Bench Wren

Louisville Head Coach and former Florida Defensive Coordinator Charlie Strong is a man who has ruined the National Championship aspirations of two Heisman Trophy QBs, Troy Smith and Sam Bradford.  He teaches that Fire Zones should attack the Offense from three different areas: Field, Middle, and Boundary.  My previous Fire Zone posts have shown pressure being brought from the Field and in the Middle and this post will show a good example of a Boundary pressure used by blitzer extraordinaire Jon Tenuta, current N.C. State LB Coach and formerly the DC at Notre Dame, Georgia Tech, UNC, Ohio State, SMU, Kansas St., and Marshall.

These are newly posted clinic notes of mine with good info on Tenuta's blitz schemes from 2006: 2006 Atlanta Nike Clinic Notes (Pat Hill, former HC at Fresno State was a great speaker at that clinic as well).   Manny Diaz, another coach that I have studied, mentioned Tenuta as a guy he admired for being relentless in bringing heat and having success with lesser talent than the rest of the ACC while he was at Georgia Tech.

Tenuta's attention to detail is readily discernible while listening to him speak passionately about getting after the QB.  He strongly emphasizes the aiming points of his DL and the departure angles of blitzing LBs and DBs.   He devoted 10-15 minutes a day as a DC to practicing these aiming points and departure angles with his Blitzes and Fire Zones.  He likes his outside blitzers to be the quick Force players and for their departure angle to be one yard outside of the nearest or deepest RB.  Departure angle is talking about his initial angle, but as a Force player it is important to be able to adjust that angle and stay outside the RB.  Let me show a quick example of how this works before I get to the Bench Wren Fire Zone I am supposed to be writing about.

This is the NCAA blitz or America's Fire Zone (Bench Falcon in Tenuta's playbook) and these are the run fits to the Field side: long stick DE - A gap, scraping Mike - B gap, 3 Hook Will - inside 1/2 of C gap, 2 Seam SS - outside 1/2 of C gap, and outside blitzer Sam - Force.  Many DCs prefer their Outside Blitzer to be a Spill player and for the 2 Seam player to always be the Force player.  To be honest with you, I don't know why Tenuta does it this way.  It could be preference or personnel or both.

Bench Falcon

Here is Bench Wren below.  The Bench call sets the FS, Will, Fox DE, and 3 technique DT to the Boundary.  The video calls it Bench Wren 3 Blaze, that's a term I used to tell the Safeties to rotate to the Boundary.  It can be a helpful tag if you are a Field and Bench pressure team, but I now prefer Manny Diaz's system of calling Field or Boundary to the side of the call, which tells everyone where the blitz is coming from.   It also tells the Safeties which way to rotate and tells the front how to line up.

Bench Wren

Both LBs will walk up on the line of scrimmage and show blitz.  The Will LB is the Outside Blitzer and Force player with a departure angle of one yard outside the nearest or deepest RB.  The Bench Tackle and Fox DE are executing what is commonly referred to as a "Tex" stunt, with the DT going first and then the Fox DE looping behind him and into the A gap.  The DT's aiming point is the inside ear hole of the OT.  He is the B gap player and wants to get up the field.  The NT gets in a heavy shade on the Center and slants to the inside ear hole of the Guard.  He wants to draw the Center's attention to create space for the Fox DE looping inside.  

The 5 technique DE is aiming for the inside ear hole of the TE.  He is a C gap player vs. the Run, but he must cross the TE's face vs. the Pass and be the Contain rusher.  The Mike LB is the B gap player and the Sam / Nickel is the D gap and Force player vs. the Run to the Field side.     

 

Here are some cut-ups:

Blitzology also did a post on this blitz concept here.


Looks like someone made a playbook app: here.  Thanks for the info - John from Coaches Corner.

Key Legal Lessons from the NBA and NFL Lockouts

I'm honored to be a panelist at this year's MIT Sloan Sports Analytics conference (see previous post).  I'll be on the Building the Modern Athlete: Performance Analytics panel.

I have a column for the conference titled Legal Lessons from the NBA and NFL Lockouts.  Here are a couple of excerpts:

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Part of the explanation for the “better” behavior of teams than their leagues and players’ associations may rest in operational objectives. While leagues and players’ associations are motivated primarily by business and legal considerations, teams are motivated most by competitive considerations. To be sure, leagues “compete” with other leagues, and more generally with other entertainment providers, for fans’ interest and dollars. And players’ associations compete with other players’ associations for most effectively representing their membership. But teams compete with each other every day and are better candidates to utilize analytics and other optimizing approaches. .....

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One caveat: if the NHL locks out its players later this year and if the NHLPA decertifies — which means that each player becomes independent and can file litigation in a court nearby where he plays — expect the players to file antitrust litigation in a federal court in California or Arizona. Both states have NHL teams, meaning the league has sufficient nexus to each state to defend itself in court. More importantly, both states are governed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which is regarded as more pro-labor than other federal circuits and which may embrace a view of the Norris-LaGuardia Act favorable to players. It is also possible NHL players could file litigation in Canada, which features stronger labor laws.

The NHL, for its part, would probably seek to move any litigation to New York, where league headquarters are based and where case law from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is favorable to its interests. The league might instead seek to defend itself in Minnesota or Illinois, both of which are states governed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, which ruled in favor of the NFL. ...

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To read the rest, click here.

