not only good at straight up getting round the edge of the offence, but run stunts by moving inside as their the tackle moves out. This can help to counter the read-option as it makes the read that the quarterback has to make more complex and can slow it down.  There are other ways you can play a running quarterback is by getting your edge defenders to play a specific player, i.e. they have responsibility for the outside man, forcing the play in towards the rest of the defence, or focussing inside whilst a linebacker scrapes over the top to cover the outside player. I expect to see all three from the Broncos talented front seven, and they also have two hard hitting safeties that will be able to help in run support. Their secondary should also be able to matchup against the Panthers skill players, and it will fascinating to see how they mix up man and zone coverage as they try to prevent the deep strikes that have served the Panthers so well all season.

The story of the Broncos offence all year has been Peyton Manning, but there have been other problems affecting them all year. The offseason saw some strange decisions in that the Broncos brought in a new coach whose zone run scheme was much different to what they had been running previously, meaning the offensive line had to learn a new scheme as well as protect an ageing quarterback. This offence has not been able to move the ball consistently on the ground or through the air, but they can get big runs here and there. More importantly perhaps, since coming back from his injury Peyton Manning seems to have embraced his new role and has not thrown an interception in the playoffs, which is in stark contrast to his play during the regular season. Also, when they are down in the red zone, his lack of arm strength is less of an issue and he still has the smarts to get touchdowns as demonstrated by the throws to tight end Owen Daniels last week.

However, they are facing a defence that has been playing well all year. They may not be as consistently good at all three levels as the Broncos defence, but the Panthers coaching staff have done a great job of making the best of the talent they have around theie super start players. In Luke Kuechly and Thomas Davis they have one of the best pairings of linebackers in the league, although it will be interesting to see how Davis will play two weeks from breaking his forearm given that I have no idea how he is even contemplating it. The defence does not blitz much, but defensive tackles Kawann Short and Star Lotulelei are going to cause the Broncos offensive line problems all day, which a rotation of ends will apply pressure from the outside. The question will be if the Broncos secondary, which apart from stand out corner Josh Norman, is a little patchwork but plays their zone scheme very well.

The only team to beat the Panthers this year were the Atlanta Falcons, and they did this by running the ball consistently to bring up Davis and Kuechly, before attacking the defence deep. The problem for the Broncos is that Manning doesn’t have the arm for long balls any more, but it seems unlikely that they would be able to run a Patriots style short passing game either. They will have to commit to running the ball, which they have done under Gary Kubiak, and hope to generate play-action passing and enough long running plays to get into a position to score. I am looking forward to seeing how they try to do this, but I am not sure if they have the tools to be successful.

Overall I see this game as either being a close tight affair, with the Broncos hanging around and making it competitive as they have done all year, or the Panthers could really run away with it. However, with as good a defence as the Broncos have and two weeks for defensive coordinator Wade Phillips to prepare, I think it is more likely to be a close game. A lot will depend on what wrinkles the coaches prepare for this game and who executes their game plan more cleanly, but I hope it will be a good contest. I am not particularly invested in who wins as both results would have good stories, but it would be nice if Manning could have at least one last good performance to go out on.

Roll on Super Bow 50, let’s hope it lives up to the hype.

A Strange Week

31 Sunday Jan 2016

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It is a slightly strange time of year. We are down to the final two teams, and we are in the middle of a two week gap to the Super Bowl, which will fail to be filled by the Pro Bowl. It is easy to understand what the NFL is trying to do, they want the Super Bowl to provide the grand finish to the season, but with the stream of replacements and those unable to play because they are preparing for the big game the Pro Bowl feels somewhat odd. In fairness, it is a underwhelming spectacle anyway, it is football but not as we are used to. The NFL’s Pro Bowl suffers more than any other American sport’s all star game from the problem that if you take away the physicality and intensity from blocking and tackling then it just looks different. I find the best things to come out of Pro Bowl week are the videos of practice where you get to see the interaction between the leagues best available players.

