As I did for 2011, this will be an irregularly-updated list of my, and only my, Total Titans posts for 2012.
FEBRUARY 2012
2012-02-16: Parsing Ruston Webster: Insight from the Titans' new GM
2012-02-14: Tennessee Titans sign DT Lamar Divens
2012-02-13: 2012 Tennessee Titans offseason positional analysis: OLB
2012-02-11: Tennessee Titans re-sign WR Lavelle Hawkins
2012-02-09: Tennessee Titans re-sign OT Mike Otto
2012-02-08: 2012 Tennessee Titans offseason positional analysis: FB
2012-02-06: Are the Tennessee Titans still good at developing offensive linemen?
2012-02-05: 2012 Tennessee Titans offseason positional analysis: G
JANUARY 2012
2012-01-31: Tennessee Titans picks in 2012 NFL draft
2012-01-27: 2012 Tennessee Titans estimated salary cap (link to this ResPro page)
2012-01-23: 2012 Tennessee Titans offseason positional analysis: QB
2012-01-19: 2011 Tennessee Titans Most Pleasant Surprise: Nate Washington
2012-01-18: Tennessee Titans promote front office executives
2012-01-16: Titans hire Brett Maxie as secondary coach
2012-01-15: How much did the Titans' pass defensive improve in 2011?
2012-01-13: Tennessee Titans re-sign TE Craig Stevens
2012-01-12: Tennessee Titans Rookie of the Year: Jurrell Casey
2012-01-11: 2011 Tennessee Titans Special Teams MVP: Rob Bironas
2012-01-10: A full season of Kenny Britt yields ... Calvin Johnson?
2012-01-09: 2011 Tennessee Titans and play-calling by quarter
2012-01-08: The Tennessee Titans and third down running in 2011
2012-01-06: 2011 Tennessee Titans Defensive MVP: Cortland Finnegan
2012-01-05: Overviewing the Titans' offensive line
2012-01-04: More on Jerry Gray Talking Turkey
2012-01-03: Jerry Gray Talks Turkey
2012-01-02: 2011 Tennessee Titans Offensive MVP: Matt Hasselbeck
2012-01-01: Real recap: Titans edge depleted Texans
2012-01-01: Quick recap: Titans 23 - Texans 22
2012-01-01: Tennessee Titans-Houston Texans inactives, gameday thread
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Friday, February 10, 2012
Book Review: War Room
Michael Holley's War Room: The Legacy of Bill Belichick and the Art of Building the Perfect Team continues the tales he began in Patriot Reign as Scott Pioli and Thomas Dimitroff finish their New England tenures and move on to their own jobs in Kansas City and Atlanta, respectively.
I criticized Patriot Reign for being relatively content-light. War Room is nominally about fifty percent longer, but effectively close to twice as long, with a shorter introduction that doesn't bog down the book nearly as badly. There are more interesting things to tell, such as Pioli's and Dimitroff's struggles to impose new regimes with the Chiefs and Falcons, and how those are both similar to and different from the ones they experienced and learned from in New England. Both men were obviously strongly influenced by their time with Belichick, but without simply being clones of him.
War Room also drops a few nuggets, which I don't recall Patriot Reign doing at all. The biggest ones come from draft day deliberations, where the Patriots picked noted busts Laurence Maroney and Chad Jackson in the first and second round over the objections of their scouts. They had instead been endorsed by people outside the building, namely Josh McDaniels' brother Ben at Minnesota for Maroney and Belichick's close friend Urban Meyer for Jackson. The Titans had actually done something similar the year before, reportedly relying on tight ends coach George Henshaw, whose son played at West Virginia, for a positive character evaluation of Adam "Pacman" Jones. Henshaw was fired after Jones' rookie season. As far as I know, Belichick and Meyer are still friends, and Ben and Josh McDaniels are still on speaking terms. In fact, Josh would hire Ben to be his quarterbacks coach in Denver, where the brothers tried to resurrect Maroney's career without any success.
I didn't find any deep insights in War Room, though I freely admit I read most football books as a deep amateur looking for a way to pass the time rather than as a professional looking to extill insights. There are also a couple things Holley doesn't seem to get, either from a Boston-centric viewpoint or they're not obvious and nobody actually bothered to explain them to him, with the foremost example in my mind that Spygate (covered only briefly) exacerbated an existing anti-Boston sentiment arising from a belief that the Patriots were willing to push to the edge of the rules and beyond, if they could get away with it, which they could (see increase in illegal contact penalties, 2004, post Colts-Patriots). War Room is currently available in the Kindle edition for $4.99, and is worth that price more than Patriot Reign is worth $2.99 on Kindle.
I criticized Patriot Reign for being relatively content-light. War Room is nominally about fifty percent longer, but effectively close to twice as long, with a shorter introduction that doesn't bog down the book nearly as badly. There are more interesting things to tell, such as Pioli's and Dimitroff's struggles to impose new regimes with the Chiefs and Falcons, and how those are both similar to and different from the ones they experienced and learned from in New England. Both men were obviously strongly influenced by their time with Belichick, but without simply being clones of him.
