4 Hard Downs: Christmas, Split Zone Duo & Tommy Rees

Does Rees deserve more credit, a guest episode plus Christmas canceled

Welcome all the new subscribers and thank you for showing up for the kid after the appearance on Split Zone Duo with Richard Johnson. Going to keep churning and mixing talking ball with cooking and just some Rad Dad shit. Enjoy it.

The first weekly thing we do, and yes this is Christmas day, is 4 Hard Downs. First off if you’re not familiar with the title, “four hard downs” is a pick-up football term for when you have to go the length of the field, in four downs, to score. No first downs. No 3rd down conversions, unless it is a TD. Backyard, pick-up, street football. Football played where you have an “All-Time QB” type deal.

And to get it started, we always SPOT THE BALL!!!!

1st Down: Christmas Down, Rib Roast Up

Christmas, as my family has known it for years, is canceled. My brother and his family are sick. My kid is sick. My dad has a trip starting the 26th and does not want to get sick. My mom is out of town making sure she doesn’t get sick from her kids or grandkids.

So this is not a normal Christmas for everyone situation.

I can live with it. As the resident Grinch, I’m not rooting for sickness, I am rooting for health and wealth and happiness. But I can live with a three person Christmas, hoping my kid feels better while I pick up wrapping paper very fast and get to cooking this rib roast and drinking whiskey.

So, here’s what I’m doing this year, granted I still haven’t decided oven roast or open fire cooking it because I am waiting on the weather. But pre-cook:

Trust the process

The rib roast. The rosemary garlic butter. The rub put on after coating with the compound butter. Final product going into fridge overnight.

Looks like weather should be good, but as I type this, I’m in “wait and see mode.” I will get up Christmas morning, check on my sick kid, go for a run, shower and drive the 20 minutes to my brother’s house and make a call on outside vs inside.

Then, if I cook outside, you better believe we’re doing a post-kid bedtime firepit.

Finishing item: It was an inside cook because the clouds were pissing.

Mid-Rare and tomorrow sandwiches with the jus

Here’s the finish and our Christmas dinner. For a family with a kid coming off a bout with being sick for the first time I think I did ok.

2nd Down: Play Tracking Coming Back, Network Style

First and foremost, shout out to College Pressbox, the best place to find depth charts on a week-to-week basis but also to figure out game times and networks.

This is notes folks

This is the preliminary work where I just figure out what network the games were on and what time they were played. Will compare this to the times and then my plan is to look at start time, have to look at weather delays pre and post-game, plus overtimes. I am establishing 7pm as “primetime” for CFB’s sake. A lot of folks will say 8-10, but given the cross country nature, 7 is when primetime starts for college football.

It is complicated and everyone is jockeying for position to have the first “primetime" game by starting at 8, 7:30, 7 or even 6. The 6pm game gives you space to have the 10:30 late East Coast game and play in the window of west coast primetime. I’m setting a hard 7pm as a “primetime start.”

Tuesday will be listing the networks, checking primetime and then determining our next step compared to the data that we have been amassing all season. We might learn more from this than from just watching the teams’ plays and times.

So we we have a plan. Thanks for riding with me. Will I have to get my brother over to make this new spreadsheet? Hopefully not, but yes. Plan is one axis as game start time, other axis as the network. Let me know if that is crazy.

Nope. Wrong. I started out that way and realized I should just do networks and average times, then game start times and average times and cross reference. You see a problem, you solve a problem. That’s coaching.

3rd Down: Interesting Michael Penix Jr Facts

This man does not run.

He’s played in all, or part, six college football seasons. 239 total rushing yards. 6 years, 239 yards is just 40 yards a year. Quinn Ewers is in the running but Penix Jr is the leader given his experience.

Yes, I know college football sucks with respect to adding sacks into rushing numbers, it does suck and I hate it.

However, Penix is athletic. He buys time. He’s thrown 100 more passes than anyone in the playoff. 200 more than Jalen Milroe from Alabama. Right under 200 more than Michigan’s JJ McCarthy.

1k more in yards than anyone in the playoff. Ewers at 3161 is closer to Milroe’s 2718 or McCarthy’s 2630 than anyone is to Penix Jr.

*Bonus, Milroe is 26 pass attempts behind McCarthy and almost 100 yards ahead. Which is about air yards*

Penix, with time, is a problem because he has the best WR core and that is all Texas should focus on. Do not let them complete passes down the field or they will kill you and that’s the problem.

4th Down: How Much Of This Is Tommy Rees

Working under Nick Saban has got a lot of coaches jobs. It has rehabilitated careers. His coaching tree has a ton of branches. If you want to talk Kirby Smart and creating his greatest opposition or Jimbo Fisher and a guy trying to replicate the system. Maybe you go career rehabilitation with Lane Kiffin or Steve Sarkisian or even Mario Cristobal.

Someone got upset with me not giving Tommy Rees his flowers for his impact on the offense at Alabama figuring out who they were:

Not here to dox so just showing the screenshot.

How much energy are we giving Rees? We gave plenty to Kiffin and Sark; which I think was due to them looking for redemption from multiple failed head coaching gigs. Nothing I’ve seen this season is a thing I have witnessed from Rees’ previous seasons which is why I was skeptical of him taking control compared to the analysts and who have head coaching experience and Saban.

This felt a lot more like him learning and growing than standing up in that room with an idea.

But maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe I’m wrong. I do think the difference between Rees compared to Sark/Kiffin is a big deal because they were multi-time head coaches. Probably why I think they both had a bigger voice.

Probably also why I think someone like Butch Jones had more space at Bama when he was there 2018-2019, than Rees currently. And that’s with Tua and Mac there. Jalen Milroe is a QB like he’s never had and I think the directive is less, “prove to me you’re a great play caller, and prove to me you can learn.”

The fights he had with Lane were rooted in Kiffin thinking he was smarter.

Sark left immediately to get out from under his thumb.

Rees, I expect to stay. Soak up everything. Learn more. Get better. Then take it somewhere else, possibly Notre Dame, to build another version of what Kirby Smart has done at UGA. He has a plan, so this isn’t about, “See I am the engineer of this” it is, “I am taking every ounce of this I can so when my number is called, I can go out and replicate it.”

So, no, I don’t feel bad when Rees isn’t the name I mention when I talk about Bama’s offense and this Nick Saban coaching job or how the army of analyst are using the information they collect.

Merry Christmas You Filthy Animals!!

Cheers!!!