Orioles Defeat Bergesen and Marlins Lose to Bonificio

In a story of teams with two dramatically different success/failure stories in baseball salary arbitration, the Orioles improved their all-time record to 12 wins and 3 losses, and the Marlins dropped to 3 wins and 7 losses. The Orioles defeated pitcher Brad Bergesen today, and the Marlins lost to Emilio Bonifacio yesterday. The Marlins 2 losses are the only two player victories of the 5 decisions to date. Mark Burstein, Robert Herzog, and Elizabeth Neumeier decided the Orioles-Bergesen case. The Marlins-Bonifacio panel was Burstein, Sylvia Skratek, and Steven Wolf. Burstein is now 1-1 in panel decision after his first two arbitration hearings. Herzog has participated in 6 panel decisions, and the teams have won 4 and lost 2. Elizabeth Neumeier’s log is now 18 team wins and 11 player wins.

Should home schooled children be able to play public school sports?

I have an op-ed for the NY Times on whether home schooled students should be able to play public school sports. Virginia is considering such a law, and 13 states -- including Florida, where home schooled Tim Tebow grew up and played high school sports -- have enacted such laws, but most states say no. I say yes.  Here's an excerpt:

Critics of home-schooled children playing public school sports also worry about public school students losing roster spots on teams to home-schooled children who are better athletes. I find this criticism to be unpersuasive. From at least the high school level on, coaches try to assemble the best teams, which normally means finding the best players, regardless of their backgrounds. Provided the available athletes meet the requisite academic criteria, coaches should be able to pick the best of the bunch.

To read the rest, click here.

Legal Implications of playing beer pong at a bar and then getting injured outside bar

I'm not sure if beer pong is a "sport", thought it is on TV and Rick Reilly clearly thinks it is. Plus, as we discussed before, spelling bees seem to be sporting events.  If a spelling bee is a sport, how could a beer pong match not be?

In any event, for all the beer pong players out there -- if you get drunk playing beer pong at a bar and then get injured outside the bar because you're drunk, one judge in NYC says you can't sue the bar. You've assumed the risk:

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In a decision made public yesterday, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lucy Billings threw out Alan Berger’s lawsuit against Wicked Willy’s on Bleecker Street, finding he’d signed up for the fast-paced beer-drinking game of his own free will.

“Despite the game tables, cups and alcohol [that the] defendant bar made available to plaintiff and other bar patrons without serving the alcohol or monitoring its consumption, plaintiff voluntarily engaged in the drinking game” and “consumed alcohol to the point of diminished capacity,” Billings wrote.

Berger was 22 in June 2009, when he got into a heated 3 1/2-hour match with friends playing the game, the object of which is to bounce a pingpong ball into another player’s cup and get them to drink, court papers say.

He took a bus back to New Jersey after the game and was still so drunk he tried to cross Highway 9 near Manalapan and got hit by a car going 50 miles an hour, said his lawyer, Michael Wiseberg.

Berger suffered numerous injuries, including a broken hip, leg and foot, tears in both his knees, and a lacerated liver, the lawyer said. When his blood was checked at the hospital about four hours after he left the bar, his blood alcohol content was .26 — almost four times higher than the legal driving limit.

His suit charges that the bar should have been monitoring the game to make sure players weren’t getting visibly drunk.

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To read the rest from the NY Post, click here.

If you let me play . . .

My late father-in-law (who lived his adult life surrounded by a wife, two daughters, two granddaughters (although one grandson), and string of female cats) used to say he did not really become an impassioned feminist (although he had always supported women's rights) until he had daughters and the demand that women and girls get fully equal opportunities came home.

Last Wednesday was National Girls and Women in Sports Day, whose celebratory purpose is obvious, particularly in this, the 40th anniversary of Title IX. Yesterday, the University of Miami sponsored a girls' sports clinic, featuring stations with members of various UM women's teams and a short speech by women's basketball coach Katie Meier. This was followed by tickets to a women's basketball game (UM is the defending ACC champion and ranked 7th in the nation). Halftime featured a scrimmage of 3d and 4th grad girls from my daughter's school (which runs a popular girls' basketball league). And every timeout during the game featured announcements of various statistics and information about the benefits girls enjoy from playing sports. And doing it all on the day of the Super Bowl--arguably the culture's most male-centered day of the year--was brilliant counterprogramming. Of course, many of the girls left the game talking about how they were going home to watch the Super Bowl, which I hope reflects the instantiation of a general love of sports in many different forms.

I was very impressed with Meier's remarks, where she talked about how relatively new opportunities are for girls in sports (Meier is about my age, so she was growing up when Title IX was in its relative infancy), how sports have allowed her to have a career she never could have dreamed of when she was a kid, and the benefits that sports have for people in all walks of life. She particularly emphasized something I never thought of--that sports teach you how to fail and how to come back from failure, an ability we can use in all aspects of our lives. I also was struck by one statistic that was announced during the game--today, 1-in-3 high-school girls play some sport, compared with 1-in-250 in 1971 (the year before Title IX). Finally, I was amazed by how fast the women players were--I had not seen a women's game live in a long time and the athleticism was surprising. I often have said that women are about 50 years behind men in most sports (i.e., women play a game that looks somewhat like the men's game of 50 years ago); I wonder if it may be less, at least in terms of speed and quickness.

I close with one of the great commercials of all time and the source of most of the statistics about girls' sports participation.^*

^* And a key piece of evidence in my arguments for why it really is difficult to separate commercial from political speech.

2012 Schedule

Although this has been available for a good while, I thought I would go ahead and post it.

Ferrum College 2012 Football Schedule

A couple of changes are apparent right off the bat. Shenandoah will be a non conference game, and will replace the spot that had been taken by Bridgewater. Also, Southern Virginia University is back after not being scheduled last year, in favor of Hampden-Sydney College.
The Christopher Newport game will be much earlier in the season as Ferrum travels to Newport News on October the 6th for a 1 p.m. kickoff. Lastly , Ferrum welcomes the LaGrange Panthers to W.B. Adams field on November 3rd for a first ever meeting between the two schools.
It should be an exciting year!