More All-22 Talk
Posted: June 24th, 2012 | Author: Tommy Lawlor | Filed under: Philadelphia Eagles | 10 Comments »The NFL recently announced that the 2012 Game Rewind package will have an All-22 option, where you can pay $69.99 and watch the coaches film for each game. You can see all 22 players on a given play, thus All-22.
This announcement has led to some internet chatter on what exactly it will mean. There are some people who think this will lead Joe Amateur to make sweeping conclusions even though he has no idea what he’s talking about.
B.S.
Fans do this already. I’ve written game reviews since the 2003 season. I study games thoroughly so that I can tell what happened to players on each play. I’ve had plenty of fans over the years tell me that a player made a mistake, when in fact the player was right and it was the fan who didn’t know what was truly happening.
All-22 gives smart football fans, writers, and analysts a tool to better explain the game. Will some people make mistakes? Sure. But again…that happens already. Too many people are acting as if we’re going from listening to radio broadcasts to seeing games for the first time. It isn’t that significant of a shift.
Also…how many fans will plunk down $70 and take the time to study games? It won’t be the average NFL fan. This will be done by those who are really dedicated to studying the game or following a specific team.
All-22 will show us what happened, but its biggest limitation is that it can’t help us know what was supposed to happen. Thank god Asante Samuel is gone in this regard. A freelancer like him confuses everyone who studies tape. If you see a strange play by a DB this year, it should be easier to figure out who made a mistake. People are still ripping Juan Castillo for the Cardinals game when Asante wasn’t on Fitz in the 4th quarter. As I’ve explained plenty of times, that was Asante bailing on his coverage and playing a hunch. I know that from reliable sources. If all we had to go on was tape, All-22 or otherwise, it would look like stupidity from Castillo.
Doug Farrar, who runs Shutdown Corner on Yahoo, has a good column up on the subject.
Jimmy Bama has a funny post on the subject, as he goes after a writer who doesn’t like casual fans having the access. Funny stuff.
All-22 is a tool that can help people who know how to use it. Not just anyone can watch that film and suddenly be enlightened. You must understand football to really know what’s going on. You also must be willing to watch a play 5 or 6 times to truly understand it. If you guys sat with me while I re-watch games for my reviews, the suicide rate among Eagles fans would go up 237 percent. It can be very, very tedious. You must truly study a play to figure out exactly what happened. A quick once-over will let you see the result, but not the how and why that led up to that.
I do think it is funny when some people act as though football is rocket science. It is not. Football can be learned by anyone. Anyone. You don’t need to be a man. You don’t need to be an American. You don’t need to be 30 or 40. If you read the right books and make an effort to truly study the game, you’d be surprised at how quickly you can pick up on the subtleties.
We’ll see how All-22 helps us this year. Thankfully there are lots of good Eagles writers and analysts. Eagles fans should be in for some great coverage, hopefully of a pretty darn good team.
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For SB Nation Philly, I decided to do an Around The League column. As my good friends Rage Against The Machine say…”Know your enemy”.
Why would any Eagles fans buy this and try to figure it out themselves anyway? That’s why we’ve got you.
So that you can question me and make me a bit crazy, of course.
Any word on if/how much you and other writers will be able to share clips?
What if you’re a sick, sick pup who can’t wait until Tuesday night or Wednesday to figure out where the F-ups occurred?
Can we at least get the NFL to block Morton’s IP address?
Bravo on the anybody can learn stuff. I really have been meaning to buy one of those coaching books and learn up the line stuff.
As a former defensive player in a 4-3 for 8 seasons of HS and college, I can see coverages roll or blitzes coming a mile away. As a DB trained in the art of reading WR alignments and first few steps off the line, I can see pass plays develop before they do.
But I’m dumb as a rock sometimes when it comes to line play. I know some stunts and DL moves after I watch them a bunch. I have tried to get the base zone-blocking concepts to where I can explain them to the audience that watches UW-Whitewater in the Stagg Bowl over and over again. But I’d love to be able to know line responsibilities like it was second nature.
Hopefully the all-22 will help me here. I still probably have to do some reading (and I’m open to suggestions) to learn certain rules (always take a rusher when he crosses your face?) but until then, I need to watch plays 6 and 7 times to figure out where breakdowns occurred, and who was supposed to have whom.
I only do it via DVR for certain plays. It’s yeoman’s work you do Tommy watching the whole game like one of the coaches would (and not having the benefit of knowing what the coaches know about the playcalls).
If they ever make a public Landro machine, or whatever that thing is called where coaches can dial up highlights of only certain players, or all plays called from a certain formation … oooh boy, that’d be a game-changer.
But it’s still about the time someone puts in to analyze the film, er, video. Without that, it’s just footage from a different angle.
Exactly. This is a great rebuttal to those who are threatened by this. They are scared that we will be able to call them on their BS, not that we won’t know what they are talking about.
I’m surprised people are threatened by it.
Perhaps for talking heads who don’t do their homework it could be an issue, but talking heads largely ignore feedback anyway. The coaches and writers/talkers who do their homework, they should love this because they can get deeper into the Xs and Os and not have to dumb it down.
Did you read the link Tommy posted to Jimmy’s blog where he call out Matt Miller (Not to be mistaken for Matt Millen)
Tommy, I just finished your part about Jerome Brown and together with this http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/eagles/20120625_Jerome_Brown_s_Eagles_teammates_reflect_on_his_loss.html, it really seems like the death of him was the beginning of the end and it really make one think at what could had been that year had Brown been alive.