Meanwhile, the rest of the league is preparing for the draft. I talked a little bit about the Senior Bowl on the podcast this week, and how in some ways it could be seen as more important that the scouting combine. The measuing of the players is the same, except they then spend a week getting NFL coaching, being interviewed, and giving teams a chance to take a look first hand to confirm what they had seen during the season, but perhaps more importantly how a player might cope with NFL coaching and what they will be expected to do at the next level. This is the place where teams can see if a college quarterback stands any chance of making the transition to receiver, or what position an offensive linemen might play at the NFL level. I find it hard to get excited about the underwear Olympics that is the scouting combine, the only thing that really excites me is the fact that I want one day to be able to carry out a 225Ibs bench press that is the standard strength test. I think I am about a year away from being able to complete that lift, but I don’t ever expect to be able to put up the reps that the strongest players can manage, they are NFL prospects for a reason. I enjoy listening to draft coverage, but as some one who doesn’t follow the college game closely; for me the benefit of the coverage is mainly listening to how scouts evaluate player. Particularly as I have yet to get excited about a player in pre-draft coverage and have him picked by my team.

The whole sequence of the post season is somewhat strange, given that coach searches start immediately after the end of week seventeen despite probably the best candidates to be new head coaches being tied up with their teams in deep playoff runs. Part of what might explain the three coordinators the Bengals have lost over the three seasons is their poor performance in the playoffs combined with the play that got them there in the first place. Availability can be as important as ability.

What I don’t understand is the competing interests that are allowed at this time of year, there is this swirl of activity going on, and I can’t help but wonder if the league would not be served better by trying to smooth out some of the timetable. The draft was delayed recently so why not hold the coaching search until after the season to make available all co-ordinators to teams.

It is also a funny time of the year to be writing a blog when you don’t have a huge investment in the Pro Bowl or draft. The things I like to write about are definitely wuieter at the moment, and whilst I am hugely excited about the Super Bowl, there is only so much analysis you can do with another week to go. I will be taking a look at both teams next week, and I am hoping that the Denver defence can make it a tight game, but either team winning would provide satisfying story lines to end the season.

In my other writer interests I have a book to edit, and whilst I am really looking forward to watching the big game, and writing my final blog of the season when I go through the coaching tape the week after the Super Bowl, I am also at that stage where I’m ready for the season to be over. I’ll take a couple of weeks off before I start evaluating what did and didn’t work on the blog throughout the season, and I will no doubt will be reading more football books over the break. However, I believe that having a balance of interests is important in life, and the endless treadmill of the NFL life for coaches can only appeal to a specific type of person. There has been barely a pause for coaches since training camp back in the summer, and preparation for next season starts virtually straight away. In some ways this might come as a relief, you can start the process of getting over the disappointments of the season with the preparation for the next one, but one of the reasons that I so respect Bruce Arians is his belief that there is only so much you can and should do. That you should be with your family and not buried in the office all the time, and if it is good enough for one of the league’s best coaches then maybe there is a lesson in there for all of us.

I’ll be looking at the coaching tape of the Broncos defence from last week as we prepare for the big game, I really can’t wait!

The Wrong Football Podcast – Episode 15

31 Sunday Jan 2016

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With just one (albeit huge) game left for the season, Dan and Gee take a good look at Championship week. In the News, Richie Incognito is going to the Pro-Bowl, Tom Brady’s getting beaten up, and the Packers argue amongst themselves!

Source: The Wrong Football Podcast – The Wrong Football Podcast – Episode 15

The Wrong Football Podcast – Episode 14

24 Sunday Jan 2016

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This week, Dan and Gee review 4 excellent Divisional games, and look ahead to the Championship games this weekend. In the news, there’s more goings on in the Head Coach market, the Titans are thinking of trading their 1st draft pick, and Leicester City & the Carolina Panthers become best friends – whatever next?!

Source: The Wrong Football Podcast – The Wrong Football Podcast – Episode 14

Playoffs, and the Conference Championship Games

24 Sunday Jan 2016

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Three games. That is all we have left if you discount the Pro Bowl, which I do. They look like exciting games, or at least intriguing, but I’ll be looking at them in a bit because what I want to focus on first is how we got here.

