[The following is from noted quarterback guru Darin Slack. Check out his site and find out about his camps, materials, and the like.]

There’s an old coaching adage that “you can’t change a throwing motion! A quarterback either can throw or he can’t. Period.”

You hear this all the time, this idea that a quarterback’s mechanics can’t be changed. Commentators, football dads, and coaches proclaim, “It’s impossible to change a quarterback’s throwing motion. Just coach his footwork.” Older quarterbacks in particular get subjected to this tunnel vision.

It says more about the coaches than it does the kid. The message it sends, however, is that, “We don’t have time to improve a kid’s throwing mechanics. Or we don’t know how — we don’t have the technical skills needed to coach them up. Why bother if we can just go find another kid who can already throw it better, without coaching”?

But what is passing talent? The mentality that some kids “have it” while others don’t shouldn’t apply to throwing in the same way it might to raw speed or quickness. Yet it comes up so often. There are many high-profile “athlete-quarterbacks” who are world-class athletes but aren’t very accurate. They can throw a spiral and an accurate pass or two, but because of their latent talent the theory is that the best thing to do is just to “let them play” and the last thing you should do is “overcoach” them. The old myth comes back: Just coach their feet; ignore the upper body.

But that’s only the most high-profile example. There are thousands of high school kids that receive almost no coaching of their passing mechanics. At best they get a few throwing drills. The result is thousands of young players who are given no the opportunity to develop. For the great-athlete quarterbacks, the lack of coaching puts a cap on their success and hurts their team’s passing games. For the less talented kids, they simply never see the field or get moved to new positions. If they ask for help, it’s that same refrain again: “Let’s work on your footwork.” Yet aren’t the feet are the farthest appendage from where you throw a ball from? Don’t you throw it with your arm?

Lack of coaching or not, the expectations remain: Perform at a high level or face criticism or the bench. The “can’t coach a throwing motion” myth prejudices the careers of many young men. Not all quarterbacks make it to the NFL but all want to succeed. Ignoring the upper body is like only coaching half the kid.

Ironically, the same coaches who preach a “footwork only” gospel also throw out plenty of meaningless buzz-phrases in lieu of actual coaching: “Follow through,” “Come over the top more,” “Raise your elbow,” “Turn your shoulders more.” This double standard of non-coaching and coaching-via-cliché is confusing — for both the coach and the kid.

If all you know are the same old cliches then you’re insulting your players’ intelligences, and if you’re insulting their intelligences then, over time, you will prove yourself to know very little. Because the stuff you’re saying won’t work. It might work a time or two, but you won’t have all the answers, as so much of it will be guessing on your part. And once that happens the players will start just fiddling with it themselves, drawing their own ad hoc conclusions about what works best. The result is typically not pretty.

Can you improve a quarterback’s throwing motion? Yes, but it’s important to use the right methods. As stated above, the old way is to focus on footwork only and then sprinkle in clichés throughout practice. Our way is different. We teach quarterbacks to “self-correct, not self-destruct,” through a central focus on the arm. We do this by teaching simple biomechanics concepts that are universal and non-negotiable, and yet provide powerful results that inform the footwork to support the entire process.

Here are two simple biomechanical examples to improve a throwing motion in the wrist and elbow. The wrist should be pronated, or turned over, on the release (see the images below), yet there are countless ways the wrist can move and only some are correct — the bad variations can create problems.

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Excellent article from rivals.com. Do read the whole thing:

That brings us here, to Texas Tech’s football complex. It’s almost 6 p.m., and it’s time to get to work. A visit from Kansas looms, and it’s time to watch film with one of the nation’s most innovative coaches and his crew of quarterbacks.

Tech quarterbacks have led the nation in passing six times in nine seasons under Leach, and this season’s group is assembled in a meeting room adjacent to Leach’s office to watch film of the A&M debacle. Taylor Potts, Seth Doege, Steven Sheffield, Garrett Riley and Jacob Karam sit at a long conference table. Most slouch or recline, feet propped on a nearby chair and necks craned at a big screen.

X’s and O’s are scribbled on a nearby greaseboard. A phrase is scrawled along the top of the board: “Reads = QBs. Have your eyes in the proper place and deliver the ball to the right player at the right time.”

Wearing a black “Texas Tech Football” pullover and cargo shorts, Leach sits at the head of the table like a pigskin CEO, in front of a paper plate that once was covered with pulled pork, baked beans and coleslaw. His gray hair mussed, Leach surveys a schedule for tonight’s 8 p.m. practice as he sips iced tea. The room is silent, then Leach flips the lights and the show begins.

