14 comments Gregg Easterbrook Talks About the Oregon Ducks Blur Offense; Makes Oregon Ducks Fans Cringe

In TMQ last week Gregg accused Bill Belichick of not wearing pink, to show his support for fighting breast cancer, during a Monday night game. Naturally, he was wrong about this and we had a picture here of Belichick wearing pink shoes posted and then later ESPN caught on to it and had a correction at the bottom of the page far away from where the mistake was made in the column. Gregg also failed to understand how the college recruiting cycle works and this from a guy who two weeks ago talked about he wrote 1,000 words of advice to potential college athletes. Gregg seemed to think a college football coach takes over a team and all of the players on said team ae his recruits. Now Gregg talks more about college athletics in his weekly NFL column. Non-hilarity continues.

Not only is Oregon scoring 54 points per game; the Ducks are snapping the ball and scoring so fast the whole thing goes by in a blur. "What did I just see?" both defensive coordinators and spectators must be asking themselves. Call it the blur offense.

That's the best non-perfect name. Let's hope this doesn't catch on.

I couldn't help but notice a SBNation Oregon Ducks site had found the link and the third comment about the article I found to be interesting. It is the one by JShufelt at 2:35 PDT. So he is accusing Gregg of being factually incorrect, only watching one game, and then basing blanket conclusions on this one game? That's the Gregg Easterbrook we know!

Does this mean the Ducks have discovered a fundamentally new way to play football?

THERE ARE NO NEW WAYS TO PLAY FOOTBALL! IT'S A FAD! JUST LIKE THAT 3-4 DEFENSE!

I like how any time a team shows a different formation or runs something that doesn't look like it came straight out of the four plays from "Tecmo Bowl," Gregg Easterbrook has to dedicate a TMQ to that formation or offense and acts like it is completely new...then calls it a fad.

The blur offense combines these four existing ideas then executes really quickly.

The spread offense combines athletic players getting in space and shotgun formations and then tries to spread the offensive players around the field.

The adult diaper combines the absorption protection of a child's diaper with more strength built for an adult so the adult can shit anywhere.

I'm going to start using italics at the end of every sentence so it will get annoying quickly.

Oregon is not the only college team to be snapping really fast. Two weeks ago, yours truly watched Amherst, an elite academic college, run a version of the blur,

Gregg didn't actually mean to go to this game. ESPN wanted him to view a football game for the first time so they could cut down on angry email from readers who point out how ignorant Gregg seemed to be about football, so they told him there was a NASA convention where Jewish scientists would talk about how the space program is awesome. Knowing Gregg's background in hating people of the Jewish faith and hating NASA, ESPN knew they could get him there with no problem.

Things to know about the blur offense:

The most important thing to know about the blur offense is that Gregg Easterbrook does not understand the blur offense. He looked up all this information ten minutes prior to writing this column.

The pistol set means the quarterback is 4 yards behind center, rather than 7 yards as in a shotgun. (A pistol is smaller than a shotgun.)

I love it when sportswriters talk to their readers like they are mentally deficient or have the IQ of a cockroach. I call it unbridled pretention to just assume the reader is more stupid than you are and Gregg is guilty of it all week and pretty much every month of the year (A week is shorter than a month).

Like the high school version of the spread, the blur involves lots of hitch screens, in which the quarterback quickly throws sideways to a wide receiver who's hitching.

"Hitching." Is this the same thing as a receiver "slanting" or "curling?"

Does it make a person sound less or more ignorant about football to say a receiver is "hitching?" I say it makes that person sound more ignorant.

Being only 4 yards behind center means the quarterback gets the snap a bit faster

Because we, as readers who are the mercy of Gregg's knowledge, wouldn't understand 4 yards is a shorter distance than 7 yards.

Often, the quarterback executes a zone-read with the tailback. Everybody's doing the zone-read in college football this season; the blur offense just executes it really quickly.

I don't think this is right. Every blur offense doesn't execute a zone-read faster than other teams who don't run the blur offense. Those teams may get to the line of scrimmage faster, but they don't necessarily execute it faster. The execution of the play is when the play is actually being run.

Pass patterns are minimal, which keeps the quarterback's mind from melting under the pace. Oregon runs hitch screens, then occasionally fakes a hitch screen and sends a receiver on the fake side deep. That's it -- that's the blur offense passing tree.

