@hawkeyegamefilm just posted this on twitter, and it is great:
https://mattwaldmanrsp.com/2019/02/...ost-super-bowl-conversation-with-eric-stoner/
Great stuff in there on some of the nuances of the superbowl. And if you read the conversation regarding early-season, people-pleasing football vs. late-season, championship football, you will definitely recognize some of the roots of the KF philosophy.
Some of my favorite tidbits:
Ray Ratto was dead-on about the Patriots with the important exception of his final sentence below.
[Belichick] has known more ways to win a game than most of us have learned to watch one, and with every trend in the sport going toward offensive pyrospectaculars and playbooks powered by dilithium crysals, he decided to force-feed America a three-hour tutorial on Chuck Noll and Don Shula and George Allen and Bud Grant. It was the early 1970s, and you were there.
It is a lesson America didn’t enjoy and one it will hate all the more in years to come, but Belichick, who has adapted to changing mores in the sport as much as any coach, dragged us all by our slackened eyelids back to a time when we thought presidents didn’t come worse than Richard Nixon and sports was designed solely as a lesson in denial of pleasure and a repudiation of style.
This was him saying, “This is a game you’re too young to remember, but I’m not, and I know how to make you sit at this table and eat it until it’s gone.”
and...
Stoner: I agree. This game comes down to a really bad performance by Sean McVay — it was bad planning, bad game management, and McVay didn’t stick to his own offense.
If Bill gives you something — in this case, the jet sweep — he is daring you to run it 10 times in a row until he stops it. Bill knows you won’t try it because offensive coordinators and good quarterback are often impatient.
Waldman: The Seahawks knew Peyton Manning would be too impatient to nickel-and-dime his way downfield in its Super Bowl matchup. They gave Julius Thomas to Manning early, betting that physical play against Thomas would lead to mistakes and Manning would begin forcing the ball downfield.
It’s exactly what happened and the Seahawks stifled and blew-out one of the most prolific offenses in football history.
I bet Mike Shanahan would have run his stuff 10 times in a row. Marty Schottenheimer would have, too. Of course, that was a different era where overthinking for style points wasn’t as prevalent in football.
Stoner: It all started with the “I bet the Bills won’t use Thurman Thomas enough to win.” They want to make it look pretty.
Waldman: People-pleasing behavior is a killer.
and...
The offense has an advantage over defense early in the season, which is also part of the reason they care most about the sample size being larger during that time of year. There’s time during this span to correct mistakes, it’s hotter outside, and the no-huddle works better in these conditions.
Post-Thanksgiving, everyone is tired and has seen all your shit, so there’s more emphasis on execution. While the rules are tilted for offense over the course of a season, the physicality, imposition of will, and letting other teams make mistakes is more effective when we move into the single-elimination scenarios of December and January.
