Alabama Getaway - 2017 College Football Thread

[ursus arctos]

But also within three points

[Incandenza]

If Auburn beat Georgia in the SEC championship, I assume they have to be in the CFP. Clemson and Oklahoma should be in if they win out, I guess the question is if a one-loss Bama team makes it in ahead of Wisconsin.

[Muukalainen]

Technical question: is deliberately fumbling the football legal? Second technical question: would deliberately placing the ball on the ground be classified as a fumble? Third, non-technical question, what the hell has happened to the Cornhuskers this year?

[ursus arctos]

Is deliberately fumbling the football legal?

Yes, though if you are thinking about fumbling it forward as an offensive tactic, keep in mind that a) a gridiron football is even more unpredictable in its bounce than a rugby ball and b) in the last two minutes of any quarter, the player who fumbled the ball is the only offensive player who can advance it.

Would deliberately placing the ball on the ground be classified as a fumble?
Yes, and the most famous example of this is the Fumblerooski in the 1984 Orange Bowl.

What the hell has happened to the Cornhuskers this year?

They have been struggling for a while, having never really adapted to the loss of Tom Osborne, the Big Ten (following the collapse of the Big 8 and a decade in the Big 12) or the "Power 5" era of college football, in which privileged access to the recruiting el dorados of Florida, Texas and California is a virtual pre-requisite for success. The coach they fired yesterday had a .500 record over his three seasons.

[Muukalainen]

Thanks ursus. I read somewhere that deliberately fumbling the football was illegal, which immediately brought the fumblerooski to mind. Perhaps it was inaccurate information or perhaps there is a difference between college and NFL rules?

It was precisely because of the unpredictability of the bounce of the gridiron ball that I asked the second question, though at that point I was expecting the answer to the first question to be negative. So, in theory, the ball carrier could run directly at a defender, place the ball on the ground, plough the defender out of the way, and a following team mate could pick up the ball and run through the gap created, a la rugby?

Sad about Nebraska. I saw some of Mike Riley's press conference yesterday and he seemed to be the only person present who thought he would be in the same position next season.

[ursus arctos]

The first may have been in reference to the institution of the last two minute rule I mentioned, which is relatively new.

The second idea is intriguing, but it wouldn’t work in the last two minutes and would require ball carriers to go against everything they have ever been taught, as well as having a teammate following the ball carrier.

It will be interesting to see if the new coach can turn things around in Lincoln. They still have the resources to be competitive within the Big Ten.

[Muukalainen]

...and would require ball carriers to go against everything they have ever been taught, ...

Indeed, retention of the ball is far more important in gridiron than it is in rugby. I'm not suggesting it would be appropriate for a called play, but I did see a situation recently where it would have been a useful ploy as the play developed. Basically the supporting player would almost certainly have scored had it been properly executed, but I suppose the fear of losing possession is so strong that it negates almost all risk taking.

[ursus arctos]

I think that it is a matter of training more than anything.

Gridiron players are continuously drilled against anything that could be interpreted as "improvisation" or "free-lancing" (with minimal accommodation afforded the quarterback in extreme circumstances). That's also why one almost never sees ball carriers "lateraling" (making a backward pass to a teammate as in rugby) in situations when it would be beneficial. The carrier hasn't been taught to think of that, and the teammate hasn't been taught to expect the ball in such circumstances. The one exception to that is plays at the end of a game (or half) in which such laterals are the only way to keep the ball alive after the clock has expired.

[ursus arctos]

BTW, highlights of the bizarre Alabama-Minnesota basketball game where Alabama played the last seven minutes with three men (and outscored the Golden Gophers) are here.

The 5 on 4 starts at about 16:30, and a bit later one of the Alabama players badly turns his ankle.

It doesn't develop the way that I imagined. Minnesota seems to lose concentration, taking a lot of threes and generally not pressing their obvious offensive advantage, while Collin Sexton, the Alabama point guard, just goes off (despite playing on fumes).

[Muukalainen]

Wow. I find that a surprising, almost shocking, reply. It gives the impression that those on the touchlines give all the directions, make all the decisions, while the role of those on the pitch is just to execute whatever has been decided for them.

[ursus arctos]

That’s exacctly the prevailing mentality

[jason voorhees]

Technical question: is deliberately fumbling the football legal? ?

Fumbling it forward in the interest of another player forwarding it and scoring is not legal. See Ken "Snake" Stabler's Holy Roller for the Raydiz back in the 70s.

It was made illegal after that play.

Sometimes players will fumble out of bounds if the ball starts slipping out.

[Hot Pepsi]

Wow. I find that a surprising, almost shocking, reply. It gives the impression that those on the touchlines give all the directions, make all the decisions, while the role of those on the pitch is just to execute whatever has been decided for them.

