Analytics and Football

I would imagine this is due to the fact that most high schools can't properly execute a punt more than half the time, and most high school teams don't practice onside kick recovery.

Watch a middle school football game. No field goals. No punts. No kickoffs. At least around here.

As they get older, the effectiveness of that decreases exponentially, and I am sure the analytics support that.

 

Pulaski Academy is a powerhouse private school program in Little Rock that gets to recruit any player they want. Hunter Henry went there, they have a ton of players on NCAA rosters all over. They have punters, they have kickers. In fact their last kicker was a 4-star recruit who signed with Ole Miss in February. They outscore their opponents by about 500 points each year. In fact last year they scored 712 and allowed 264. Of course they don't punt, they know they can't be stopped!!! They're never in any danger of losing! They aren't ever in any close games so they can go for it every 4th down, run 100 trick plays, onside kick etc.. This guy is a media princess who will do or say anything to try to get national attention...he wants to be a college coach more than anything and is one of the most hated coaches in the state.

 

Right. Ppl don't practice a lot of onside kick cover much. And even if you focus on it the week before you play Pulaski, they have like 10 different onside kick plays so they can target which one to use based on creating a numerical or talent advantage. Not many teams play their best players on the hands team. And like college, the bigger the difference in athlete, the bigger the advantage.

We played one team that had a very unique offense and we had to change everything about our defense for that week. We did fine but if their offense had more variation, we wouldn't have been able to handle it.

The more you can practice something vs your opponent, the more of an advantage you get. That's one of the advantages of the Run and Shoot. The offense uses a 4 wr set as their starters while the defense has to play their nickel and dime cb's as starters and take 2 normal starters off the field. The offense runs the same plays on 1st down, 3nd down,, two minute and short yardage and goal line. Defenses aren't used to practicing against that formation for all of those situations. Advantage offense.

 

I guess this fits in here

http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/...layer-data-pete-carroll-sean-payton-dan-quinn