im running out of idea...is it bad?

I hate to say that...

though i sit in front of the computer the whole day,
thinking of what to blog while doing other things at the same time,
i still cannot come out of an idea of what to blog...*sigh*

and its like a routine thingy...*sigh*
sitting in front of the computer the whole day of everyday...
thinking of what to blog...

the result is still zero...T_T

i guess...
no matter how long i sit in front of this computer...
i still find zero idea...



p.s. except for this one of course, :/
am trying my best to blog everyday...

if not maybe i should just delete this account...



but no thanks...

=(((((((((((

I almost lost my blog for beingg tooo adventurous....

DAMNNNN.....

i almost give up....

Go Crazy

Ohhhh I did something totally insane and spent money on a pair of boots that look like this:

Yes. They will be here tomorrow. Wonderful Guess "Maeve" boots. Kind of gothic but I can't wait to wear it with my chiffon dress with tights and leg warmers, a black blazer, and some crazy coloured scarf.

So now for some outfits that I would gladly wear. Because we all have Lacroix, Moschino and Schouler lying around in our closets.

SO EXCITED. SO IN LOVE.

But not nearly as excited or as in love with the fact that Barack Obama is now our President!!

Fire zone-blitzes

Dr. Saturday recently broke down some of the zone-blitzes Utah used against Alabama in their bowl game. It's great analysis; check it out. For a bit more on pass protection and zone-blitzes generally, check out my article here. Also, Bob Davie wrote a worthy article for ESPN about zone-blitzes a few years back. Read all that and come back here: I want to highlight a few quick aspects of the most common zone-blitzes or fire zones. I'll have to leave a more in depth discussion for another time.

Below is a diagram of one of Nick Saban's most common zone-blitzes:



This is very typical. One thing Matt did a great job of breaking down with the Utah article was in his discussion of how the Utes crossed up 'Bama's protections. But it's worth noting the constraints the zone-blitz puts on the defense: namely, the number of coverages you can viably use. Occasionally, in the NFL, some teams zone blitz with a mere Cover 2 or two-deep zone behind it. The Ravens get away with this sometimes with Ed Reed, but it is dangerous -- with all your defensive movement you don't get good jams on the receivers and you too often will let receivers run free in the deep voids.

So by far the most common coverage behind a zone-blitz is a three-deep three-under coverage. Obviously, that can leave wide open spots underneath, but that's still part of the zone-blitz philosophy. As some defensive coordinators say, with so much three-deep, it is actually a conservative approach. And it is one reason why zone-blitzes are so common on third down -- defenses get good opportunities to cross up the pass protection while forcing completions to be made underneath where guys can make a quick tackle short of the first down. This is a favorite strategy of Jim Johnson of the Philadelphia Eagles: there's nothing wrong with giving up a five yard completion on third and nine. (Further, most progressions have the quarterback read long-to-short. By taking away long and forcing short the defense gives itself another few moments to get to the quarterback before he can release the ball.)

Below is a video clip (courtesy of HueyTube) of LSU running basically the zone-blitz diagrammed above.



On the first play in the clip, notice the way the three linebackers appear to attack just before the snap, but then the left outside linebacker (lined up to the short side of the field) drops into coverage, as does the the left defensive end. The strong safety comes up to play the flat and seam areas, and the two corners and the safety drop back into a simple three-deep. And Tennessee actually gets a completion, largely because the linebacker who probably ought to have been in the middle of the field follows the tight end on a short drag route and thus exposes the middle to an in-breaking receiver. (The linebacker should have passed him off to the defensive end who had dropped out; they end up defending the same area leaving the middle wide open).

On the second play LSU is in the same zone-blitz, with three deep. This time Tennessee keeps it simple and throws an out route against the soft outside coverage. Throwing away from defenders is often a solid strategy -- not that it is always easy to identify when there's a zone-blitz on.

Next, briefly, take a look at the clip below of the New York Giants running some fire zones. (Note: the best way to watch this is to watch and rewind several times, watching different players. You can barely see the ball anyway so watch the safeties, linebackers, line, etc. each successive time you replay it.)



In the first clip against the Cowboys, you'll see the exact same coverage -- three-deep, three-short -- except they have changed who does what to further disguise things (hey, it's the NFL now). Now you have a cornerback blitz from the weakside of the formation (and short side of the field), and the three-deep look, instead of being comprised of the two corners and safety, is now in the form of what is called a "cloud" rotation: the corner and two safeties rotate over to create the three-deep coverage. The overload blitz now comes from the short side of the field rather than the wide side as with LSU, and the other linebackers rotate over to fill up the underneath zones. It's really just the same thing, just a different look. And, again, in the NFL your guys can do more. Not only can your linemen drop into coverage, but your secondary can blitz and get to the quartberback while apparently lined up over a receiver.