This is the official start of game week and the first of several film sessions for Leach and his quarterbacks, who already have watched film with the rest of the offense.

Tonight, though, the quarterbacks will review clips from the previous day’s game with just Leach. The players are given Mondays off. On Tuesdays, the quarterbacks watch film cut-ups of the upcoming opponent’s defense. On Wednesdays, the quarterbacks watch more film of their foe along with film from the previous day’s practice. That’s repeated on Thursdays and Fridays.

“This is where the scheme meets the reality,” Leach says before the film session. “On Mondays, when the players are off, the staff pores over film of the opponent and develops the game plan. It’s a long day. I probably end up watching about 30 hours of film a week. The quarterbacks probably watch about eight.”

The formula works. Since arriving in west Texas in 2000, Leach has become the face of this school, making Texas Tech one of the country’s most dynamic – and talked-about – offenses. You think of Texas Tech, you think of Leach, his mad-scientist attack and his fascination with pirates.

In the film room, the video has rolled for less than a minute before Leach spots something he doesn’t like from Potts. This will happen often on this evening. Potts was seeing his first action since suffering a concussion against New Mexico on Oct. 3; he ended up being benched at halftime and replaced by Doege.

“What did you see here?” Leach asks. “[Wide receiver] Detron [Lewis] really wasn’t open. You should have gone to this guy. You had leverage and he was open there for a moment. You can’t hold the ball that long.”

Potts’ final numbers didn’t look bad, as he completed 25 of 36 passes for 310 yards with two touchdowns. But he also had two interceptions and lost a fumble, and after the game, Leach described Potts as “statue-like.”

On the screen, Potts is getting sacked. “You have to feel this and step up,” Leach says. “It’s only one guy and he’s not on your blind side. You need to step up and avoid this.”

As Leach runs the play back – again and again – he lobs critiques at his pupils in a conversational manner; he doesn’t raise his voice, though he occasionally curses. It’s essentially a one-way exchange throughout the entire session, as the quarterbacks either offer a “yes, sir” or a nod.

On the screen, Potts is throwing an interception in the end zone. “No, we can’t have that,” says Leach, using a laser pointer to highlight an open receiver that Potts missed. “We don’t practice that, do we?

“We have an entire offense that needs to listen better. If you see that the group is anxious, huddle them up to calm them down. Make sure your messages are delivered with confidence. You need to relax. For whatever reason, you are struggling.”

Still, Leach doesn’t want to harp on the negative too much. It’s important to inject a positive message. There’s still a lot of football to be played this season.

“What did you see on that play?” Leach asks.

“I thought the receiver in the boundary was covered, so I looked to my option cutting over the middle,” Potts answers. “It looked like he was open, but their defensive back closed quickly.”

On the screen, the Tech offense rolls on.

“I think we are playing at a pretty high level here,” Leach says. “Go through your progressions. Nice job here, Seth. But I know you guys can do better.” . . . .

Doege is soaking it all in on this Sunday night. He watches and listens as the second-half tape continues to cycle by with him under center. This is his big chance. A quarterback controversy may be brewing in Lubbock, and Doege may end up starting this week against Kansas. He wants to be ready.

“That check is good, but we have some guys who are trying to do too much,” Leach says. “You did a good job on your reads. You found the hot receiver.”

Doege nods and says, “Yes, sir.”

“Good job moving your feet and staying out of trouble,” Leach says. “But when the safety went here, you should have gone here with this throw.”

On the screen, Doege drops back and fires a nice pass – which is dropped.

After about an hour, Leach has seen enough.

“Someone hit the lights.”

The first film session of the week is finished. Leach has Potts wait in the film room and tells Doege to wait in his office. Leach wants to talk to each quarterback in private, presumably to tell them who will start against Kansas.

The one-on-one sessions last about 10 minutes before the quarterbacks leave to get dressed for practice. Leach scribbles some notes on his practice agenda. There’s lots of work to do, and Leach will be back in his captain’s chair later.

Now, he pulls on a jacket and heads toward the stadium for practice. It’s cold out, about 40 degrees. The door closes behind him. The next game is six days away.

And here’s a quote from a drop caption in the article: “I would say Kliff [Kingsbury] and Graham [Harrell] liked [watching film] the most of all of my guys,” Leach says. “Those two were sons of coaches, so I think they came by in naturally. They really enjoyed it and were like gym rats.”

(H/t doubletnation.com)

Available over at the NY Times’s Fifth Down blog. Check it out there.

