Adapting to Challenges

This week, I had to depend on College football to get my fix. I live in Utah and am a fan of BYU, who got spanked by TCU on Saturday. BYU Coach Bronco Mendenhall is a good coach and he has instilled good character and work habits in his players. His mantra is "Stick to our gameplan", but the problem is their gameplan never changes. They never adapt to the challenges of each team. My friend, who doesn't really know much about football, tells me that she can even notice that BYU doesn't prepare for individual teams and adapt to the weekly challenges.

When BYU beat Oklahoma in week one, many people claimed that BYU could contend for the national championship. Then Florida State puts up 54 points and a win on them, while now the Seminoles are 3-4 and out of bowl consideration. What works against one team doesn't always work on other teams.

Reading potent quotables from John Bena today, you can sense from Josh McDaniels' lengthy responses that he has adequately broken down all three phases of the Raven's team and has a new gameplan that he will feed to his players this week at practice.

I love how McDaniels used his insider information to adapt his playcalling against the Patriots. He remembered that the Pats struggled against the wildcat formation last season, so he developed a brand new "Wild Horses" scheme during practice before the N.E. game. (I have yet to see another team have his QB audible during the wildcat formation after decifering the defense) And as we all remember, Belichick was going nuts on the sideline when he saw the Wild Horses and was forced to call a timeout.

McDaniels adapted again today by swapping Brett Kern for Mitch Berger. (By the way, what made McDaniels make the switch? I know he was irate at Brett Kern. Was it simply because he punted right to Darren Sproles?)

Okay, two more quick points:

-As a BYU fan I follow Austin Collie, WR for the Colts each sunday. If Peyton Manning passes to Michael Hart and Anthony Gonzales for touchdowns this season, he will have hit 4 players that have names that are also cities in Texas: AUSTIN Collie, DALLAS Clark, Michael HART and Anthony GONZALES. (Okay, I know it's a big stretch, and yes, I had to Wikipedia Texas Cities, but come on! It was a long bye week!)

- My brother in law, who is a loyal Chargers fan and has never had anything good to say about the Broncos, admitted to me today that Coach McDaniels is a "Genius". Seems that the rest of the football world is coming to that realization....