Sweet Jesus, these assumptions are incredible.

That's not the blur offense's passing tree, that is the Oregon passing tree, and I would doubt this is even the Oregon passing tree. I would also imagine the Ducks have a few more passing plays than just a hitch (where the receiver is "hitching"), a fake hitch, and a go route.

Players on the field couldn't possibly understand hand signals for a conventional 50-play college playbook.

Because these players are mostly football players and football players aren't as smart as Gregg Easterbrook.

Countermeasures to the wishbone were found, and countermeasures to the blur offense will be found. Football tactics go in fad cycles;

Here in a couple of years, Gregg Easterbrook thinks head coaches in the NFL will find a countermeasure to the 3-4 defense, thereby rending it ineffective for 10 years, until every head coach forgets how to stop the 3-4 and it comes back into fashion.

In other football news, helmets -- and hypocrisy -- were flying in Week 5. The helmets of Ndamukong Suh of Detroit, D'Brickashaw Ferguson of the Jets, Fred Jackson of Buffalo and Tony Brown of the Titans were just four of many that went flying off during games. No penalties were assessed -- though loose-fitting helmets are a risk factor in concussions, and both improper equipment and having your chin strap unbuckled are illegal.

Hmmmmmmm......what's weird about three of these players? How about the fact they are either offensive or defensive lineman and are engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the opposing offensive/defensive line. Perhaps the reason their helmets came off is not because the helmet was loose-fitting and could be because another player knocked it off. I don't know if Gregg has heard or not, but football players are strong and at the right angle could probably knock a helmet off a person.

The NFL's Week 4 nominations for best photo include 'The helmet of the Ravens' Jarret Johnson falls off as the linebacker attempts to bring down the Steelers' Hines Ward' and 'Texans safety Bernard Pollard buries the face of Raiders tight end Zach Miller into the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum turf.' Both pictures demonstrate lack of head safety -- yet the NFL celebrates them, as if risking head injury is part of the entertainment."

Obviously Bernard Pollard should have cradled Zach Miller's head in his arms to avoid him getting his head hurt in any way. I am sure he had time to do that. When he was tackling Miller he probably had a whole half-second to think this all through, while still tackling Miller so he can't run away.

It's football. Players are going to get tackled and their head is going to hit the ground. This really isn't an issue where head safety can be called upon as a solution, unless Gregg wants the football field to be made of marshmallows.

If a flag was thrown whenever a helmet came off, players would keep their chin straps buckled.

The chin-straps are buckled. Other players may have their hands to that player's face or hit the player at an angle where the helmet just comes off. It happens.

Stat of the Week No. 4: The Atlanta Falcons are averaging 17 more plays per game than their opponents. Good teams typically average five to 10 more plays per game.

Is there a statistic to prove this or is this another example of Gregg Easterbrook just citing statistics that he believes to be true in his head? I would probably argue the latter.

Stat of the Week No. 7 (College Bonus): Baylor and USC combined to gain 1,002 yards of offense -- and both lost.

If only they had found a way to get five or ten more plays a game than their opponent, I am sure they would have won the game. That's why the Oregon offense is so successful, it gets more plays off than the other team, runs three pass plays that can be easily understood and hopes the scoring takes care of itself.

Game tied at 21, City of Tampa took over on the Cincinnati Bengals' 34 following an interception, with 14 seconds remaining and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers out of timeouts. Maybe, just maybe, this will be a sideline pattern. Sophomore quarterback Josh Freeman threw to the sideline to receiver Michael Spurlock, whose entire body -- except his feet -- was out of bounds when the pass arrived.

No part of Spurlock's body could have actually been out of bounds and touching the ground or this would have been an incompletion. So Spurlock's body couldn't have been actually out of bounds.

Tennessee linebacker Will Witherspoon, who's having a tremendous season after being waived by the Eagles, broke up the pass. On fourth-and-9, Romo attempted the same pattern and Witherspoon again broke up the pass, this time dropping an interception. (Witherspoon slapped himself in the helmet until he realized it had been fourth down.)

Witherspoon slapped himself on the helmet? HE HAS NO REGARD FOR HEAD SAFETY! SUSPEND HIM IMMEDIATELY!