Sort of. Just about everyone on the field, especially the quarterback,is making a lot of “reads” - figuring out what the opposition is trying to do and responding accordingly. But in order for all 11 players on a side to function as a unit, they need to be able to predict how the rest of their team will react to a given situation, so their options on what to do on a given play are proscribed. All of this is happening very fast.

The player with the ball can be somewhat creative in how they try to get around defenders, but because losing possession is such a bad thing for the offense, there’s really no room for improvisation with passing, lateraling, or handing off the ball.

[Cal Alamein]

You have to get Bill King's amazing commentary in there.

Re: Nebraska demise, there was no more consistent collegiate powerhouse from the early 60s to the early 2000s. At OU I was fortunate to see them in person 1981, 1983, and 1985. The 1983 game was probably my favorite college football game experience. OU was out of the running for the Big-8 title, but played their guts out to a #1 Cornhusker team that eventually lost a squeaker to Miami for the national title. It was cold, rainy and the Sooner fans went apeshit, but Nebraska prevailed. Lotsa respect for NU - their fans were quality fans, and their program was generally a class act (Osborne lost me w/ his handling of Lawrence Phillips). Loved the OU/NU rivlary - wish they could come back to the Big 12.

[ursus arctos]

I was assuming that Muuk would be less obvious than The Snake.

I’m obviously old, but really don’t think that any of the former Big 8 or Southwest Conference schools have benefitted from the demise of their old stomping grounds.

That said, the Sooners are quite well positioned this season.

[Muukalainen]

I was assuming that Muuk would be less obvious than The Snake.

Indeed. I hadn't even heard of that play before, but it's plain ridiculous that it was allowed to stand as a TD. There's loads of scope for the officials to rule the play dead, perhaps less so with the QB's fumble but much more so with the next player's fumble.

OU was out of the running for the Big-8 title, but played their guts out to a #1 Cornhusker team that eventually lost a squeaker to Miami for the national title.

I hadn't realised how dominant they once were. I started following American football in, if I recall correctly, 1983 when Channel 4 started covering the sport on Sunday evenings. At some point I saw the highlights of that final, and remember the fumblerooski because neither the cameramen nor the commentators had the foggiest idea of where the ball was. The coverage was almost entirely of the NFL, of course, and I started supporting the Pats, mainly on the strength of their linebacker unit (Andre Tippett, Steve Nelson, Laurence McGrew (I think) and Donald can't remember his surname but I think he played outer left) but also because of their shambolic attack, in which "Champagne" Tony Eason was binned in favour of the nearly decrepit Steve Grogan. They scraped through to the play offs, won all their games on the road to reach the final, which I stayed up all night to watch them get a right royal dicking, stuffed up a chimney and taken to the cleaners and back again, all in the same bloody game, by the Chicago bastard bears. It doesn't grind. Well, not too much after 30 odd years.

Sort of. Just about everyone on the field, especially the quarterback, is making a lot of “reads” - figuring out what the opposition is trying to do and responding accordingly. But in order for all 11 players on a side to function as a unit, they need to be able to predict how the rest of their team will react to a given situation, so their options on what to do on a given play are proscribed. All of this is happening very fast.

Well, yes, but that's true of any type of football, where the prevailing mentality is far from what it seems to be in gridiron.

[Muukalainen]

Hah, I should've checked first: it was 84/85 season for Bears - Pats, not 83/84. And the missing surname finally arrives in my memory: Blackmon.

[Hot Pepsi]

Part of their "dominance" was that they only played a few tough games per year. As did most of the top teams. It was definitely not a case of "any given Saturday." It still isn't, really, but college football is more competitive than it used to be.

The old Big8 were Nebraska, Oklahoma and the little 6. That's one reason why they often played Penn State. We had a great rivalry with them in the 80s. They won more, but we won a couple of important ones. Then Colorado got good, but around that same time Oklahoma went into the shitter. The early years of the Big 12 were exciting, though.

Nebraska always ran the wishbone offense, which is a bit like the triple-option run by the service academies and could recruit players who specifically fit that. They didn't usually score a lot but they had good defenses. That offense doesn't really work any more so they are just another team running a pro-style offense. There aren't a lot of people in Nebraska, so they've had to rely on recruiting players from around the west and southwest. That's harder to do now, I guess because there are more good teams, good coaches, and programs with money and facilities.

The Big 12 is falling apart because Texas wouldn't share. And now Texas sucks. Karma. They're not a bad fit in the B1G, they just haven't been very good. Their refusal to give any coaching staff more than a few years isn't helping.

There fans always travel pretty well, even all the way to State College, and are usually nice people to talk to.

[Hot Pepsi]

Well, yes, but that's true of any type of football, where the prevailing mentality is far from what it seems to be in gridiron.

