From Distance: Vlogging Team USA’s Defeat and Freddie’s Terrible Play-Calling

four point play….

1. Team USA was without its best players, but it was still rather shocking to see Coach Popovich be a primary reason why the American squad lost so early in the tournament. The lineups continued to promote Small-ball, even when it was clear that the USA couldn’t play the paint and get out to contest threes with such limited size.

Despite its roster limitations, Team USA could have won the Cup had it cobbled together a better game-plan. It would have been difficult considering the ever evolving roster and its limited practice time, but it shouldn’t have been impossible. It will be interesting who will be on the Olympics roster.

2. LeBron lost his bid to trademark “Taco Tuesday”. Good. That would have been absolutely ridiculous. I can’t live in a world in which I would have to pay some random person for the ability to use pleasant alliteration.

Or worse, what if some beer company were to trademark the use of the phrase, “beer’o’clock”. I simply won’t stand for it.

There have been similar absurdities of “intellectual property law” in the music industry over the last few years. I still don’t have any idea why “sampling” is ok in one era, but then taking a simple chord structure is theft.

One directly inserts a song into another, and the other just gives us the feel. How is the “feel” one more of a problem? It makes no sense. Adam explores it for us, so I don’t have to.

3. The Browns miss having a boring deep threat more than they thought they would. With Breshad Perriman gone and Antonio Callaway suspended for the first four games, the Browns don’t have a receiver who will happily run a fly route on almost every down.

As good as Odell Beckham Jr and Jarvis Landry are, neither will open up the top of the defense on every down. Beckham, obviously, is an elite deep threat, but he runs far more intermediate routes that take longer to develop. I talk in the Vlog about how much I abjectly detested Freddie Kitchen’s play-calling.

Part of what makes a defense fear an offense is not knowing what it going to do, being forced to guard every level. By running the Gun and this terrible “Air Raid” almost exclusively, the Browns let the Titans focus on intermediate routes without being forced to really play the run or the deep ball on most plays.

In 2019, I shouldn’t be able to call out plays before they happen. If the Rams offense taught us anything, it is that a formation isn’t good unless a team can run a play out of said formation that attacks all zone levels. Run/Pass plays are additional aspects to that formation flexibility.

If you know it is a quick hitting pass by the formation, you are forcing your tackles and QB to be perfect on all downs. It is a recipe for disaster, and disaster it was.

4. I said I would link the Zach Lowe/David Epstein podcast. Here it is. I had some serious issues annunciating while discussing this topic in the Vlog. Perhaps Epstein’s theory was displaying itself in real time. My life’s focus of delivering text in various forms had ultimately left me less capable of performing the direct task at hand.

No, that isn’t exactly his theory. Jokes, everyone. Jokes.