There is a simple reason that I am writing about this, which is that in the last two weeks I have found myself repeatedly reaching for the same phrase. This was one game too far for this team, or variations of that. And in each case I am talking about a team that has done well, but for various reasons fell short, but the primary one at this time of year seems to be injury. This is not a new theme for this blog, I have been writing about the importance of depth all season, but it takes on an extra significance at this time of year thanks to the structure of the NFL schedule.

All four of what are traditionally considered the major sports in America operates with a playoff structure, as well as the expanding MLS despite football’s tradition of leagues and parallel cup competitions across the globe. It is simply the expected format over in the States, and it still feels odd to someone who grew up with team sports being settled by everyone playing each other home and away in a league to decide the best team. In the NFL’s defence, there is simply no way for them to schedule such a league wide format with thirty-two teams who are already stretched to breaking point by a sixteen game schedule spread across seventeen weeks.

The reason I bring this up here, is that whilst all the sixteen games look to have the same mathematical value initially, in practice some games are literally more valuable than others. Thanks to the importance of winning your division, and the record comparison that can be used to determine who wins a division or makes the playoffs via the wildcard places, there are some games that are more helpful for getting to the playoffs than others. This in of itself is nothing new to competition, it is impossible to make things absolutely fair, and even in the league format scheduling and timing, not to mention the timing of injuries can play a significant role in the outcome.

For those who are not interested in Premier League football, one of the stories of the season has been Leicester City’s performance, which has seen them top the league and remain in contention through and after the festive period. For me this was always the real test as it is not uncommon for a team to have a good start, but have their performance tail off over the second half of the season, with the fixture congestion over the festive period often really testing a team’s squad and their ability to maintain a title challenge or a top four finish so they get into the Champions League. Not only is great for the team in your city to be on such a run of form, but in the last couple of weeks they have been social media contact between them and the Carolina Panthers, as City had spotted the similarity in both team’s season of unexpected success, and both clubs have been sending each other jerseys.

Whilst there is plenty of season to go for Leicester City, the Panthers are coming down to crunch time. I’m sure their fans won’t be thinking about it, but to some it might seem curious that a team which finished with a 15-1 record, two games better than any other team in the league, still have to win three games to be crowned champions. At its heart, the NFL is an entertainment business and so they can’t help by love the drama and tension of playoff football, and in fairness we all do.

I wouldn’t want to change this as I have already mentioned, but I do think it should be remembered when evaluating teams and players. I will cover the way injuries are likely to affect the teams when I go over the games, but I thought I would cover an aspect of the first game as I prepare to write about the Conference Championship games.

The number of people in involved in an American Football game is greater than any other sport that I can think of, with over forty active players, various coaches, and the required sport staff. It is very much a team game, which is what makes it somewhat ridiculous to start billing the upcoming Patriots at Broncos as Brady vs Manning seventeen. They are in very different places in their career right now, even if they are not so far apart in age. This could be the last game we see Peyton Manning play, the brain is still willing but the body whilst not exactly failing, is no longer truly up to the rigours of the NFL. The most frustrating thing for him must be that in most games he still makes a really good play, but he can no longer do it consistently and the arm strength has become a real problem.

The other qualifier that is often mentioned when looking back over Manning’s career is his playoff record, and this is usually compared negatively to Tom Brady’s. It is not that this is an unfair comparison, but that I think it gets over played. They are both outliers in terms of ability, each are Hall of Fame quarterbacks, and there is no argument that Brady has the more impressive post-season résumé. There is even a structural criticism in that by taking the salary that Manning has in a salary cap sport, it has meant that his teams have had to build their roster in a different way to the Patriots, where Tom Brady’s more team friendly deal allow the Patriots be more competitive. However, whilst I think there is some validity to all of this, the overlooked part is that Brady has also played his entire career with one of the all time great coaches, who not only wins tactically, but seems to have mastered the art of taking players that other coaches have let go, and put them into a position to succeed with the skills they do have.

In a culture where we seem to love building up heroes and then knocking them down, there is so much to admire in Manning’s come back from four neck surgeries and his performance over the last few seasons. One of the best defences we have seen in a long time stopped him winning that second Super Bowl, and it wasn’t him who snapped the ball over his head. There are different ways of leading, it doesn’t have to be screaming and shouting on the side line, and Manning’s preparedness is legendary.