War Room also drops a few nuggets, which I don't recall Patriot Reign doing at all. The biggest ones come from draft day deliberations, where the Patriots picked noted busts Laurence Maroney and Chad Jackson in the first and second round over the objections of their scouts. They had instead been endorsed by people outside the building, namely Josh McDaniels' brother Ben at Minnesota for Maroney and Belichick's close friend Urban Meyer for Jackson. The Titans had actually done something similar the year before, reportedly relying on tight ends coach George Henshaw, whose son played at West Virginia, for a positive character evaluation of Adam "Pacman" Jones. Henshaw was fired after Jones' rookie season. As far as I know, Belichick and Meyer are still friends, and Ben and Josh McDaniels are still on speaking terms. In fact, Josh would hire Ben to be his quarterbacks coach in Denver, where the brothers tried to resurrect Maroney's career without any success.
I didn't find any deep insights in War Room, though I freely admit I read most football books as a deep amateur looking for a way to pass the time rather than as a professional looking to extill insights. There are also a couple things Holley doesn't seem to get, either from a Boston-centric viewpoint or they're not obvious and nobody actually bothered to explain them to him, with the foremost example in my mind that Spygate (covered only briefly) exacerbated an existing anti-Boston sentiment arising from a belief that the Patriots were willing to push to the edge of the rules and beyond, if they could get away with it, which they could (see increase in illegal contact penalties, 2004, post Colts-Patriots). War Room is currently available in the Kindle edition for $4.99, and is worth that price more than Patriot Reign is worth $2.99 on Kindle.
Saturday, February 04, 2012
My 2011 NFL Awards
For This Given Sunday, we made our choices for a number of NFL awards, which were aggregated into this post. As my individual votes and writeups weren't included in the site, I'm re-printing my email here.
MVP: It's Aaron Rodgers, and for half of the year it was laughably not close. Rodgers cooled a bit the second half of the season, partly the result of some struggles at offensive tackle, partly some issues with the receivers, and partly because it's darned near impossible to play virtually mistake-free football for an entire season. Drew Brees of course put up more numbers, but he also dropped back to pass 138 more times. Brees' sheer volume includes a lot more short passes designed to get playmakers in space and to complement the Saints' running game, so it's no surprise he had a higher completion percentage than Rodgers. He still threw more than twice as many interceptions, and that's no surprise, because every week he gives defenses multiple opportunities for turnovers.
Rookie of the Year: Carolina went from a pathetic to competent and at times quite prolific offense primarily because of the tremendous upgrade Cam Newton represented over the vast abattoir of suck that was Matt Moore, Jimmy Clausen, and whatever else the Panthers called what they rolled out at quarterback in 2010.
Defensive Player of the Year: With all due respect to Jason Pierre-Paul's one man band effort for the New York Giants, Justin Smith was probably the key to the San Francisco Giants' outstanding defense this year, lining up in different positions, soaking up blockers, and generally creating havoc from a 3-4 defensive end position where creating havoc rarely ranks high on the results list. As impressive as rookie Aldon Smith's 14.0 sacks were, he should probably give half of them to Justin for his role in creating them by disrupting protection schemes and drawing double coverage.
Offensive Player of the Year: Too often, the most outstanding offensive player of the year is the person who actually wins the MVP award, and some player who puts up outstanding numbers but either for a lesser team or just isn't as good as the person who wins MVP. It's nice to recognize the great year Drew Brees had, but Aaron Rodgers was both better and more valuable.
Comeback Player of the Year: Cam Newton reminded us that Steve Smith was still good, but Smith was also good in 2010. He was just hard to see amidst the dross in Carolina. I'll instead go with Matt Stafford, who after missing most of 2010 with shoulder surgery, started all 16 games en route to leading the Lions to the playoffs in 2011. Granted, it helps when you have a player like Calvin Johnson, but he came back from injury, answered questions about his health, and showed the promise that led the Lions to choose him first overall in the 2009 draft.
Coach of the Year: Jim Harbaugh instilled the San Francisco 49ers with the toughness Mike Singletary always talked about, and added more creative offensive play-calling, better management of quarterback Alex Smith, and a new defensive coordinator who brought better results. With the 49ers holding the #2 seed in the conference, you can't kick the NFC West champs around the way you've been able to the past couple years.
MVP: It's Aaron Rodgers, and for half of the year it was laughably not close. Rodgers cooled a bit the second half of the season, partly the result of some struggles at offensive tackle, partly some issues with the receivers, and partly because it's darned near impossible to play virtually mistake-free football for an entire season. Drew Brees of course put up more numbers, but he also dropped back to pass 138 more times. Brees' sheer volume includes a lot more short passes designed to get playmakers in space and to complement the Saints' running game, so it's no surprise he had a higher completion percentage than Rodgers. He still threw more than twice as many interceptions, and that's no surprise, because every week he gives defenses multiple opportunities for turnovers.
Rookie of the Year: Carolina went from a pathetic to competent and at times quite prolific offense primarily because of the tremendous upgrade Cam Newton represented over the vast abattoir of suck that was Matt Moore, Jimmy Clausen, and whatever else the Panthers called what they rolled out at quarterback in 2010.