During the Cold War, the United States spent more than $2 trillion building nuclear-tipped missiles in the hope that none would ever be used. Why won't we spend 1 percent of that amount building an anti-asteroid rocket in the hope it will never be used?

Because we can send a special team of oil drillers and astronauts to land on the asteroid and destroy it before it hits Earth. I saw this in the documentary feature film "Armageddon."

New Orleans might also be suffering from big-game exhaustion -- the playoffs, then the Super Bowl, followed by consecutive nationally televised night games to open 2010.

The Super Bowl and the first game of the 2010 season were 8 months apart. I really, really doubt a football team would be exhausted from playing important games, especially when two of the games are 8 months apart. This is the weakest excuse I have heard yet for the Saints average start to this 2010 season.

Trailing 23-13 with 5:20 remaining, facing fourth-and-2 and down to one timeout, Payton sent in the punt team; last season he would have gone for it in this situation. Brees jogged off the field passively; last season he would have screamed at Payton to go for it.

But Brees wouldn't have had to yell at Payton to go for it because Gregg just said Payton would have gone for it. So either one or the other would have happened, but not both.

Also, when did Drew Brees turn into Brett Favre and start randomly yelling at his coach and publicly questioning his decisions?

Considering Green Bay's defense allowed 45 points to Arizona in its playoff loss to end the 2009 season, and now looks average, maybe the 2009 switch to 3-4 made the Packers seem better on defense than they really are.

Or, and I know this is crazy reasoning, but maybe the players on the Packers defense aren't playing as well this year. It sounds like an insane theory, but it may make more sense than thinking the same defense the Packers ran in 2009 made them look better when they had less experience in it than they currently do in 2010.

At the time, the 3-4 was rare in the NFC, but now lots of teams are playing it and everyone has film on how to attack the 3-4.

Just a fad. It will be out of the league in 10 years...then reappear...then disappear for 10 years.

As for the offensive line, supposedly its 2009 problems were fixed. On a second-and-14 in the fourth quarter, no one blocked a London Fletcher middle blitz. The most basic form of "line call" is for the center to identify and assign blockers to the defensive linemen and middle linebacker; for the Packers to be bungling that call five games into the season isn't good.

Gregg's proof that the Packers offensive line problems haven't been fixed is that they gave up one sack. One sack.

In overtime, Green Bay faced third-and-12; Washington rushed just three; with five blockers facing three rushers, Brian Orakpo got a sack, blowing past left tackle Chad Clifton. Despite the addition of first-round choice Brian Bulaga, the Green Bay offensive line still looks shaky.

They gave up two sacks? The Packers have an abhorrent offensive line. They gave up two sacks in one game? I thought the offensive line was fixed to where they would give up no sacks for the rest of the year...at a minimum.

Denver brought the NFL's No. 1 passing attack to Baltimore to face the No. 1 passing defense -- and the Broncos did not cross midfield until a minute remained in the first half. Baltimore did not use any unusual coverages, merely outplayed the Broncos,

Does anyone know how the Ravens shut down the Broncos? Using the "fad" 3-4 defense that Gregg just cited in an example with the Packers to insinuate that the NFL had figured out. It's weird that the NFL has figured out the Packers 3-4 defense, but not the Ravens. It's almost like the players on a team's defense make a difference in how well the defense performs.

Trailing by the new economy score of 24-7, Denver reached fourth-and-3 on the Nevermores' 19 with 11:54 remaining. Josh "When Does the Frat Party Start?" McDaniels sent in the kicking unit, and TMQ wrote the words "game over" in his notebook. Down by 17 points on the road late against a power defense, taking a field goal on fourth-and-short doesn't cut it.

As always, it is the field goal attempt that decides the Broncos fate, not the fact they are down 17 points in the fourth quarter.

True, Baltimore was likely to win no matter what McDaniels called on this down -- but going for it was Denver's sole hope at that point.

"True, I may have no point by writing 'game over,' but the more points they get the closer they get to winning. See, three points is more than seven points."

The Rev. Tejado Hanchell of High Point, N.C., writes, "My wife and I had dinner here [at Steak Street] to celebrate our wedding anniversary. The restaurant was decorated for Christmas, including a lighted, trimmed tree. It was Oct. 2!" Well, at least it wasn't Oct. 1.

