"Matriculatin'" Hank Stram Style
From Wiki:
"In Super Bowl IV, American football coach Hank Stram wore a microphone on the sidelines as part of the television broadcast, and was caught telling his Kansas City Chiefs, "Just keep matriculatin' the ball down the field, boys," referring to the process of moving the football toward a score... However, this use of the word is unrelated to any other known use of the word."
Notwithstanding Stram's proclivity to create his own definitions for words, Brady and Al share Hank's affinity for ball control offense and prolonged time-consuming drives. That first drive yesterday was a thing of beauty and it will be interesting to see how much our offense will develop this year. Will we be able to consistently score on and wear down tougher defenses?
Based on the relatively few number of plays we were able to see yesterday, what do you think is the upside of our offense this year?
September 4th, 2011 at 9:58 AM ^
September 4th, 2011 at 10:07 AM ^
helped him win two Super Bowls and a Hall of Fame induction.
But we're dating ourselves...
September 4th, 2011 at 7:41 PM ^
Slight correction. Hank Stram won one Super Bowl. Hank's Chiefs did lose to Green Bay in Super Bowl I, but won Super Bowl IV. Chiefs were also AFL champs in 62'
September 4th, 2011 at 10:10 AM ^
Obviously there are going to be fewer possessions and lower scores. This is a good thing. I know that Brian has gone on record criticizing coaches who think that "Fewer possessions mean better defense", but if I had a dollar for every nfl coach who said something to the effect that "We're going to do everything we can to keep the ball out of Aaron Rodgers hands" I would be a millionaire. With our depth(or lack thereof) on defense thats just smart football.
You've got to be impressed with Borges's flexibility. If Rodriguez had been capable of utilizing Threet's mediocre skills instead of trotting Nick Sheridan out on the field running spread Toledo probably doesn't happen. With that said, yeah, Denards numbers are likely not going to be heisman calibre. Obviously, if he is 100% for MSU and OSU I will take that trade every day of the week and twice on Saturday.
September 4th, 2011 at 10:12 AM ^
There aren't that many NFL coaches. You'd probably have something like 20 dollars.
September 4th, 2011 at 10:16 AM ^
I've never been good at hyperbole.
September 4th, 2011 at 10:38 AM ^
there's a lot of assistants, and they can say it more than once. If it's not my money, he'd still get credit.
September 4th, 2011 at 10:46 AM ^
Are you dahblue's little brother? (Actually, that would be an insult to dahblue, who at least makes some good points despite sounding like a jacka$$ much of the time.)
Seriously, are you comparing Denard-running-pro-style to Threet-running-zone-read? Really? I think that's exactly what you tried to do. I'd agree that the offense in '08 was a bad fit for Threet, but I don't think any tweaks would have made a significant difference.
Elsewhere, I see that you buy into the idiotic time of possession ideas.
September 4th, 2011 at 6:23 PM ^
I'd draw a parallel between running no huddle spread with Nick Sheridan/Steven Threet to putting Denard in I-formation for the entire game. Fortunately it didn't/wont happen.
And since when are clock-control concepts "idiotic"? Have you really lost so much connection to reality that you think some manipulation of statistics(taken totally out of context in game situations with literally millions of variables that cannot be accounted for) make the convictions of minimum 95% of football coaches idiotic? You've got a pretty high opinion of yourself dude.
September 4th, 2011 at 10:30 AM ^
I used to have one of those games that had magnetic football players on a metal field, Vikings v. Chiefs, and you'd flip a switch, the "field" would vibrate and the players would move.
Way before computers...
Holy crap! I'm starting to sound like my grandpa used to!
EDIT: Not before computers, just before they were available for consumers. NASA obviously used one for the Apollo 13 mission "that fit inside a single room".
I guess I'm not that old after all.
September 4th, 2011 at 10:18 AM ^
has said (paraphrasing) that having a player with Denard's "once in a generation" skill set is really challenging him to figure out how best to utilize his talent.
Like you Desmonlon I'm looking forward to seeing what he comes up with.
September 4th, 2011 at 10:32 AM ^
Make mine vanilla, please.
Yesterday's offense was supposed to be boring. Hoke and Borges didn't have to tip their hand for Notre Dame, so they chose not to. Yesterday went perfect. The whole idea is that we CAN'T judge the offense yet because the sample is so small.
When ND looks at film, all they will see is a bunch of basic plays that will give them absolutely no idea what to expect next week. That is exactly what I was hoping for. I, for one, am nearly ecstatic at how yesterday went.