Defensive Player of the Year: With all due respect to Jason Pierre-Paul's one man band effort for the New York Giants, Justin Smith was probably the key to the San Francisco Giants' outstanding defense this year, lining up in different positions, soaking up blockers, and generally creating havoc from a 3-4 defensive end position where creating havoc rarely ranks high on the results list. As impressive as rookie Aldon Smith's 14.0 sacks were, he should probably give half of them to Justin for his role in creating them by disrupting protection schemes and drawing double coverage.
Offensive Player of the Year: Too often, the most outstanding offensive player of the year is the person who actually wins the MVP award, and some player who puts up outstanding numbers but either for a lesser team or just isn't as good as the person who wins MVP. It's nice to recognize the great year Drew Brees had, but Aaron Rodgers was both better and more valuable.
Comeback Player of the Year: Cam Newton reminded us that Steve Smith was still good, but Smith was also good in 2010. He was just hard to see amidst the dross in Carolina. I'll instead go with Matt Stafford, who after missing most of 2010 with shoulder surgery, started all 16 games en route to leading the Lions to the playoffs in 2011. Granted, it helps when you have a player like Calvin Johnson, but he came back from injury, answered questions about his health, and showed the promise that led the Lions to choose him first overall in the 2009 draft.
Coach of the Year: Jim Harbaugh instilled the San Francisco 49ers with the toughness Mike Singletary always talked about, and added more creative offensive play-calling, better management of quarterback Alex Smith, and a new defensive coordinator who brought better results. With the 49ers holding the #2 seed in the conference, you can't kick the NFC West champs around the way you've been able to the past couple years.
Book Review: Patriot Reign
How do you have extensive behind-the-scenes access to the top decision-makers for one of the NFL's most secretive franchises for the better part of two seasons, write a book about it, and not have much interesting in it? That's the question I have to ask of Michael Holley's Patriot Reign: Bill Belichick, the Coaches, and the Players Who Built a Champion. Sitting down to write this review perhaps a dozen hours after finishing the book, I find myself at a loss to talk about the interesting insights I gleaned from reading it. Perhaps reading it would've been a more valuable experience when the book first came out in 2004, but even then I doubt it. Too much of the book is devoted to the time before Holley had the extensive behind-the-scenes access (the first third, roughly), and too much of the remainder is taken up by descriptions of game action where Holley's access provides little, if any, value-add over a game recap written the day of the game. In what's left, there's not much insight into any of Bill Belichick, Romeo Crennel, Charlie Weis, or Scott Pioli beyond what I already knew, and the players are almost complete ciphers. I may have said unkind things about Next Man Up, and still think they're true, but Feinstein's at least was a relatively complete portrait of a team in a season; Patriot Reign doesn't even get that far.
Despite my quibble with whether reading Patriot Reign was a particularly valuable use of my non-infinite time, reading it was a relatively pleasant experience. If you're a Patriot fan who wants to read about your favorite team and don't care about deep insights and unique content, you could do worse. For serious football fans, though, there's little if anything of interest or importance. And I'm still planning on reading Holley's newer book, War Room.
Despite my quibble with whether reading Patriot Reign was a particularly valuable use of my non-infinite time, reading it was a relatively pleasant experience. If you're a Patriot fan who wants to read about your favorite team and don't care about deep insights and unique content, you could do worse. For serious football fans, though, there's little if anything of interest or importance. And I'm still planning on reading Holley's newer book, War Room.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Tennessee Titans Estimated 2012 Salary Cap
For the past several years, I've attempted to keep track of the Tennessee Titans salary cap situation. As with the All-22 footage, the NFL doesn't necessarily want you to have this information, so getting accurate numbers is a non-trivial task. The following numbers should be considered estimates only and should be relied on at your own risk. Numbers in italics in particular should be regarded as educated guesses. Use of 1 represents an unknown non-zero quantity.
Guide to Notes
Known Unknowns:
To make these tables more complete, these are the amounts I know are not right or do not know are right: Eugene Amano-explanation for difference between known numbers and reported 2012 cap value; Kenny Britt-signing bonus; Tony Brown-dead money related to signing bonus from 2010 contract extension; Rennie Curran-signing bonus; Lamar Divens-salary and signing bonus, if any, from Feb. 2011 one-year deal; Chris Hawkins-salary; Hall Davis-signing bonus confirmation and amount; Jamie Harper-signing bonus; Leroy Harris-salary and signing bonus, if any, from 2011 contract extension (reported APY of two-year deal $3.15 million); Chris Johnson-confirmation signing bonus 1 and option bonus amount from original 2008 contract apply and explanation of approximately $400,000 difference between numbers shown and reported 2012 cap value; Robert Johnson-salary; Brett Kern-signing bonus from 2011 contract extension, if any; Karl Klug-signing bonus; Kevin Malast-salary; and Shaun Smith-salary and signing bonus.
LATEST UPDATE:
2012-02-15, 0034 CT: Added Lamar Divens. Incorporated new information from Rotoworld page, including signing bonus and salary information for Tommie Campbell and Jurrell Casey and a few other tidbits.
