Dave’s Football Blog

Olympics: USA 1-2 Nigeria I’m still debating whether Michael Orozco or Peter Nowak was the bigger moron today. Orozco got a straight red for elbowing a player in the chest right in front of a German ref who wasn’t taking any crap. Brilliant. So down 1-0 and down to 10 men at the start of the second half, with Freddy Adu and Michael Bradley on yellow card suspensions, the USA needs a goal — and Nowak pulls Jozy Altidore out in favor of Benny Feilhaber? Are you freaking kidding me!?

Between those two things and Stuart Holden’s dumb foul at the end of the Netherlands game, the USA earned its trip home here. I hope Nowak earned a pinkslip.

US Open Cup: No quadruple for the New England Revolution. D.C. United topped New England, 3-1, in a game seen by less than 7,000 people. (Thanks for nothing, MLS.) Meanwhile, on a rainy night in Charleston, SC, the Seattle Sounders took the Charleston Battery to penalty kicks, and the Battery came out on top. The Open Cup Final between D.C.U. and the Battery takes place on Wednesday, September 3, at RFK Stadium. It will probably be D.C.U.’s only chance to win a trophy and make the 2009 CONCACAF Champions League.

Premier League: Dimitar Berbatov is headed to Manchester United. (Was that deal ever not going to happen?) Meanwhile, Tottenham Hotspur has not yet secured Andrei Arshavin from Zenit St. Petersburg. Expect even more “SPURS GET BENT” headlines from British Tabloids.

AFL: The Sydney Swans just signed 24-year-old Canadian rugby fullback Mike Pyke to their rookie list. Their next target: Chris Chambers…

Dude can mark. Ha ha.

Programming Note: Blogging will be light for the rest of the week, as I’m off to Las Vegas for a few days. I’ll have something resembling a Premier League preview up on Friday, but that will probably be about it until next week. On a side note, I made a grand total of $3.06 yesterday from my banner ad network, thanks to this Stuart Scott karaoke post. I’d promise not to spend it all in one place, but really, I’ve got a lot of postcards to buy…

Oh, yes. This is just what you want behind an offensive line that can’t block — a quarterback that can’t run. Brilliant. We might as well have signed Bernie Kosar. I hear he could use the cash.

Charlie Batch, get well soon. And Ben Roethlisberger, stay well. Seriously.

Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is putting on the bravest face in the NFL this side of… well, anyone who walks into the Cleveland Browns’ E coli-laden training room, really.

The atmosphere at Packers camp might be even more poisonous. The fans have rejected him outright. Children in #4 jerseys are swearing at him. Every mistake that Rodgers makes will be scrutinized to no end. If he gets the Packers to the NFC Championship game and throws a crucial interception in overtime, well, gee, that’s so much worse than when Brett Favre did the exact same thing last January, isn’t it?

Rodgers, however, has taken the high road here. He just wants a chance to lead this team and show everyone what he can do. The problem, however, is that nobody cares. You’ll see more Packers fans showing up at Lambeau wearing New York Jets jerseys — what, you think it was just New Yorkers that bought them all? — than ever before.

But what if Rodgers had decided he wanted no part of this? What if, when Brett Favre’s plane landed, Rodgers had packed up his bag, walked out of camp and turned to the camera crew following him out — assuming there was one available — and said something like this:

“You know what? I’m not putting up with this shabby crap. I’ve had enough of this team’s fans berating me and their kids throwing F-bombs at me and telling me I suck. They don’t support a team anymore. They support some dude. And that dude hasn’t even won a Super Bowl in what, 12 years? And he’s still some kind of god to them. These people are bigger freaks than Scientologists.

“Well you know what? I’m done with it. I say let those Scientologists have their Xenu. I’m calling my agent and demanding a trade. I’d rather play somewhere where I’m wanted than deal with these false idol worshippers for another minute.”

Of course, several media people would have told us all that this was the wrong move. Many probably would have compared him to Ryan Leaf. But you know what? Once that tirade had gotten loose on ESPN, at least three NFL teams would have called Ted Thompson within the hour to offer up a first round pick for Rodgers, and Packers fans probably would have stormed the Packers front office with pitchforks to ensure such a deal happened.

And it would have been so much more fun.