In other kinds of football, the cost of losing the ball is not usually as great as it is in gridiron. And you have three, maybe four plays to make progress, whereas in RU or football, you can stall the game a bit and not really go anywhere for a while. In gridiron having to punt is a failure, much moreso than in rugby league.

In football and rugby, if the offense can move the ball quickly and efficiently, it pressures the defense to make quick choices hoping that, sooner or later, they chose wrong and leave somebody or somebodies open for the offense to sneak through or catch the defense out of shape. That happens *within* plays in gridiron, but in gridiron, the defense resets itself after every down and can use unlimited substitutes, so the offense, which also resets itself, has to start with a fairly specific plan on how to counter that.

[Flynnie]

Does Nebraska run a pro-style offense? I was under the impression that was increasingly rare in college, hence the success of quarterbacks like Wentz who aren't from big schools but played for programs where they occasionally went under center.

[Hot Pepsi]

Right. Not a pro-style, I guess. More of a spread, I think. I wasn't really paying attention. But they're not running the option any more and they aren't at all unique. That's the point. And, in any event, they're running game isn't very effective these days.

Their fans will go apeshit if they fail to hire Scott Frost as their new coach. He was a very successful QB for them in their wishbone-glory days and has been very successful at UCF. It says a lot about how fast time passes these days. When I heard that Scott Frost was a head coach somewhere, I thought "didn't he just graduate like five years ago?"

Last week, Nebraska actually scored more points then any visiting team at Penn State ever has - 44. (the previous record was the Carlisle Indian School, but that game was played in Harrisburg), but almost all of them came in garbage time, which was most of the second half, after Penn State was well ahead and put in the back-ups. Still, it was frustrating, so this last weekend after the game against Maryland was well in hand, our back-ups played much better. Final outcome 66-3.

It was satisfying. It's helpful for Penn State's recruiting for Maryland to resume it's traditional status as not-nearly-as-good-as-Penn State. Same with Rutgers. If Maryland kept all the good recruits from Maryland and Rutgers kept all the good recruits from New Jersey and the NYC area, they'd both be very good programs, but they don't because they're usually just not as attractive an option for top recruits as Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, USC, et al. Because they compete for interest with local NFL teams, they've never had the big fan bases and, until relatively recently, their institutions didn't have the ambition and/or alumni donations to improve facilities. Being in the B1G means they will get a lot of revenue and Maryland especially has some big-money donors, but it also means they'll routinely get their ass kicked on the field and that their relatively small stadiums will be half or more opposing fans in a lot of games.

[Muukalainen]

In other kinds of football, the cost of losing the ball is not usually as great as it is in gridiron.

Agreed, that was my original argument. I don't see any particular difference in the initial objective of a down in gridiron to that of a phase in rugby, either code: get the ball carrier through a breach of the (first line of) defence. For certain, the governing laws of the different sports are very different and the ways of going about it are consequently different, but the objective is constant. What does appear to be different though, is the mentality of the players once that initial objective is achieved. Without question, in rugby the players will attempt to exploit the situation to the maximum, and that means scoring, and their coaching sessions will support this. In gridiron, however, the mentality appears to be to get as much gain in ground as you can but with no risk in losing the ball. The problem with this is that, for certain, situations will arise in games where a simple pass (lateral) to a team mate will turn a modest gain into a much bigger one or even a TD. Where's the risk? That the pass might go astray and be recovered by the opposition? Or that the pass isn't made and the defence sack the QB next down, or intercept him, or the RB fumbles or the defence holds and you have to punt anyway? By actively coaching the players not to pass the ball and also to do nothing other than instructed from the touchline, the players are being robbed of the tools they need to make informed decisions when these situations arise.

[Hot Pepsi]

Agreed, that was my original argument. I don't see any particular difference in the initial objective of a down in gridiron to that of a phase in rugby, either code: get the ball carrier through a breach of the (first line of) defence. For certain, the governing laws of the different sports are very different and the ways of going about it are consequently different, but the objective is constant. What does appear to be different though, is the mentality of the players once that initial objective is achieved. Without question, in rugby the players will attempt to exploit the situation to the maximum, and that means scoring, and their coaching sessions will support this. In gridiron, however, the mentality appears to be to get as much gain in ground as you can but with no risk in losing the ball. The problem with this is that, for certain, situations will arise in games where a simple pass (lateral) to a team mate will turn a modest gain into a much bigger one or even a TD. Where's the risk? That the pass might go astray and be recovered by the opposition? Or that the pass isn't made and the defence sack the QB next down, or intercept him, or the RB fumbles or the defence holds and you have to punt anyway? By actively coaching the players not to pass the ball and also to do nothing other than instructed from the touchline, the players are being robbed of the tools they need to make informed decisions when these situations arise.

