Tuesday, November 1, 2011

A new approach to game reviews (maybe)

If you're looking for the first quarter or two of the Bills game review, I'm trying a slightly different tack this week to see how it goes.  Basically instead of going through one quarter at a time, I'm considering picking a few themes each week and then highlighting a selection of plays that illustrate it.

Here's what I have in mind this week and we'll see how it goes:

- One post detailing all nine of John Beck's sacks and several more plays on which he was hit or hurried in order to discuss how both the line and Beck himself contributed to the problems.

- Another post on the failure of the run game, with a selection of, I don't know, eight to ten plays or so with which we can pick on linemen for blowing blocks.

- A third post focusing on the defense's failure to stop the run.

- There may or may not be yet another post with miscellaneous observations from the film that I think are worth mentioning but don't really fit into any of the above areas of focus.

Good old Statcounter.com indicates that there is a hard core of a few dozen of you who regularly read all four quarters of each game review (which is greatly appreciated) while other readers drop in when something with a more straightforward "message" is available. So my intentions here are two-fold. First is to be able to post something that has a certain completeness earlier in the week, that will leave those without the patience for wading through all four quarter breakdowns with a "takeaway." The second is to have a better option for those weeks where I don't have time to do each quarter in full. Since each individual post will stand alone better, if I only have time for one or two it will still give people something coherent.

I certainly don't want to shortchange those of you who really like to dive into the weeds, so my intention is to still go into a lot of very detailed play breakdowns.  We'll try it this week - the first post won't be til Wednesday night since it took me awhile to think through how I wanted to approach things - and I absolutely want your feedback. If you hate it, by all means let me know. This could turn out to be a one week experiment before we go back old routine, or we could find a way to make the blog a little more readable without sacrificing the more detailed analysis. Let's see how it goes.

2 comments:

  1. I do tend to read all four quarter break downs, but honestly, either way works. This new method seems to have more of a "flow" to it since you can focus on themes like you said. I would be interested in your opinion of Beck; I remember thinking during the game that it didn't seem like he was getting much time but both he and Shanny said that he'd held the ball too long on some plays so maybe I missed things. Also, I understand we've shuffled 3 line positions, but why is our line seemingly so much worse now? Especially against a supposedly weak Bills pass rush, I expected a much better performance. Anyways, long story short, I do enjoy the breakdowns and basically having someone explain why certain plays worked and others didn't, etc. so thanks for that in whichever form is most convenient.

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  2. Sounds great to me.

    I liked the play-by-plays but think what you've outlined makes more sense and provides a bit more focus/insight.

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