Self-Indulgent Post of the Week: The Force

Self-Indulgent Post of the Week: The Force


February 23, 2019
(image via NPR)

What am I reading? I’m actually reading three books at once right now, but the one that has really been a page-turner is The Force by Don Winslow. It’s a fictional piece about New York police detective Denny Malone, a crooked cop who ends up being squeezed by a lot of seedy elements in the city. It’s set in 2017 and has a pretty modern vibe to it, and one reason I like Winslow is his dialogue. His characters speak more realistically than characters in a lot of books.

What am I googling? I went to see Alita: Battle Angel and saw some previews for other movies I’ve been looking into a little bit, like the new Pet Sematary and Jordan Peele’s Us.

What am I looking forward to? I’m looking forward to football season. Like, high school football season. I went to a clinic last weekend, and it got me all excited to get back out there in August. Of course, we have a lot of things to do to get ready for the year, but clinics have a way of refreshing your mind while making you impatient to implement some of the new things you learned.

4 comments

  1. Comments: 1863
    Joined: 1/19/2016
    je93
    Feb 23, 2019 at 2:52 PM

    PET SEMATARY & US are both on my list

  2. Comments: 522
    Joined: 8/12/2015
    DonAZ
    Feb 23, 2019 at 4:15 PM

    What kind of things were covered in the clinic you attended?

    Care to play soothsayer? Given your knowledge of the game, and what trends you see coming, where is the game headed? By that I mean: will we see offense dominate more and more, or will we see defenses swing the pendulum back a bit? On offense, is it more and more of a passing game, or will the running back make a return? On defense, what’s going to be the key to stopping offenses?

    • Comments: 3844
      Joined: 7/13/2015
      Feb 23, 2019 at 7:30 PM

      Well, I do plan to put together a post with some notes and such about the clinic. There’s a lot to put together, and I’m going to another clinic soon, so there’s a bunch.

      I will offer up that I was talking to a very accomplished high school coach, and he said he thinks the window for RPOs to be such a prevalent and explosive concept is starting to close. He thinks defensive coaches are catching up to the RPO through both scheme and personnel. So I thought that was pretty interesting.

      There was another coach there (whom I was not a fan of in general) who said the future of the spread offense is to run it from condensed formations. In other words, run spread concepts from tight bunch formations, double-tight end formations, tight slots, etc. Of course, that’s kind of the opposite of running a spread offense, but I get what he was saying. I don’t agree that it’s “the future” of the spread offense, but I can see some teams using it effectively, at least in certain packages. Michigan ran a ton of those formations last year, though it was often with 12 personnel (1 RB, 2 TE).

      • Comments: 522
        Joined: 8/12/2015
        DonAZ
        Feb 23, 2019 at 9:21 PM

        Thanks!

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