Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Alabama embraces the spread/RPO revolution

I've got a longform up at SB Nation about how Nick Saban is rebuilding the Alabama football team around new strategies designed to allow them to dominate the new era of spread football.

One of the major developments is how Saban is equipping his offense, at least his QB, to be able to cycle through the OODA loop and be equipped to make adjustments in the heat of the moment after the snap. RPOs are the way that is accomplished.

One thing that'll be interesting to watch in the future is whether defenses start to design their coverages around muddying up RPO reads so that QBs have to hold the ball and (hopefully) panic. We'll get into that later.

Another nugget from that article is that Malzahn is apparently in Saban's mind, hence his move to channel Belichick and embrace becoming an offensive team.

You can find lots of my 2015 SB Nation previews here including a piece on how Baylor will use their massive TE and changes to the POP pass that will occur as a result of changes in rule enforcement.

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