Every Wednesday, Chris from Smart Football puts on his sturdiest of work clothes, leaves Brown Manor, and lowers his overall IQ by spending a few moments with us helping the masses understand a bit of actual football through questions submitted by you via our Twitter feed. If you have a question about football strategery, tactics, fluid dynamics, tort law, or orchid taxonomy, please submit them to us at twitter.com/edsbs . Enjoy.

Question from @cdbarker: Is it possible to successfully use two quarterbacks of similar but divergent styles effectively, ie Tate and Denard?

The traditional wisdom — and it is a notion I generally have agreed with — is that having two quarterbacks is a euphemism for not having any. There are a few interesting counter examples, though none are truly compelling, like Mark Richt rotating D.J. Shockley and David Greene, or Spurrier rotating Doug Johnson and Noah Brindise every other play against Florida State. But, generally, it is a bad recipe. There are lots of reasons, but none may be more important than simply repetitions in practice. If you have two quarterbacks the receivers have to get used to both; the gameplan has to be taught in detail to both, film must be gone over with both, etc; and then there’s that old saw about “rhythm” and how it is disturbing with different guys in the huddle. I don’t find those latter ones all that persuasive, but there is at least a little truth to them.

But I think the winds are changing, and a two-quarterback system is quite possible. (more…)

Scene: The post Big Ten Media Day dinner at Gibson’s Steakhouse in Chicago. Rich Rodriguez is dining at a table with several Michigan types. Jamie Foxx sits down at the table next to Rich Rodriguez.

RR: Hey! Weren’t you in Booty Call?

JF: Among other things, yeah, man.

RR: I remember that. You put a rubber glove on your stuff instead of a condom. That was GREAT.

JF: Thank you. What do you do?

RR: Well, I coach football. At the University of Michigan. But we had a pretty bad year last year.

RR looks hurt. He trails off.

JF: Hey, now. Let’s turn that frown upside down. You can talk about it.

RR: Naw, it’s…it’s difficult for me. It was so painful.

JF: It can’t be that bad, man.

RR: (pauses) We lost to Toledo.

JF: Oh, now, I didn’t know it was like that. You’re gonna have to sing that one out.

RR: I’m sorry?

JF: It’s the only way you’ll feel better about it. I’ll drop the beat for you, and you can just sing it. You heard my hit song, “Blame it on the Alcohol?”

RR: Have I? You bet. Gary Moeller loves that jam.

JF: Well, I just lay the track down like this…

RR: Really, I don’t know if I could…

Sultry drum machine kicks in. Rich Rod pulls an autotuned mike from his pocket.

(more…)

Begin.

EDSBS Live. Tuesday. 7:30 p.m.

Phil. Steele.

Note: buy Phil new t-shirt.

You are not ready.

The task of putting together a top 25 of any sort is stressful: frayed nerves, excessive caffeine and Ritalin consumption, the ever-present explosive gas…it’s like working in a cubicle with Katy Couric, actually, though without the constant reminders to get our colon checked yearly. (We do! By a guy named Stan in an alley in Macon! What?)

We therefore recruited help for 1-10 in the form of R. Kelly, who in addition to fucking the same girl happen to be huge college football fans with plenty of angles to cover on the upcoming season. The end product is so hot, it reminds us of our Jeep, because it makes us wanna ride.

See provisional 1-3 here, including our standard overreach for Michigan.

4. Texas. Is this a blind reach for a blue-chip program, or an actual stab at coherent forecasting? Considering that we’re reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book Black Swan right now, we’ve been disabused of the notion of accurate forecasting and can happily toss this out there as a rank and giddy guess–since they’re all guesses that will inevitably be up to 180 degrees from what we thought would happen.

Colt McCoy: will be merely excellent this year, a letdown from 2006.

Nevertheless, Texas makes for solid guessing for good reason. The linebacking corps returns intact; the defensive line will feature defensive tackle Frank “The Subpoena” Okam, who along with his fellow d-lineman Derek Lokey is taking the LSAT in preparation to become a lawyer (and therefore a future reader of EDSBS.) Colt McCoy and his fake-ass assumed name (born Edwin Schlobodowitz, Poughkeepsie, NY) had the best freshman season in recent memory, insuring that whatever he does this season will be a letdown of some sort. We’d say he can’t be as good, but the Greg Davis offensive system remains a run first game, and Jamaal Charles et al constitute the usual nightmarishly talented Longhorn backfield to keep the pressure off McCoy. Limas Sweed, Quan Cosby, and Billy Pittman are already getting open as we speak, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Kells:

Straight up, dog.

Kells on Texas: Straight up, dog.

5. LSU. Everyone else’s automatic number two winds up at six five here, mostly because we think this team just has two losses written all over it this year. Placing them at two requires taking certain factors as givens we’re not willing to grant, namely:

1. New offense, no problem=untrue. Jimbo Fisher can’t help but be overrated after the bidding war that ensued this offseason between FSU and Alabama, yet the dropoff between him and Gary Crowton must be noted. Crowton’s offenses at Oregon rang up huge numbers against the gnomes of the conference and sank when confronted with actual defenses. (more…)