I, Noted Football Idiot, Can Spot Todd Orlando’s Blitzes

There has been much consternation about Todd Orlando’s defense on this site and others, as well as complaints from former players about how obvious & ineffective the pressure tactics are.

I tuned into the last few minutes of the game last night to witness the hell everyone was going through, and it seemed pretty obvious to me - the guy who at best knows 15% as much about football as Scipio Tex - who was blitzing before the ball was snapped. I made a crack about it last night, but today I thought I’d try it on a bigger sample size to see if I was just getting lucky. While I used to watch a lot of football, I watch very little these days; I haven’t watched a NFL game in going on 2.5 years and I rarely watch college football any more. I think I saw 3 Texas games last year and I’ve caught maybe a quarter of one game combined this year. I do learn some things through osmosis as I still go on Texas boards, but my football muscle is definitely atrophied.

So here’s what I did: I turned on the LHN rebroadcast of the Kansas game and watched the Kansas offensive possessions from the first half. Since it’s the two-hour condensed version, I didn’t see all of the plays but it ended up being 20 snaps in total. I’d wait for the defense to get set, then write down if I thought they were blitzing and how many guys I thought were coming. (I was guessing which guys as well, but didn’t write down who because I couldn’t always make out numbers.) I figured I’d get like 20-25% of the blitzes right, tops. I mean, I’m just an average viewer, not a defensive coordinator or former player, right?

I correctly picked if the blitz was coming 17 of 19 times. (One snap I didn’t count because LHN didn’t get back to the play in time.) That’s a 89% hit rate. On the 13 blitzes I saw coming, I got the specific blitzers correct 5 times. That’s a 38% hit rate. And again, I don’t watch football; if I’m able to guess when he’s sending a blitz and have a decent guess on who, I can only imagine what people who do this for a living are pulling off.

What the hell, Todd.