PRIOR UPDATES:
| PLAYER | CATEGORY | AMOUNT | NOTES |
|---|---|---|---|
| Afalava, Al | Futures | ||
| Amano, Eugene | Salary | 3,182,500 | |
| Signing Bonus | 1,450,000 | ||
| Roster Bonus? | 500,000 | Guess based on reported 2012 cap amount | |
| Amato, Ken | UFA | ||
| Avery, Donnie | UFA | ||
| Ayers, Akeem | Salary | 598,932 | |
| Signing Bonus | 520,728 | ||
| Babineaux, Jordan | UFA | ||
| Bailey, Patrick | UFA | ||
| Ball, Dave | UFA | ||
| Bironas, Rob | Salary | 2,850,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 825,000 | ||
| Britt, Kenny | Salary | 755,000 | |
| Option Bonus | 733,750 | ||
| Signing Bonus | 250,000 | ||
| Brown, Tony | Signing Bonus | 1 | Dead Money |
| Campbell, Tommie | Salary | 465,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 11,500 | ||
| Casey, Jurrell | Salary | 490,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 153,750 | ||
| Clayton, Zach | Salary | 465,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 27,500 | ||
| Cook, Jared | Salary | 615,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 175,000 | ||
| Curran, Rennie | Signing Bonus | 322,200 | Dead Money |
| Davis, Hall | Signing Bonus | 1 | Dead Money |
| Dawson, Keyunta | Futures | ||
| Divens, Lamar | Salary | 1 | |
| Donaldson, Herb | Futures | ||
| Durand, Ryan | Futures | ||
| Egboh, Pannel | Futures | ||
| Finnegan, Cortland | UFA | ||
| Graham, Cameron | Futures | ||
| Graham, Daniel | Salary | 2,000,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 666,667 | ||
| Griffin, Michael | UFA | ||
| Hall, Ahmard | UFA | ||
| Harper, Jamie | Salary | 465,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 94,000 | ||
| Harris, Leroy | Salary | 3,150,000 | |
| Hasselbeck, Matt | Salary | 5,500,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 2,000,000 | ||
| Hawkins, Chris | Salary | 465,000 | |
| Hawkins, Lavelle | Salary | 800,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 666,667 | ||
| Haye, Jovan | Signing Bonus | 1,000,000 | Dead Money |
| Hayes, William | UFA | ||
| Hope, Chris | UFA | ||
| Ingram, Jake | Futures | ||
| Johnson, Chris | Salary | 8,000,000 | Subject to $250,000 workout reduction |
| Signing Bonus 1 | 50,000 | 2008 contract | |
| Option Bonus | 966,000 | 2008 contract | |
| Signing Bonus 2 | 2,000,000 | 2011 extension | |
| Johnson, Quinn | Salary | 615,000 | |
| Johnson, Robert | Salary | 540,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 95,000 | Dead Money | |
| Jones, Jason | UFA | ||
| Kern, Brett | Salary | 706,000 | |
| Kirkendoll, James | Futures | ||
| Klug, Karl | Salary | 465,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 49,000 | ||
| Kropog, Troy | Futures | ||
| Signing Bonus | 101,125 | Dead Money | |
| Locker, Jake | Salary | 947,091 | |
| Signing Bonus | 1,912,500 | ||
| Malast, Kevin | Salary | 1 | |
| Mariani, Marc | Salary | 540,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 14,850 | ||
| Marks, Sen'Derrick | Salary | 615,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 235,000 | ||
| Matthews, Kevin | Salary | 540,000 | |
| McCarthy, Colin | Salary | 465,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 113,850 | ||
| McCourty, Jason | Salary | 1,260,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 22,455 | ||
| McRath, Gerald | Salary | 645,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 106,531 | ||
| Morgan, Derrick | Salary | 725,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 1,400,000 | ||
| Option Bonus | 750,000 | ||
| Mouton, Ryan | Salary | 615,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 166,250 | ||
| Otto, Michael | Salary | 750,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 375,000 | ||
| Preston, Michael | Futures | ||
| Reynaud, Darius | Futures | ||
| Ringer, Javon | Salary | 615,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 36,600 | ||
| Robinson, Duke | Futures | ||
| Roos, Michael | Salary | 5,500,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 1,500,000 | ||
| Ruud, Barrett | UFA | ||
| Scott, Jake | UFA | ||
| Shaw, Tim | UFA | ||
| Sheppard, Malcolm | RFA | ||
| Smith, Anthony | UFA | ||
| Smith, Rusty | Salary | 540,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 28,500 | ||
| Smith, Shaun | Salary | 1 | |
| Stevens, Craig | Salary | 1,000,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 1,125,000 | ||
| Stewart, Dave | Salary | 5,000,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 1,000,000 | ||
| Stingily, Byron | Salary | 465,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 27,625 | ||
| Ta'ufo'ou, Will | Futures | ||
| Velasco, Fernando | ERFA | ||
| Verner, Alterraun | Salary | 540,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 132,000 | ||
| Washington, Nate | Salary | 3,400,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 900,000 | ||
| Wheatley, Terrence | Futures | ||
| Williams, Damian | Salary | 540,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 205,500 | ||
| Wilson, Lawrence | Futures | ||
| Witherspoon, Will | Salary | 3,500,000 | |
| Signing Bonus | 1,000,000 | ||
| UDFA Bonus Amount | 75,000 | Estimate | |
| Missing | 5,000,000 | Estimate | |
| TOTAL | $89,084,073 | ||
Guide to Notes
- Dead Money: If a player is cut by an NFL team before the termination of his existing contract, any guaranteed money, particularly signing bonus, remains on the books and counts against the salary cap.