That's so weird! I ate at that exact restaurant on October 6th and saw a tree there also! What's even more bizarre is that when I ate there in the spring of 2010 I also saw a tree in the restaurant. What's even more bizarre is that the restaurant's decor isn't really Christmas-themed. Steak Street just uses Christmas-type lighting around the restaurant as a way of setting the mood (I guess). Anyway, it's Christmas Creep! (but not really)

But college players are years ahead of high-school boys in physical maturity and time spent lifting. Rare is the high-school boy who carries a natural 300 pounds, as opposed to weight gained by deliberate overeating. For instance Good Counsel, one of the country's powerhouse private prep programs and one with an excellent reputation for taking good care of players, has no one above 290 pounds.

That school doesn't have a player over 290 pounds? That's so much safer than having high school kids on the team that are ten pounds heavier at 300 pounds. 10 pounds is a huge difference! At either 290 or 300 pounds, a high school athlete is still probably not naturally that heavy. It's really picking nits to compliment a school that has athletes at 290 pounds, but criticize a program for having players that are only ten pounds heavier.

Katie Weil of Brookline, Mass., was among many readers to point out this story of a high school that forfeited last weekend rather than face a private prep team with several linemen exceeding 300 pounds.

I did a little research and it turns out this wasn't quite the noble decision Gregg wants us to think that it is. Lawrence Academy offered to play the game at half-speed and the other school declined. It wasn't just the linemen that scared the other coach, but the speed and skill of the team. So unless Gregg thinks high school players shouldn't be as fast or skilled as compared to other schools (as well as fatter) then he may not have a great point.

The prep school in question with the very heavy boys, Lawrence Academy, won its 2009 games by an average of 43-9 and its first two games of 2010 by a combined 73-14.

More important, Lawrence claims its mission is "excellence." Can it be excellence for the football staff to be encouraging or at least averting eyes from unhealthy levels of weight gain, in order to create gigantic linemen?

I searched all over the Lawrence Academy varsity football home page and found no listing of the players and their weights. So either Gregg has seen this team play or is going on a rant based on secondhand information that the players on the team exceed 300 pounds.

Oakland blitzed like mad against San Diego, including three consecutive snaps with seven-man blitzes on the final Chargers' possession. The result was 506 yards of offense surrendered but victory when three of Philip Rivers' final four passes, all hurried by the big-blitz, fell to the ground incomplete. So the blitz worked here -- but the odds say that if the Raiders continue big-blitzing, over the course of the season they will be sorry.

Sure the Raiders blitzes helped them beat the Chargers, but all this big-blitzing won't work in the long term because blitzing is inherently a bad strategy, except when it isn't a bad strategy. The only thing Gregg knows for sure is despite plenty of evidence to the contrary blitzing never works in the long-term.

I wonder if Gregg has thought that blitzing isn't bad, but teams that don't blitz well probably shouldn't blitz as much? We get no mention in this TMQ of how the Redskins blitzing helped them shut down Green Bay. See, if Gregg mentioned this instance of blitzing working then his readers wouldn't blindly influenced to assume whatever he says is correct.

The second half of the Vikings-Jets contest was a lot of fun, though it ran so late that many viewers on the East Coast may have bundled off to bed. Favre's second-half touchdown passes came on a third-and-17 and a third-and-19, both downs on which Jersey/B big-blitzed. Any skilled quarterback wants to be blitzed on third-and-long. Had Rex Ryan simply called a conventional defense on these two downs, probably there would have been no Vikes comeback.

Because Gregg Easterbrook knows how to tell the damn future. Gregg knows exactly what would happen in an alternate universe where the Jets did not blitz. The Vikings would not have come back and the Jets would have won by 40 points and Gregg Easterbrook could have written "game over" in his notebook.

Any skilled quarterback also likes for there to be no pass rush so he has all day to find an open receiver and get the ball to him. Gregg ignores this fact though.

Nikita depicts its heroine killing bad guys by throwing knives. In one scene, a steak knife thrown into a huge bad guy's chest causes him to fall dead instantaneously. Even if a steak knife could be thrown into the center of the chest (unlikely -- the sternum is pretty strong), a person wouldn't just fall dead: he would struggle, try to clamp the wound and so on.