From a study of NCAA probation penalties:

… The study reveals universities who belong to conferences whose champions receive annual automatic BCS bowl bids (BCS automatic-qualifier schools) received less stringent probation penalties from the NCAA infractions committee than other Division I institutions. Also, the research indicates FBS institutions receive less probation years than FCS institutions and non-football sponsoring schools. Finally, the results suggest historically Black colleges and universities in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference and Southwestern Athletic Conference (HBCUs) received harsher probation penalties than other Division I institutions.

Read the whole thing. (H/t Blutarsky.)

And yet, as bad as this is — and it is terrible — I still tend to prefer the NCAA system and am more hopeful that it can be fixed than the NFL’s current autocracy, which works as follows, at least for individual players:

Commissioner Roger Goodell determines if you have violated the NFL’s policies. If you have, Commissioner Roger Goodell will bring enforcement against you. Commissioner Roger Goodell will determine if Commissioner Roger Goodell properly determined that you violated Commissioner Roger Goodell’s policies, and then determines the punishment. If you disagree with Commissioner Roger Goodell’s ruling or punishment, you may appeal to Commissioner Roger Goodell. Finally, Commissioner Roger Goodell will determine of you have complied with Commissioner Roger Goodell’s terms of punishment and/or probation.

Potts, after the Red Raiders’ loss to Texas: “We’d get on a roll offensively and then get a penalty and go right back where we started,” Potts said.

“We tried to beat Texas and ourselves in the first half. In the second half, we just tried to beat Texas.”

And they gave it a pretty good effort. That is, until Sergio Kindle shut the door.

Steve Spurrier watched the game film of his offense’s horrible performance against NC State and concluded: we weren’t aggressive enough. And people are ridiculing him for it.

Steve Spurrier has watched the entire N.C. State game twice and part of it a third time.

The South Carolina coach reached two conclusions: The Gamecocks were too conservative offensively in their 7-3 win in Raleigh, and such an approach is not going to cut it this weekend at Georgia.

“We had a pretty conservative game plan. I didn’t realize how really conservative it was until I watched the game twice now – almost three times,” Spurrier said Sunday. “We wanted to give the running game a chance, so we did do that. But we obviously need to try for some big plays along the way a little bit more probably.”

USC’s run-pass ratio in the opener was nearly 2-to-1, with the Gamecocks running 42 times and attempting 22 passes (although some of those rushes were scrambles by or sacks of quarterback Stephen Garcia).

Still, the attack looked much too plain for a coach credited with introducing the SEC to an intricate downfield passing attack in the 1990s.

And while Spurrier is not ready to scrap the Gamecocks’ revamped rushing scheme after one game, he made it clear he wants to see a more balanced attack against Georgia.

“We certainly can’t bring that game plan to beat Georgia on offense. I don’t think we can,” Spurrier said. “But we don’t want to send Stephen back there and get sacked and run around all night either. We’ve got to get us a balance between runs and passes that we can hit and look like a good offense.”

The buzz has been that Spurrier must be nuts — hey, he’s already given up on the run game. But look at the numbers. I’ve previously talked about a notion of “balance” that only looks at the number of runs or passes or the total yards with rushing and passing as being misleading, and that a far better metric is comparing the expected — or, in lieu of that, average — yards per attempt of each, though, since passes are riskier than runs, passes should still average more (have a premium). The reason is because the defense will respond to your playcalling; it’s a game theory thing.

So let’s look at the numbers. Overall, the Gamecocks averaged a measly 2.57 yards per rush, and an okay 6.7 yards per attempt, though with an interception. There can be problems at looking at the raw numbers, particularly on third down where the result is binary: convert or fail to convert. So let’s look at first down, where clearly the optimal strategy is to maximize your expected gain.

The sample is small, but on first down South Carolina ran the ball 16 times and averaged a mere 3.06 yards per carry. They threw it nine times for 78 yards (and no INTs), resulting in a very healthy 8.67 yards per attempt. I can safely say that Spurrier should have called more first down passes. The OBC’s instincts are right. His playcalling was too conservative, at least on first down, which is the most important down in football because there are more first downs than any other down.

Well, I accidentally submitted this poll too late to count for the overall poll (seen here), though that is probably for the best. Mine was a bit of a monstrosity. Discussion follows the poll. I’ll be back on schedule next week.