- ERFA: Player was a member of the Titans in 2011, is not under contract for 2012, and has accumulated fewer than three seasons of NFL experience. Player is an exclusive rights free agent who can only be signed by the Titans, unless the Titans elect not to submit an offer no later than March 13, 2012.
- Estimate: The amount is estimated. For the UDFA Bonus Amount row, the 2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement imposed a maximum aggregate bonus amount to rookie undrafted free agents of $75,000. Because it is generally not possible to locate UDFA bonus amounts for every individual player, I have included the maximum amount as a placeholder. For the Missing row, that amount is calculated based on the difference between my total and the reported aggregate salary cap value.
- Futures: Player has signed a futures contract. Players who sign a futures contract are, generally speaking, not likely to make a 53-man NFL roster, and if they do likely will be making at or close to the league minimum.
RFA: Player was a member of the Titans in 2011, but is not currently under contract for 2012 and has accrued three accrued seasons. The Titans must make him a qualifying offer no later than March 13, 2012, or the player will become an unrestricted free agent. If the Titans make the player a qualifying offer, the player may sign the tender or enter into contract talks with other teams. The Titans will have the right to match contract offers from any other team or permit the player to sign with the other team and potentially receive draft compensation for the player. Potential draft compensation for the player depends on the amount of the qualifying offer.The Titans have no restricted free agents.- Total: Estimate based on reported aggregate cap amount. Note that this excludes futures contracts, and is not the same as the current Titans salary cap figure for NFL purposes. Does not include Lamar Divens.
- UFA: Player was a member of the Titans in 2011, but is not currently under contract for 2012 and has at least four accrued seasons. The player will be an unrestricted free agent who may sign with any NFL team if not re-signed by the Titans prior to the start of the 2012 League Year on March 13, 2012.
Known Unknowns:
To make these tables more complete, these are the amounts I know are not right or do not know are right: Eugene Amano-explanation for difference between known numbers and reported 2012 cap value; Kenny Britt-signing bonus; Tony Brown-dead money related to signing bonus from 2010 contract extension; Rennie Curran-signing bonus; Lamar Divens-salary and signing bonus, if any, from Feb. 2011 one-year deal; Chris Hawkins-salary; Hall Davis-signing bonus confirmation and amount; Jamie Harper-signing bonus; Leroy Harris-salary and signing bonus, if any, from 2011 contract extension (reported APY of two-year deal $3.15 million); Chris Johnson-confirmation signing bonus 1 and option bonus amount from original 2008 contract apply and explanation of approximately $400,000 difference between numbers shown and reported 2012 cap value; Robert Johnson-salary; Brett Kern-signing bonus from 2011 contract extension, if any; Karl Klug-signing bonus; Kevin Malast-salary; and Shaun Smith-salary and signing bonus.
LATEST UPDATE:
2012-02-15, 0034 CT: Added Lamar Divens. Incorporated new information from Rotoworld page, including signing bonus and salary information for Tommie Campbell and Jurrell Casey and a few other tidbits.
PRIOR UPDATES:
Friday, January 13, 2012
Book Review: Three and Out
Two books about football in one month! I must be ill or something (where "or something" is defined as "insomnia").
All-access books have a relatively long and generally, though not entirely positive reputation. They generally cover only one season. At their best, they're able to provide deep insight into the day-to-day operations of something almost none of the readers will ever experience. Not at their best, they're a good way for an author to write nice things about their sources and what they already believed.
John U. Bacon's Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football actually results from Bacon's three years of access to Rodriguez, what proved to be the entirety of his tenure as Michigan's head football coach. To Bacon's good fortune, those turned out to be three very interesting and tumultuous years, and to our good fortune, Three and Out actually tries to chronicle all of the tumult and drama, both behind the scenes and otherwise. When most of the purported adults involved hate the book and probably its author yet aren't bothering to actually make specific criticisms about its contents, that's a good sign.
Beyond being a fascinating and eminently readable book about life inside a major college football program, Three and Out also is a story about a classic case of bringing an outsider into an existing culture, strong elements of which end up seeing the outsider as an invasive species that must be destroyed. Rodriguez the outsider ends up making a number of missteps that didn't endear him to the existing power institutions at Michigan, even those that, unlike Lloyd Carr, weren't hostile to him in the first place. Carr refused to talk to Bacon for Three and Out, perhaps because Bacon had nothing to offer him, and perhaps because Carr saw how easy it would be for somebody else to read the book and think deeply unkind things about Carr; specifically, that Lloyd Carr comes across as being interested in a successful Michigan program only if it features what Lloyd Carr thinks is important.
