Date Archives September 2012

Pai Mei, Longtones, and Route Running: Lessons of Kung Fu, Jazz, and Football With Utah WR DeVonte Christopher

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Football and music (and in this case, Kung Fu) continue to have a number of parallels for me. I played saxophone from the age of 8 until I stopped at 23.This is roughly the same career life span of most college football players. Those who continue playing beyond college and perform on the highest stage possess a mastery of fundamentals that require a willingness to enslave oneself to the development process: practice.

Practicing the craft of an instrument is the same as practicing the craft of playing a position. There are concepts of precision, timing, teamwork, and leadership that all musicians and football players have to learn about playing together. There are also things a player from both worlds has to refine on his own. Continue reading →

Reads Listens Views 9/7/2012

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Views

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Pound-for-pound, one of the fiercest competitors in the NFL. If you don’t want this guy on your team you need a gut check. Although I must admit that he’s completely delusional when it comes to saying that he doesn’t play with a chip on his shoulder. Listen to him say he wasn’t allowed to practice with the wide receivers during his rookie year at Carolina and I think any guy that used to be a part of that coaching staff still reflexively slaps himself in the face when he hears the name Steve Smith.

Fantasy Rosters (I’m asked, so here are 4 of my 8 teams this year) Continue reading →

One-on-One Fantasy Football-Free!

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Check out our one-on-one fantasy game in Year Two. It’s free!

Most of you reading the RSP blog play fantasy football. If you’re like me your favorite part of fantasy leagues is the draft. There’s nothing more enjoyable than assembling a team, except perhaps the week you play a heated rival and get a chance to smack talk like you’re James Harrison and he’s Ray Rice.

I’ve been touting a fantasy football game for the past 7-10 days that is a free, simple, convenient, and fast way to play every day and it’s also challenging enough to keep you coming back for more – FantasyThrowdown.com. I think it’s a great innovation to playing fantasy football because its one-on-one match ups allow you to challenge anyone, anytime.

You can play 20 times in a week or you can play once a month – whatever fits your schedule. It’s so easy to learn that I’ve had very few people need to ask me a question about how to play because if you’ve been in a fantasy league, it’s truly an intuitive game to learn.

Here’s the basics (for more complete directions go here):

  • Challenge a friend or another person on the site.
  • You and your opponent determine the three games for that week that will comprise your player draft pool.
  • Pick your games wisely as well as your draft order, because you each get to block a player from the draft pool during the draft. If there’s only two good QBs from those games you selected, you can set it up to force your opponent to settle for a scrub.
  • Draft your team.

Drafts take 10 minutes if you and your opponent are both online. Or you can stretch out the draft throughout the course of the week or even do predraft settings. Play standard or IDP, PPR or non-PPR. And the site has live chat and connects to Twitter and Facebook.

For those of you wondering why I’ve been promoting FantasyThrowdown.com on the RSP blog it’s because I am a co-owner of this new website.  This season we are Beta testing Throwdown and the response has been terrific since making it public.

Challenge me to a game either by registering and looking me up on the Leaderboard in the Lobby (matt) or use my email address: thegutcheck@gmail.com.

RB-OL Collisions: Reading the Road with Marcus Lattimore

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A criticism I read about a few college running backs this week was the tendency for some of them to run up the back of offensive linemen. Sometimes this is a fair criticism of a player. However, it’s also an observation that requires a strong frame of reference about the critic. It’s easy to evaluate a running back, see him run into a lineman’s back, and conclude that he lacks patience, agility, or good decision-making.

However, there are numerous examples of plays where a running back is not at fault for colliding with the backsides of his blockers. Considering the number of Tweets I saw this week where this conclusion was made about a back, I thought it might be helpful to provide examples of when this type of behavior is not the fault of the runner. I’m using South Carolina running back Marcus Lattimore and his teammates as an example. Continue reading →