And, another advantage with the NFL over college comes with the techniques involved. Around the 1:30 mark of that clip is another, rather traditional fire-zone. Atlanta throws about a six or seven yard hitch for a completion. But note the look from the secondary: the cornerback is lined up over the receiver as if he is in press man, but instead he bails -- after the snap -- into the deep-third, thus giving up the underneath completion. Few college or high schools will put cornerbacks responsible for deep thirds of the field up on the line of scrimmage so close to a receiver. Again, it's the NFL. Here, there is little fault you can blame on the offense: kudos to the quarterback and receiver for identifying the coverage despite the disguise.

Finally, motion is still a good way to reveal whether a defense is in man or zone, particularly when the motion changes the strength of the formation. (Though teams are certainly much better at disgusing their coverages even with motion or shifting.) If the defender runs across the field with the receiver, it is probably man. If they sort of "bump over," it's probably zone. And if it is man, well, then maybe you're getting better matchups.

More to come on blitzing, pass protection, and zone-blitzes throughout the offseason.

Pretty Passport Holder

When I was walking pass the travel accessories section at Saks last month, I scoffed at the idea. Why would I need a pretty passport holder when I only use it once every few months, and when I do, only very briefly when I go through customs. Most of the time, it is kept inside my bag anyway.

A day or so later, I learnt the error of my ways. 12 hours before my international flight, I realized that my passport was not where it should be. I was completely frazzled and lost. I immediately started ransacking my apartment looking for it and even called HG internationally for moral support in my panicked state (it was the middle of the night for her too!). I kept looking while she went online and checked out what one does in a situation like this (it was a saturday night so govt departments are not even opened the next day). Half an hour later, I finally found it neatly tucked away in a inconspicuous looking white envelope. I'd used my passport 6 months ago for something else and had forgotten to put it back in the pencil case looking travel bag where I put all my travel stuff in. Phew! Crisis avoided.
The next day on my ride to the airport, I retold my story to my friend and she said that this was why I should get a pretty passport holder, then I'd never have to put my passport in a white envelope. Plus, I should get an eye catching one, so I'll see it immediately. She had a point. Now i'm a convert to pretty passport holder. The question of course, is which one. I'm considering this bright red one from Saks. It is simple, elegant and vibrant. Plus, the size is just right, with little compartments for travel award cards etc (actually it might even be a great present for mom!).

How does everyone else keep their passport?

Image Source: Saks

The rise and fall of the spread via Purdue's Curtis Painter

Dr. Saturday recently wrote about his guiltiest pleasures of this past college football season. One of them was Purdue Quarterback Curtis Painter's rather miserable season, despite all the preseason hype from so-called experts like Mel Kiper.

Curtis Painter's Implosion. I do feel for Joe Tiller, a perfectly decent coach who brought the spread to the Big Ten when it was still considered a novelty, went to a Rose Bowl and whose tenure in West Lafayette should be remembered as an unambiguous success. But one of the banes of my existence in preseason was the unfathomable hype for Painter, led by Mel Kiper, who anointed Painter the top senior quarterback prospect in the country despite his wretched mark (0-14 from 2005-07) as a starter against BCS conference teams that finished with a winning record. Painter subsequently tossed one touchdown to six interceptions during the Boilermakers' 0-4 Big Ten start -- during which Purdue scored 6, 3 and 6 points, respectively, against Penn State, Ohio State and Minnesota -- and was benched just in time to watch a redshirt freshman who began the season at running back light up Michigan for a season-high 48 points in November. In short, I was right and Mel Kiper was wrong ... so wrong, in fact, he'd dropped Painter to No. 2 on his list of the top senior quarterbacks by December. Way to eat crow.

For starters, I totally agree about Kiper. Aside from the fact that almost no one knows how to properly evaluate quarterbacks (scroll down for a discussion of Malcolm Gladwell's "quarterback problem"), it is well known in football circles that Kiper is just a fan -- he possess no uncanny scouting skills. (But who really does?) There's nothing wrong with that, but all he brings to his "rankings" and assessments is exactly the same thing you or I would after watching a lot of games on TV and checking the stats. That's it. No more, and no less. Kudos to him for doing what he does, but that's all it is.

But I think Curtis Painter's woes (great against weak teams, mediocre to poor against good ones) can be partially explained as a data point in a larger story. This story gets back to my discussion of the rise of the terrible spread team, and even my earlier post about whether the spread has reached its apex as far as helping the little guy beat the big goliaths with lesser talent.

Painter never started under the original Purdue offensive scheme architects, namely Joe Tiller plus Jim Chaney. Chaney left to go to the NFL (now he's with the University of Tennessee), and in stepped Ed Zaunbrecher, who had followed great success coaching offense at Marshall with some success doing the same at Florida under the Zooker and less at Illinois. When Zaunbrecher got there Tiller had already decided to move in some new directions with the offense. But, while there were differences the problems wound up being many of the same things, because of the talent and overarching philosophy.

