Throughout the 2018 regular season, the Seattle Seahawks made a conscious effort to establish the threat of the running game in the minds of their opponents. In the face of record offensive production across the NFL — driven in large part by prolific passing offenses — head coach Pete Carroll doggedly maintained that sticking with […]
The NFL’s wild-card round may have been a brutal showcase of grind-it-out defense and uninspired offensive play-calling. But at least it threw another intriguing wrench into what was already shaping up to be a chaotic postseason. Three of the four favorites (according to FiveThirtyEight’s pregame Elo ratings) lost on opening weekend: the home Texans, Ravens […]
For decades, the draw play has been one of the NFL’s most reliable tricks to fool overeager defensive lineman. The play mimics a pass — in the action of both the quarterback and the offensive line — until the last second, when the ball is handed off to the running back. When it works, the […]
gfoster (Geoff Foster, sports editor): The wild-card weekend — the best weekend — is in the books, and it would be hard to argue that it wasn’t great. Three of four road teams won. With the exception of the Colts wiping out the Texans, every game was within a touchdown. Let’s start with the most […]
The play-action pass is one of the most effective calls in all of football. The three teams that use the play-action the most — the Rams, the Patriots and the Chiefs, according to data from Sports Info Solutions — each locked down a first-round bye in the playoffs. Across the league in 2018, quarterbacks with […]