In some ways, that's one of the deep ironies in Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez was a West Virginia native who walked on to the football team in Morgantown as a student and eventually became head coach at the school. He won there, almost playing for a national title in 2007 right before being hired to coach Michigan, and could have been there until he retired, like Don Nehlen. In perhaps the most interesting part of Three and Out, though, Bacon writes about how Rodriguez fell afoul of the existing power structure in West Virginia, including Governor Joe Manchin. This sort of upper-level political involvement is the kind of thing that you know happens in university athletics, but it's rare to get a good portrait of it. One of the reasons Rodriguez was willing to listen to Michigan in the first place is there was pushback by Manchin, WVU's President Mike Garrison, and A.D. Eddie Pastilong against Rodriguez for what they viewed as the personal brand he was developing with his success. Rodriguez ended up not winning the political struggles with his nominal superiors, and saw that even when he raised the money for things for his football program he wasn't necessarily going to get them. That kind of thwarting of aspirations is precisely what Rodriguez left Morgantown to avoid in the first place, yet it's what he encountered in Ann Arbor essentially from the day he got there.
The other deep irony I found in Three and Out is the one of the most successful things Lloyd Carr did to put Rich Rodriguez beyond the eight ball actually happened long before the thought of Rodriguez coaching Michigan occurred to anybody, and that's the extraordinarily bare defensive personnel cupboard he left. Carr (in)famously volunteered to sign everybody's transfer paperwork after initially recommending RichRod, which led to a spate of offensive transfers. With RichRod being a spread guru, though, a high degree of offensive changeover was inevitable, especially with the most prominent offensive skill position players, Mike Hart and Chad Henne, exhausting their eligibility. Rodriguez had gone through, and expected, a certain level of ineptitude that first year on offense. What he didn't expect coming to Michigan, and what he failed to adapt to, were personnel deficiencies and coaching struggles on defense. As Bacon's initial plan was apparently to write about RichRod bringing his offense to the B10, the story of the defense ends up under-covered in Three and Out. One of the great "what-ifs" implicitly raised by Bacon's book is what would have happened if Carr hadn't retired at the end of 2007. A great deal of offensive turnover was inevitable, and defensive decline was the order of the day. How much better would a Carr Michigan team have done in 2008 than RichRod's 3-8, and would Carr (or his designated successor) have been able to turn around the Wolverines' defense any faster? Carr's retirement meant never having to publicly face the music for this, and, if he so desired, room for plenty of private backbiting about the new coach's inability to meet the challenges bequeathed to him.
I should make it clear that while Carr comes off quite poorly in the book, it's far from a whitewash of Rodriguez. While he showed some improvement in his handling of various issues, his occasional missteps and clashing with the extant Michigan culture (one which Bacon was a part of and seems to value highly) started with his introductory press conference and continued essentially until almost the end of his tenure at Michigan. In addition to those flaws, he also has a lot more of what I think of as "normal coach" flaws, including profane and angry reactions after losses (in private) and at times letting his personal struggles influence his team unity-building. It's also not quite clear that Bacon sees the deep ironies I found in Three and Out; it's more a work of narrative journalism than a psychological study of RichRod.
For somebody with no Michigan connection who's spent more time singing "We Don't Give a Damn for the Whole State of Michigan than "The Victors" the past decade, I obviously found Three and Out a deeply interesting and enjoyable read. For more on Three and Out, see MGoBlog's tag, which includes a couple extensive Q&As with Bacon.
UPDATE (1/29/12, 2217 CT): Made a couple stylistic and typo edits.
All-access books have a relatively long and generally, though not entirely positive reputation. They generally cover only one season. At their best, they're able to provide deep insight into the day-to-day operations of something almost none of the readers will ever experience. Not at their best, they're a good way for an author to write nice things about their sources and what they already believed.
John U. Bacon's Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football actually results from Bacon's three years of access to Rodriguez, what proved to be the entirety of his tenure as Michigan's head football coach. To Bacon's good fortune, those turned out to be three very interesting and tumultuous years, and to our good fortune, Three and Out actually tries to chronicle all of the tumult and drama, both behind the scenes and otherwise. When most of the purported adults involved hate the book and probably its author yet aren't bothering to actually make specific criticisms about its contents, that's a good sign.
Beyond being a fascinating and eminently readable book about life inside a major college football program, Three and Out also is a story about a classic case of bringing an outsider into an existing culture, strong elements of which end up seeing the outsider as an invasive species that must be destroyed. Rodriguez the outsider ends up making a number of missteps that didn't endear him to the existing power institutions at Michigan, even those that, unlike Lloyd Carr, weren't hostile to him in the first place. Carr refused to talk to Bacon for Three and Out, perhaps because Bacon had nothing to offer him, and perhaps because Carr saw how easy it would be for somebody else to read the book and think deeply unkind things about Carr; specifically, that Lloyd Carr comes across as being interested in a successful Michigan program only if it features what Lloyd Carr thinks is important.
