4 Hard Downs: Pool, Pulled Pork, Ace and Bunch
Back to the basics, I love some Carolina Barbecue & to my three favorite sets in football
Your boy Michael D. Felder Jr. went to the pool. He is a full blown housecat slash porch puppy. Not built for outside when it is 90 degrees and has to be social with his wife’s friends.
Hard stop.
No excuses.
Reality is Felder is built to cook, have dinner ready when they get home or work pool, not lounge in the sun for two hours.
Porch Puppy.
That’s me.
I guess I need to do conditioning for being outside because I do not respond well to it and I could feel my skin hating every second of it. When I garden; trim things, plant things, harvest things, I usually wear a sun hoodie and am in the shade, more or less. Today, it was just outside, full sun and it beat me down.
Speaking of down, we got 4 of them, let’s SPOT THE BALL!!!
1st Down: Carolinian By Birth
I was born in Eastern North Carolina. I spent a lot of summers, up until high school, in Cumberland County. I know Old Wire Road as the cut-through to get to Fayetteville via Scotland through Raeford.
I also know Eastern NC barbecue.
We don’t have barbecues, we have pig pickings and if you can’t get whole hog then you’re smoking butts. Sunday I smoked a butt aka pork shoulder. Rubbed her down and threw it on with some applewood because they didn’t have any pecan and I’m tired of hickory.
This was great, temped out (if you’re not using a thermeter when you cook you’re fucking up, you’re not that good), tented and then pulled it. I had a sandwich, my wife and kid had barbecue plates. It was real recovery from a day in the sun that my body was not ready for and will have to ramp up to going forward.
Some brown sugar. Eastern NC sauce with some ACV and Texas Pete plus the red pepper flakes and we are cooking with gas.
2nd Down: Offensive Football Era
Ace. I talked about it on the podcast, which should be on the free feed and ACE is my favorite set.
Two tight ends, two wide receivers and one running back. It is a mirrored set and anything you can do left, you can do right. Miami was so good at this in the early 2000s. Honestly, if you can’t run anything you want out of 12 then your tight ends suck, you have amazing depth at WR or you’re a dumb coach.
Case and point:
Same personal makes the defense stay in the base package. Then a shift to tight bunch and now you got a TE back-side, TE point man, two WR and your RB for that pin and pull or the play-action flat to 6-man protection with a chip by WR or TE as they get up field.
You can strong side zone, pin and pull or weak side zone and let that tight end climb and get the RB loose. 12 personnel is the best personnel. Ace is the best set and then you can shift into formations.
3rd Down: My Favorite Slice
This isn’t isn’t some Dave Portnoy bullshit, this is some football shit.
Learned this from skipping class and watching with Gerald Sensabaugh in 2004, it is called “slice” or “slicing.” You can play true Cover-2 but you exchange responsibilities between corner and the safety, usually based on WR splits and CB vs S tackling abilities.
Classic Cover-2, not talking Tampa, and not a truly Inverted Cover-2. Inverted is a call where both safeties and both corners take the deep halves. SLICE is a two man decision, independent of the rest of the defense and exchange because the safety has a better angle, is a better tackler and/or is more into being around the ball.
Makes sense right? He led us in tackles and gave us the confidence to beat #4 Miami in 2004.
4th Down: A Special Shout Out
Jackie is in the Hall of Fame for USA Field Hockey.
She is highly decorated as a goal keeper and was in the Olympics and World Championships. She’s absolutely a phenomenal player turned coach. Very cool to see your friend hit that ultimate achievement.
Super proud of and for her!
‘Cheers!!!
> This isn’t isn’t some Dave Portnoy bullshit, this is some football shit.
LOL