Month: September 2016

For a few weeks I had been debating about writing about Colin Kaepernick and his decision to sit down during the playing of national anthem at NFL games as his means of protesting the mistreatment of black people at the hands of some police officers.

Much has changed since that time, starting with Kaepernick’s conversation with Green Beret Nate Boyer (who spent a year in Seahawks training camp as a long snapper) and the NFL quarterback opting to kneel instead, and followed by more NFL players joining in kneeling for the anthem or other forms of protest, with Denver Broncos LB Brandon Marshall among those players.

Between being busy with my job and other activities, and wanting to sort out my thoughts on the subject, I have not written about this until now. And given that Marshall, a Broncos player, has joined the protests and that two companies dropped him as a spokesperson as a result, it’s even more fitting I address this subject. Continue reading Why Kneeling During The Anthem Is Like Past Protests

Last night I applied the first week of snap count adjustments to the 2017 compensatory pick projection.  There’s plenty of data noise that takes place on Week 1 due to a small sample size, so in the end nothing may change, but I do want to draw your attention to a pair of interesting snap counts relative to the Broncos’ comp pick standing.

Continue reading 2017 Broncos Compensatory Picks Update: What Rounds Will Trevathan And Stephenson Be?

I thought I’d try out what might be a new series for me, taking a closer look at the most recent game and trends using Pro Football Reference’s tools to look at Snap Counts, play by play data, and historical data.  Let me know what you think and if you have any feedback and I might make this a regular occurrence:

 Looking at the Broncos Run Plays

The Broncos had quite a few long runs that accounted for most of their yards.  They broke off runs of 10 yards or more 6 times (22% of runs), and that accounted for 66% of their rushing yards.  I’m very excited about their ability to break off big plays.  On the flip side, they were stopped for 2 yards or less 12 times (44% of runs), and 1 yard or less 9 times (33% of runs).  Two of those plays were successful short yardage conversions (CJ’s 3rd and 1 and 4th and 1 conversions). Continue reading A closer look with Pro Football Reference

2016 Biomechanical NFL Preview

Hello friends.  It’s become clear that I was a bit hasty in deciding to post biomechanical analyses.  This site is filled with intelligent discerning readers, but without being able to visually represent this stuff, I can’t explain it to anyone’s satisfaction.  I can’t even really post predictions, since each one is a set of complicated if/thens that are dependent on factors I can’t clarify (see my Siemian write-up for an example).

So I’ve boiled down my predictions to a few that can be communicated without biomechanical jargon:

Continue reading 2016 Biomechanical Preview

I think I stopped breathing the last 5 minutes of the game. I honestly thought the Panthers would win this game, and they nearly did! Nearly is the important keyword, as they did not, obviously. We made a lot of adjustments at halftime and we looked like a different team in the second half. In any case, here are the 10 things I liked, and the 10 things I didn’t.

Continue reading Panthers at Broncos: The 10 Things I Liked and the 10 Things I Didn’t