In some ways, that's one of the deep ironies in Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez was a West Virginia native who walked on to the football team in Morgantown as a student and eventually became head coach at the school. He won there, almost playing for a national title in 2007 right before being hired to coach Michigan, and could have been there until he retired, like Don Nehlen. In perhaps the most interesting part of Three and Out, though, Bacon writes about how Rodriguez fell afoul of the existing power structure in West Virginia, including Governor Joe Manchin. This sort of upper-level political involvement is the kind of thing that you know happens in university athletics, but it's rare to get a good portrait of it. One of the reasons Rodriguez was willing to listen to Michigan in the first place is there was pushback by Manchin, WVU's President Mike Garrison, and A.D. Eddie Pastilong against Rodriguez for what they viewed as the personal brand he was developing with his success. Rodriguez ended up not winning the political struggles with his nominal superiors, and saw that even when he raised the money for things for his football program he wasn't necessarily going to get them. That kind of thwarting of aspirations is precisely what Rodriguez left Morgantown to avoid in the first place, yet it's what he encountered in Ann Arbor essentially from the day he got there.
The other deep irony I found in Three and Out is the one of the most successful things Lloyd Carr did to put Rich Rodriguez beyond the eight ball actually happened long before the thought of Rodriguez coaching Michigan occurred to anybody, and that's the extraordinarily bare defensive personnel cupboard he left. Carr (in)famously volunteered to sign everybody's transfer paperwork after initially recommending RichRod, which led to a spate of offensive transfers. With RichRod being a spread guru, though, a high degree of offensive changeover was inevitable, especially with the most prominent offensive skill position players, Mike Hart and Chad Henne, exhausting their eligibility. Rodriguez had gone through, and expected, a certain level of ineptitude that first year on offense. What he didn't expect coming to Michigan, and what he failed to adapt to, were personnel deficiencies and coaching struggles on defense. As Bacon's initial plan was apparently to write about RichRod bringing his offense to the B10, the story of the defense ends up under-covered in Three and Out. One of the great "what-ifs" implicitly raised by Bacon's book is what would have happened if Carr hadn't retired at the end of 2007. A great deal of offensive turnover was inevitable, and defensive decline was the order of the day. How much better would a Carr Michigan team have done in 2008 than RichRod's 3-8, and would Carr (or his designated successor) have been able to turn around the Wolverines' defense any faster? Carr's retirement meant never having to publicly face the music for this, and, if he so desired, room for plenty of private backbiting about the new coach's inability to meet the challenges bequeathed to him.
I should make it clear that while Carr comes off quite poorly in the book, it's far from a whitewash of Rodriguez. While he showed some improvement in his handling of various issues, his occasional missteps and clashing with the extant Michigan culture (one which Bacon was a part of and seems to value highly) started with his introductory press conference and continued essentially until almost the end of his tenure at Michigan. In addition to those flaws, he also has a lot more of what I think of as "normal coach" flaws, including profane and angry reactions after losses (in private) and at times letting his personal struggles influence his team unity-building. It's also not quite clear that Bacon sees the deep ironies I found in Three and Out; it's more a work of narrative journalism than a psychological study of RichRod.
For somebody with no Michigan connection who's spent more time singing "We Don't Give a Damn for the Whole State of Michigan than "The Victors" the past decade, I obviously found Three and Out a deeply interesting and enjoyable read. For more on Three and Out, see MGoBlog's tag, which includes a couple extensive Q&As with Bacon.
UPDATE (1/29/12, 2217 CT): Made a couple stylistic and typo edits.
Monday, January 09, 2012
Book Review: A Team for America
Well, I'm finally back in the saddle. Sort of, at least.
College football during the Second World War was kind of an unusual enterprise, what with that whole military draft thing resulting in males of collegiate age being called up for service. If you look at, say, the final AP Poll for 1944, you notice a bunch of "schools" like #3 Randolph Field, #5 Bainbridge Naval, #6 Iowa Pre-Flight, and more of the same ilk mixed in with more familiar names like Ohio State and Notre Dame. Then again, even a school like Notre Dame was not the typical undergraduate institution it had been in, say, 1941, but was instead largely devoted to Navy and Marine training.
That was true of essentially all of the top twenty teams in the country. Many schools dropped football, simply because they didn't have enough healthy men of the proper age. Those that didn't were the beneficiaries of an influx of those military trainees, who were then also subject to the whims of military training. For instance, 1943 Heisman Trophy winner Angelo Bertelli played in only six of Notre Dame's ten games before being activated for military service. Eligibility rules, which were previously fairly strict, were modified, permitting freshmen eligibility and letting transfers play without the need to sit out a year.
For purposes of Randy Roberts' A Team for America, it's worth a reminder that those were predominantly Navy and Marine training bases, and pretty much the only defender of The Long Gray Line was, well, The Long Gray Line itself, the United States Military Academy at West Point.
The problem had been the Army gridiron team had recently not been a great defender of the Gray against the Blue. Army hadn't beaten Navy since 1938, and the Cadets had bottomed out in 1940 with a 1-7-1 record. It's really there that Roberts' book begins, as he tells the story of the growth and development of the Army gridiron squad beginning with the hire of USMA grad Earl "Red" Blaik.