Sweet Jesus, is this a joke? It's a television show. No one wants to see Henchman #3 in the corner of the screen attempting to clamp his wound shut. Perhaps Henchman #3 was stunned when he got hit in the chest or the knife penetrated his heart and killed him instantly? Maybe it is a television show and is purely for entertainment purposes.

Obviously "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" contained nothing but nonsense. Can't physical reality at least be depicted accurately?

No, it can't. This is entertainment, not real life. It's supposed to be entertaining, not reality-based television programming or movies.

In the Fox show "Fringe," in the Arnold Schwarzenegger flick "Commando" and in other Hollywood offerings, regular people who don't have any superpowers cause instant death by twisting someone's head. Is this possible? And wouldn't the person whose head is being twisted -- what's the word I am looking for -- resist?

Yes, the person would resist. If taken by surprise the human neck may have hard a time overcoming a person's strength in twisting it. I don't even know why I am arguing this point.

"Maryland coach Ralph Friedgen arrived via helicopter" -- Washington Post report of Friday's DeMatha-Good Counsel game, matching the top prep football powers of the Washington-Baltimore area.

This is not the first time Friedgen has flown around in a helicopter as if he were a visiting head of state. Who pays for this absurd excess -- the taxpayers of Maryland, who fund the University of Maryland?

To be fair, Friedgen is a big (read: fat) guy. It is entirely possible a car can't fit his entire body into it and a helicopter is the only mode of transportation that is able to successfully fit his entire body in it and transport him from Place A to Place B.

Carolina managed just eight first downs and 147 yards of offense in losing at home Sunday. The Cats may be able to rationalize a bad 2010 as the learning year for Jimmy Clausen, who stands a good chance of becoming a quality NFL starter.

This statement is based on what? Why does Jimmy Clausen stand a good chance of becoming a quality NFL starter...other than Gregg Easterbrook just felt like saying this for no good reason.

After posting decent defense in 2008 and 2009, Bills' management dismissed defensive coordinator Perry Fewell, who teaches the 4-3 Tampa Two, and brought in George Edwards, who teaches the trendy 3-4. Buffalo is now last in the league in scoring defense while the Giants, now run by Fewell, have the league's No. 1 defense. What a canny move by Buffalo management to show Fewell the door!

If only there were a variable that could help explain this difference, like the different players on each team's roster that actually play defense. Oh yes, there is...(looks up each team's roster). It appears the Giants have a much better set of defenders than the Bills do. Nah, it is probably the 3-4 defense that is the problem with the Bills.

Buffalo threw the 11th choice of the 2009 draft out the window on Aaron Maybin, who is so awful he doesn't even play special teams.

This is a terrible way to judge a player. Aaron Maybin may be a bad pick, but part of the reason he is a bad pick isn't because he doesn't play on special teams. Some players aren't cut out for special teams.

That the 33-year-old Moss fetched a third-round selection while the 24-year-old Marshawn Lynch was traded the same day for a fourth-round pick and a conditional late choice shows how low the NFL's opinion of Lynch is. Green Bay, desperate for a tailback, didn't even bid. Lynch becomes yet another in the decade-long string of blown first-round draft choices by Buffalo -- Mike Williams, John McCargo, J.P. Losman, Lynch, Leodis McKelvin, Maybin.

Marshawn Lynch has played in the NFL for three full seasons. He is 24 years old and has two 1,000 yard seasons already. He is not a blown first round draft choice based on his performance. Granted he seems to be declining, but he's not a blown first round pick at this point because he has been productive.

Moss Trade Note 4: The full transaction was that the Patriots received a third-round choice in 2011 while Minnesota received Moss and a seventh-round choice in 2012. The latter holds so such scant present value it might as well be a tip: "Here you are my good man, here's your disgruntled wide receiver, and I've thrown in a little something extra for your trouble."

The same guy who tells us every week how great undrafted and lowly drafted players are also thinks a 7th round pick has so very little value. So Gregg thinks 7th round picks are valuable and great players only when they turn out to be great players. Otherwise they hold little value.

Next Week: Is Canada sneaking unwanted pennies across our border?

This could only be allowed if those pennies could be thrown at Gregg Easterbrook. Even then it would be a bad waste of good money.