You're randomly flipping channels and come across a football game. You aren't familiar with either team. How long does it take you to see which players are good?
Scenario And Question For Football Guys Who Know Their Stuff
- Thread starter RutgersRaRa
- Start date
How long does it take for you to notice the hot girls in a bar? Yea that quick.
Perhaps true for skill positions, equally true for the big fatties?
The only teams you may not know are non P5 schools. The rest most of us follow.
The surprise this season isn't the successful one but teams like USC who struggled early but now are playing to form.
The non P5 school that surprised me the most was Navy. They lose their starting QB but when you watch them you realize they are very talented on both sides of the ball
The surprise this season isn't the successful one but teams like USC who struggled early but now are playing to form.
The non P5 school that surprised me the most was Navy. They lose their starting QB but when you watch them you realize they are very talented on both sides of the ball
Glad you responded, vkj--you're definitely one of the top posters on the board. So what do you see when you flip on a game and see just one play? Do like five players stand out as having done good things, like a guard pulling, a corner's hips, etc.? I'm guessing your eyes aren't on the ball like most fans' eyes.
I'm talking about specific players on those teams. Without knowing ahead of time who is who, and you just randomly flip on a game, can how long does it take you to tell who or where the dominant players are? For guys like me who didn't play, but who are studying the game, it isn't as easy as vkj said about hot chicks in a bar. It takes specific looking, and even still it can be hard to tell. For guys like you who are knowledgable about the game, I was just wondering how long it takes to get a sense about who's a good player and who's average.
First I watch so much college football shows including the only ESPN non live sports event I 'll ever watch College Game day. Still the best in the business. So you get heads up on to who to look for. But to turn on a game and find someone who is above the rest it's apparent fairly quickly. College is all about mismatches. And they come up very quickly.
However, it's very hard to watch how good lineman are quickly only because they aren't in focus during plays. So both sides of the ball the trenches crowd may take a full game or several games.
Besides talent, poise during mayhem is easy to spot.
Yes. Here's the thing, people who watch football from a critical viewpoint vs a fan viewpoint look at different things. It's why we had a tread about the fake reverse against PSU. Who saw Flannigan miss his block? Who saw the tackle block down? Who saw the one on one if those blocks are made? In college, when you watch film you can watch a whole game cut up and have no idea who won. Each position needs to watch their keys and understand their responsibilities. The rest is just noise.
Well I'm flattered. Lol
To be honest, if I'm really watching a game, I can watch the same play 20 times. Drives my wife nuts
If I'm at a BBQ and watching football, I probably don't notice more than most people. I'm watching the point of attack just like everyone else. Sure, I might notice a misstep, a guy Losing contain or bad hand placement, and poor technique but I'm not looking at the backside DE to see if he kept depth or if he's being set up for a future play. I've said this before, I've coached at the HS level but more as a stop gap before going to grad school. In our youth program, I've coached with 3 HS coaches that most people who know football would speak very highly of. The things they see even at the youth level blows my my mind. 5 plays into a first grade game and these guys know who the keys are, what sets they are running where, and player tendencies. Sometimes I'm like you sure the kids just doesn't need to go pee? They are usually right.
Last season, I was lucky enough to spend some time with the ASU staff and sat in on QB meeting with my son. Watching these guys break down film, tendencies, situational awareness etc was awesome. It's a whole other level
That's the type of stuff I'm talking about. Experts in every field will blow your mind, whether you're watching the Discovery Channel about the Hubble Telescope and how they figured something out, and football is no different in its own right. I remember Schiano saying that when he spoke to most other coaches, there might have been one or two thins he picked up on that were useful to him, but when he spoke with Belichick he would come away with two pages of notes. And Schiano, at least IMO, was one of the most brilliant defensive minds in the game. So for those of us who never played the game, and trying to get more of an overview of many aspects of the game itself as well as commentary, I wonder how quickly guys like you size things up.
One anecdote, and it was when we played Pitt about four years ago at Pitt (Heinz Field), and it was about 25 degrees with snow blowing sideways. It was brutal. Through a friend of mine, who was on the 1961 undefeated team, I happened to meet and sit next to another member of the team, who eventually ended up coaching WRs in the NFL (he coached Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin, Emmit Smith, and Deon Sanders when he added offense to his repertoire. He was a real nice guy. We couldn't move the ball well, and were down 14-3 with two minutes left in the first half, and unlike the rest of the half, we were driving. We picked up a first down, then were moving pretty well. We had the ball at about midfield with just under minutes to go, and he gently said to me, with no malice whatsoever since he'd seen so many game in his life, "We'll be down 21-3 at halftime." We had the ball, were driving, and there were two minutes left in horrendous weather. My thinking was, "I know he knows the game, but that's a cute prediction. We're probably gonna score here, or at least punt going into halftime." Well we ended up going three and out, Pitt used their timeouts well, and scored before halftime. We were down 21-3. That's the kind of stuff I'd love to have more of a clue about, but don't think I'll get close to it since I didn't play the game.