No, it's not about that. This game has been played for about 100 years and everything has been tried. Besides, most of the players play or have played basketball, lacrosse, soccer, or rugby. They understand how improvisation works and why it usually doesn't in gridiron.

That doesn't usually work because there is not usually a clear free space in which to make that lateral. In rugby, offside is based on where the ball is and there's no blocking allowed, so the guys running behind the ball carrier aren't covered by defensive players. But this is not the case in gridiron. In gridiron, ideally, you want everyone who isn't carrying the ball to be in front of the guy with the ball blocking or, in some cases, blocking guys trying to catch him from behind. It's a much better use of their bodies to block rather than set-up to get a lateral, which has a reasonable chance of ending up as a fumble unless the receiver of said lateral is ready to get it, but being ready to get it means conspicuously running a few yards behind the ball-carrier and not blocking anybody. It's very hard to do that without the defense figuring out what's about to happen, in which case somebody covers the trailing guy while somebody else tries to tackle the ball carrier.* You can't do that in rugby.

For the lateral to work, the guy with the ball has to get all the defenders in the vicinity to come toward him such that the guy he wants to lateral too has some open space to catch and run into, as well as a free lane of space through which to lateral the ball. But if he waits until the defense is actually tackling him, he probably won't be able to execute a clean pass, especially if the defenders has hold of one of his arms. And for this to work at all, everyone has to be running at full speed, otherwise it's easy for the defense to snuff it out regardless of how well the lateral is executed. So in order to make all of that work at full speed, it almost always has to be something carefully planned and practiced.

And even then, its usually only used in desperation situations because the odds of it causing a fumble are so high that it makes more sense to build plays around blocking schemes rather than trickeration with the ball. And once you use one of those plays, it's very hard to use it again even in that season because oppositions will be looking for it. Whereas, if you execute your blocks right, it doesn't matter if they know what you're doing.

The reason why the Play was so remarkable - other than the fucking band - is that they had to mostly improvise it. That same sort of thing has been tried at the end of hundreds of games in the NFL, college, and high school and it probably only works about 1% of the time, if that.

Here are some examples of planned lateral plays that work.

There are also plays where a guy - usually a receiver who has caught it downfield and is about to be tackled - manages to make a snap decision and successfully laterals it to another guy, but that's rare because usually the other receivers are either far away - that's how you spread out the defense - or are in front of him blocking. That's sort of what happened in this play with the Vikings, but I think they were setting it up for a possible lateral. ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8o--gh5R98


And of course, there are lots of reverses, double reverses, triple reverses, flea-flickers, direct snaps, fake spikes, half-back passes, etc, etc. You can see them on youtube.

*Indeed that's how the option and screen passes can be defeated. If the defense can get enough guys off of blocks to tackle the quarterback and the running back or backs, it doesn't need to try to figure out what the quarterback is going to do with the ball before he does it.

[Muukalainen]

They understand how improvisation works and why it usually doesn't in gridiron.

The more you discourage something and actively coach against it, the less likely it is to succeed when you need it. I'm not suggesting for a second that gridiron should become more like rugby. I, for one, am quite happy the way the different sports are at the moment. What I am saying, however, is that situations will arise during American football games, most often by chance rather than design, when a bit of improvisation can be beneficial. There are plenty of occasions, for example, when the ball carrier has an unblocked opponent ahead of him, but team mates trailing quite close behind him. They're not trying to position themselves for a lateral, they're trying to get into a position to block opponents, but they're unable to do so, so they just happen to be support runners. The ball carrier will naturally try to beat the defender, and if he fails then the play ends with the tackle. What price a lateral in these circumstances? Of course, it depends precisely on what these circumstances are: the exact positions of his team mates, the presence of other defenders, the potential further gain, and so on. This can vary from a very high risk, in which case the ball carrier holds on to the ball at all costs, to a very low risk, in which case he might choose to pass.

Another example, and one I saw on youtube recently, was where a defensive lineman batted an attempted QB pass and a fellow lineman intercepted the ball. He then trundled off in the general direction of the end zone at a fairly leisurely pace while his speedier team mates formed a screen around him. After a while an opponent got through the blockers and made the tackle. Had he done what to me seemed the obvious, namely give the ball to a swifter team mate then the defence would have scored a touchdown rather than just getting a turnover. What appears to be standard coaching practice in gridiron, deprives the players of the ability to make a proper assessment of the risks involved and act accordingly. This is the bit that I totally disagree with, and I can't think of another sport where this is the case.

I will also add that killing the play sooner, rather than later, increases the number of downs, which itself increases the risk of losing the ball. How do you measure those comparative risks (risk of improvisation versus risk of losing the ball through prolonging your offence)? I happened to be watching these highlights as you posted your reply. Both offences get turned over quite regularly.

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/WayneMcGaheeIII/status/936648576956092418