All of these things will be played out one more time in the AFC Conference Championship, which will be hugely pressured, but in something as volatile as game of football there are no guarantees. Not only that, but injuries could well play a part as the four top seeded team play for the right to face each other in the Super Bowl.

New England Patriots @ Denver Broncos

In the opening drive of last week’s game we saw that the Patriots had managed their injuries well over the last few weeks of the season, and looked more like themselves on offence. Tom Brady was able to get the ball out quickly again, as the Patriots threw the ball all over the Kansas City Chiefs, who were unable to get pressure on Brady. The Patriots come into this game with not the best history of playing in Denver, and they face a team that have been winning ugly all season.

The Broncos won last week with a solitary touchdown on offence, but with better special teams than the Pittsburgh Steelers and a defence that held Ben Roethlisberger and his receivers in check. However, a large concern for them is that corner Chris Harris is struggling with a shoulder problem and was in and out of the game a lot. This is a problem for the Broncos defence as he is their most effective slot corner, and when facing a team with both Danny Amendola, and particularly Julian Edelman, you want your best slot corner to be on top of their game as they will do their damage from these positions.

The other worry for the Broncos is that Belichick’s game plan on defence is always to take away what the opposition do well and force them to win by doing something they are less comfortable with. I would expect this to take the form of the Patriots focusing on stopping the run and short passes by packing the middle of the field, daring Manning to make the deep and sideline throws that have given him problems this season. With some of the injuries to the Patriots front seven, it might be that the Broncos will be able to run the ball, but they will have to if they are to keep this game close.

I am expecting the Patriots to win this game, I think that the better balance between offence and defence will be too much for the Broncos to overcome, but they got here for a reason and so if they can keep it a tight game they stand a chance. There is part of me that still wonder if Manning has one or two moments of magic left in him, but even if he hasn’t, it has still been an incredible career.

Arizona Cardinals @ Carolina Panthers

This is going to be a cold game, with the east coast storms freezing an already torn up grass field. It is into this environment that the Cardinals come after playing three straight games in the warm dome that they call home.

More worrying for the Cardinals is that quarterback Carson Palmer was clearly having problems throwing the ball last week. It may be that his finger will feel better for another week of recovery, or they can make further changes to the taping of it, but balls were consistently sailing on Palmer lat week. Not only that, but he didn’t look quite as poised or as aggressive as he has for most of the season, and the long ball is a big part of Bruce Arians’ offence.

They are going against a team whose defence has been excellent, but with the injuries in the secondary, you might be able to get at the Panthers with the deep passing game. However, in Star Lotulelei and Kawann Short the Panthers have two defensive tackle that could really cause the Cardinals problems with pressure up the middle, which stops a quarterback from stepping up and Carson Palmer was never the most mobile of quarterbacks. The defence also features one of my favourite player sin Luke Kuechly, one of the best linebackers currently playing who is equally effective making a tackle in the run game as he is when dropping back in coverage. The Panthers will be hoping their predominantly zone coverage will hold up against an offence that loves to attack a defence at multiple levels.

The Panthers power running game might be well suited to counter the aggressive Cardinals defence, particularly as the Cardinals play with a converted safety at linebacker, relying on the speed of their extra secondary players, which might struggle on the Panthers’ turf. However, the Panthers have been making their passing game work with a less than stellar group of receivers, and Arians has been talking about how the Cardinals’ focus will be stopping tight end Greg Olson. Whether this will be enough with Cam Newton’s deep passing game causing many teams problems, particularly as you have to respect the dual threat that Jonathan Stewart and he present in the running game when they run play action, is yet to be seen.

I think this is likely to be my favourite game of this week. I have so much respect for both coaches, and it will be great to see an unfamiliar team going to the Super Bowl from the NFC given the recent stretch of dominance from the Seattle Seahawk.

Most of all however, we should be savouring both of these games as there is so little football left. Sure we will all be pouring over the offseason moves as every fan base transitions into the hopeful offseason part of the year, but the games are what it is all about. More on that next week.