In many ways, under Zaunbrecher I liked a lot what Purdue was doing. If I had to compare their offense to anyone else's in terms of structure and schematics it likely would have been the New England Patriots under Belichick/McDaniel -- one-back sets with a tight-end, shotgun, and lots of base, simple 5-step concepts like the snag, all-curl, three-verticals, four-verticals, underneath option routes, and smash. This was slightly different than the original Tiller model with Chaney when Drew Brees and Kyle Orton had been there, which was more no-back and more three-step drops.

Brees-Tiller-Chaney clips:



Painter-Tiller-Zaunbrecher



(Compare the quick drops and completely spread sets that Brees tended to operate from with the longer developing plays used with Painter. Some of this is styles--Painter probably had a stronger arm than Brees, and Brees was a quick decisionmaker with a quick release. And some of the evolution was necessary. But it's worth pointing out the slightly different styles.)

In any event, the Tiller-Chaney-Brees model of four and five wides and three-step drops began to turn somewhat stagnant against the big boys; it's not a phenomenon entirely unique to Painter. Kyle Orton began the 2004 season as a Heisman contender and then Purdue rattled off loss after loss and failed to generate enough offense. And the reasons were simple: by then, if you spread out Wisconsin, Michigan, or Ohio State, they had guys who matched up with all your receivers, and if you had any advantage at all they could still put a floater or robber defender to bracket him and take him away.

But, despite the changes with Zaunbrecher, the exact same pattern emerged, except almost even more brutally. From about 2002-2004, with the Chaney short-passing model, Purdue would manage a number of completions, all of them for very, very short yardage, no run after the catch, and would hope to break a play or two. You saw a lot of that with Zaunbrecher, but mixed in were a lot of very difficult to complete downfield passes to guys who were not open. The week before, against Syracuse or even Minnesota, they'd look like the Patriots. Against Penn State or Ohio State, they looked like Syracuse. Though Zaunbrecher was more willing to stretch the field, against these top teams they could not shake anyone free. Plus, this exposed the quarterback to pressure and the line to certain protection issues, something that had not been as much of an issue with the previous quick-release approach.

In my 2006 article, I wrote this about where the spread was headed:

The offense has arguably become the opposite of an equalizer, it has become an amplifier: if you are talented you can really rack up the points because no one can cover Vince Young, Ted Ginn or the like one-on-one, but if you're not, you just get sacked and no one gets open.

So -- and I recognize that there were other issues at work like play-calling and Painter's at-times erratic decision-making -- but to me Purdue and Curtis Painter became an object lesson for the effect of the spread. When they played out of conference opponents or Big 10 bottom dwellers, they lit them up: their offense worked perfectly to create matchups and generate plays that garnered chunks of yardage at a time. But against the big boys, they got manned up, pressed, jammed, and blitzed into oblivion.

And maybe even Purdue's new head coach, Danny Hope, who coached with Tiller back in the Brees days and this past season, has noticed this. He chose not to retain Zaunbrecher and has instead hired Gary Nord from Florida Atlantic, who spent the last two decades as Howard Schnellenberger's offensive coordinator. If anything, his offense is NFL-esque, but almost a throwback to the early 90s of the Cowboys under Aikman and 49ers with Steve Young. Maybe it will be a success, or maybe it won't. But the days of Purdue being spread-only are likely over.

Tiller? Definitely a success at Purdue. Maybe his biggest fault was that his idea was so good it got copied and assimilated too quickly.

Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis.

=`)

i never failed to shed a tear or two whenever i listened to US National Anthem...


and since tomorrow(as in 20th of January 2009)will be Barrack Obama first day as the MR PRESIDENT(officially),read it from eSKay blog...=b (i dont watch news and i dont read newspaper as well...thats why la...i have to change this...)...so might as well just put one or two of USA National Anthem video here...

i've you-tube-d and found a few...below are the chosen videos...let us listen...

By 16 year old Demi Lovato

Doro Pesch Lyrics
U.S. National Anthem Lyrics

beautifully sung by Beyonce Knowles

I love it...can i say that?? its just a song maaa...maybe not for american right...but i love it still...
and dont take offence malaysian...I LOVE MALAYSIA the most...

am watching laguna beach and blogging at the same time...
mngumpat pasal Lauren of Laguna Beach...
just logged in my myspace account..
trying to change my avatar outfit...and background...
checking and deleting email...
checking facebook...
deleting unknown ppl from my friendster a/c...
posted shout out di friendster...
checking my nuffnang over and over again hoping it will turn rm0.01 anytime soon...saddd
and at the same time looking for a cheap ticket to kl...rm69 tax included..S.I?S.I.N?

hotmail a/c, signed out...
Fs a/c, signed out...
Yahoo mail, signed out...
yahoo avatar, signed out..
myspace, signed out...

time to go to the kitchen...maalass ooo...
aiyaaa galap suda...

til' then