Rank	Team
1	Florida
2	Texas
3	Southern Cal
4	Alabama
5	Penn State
6	Brigham Young
7	Boise State
8	Oklahoma State
9	Ohio State
10	Mississippi
11	Georgia Tech
12	TCU
13	Utah
14	Cincinnati
15	North Carolina
16	Nebraska
17	Notre Dame
18	Miami (Florida)
19	Oregon State
20	Kansas
21	Texas Tech
22	Missouri
23	Tennessee
24	Michigan State
25	Clemson

So, the first thing I did was eliminate every team that lost. Is that rational? I don’t think so, but the BlogPoll instructs that results are supposed to be about what happened on the field. Now, later on I will definitely count close losses, etc into a fuller vision of teams, but for now I thought I’d try this. Among the remaining teams I just employed my gestalt approach: a blend of likelihood of winning the big one, reward for playing well, and elements of a “power poll.”
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For all the talk of more pro-sets and and putting Tebow under-center, the biggest change the Florida Gators may installed on offense is a new “bonsai” (or “bonzai”?) package: a no-huddle look they got from Oklahoma whereby they can use multiple tempos — i.e. line up and call the play right away, or line up, get a look at the defense, and call a play. Specifically:

Word from Gator Country ($) is that the Gators’ no-huddle package, deployed sparingly in the steamrolling of Charleston Souther, is called either “banzai” or “bonzai” or “bansai” or something. (Gator Bytes confirms this.) . . . .

The idea is stolen from Oklahoma’s hurry-up, which helped power their near-unstoppable 2008 offense. . . .

There are many reasons to use this scheme, but one of them is that Florida simply has better talent than most (all?) of its opponents. And if you have more talent than your opponents then you want to get as many “trials” as possible to maximize your chance of winning. Conversely, an optimal game for an underdog would be where they managed to get lucky, score early, and end the game right there. In other words, the underdog wants a high variance strategy. The hurry-up no-huddle for Florida (I know they will use different tempos) is a way to get more of these trials. Think of it this way. There is very little chance of Kentucky beating Florida this year. It’s not impossible; we could think of what would have to happen. Tebow would have to play awful, Florida would have to turn it over, blow some coverages, fumble a kickoff or punt or two, and Kentucky would have to take advantage of all of those mistakes. In other words, they’d have to be very, very lucky. Unless you are a partisan or don’t understand statistics, you have to admit that if Florida and Kentucky played 1,000 times Kentucky might win at least one of them. If Florida runs more plays than usual (Oklahoma ran more plays than any team in college football last season), then this is like factoring in extra games into a single one — the Gators would have more opportunity to smooth out instances of the other team getting lucky.

Of course I’ve previously discussed this dynamic of underdog and favorite (or “David” and “Goliath” strategies):

Going extreme hurry-up to get as many plays as possible — other than endurance, I suppose — is a Goliath strategy: it decreases variance by increasing the number of trials. The chance of getting only heads and no tails in five coin flips is much higher than it is in a hundred — i.e. the impact of the law of large numbers or regression to the mean. If Oklahoma has significantly more talent, better schemes, and everything else than the underdog, then the more plays it run the more likely it is to exhibit its raw dominance over the underdog; the underdog is less likely to “steal” a few good plays and get the heck out of dodge. The principle is the same as the difference between an underdog winning a game in a single-elimination tournament and trying to win a seven-game series: the seven-game series is far less likely to produce upsets.

The logic runs exactly opposite for Florida’s opponents this year, all of whom are likely to be considered underdogs:

As explained above, the higher variance and thus David-favoring strategy is to reduce the number of “trials” — i.e. plays. This is where a passing strategy and a strategy that involves “shortening the game and keeping it close” might run counter to each other. Incomplete passes typically stop the clock (I can’t keep the college clock rules in my brain anymore), as do plays where the ballcarrier goes out of bounds, which is more common on passes (same with the clock rules). If an underdog were to get an early lead, they obviously would love it if the game effectively ended right there. Yes, there is much to say about the problems inherent in not playing to lose and all that, but those are means questions, not ends. And all can agree that an underdog would love to get an early lead in a game against a favorite and have the clock run out as fast as possible.

Whether or not Meyer had stochastic reasoning in mind when he went to this, this kind of strategy should benefit his team overall, but especially against overmatched opponents; it’s kind of like upset-repellent. Even if the Gators got down and played poorly, they would always have the option of lengthening the game and evening out the probabilities.

(Ht EDSBS.)

Now up over at Yahoo’s Dr Saturday. Check it out.

My breakdown of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ offense is up over at the New York Times Fifth Down Blog. This should become a weekly thing, so check out the inaugural post.