The Blaik hire was the beginning of a process where Army did essentially what many other formerly-quite respectable institutions have done. Lou Holtz reportedly recruiting Tony Rice and his poor SAT score to Notre Dame as a Prop 48 player who didn't come close to meeting even Notre Dame's relaxed admissions standards is an old story. The first challenge was simply hiring Blaik in the first place; Army had a policy of requiring football coaches to be serving officers, and while Blaik was an alumnus, he'd been out of the Army since the 1920's.
That surmounted, Army then had the problem of acquiring more talented players, one subject to two additional challenges: first, that entering cadets had to meet certain height and weight limitations that made it difficult to recruit players of the size even then normally found on the offensive and defensive lines, and second, ensuring that players had the academic wherewithal to survive and stay eligible at West Point, a school with a demanding enough daily schedule, mathematically and scientifically rigorous classes, and constant examinations that could make a player's eligibility a question from week to week.
Well, we know how the story ended. Army recruited and managed to keep enough great players like Mr. Outside Glenn Davis and Mr. Inside Doc Blanchard, and beat Navy en route to an undefeated season in 1944, where A Team for America ends.
Roberts, a professor of history at Purdue who's written books on other sports topics from the first half of the twentieth century, tells the story well enough. The book is well-researched, including interviews with the surviving members of the Army teams of the early 1940's, and, as you'd expect from a professor, includes footnotes and an index. From the subtitle, I expected more on Navy and the game itself, but this is really a book about Army's rise from 1940 to 1944 and Navy is present primarily as a foil. That's not a criticism of Roberts or the book, mind you, just a note that you should be aware of what you're getting.
Recommended for what it is, even though it doesn't escape the the problems of most football books.
College football during the Second World War was kind of an unusual enterprise, what with that whole military draft thing resulting in males of collegiate age being called up for service. If you look at, say, the final AP Poll for 1944, you notice a bunch of "schools" like #3 Randolph Field, #5 Bainbridge Naval, #6 Iowa Pre-Flight, and more of the same ilk mixed in with more familiar names like Ohio State and Notre Dame. Then again, even a school like Notre Dame was not the typical undergraduate institution it had been in, say, 1941, but was instead largely devoted to Navy and Marine training.
That was true of essentially all of the top twenty teams in the country. Many schools dropped football, simply because they didn't have enough healthy men of the proper age. Those that didn't were the beneficiaries of an influx of those military trainees, who were then also subject to the whims of military training. For instance, 1943 Heisman Trophy winner Angelo Bertelli played in only six of Notre Dame's ten games before being activated for military service. Eligibility rules, which were previously fairly strict, were modified, permitting freshmen eligibility and letting transfers play without the need to sit out a year.
For purposes of Randy Roberts' A Team for America, it's worth a reminder that those were predominantly Navy and Marine training bases, and pretty much the only defender of The Long Gray Line was, well, The Long Gray Line itself, the United States Military Academy at West Point.
The problem had been the Army gridiron team had recently not been a great defender of the Gray against the Blue. Army hadn't beaten Navy since 1938, and the Cadets had bottomed out in 1940 with a 1-7-1 record. It's really there that Roberts' book begins, as he tells the story of the growth and development of the Army gridiron squad beginning with the hire of USMA grad Earl "Red" Blaik.
The Blaik hire was the beginning of a process where Army did essentially what many other formerly-quite respectable institutions have done. Lou Holtz reportedly recruiting Tony Rice and his poor SAT score to Notre Dame as a Prop 48 player who didn't come close to meeting even Notre Dame's relaxed admissions standards is an old story. The first challenge was simply hiring Blaik in the first place; Army had a policy of requiring football coaches to be serving officers, and while Blaik was an alumnus, he'd been out of the Army since the 1920's.
That surmounted, Army then had the problem of acquiring more talented players, one subject to two additional challenges: first, that entering cadets had to meet certain height and weight limitations that made it difficult to recruit players of the size even then normally found on the offensive and defensive lines, and second, ensuring that players had the academic wherewithal to survive and stay eligible at West Point, a school with a demanding enough daily schedule, mathematically and scientifically rigorous classes, and constant examinations that could make a player's eligibility a question from week to week.
Well, we know how the story ended. Army recruited and managed to keep enough great players like Mr. Outside Glenn Davis and Mr. Inside Doc Blanchard, and beat Navy en route to an undefeated season in 1944, where A Team for America ends.
Roberts, a professor of history at Purdue who's written books on other sports topics from the first half of the twentieth century, tells the story well enough. The book is well-researched, including interviews with the surviving members of the Army teams of the early 1940's, and, as you'd expect from a professor, includes footnotes and an index. From the subtitle, I expected more on Navy and the game itself, but this is really a book about Army's rise from 1940 to 1944 and Navy is present primarily as a foil. That's not a criticism of Roberts or the book, mind you, just a note that you should be aware of what you're getting.
Recommended for what it is, even though it doesn't escape the the problems of most football books.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Play Notes: 2011 Week 07 vs Houston-Run Defense
Data dump for another Total Titans post, this one on the rushing defense against the Texans in Week 7. Per normal practice, full details after the break.
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