After all, those GMs know just as well as the rest of us — the man who follows The Man is doomed. Aaron Rodgers is the next Cliff Stoudt, the next Brian Griese, the next Jay Fielder. They’ll never accept him in Green Bay, because Packers fans don’t support a team anymore. They support some dude — a dude who hasn’t won a title in 12 years and has spent most of that time manipulating the media with his tired maybe-I’ll-retire schtick. Clearly, this has had a massively hypnotic effect on Packers fans, who would drink the Kool-Aid if their now-exiled leader told them to. We might have to rethink the basic rules for how to start a cult.

As we get closer to the start of several different football seasons — and the end of another — it’s nice to know that we can find some consistency from one season to the next.

The NFL preseason is still a horrific bore.

Harry Redknapp is still the master of the of the ugly 0-0 draw.

Manchester United still need Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo.

Reading still can’t score a damn goal.

Peter Nowak-coached teams still put themselves in bad positions needlessly.

Carolina Railhawks manager Scott Schweitzer still has no bloody clue who his best 11 players are.

The Geelong Cats still own the rest of the AFL. (And the Melbourne Demons still suck.)

South Africa’s rugby union team is still pretty good.

Any Cleveland Brown who has an open wound is still at heavy risk for a staph infection.

Ronaldo is still a fat bastard.

So take comfort, football lovers. The new season is upon us, and all those old tropes we love to lean on so much aren’t going away any time soon. (Though I sure wish Schweitzer would…)

The Brett Favre soap opera or the Cristiano Ronaldo transfer saga — which media frenzy made you more want to beat a kitten with a meat tenderizer?

Seriously, does any football code have a bigger diva than these two? Can they not just go away and leave us in peace for once?

Since Walter Camp invented the gridiron, coaches have constantly looked for new ways to run an offense — the Wishbone, the Single Wing, the Run and Shoot, the Spread Option. Ultimately, they all have the same goal — find the weakness in the defense and exploit it as often as possible.

What if you could exploit those weaknesses by making everyone a receiver?

What you’re looking at here is the basic formation of the A-11 Offense, the brainchild of Kurt Bryan, who coaches football at Piedmont High School in Piedmont, California. He looked at his players, realized they were too small to run a traditional offense. So he created an offensive scheme with a center, two tight ends, two quarterbacks and six, count ‘em six wideouts.

How is this legal, you ask? At least one of the QBs is lined up at least 7 yards behind the ball, thus making this a scrimmage kick formation. As long as enough players are lined up on the line of scrimmage, pretty much anything goes.

One Deadspin commenter called it “Calvinball.” After watching this video, I’d say he’s not too far off.

Now you might ask, wouldn’t it be a lot easier to kill the QBs when there’s almost nobody blocking the pass rushers? Well, yeah, if Drew Bledsoe and David Carr are your quarterbacks. This is an offense for the Antwaan Randle Els of the world, and according to its creator, injury rates have actually decreased since he started using it.

“An unforeseen benefit for us has been a major increase in the safety and protection of our players. We have not had major injuries to our offensive players in a game or practice due to the spread out nature of the A-11, and this is a major selling point. It really helps the players of the much smaller schools stay healthier during the season, which in turn allows schools like us to remain competitive throughout the entire year.”

Piedmont High went 7-2 last season, which might be the only reason why this offense is garnering any attention. Clearly, the A-11 works on the high school level. The question is whether it could work in any level higher than that.

The NFL? No chance. Defensive ends and linebackers are too fast and too smart to allow this sort of thing to take place. Let’s not forget how quickly the Run and Shoot was shelved after the teams who used it got summarily tossed out of the playoffs every year. Had the Run and Shoot won a Super Bowl or two, we’d see a lot more of that instead of Bill Walsh’s West Coast Offense.

College football, however, is another story. There’s a lot more room in the college game for experimentation, and a small school with nothing to lose — or a school that’s a perennial doormat in a big conference (Duke, Northwestern, etc.) — might give this a try. The college coach that gives this a go, however, will have to find players who aren’t so interested in NFL careers. No A-11 quarterback will ever make it as an NFL quarterback. Just ask Andre Ware, David Klingler and, in about two years, Pat White about how QBs in exotic college offenses do in the pros.

Still, it’ll be interesting to see if this offense rises up from the high school level and makes it in college football. It would certainly make things a lot more interesting.

(First spotted on Shutdown Corner.)