… “Being a fullback is such a dead position. People don’t really use it,” [Khalil] Hill said. “So you’re going to not really find many teams that are going to draft a fullback, you know what I’m saying? They’re not going to really do that because they are going to use you — what? — two or three times a game, depending on the offense. So you want to be as versatile as you can and do as much as you can because coaches like to see that.”
A fullback is a throwback in name but a utility player in practice. These days, he’d better be able to handle throws from his quarterback or possibly be able to throw passes himself as part of a trick play. He’s a guy without a defined position on a team, if there’s a roster spot for him at all.
In 2016, his rookie season, Carson Wentz ran 30 times. The quarterback avoided contact on only 12 rushes and was flat-out tackled to the ground, like any ball carrier, a dozen times.
During film review, Eagles coaches instructed Wentz to be more cautious when running. The headstrong quarterback brushed off the advice, however, as he did so many defenders.
“It definitely went in one ear and out the other early on,” former Eagles offensive coordinator Frank Reich said recently. “It didn’t go exactly like this, but this is just made up to protect the innocent or protect the guilty, however you say it. We would say to him, ‘Hey, you just need to kind of back off on some of this tackling stuff.’
“And he didn’t quite say it like this, but it was essentially, ‘No. I’m not backing off. This is me. This is how I play.’ ”
The next generation of Russian players is young, talented and well-suited for the faster NHL. Dynamos like Nikita Kucherov, Evgeny Kuznetsov and Artemi Panarin are ready to pick up the mantle in the playoffs.
… All in all, Lukaku is shaping up to be a textbook example of a flat-track bully. Except I am no longer sure such a concept exists.
We all instinctively know, of course, that scoring against better teams is harder for everyone. However, when Omar Chaudhuri, the head of football intelligence at 21st Club, analysed 15 years of Premier League scoring data, he found the differences were stark. The average forward scored 0.24 non-penalty goals per 90 minutes against sides finishing in the top six in a given season – pretty much one every four games – compared with 0.37 goals against everyone else. In other words, strikers typically score at a 35% lower rate in “big matches” – whether they are good or bad, supreme or indifferent.
Fatigue is a complex state with multiple physiological and psychological origins. However, fatigue in soccer has traditionally been investigated from a physiological perspective, with little emphasis on the cognitive demands of competition. These cognitive demands may induce mental fatigue, which could contribute to the fatigue-related performance decrements observed during and after soccer matches. Recent research investigating the relationship between mental fatigue and soccer-specific performance supports this suggestion. This leading article provides an overview of the research in this emerging field, outlining the impact of mental fatigue on soccer-specific physical, technical, decision-making, and tactical performances. The second half of this review provides directions for future research in response to the limitations of the existing research. Emphasis is placed on translating the current body of knowledge into practical applications and developing a greater understanding of the mechanisms underpinning the negative impact of mental fatigue on soccer performance. A conceptual model is presented to help direct this future research.
Psychology Today, The Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research from
The concept of mindfulness is in the media constantly. We’ve written about it several times on the Evidence-based Living blog. Many people see meditation as a magic bullet that can reduce pain, relieve depression, and sharpen our focus.
But in fact, the evidence on meditation is flawed; researchers don’t really know how meditation effects the mind and brain. A new sweeping review (link is external) published in the journal Perspectives in Psychological Science takes a careful look at what we know about meditation based on the body of data in hundreds of studies.
The authors, psychology researchers from across the U.S., Australia, and the Netherlands, make the case that society’s beliefs about mindfulness as a cure-all are misguided. They found the vast majority of evidence available on mindfulness has two main flaws: There is no consistent definition for mindfulness, and researchers don’t have a consistent way to measure the results of mindfulness.
Every coach aspires to take his team where Nick Saban and Kirby Smart had Alabama and Georgia at the end of last season, and most of them spend the offseason talking about the importance of developing a program-wide culture that will help them reach that championship stage. This year’s two College Football Playoff finalists didn’t get to the top of the SEC and the college football world just by loading up with talented players (although that certainly helped). They also pride themselves on something Saban assistants past and present have said is the key to building his dynasty, a simple concept that contains multitudes: discipline.
The word carries a variety of meanings, but in short, you can either view discipline as a consequence of bad behavior or a driver of good behavior. A coach who recently took over a struggling program thought his players’ definition from the previous regime would be “the stuff that the coaches make us do if we get caught doing something wrong.” Saban has his own definition, and members of the Alabama and Georgia programs have internalized it and integrated it within their routines.
“The ongoing definition around here is to do what you’re supposed to do, when you’re supposed to do it, the way it’s supposed to be done—all of the time,” says Alabama’s head strength and conditioning coach Scott Cochran.
I was relieved to learn on Saturday that the Oregon Ducks football team didn’t pack team-issued raincoats for their rainy/windy practice and scrimmage in Portland at Franklin High School.
Given the hard-nosed messaging coming from coach Mario Cristobal’s program, wearing jackets in the drizzle might have been blown out of proportion or something (See: Civil War 2017).
It’s pretty much been #grind #hardwork #nosleep #everyoneworkshard since Cristobal was promoted. We can’t be sure how many games the Ducks will win or who will catch passes from Justin Herbert. But what we’ve learned so far is that nobody at Oregon is ever sleeping and everyone is lifting a lot of weights and doing a lot of grinding. Or so they say.
“For me, when guys get to that point in the workout, that’s when they really have dug a little deeper and pushed through the physicality, pushed through the fatigue,” Bryant says. “And that’s when you’re hit with that adversity and when you kind of have to get a little bit more.”
Bryant, 32, is an expert at drawing out the best in NBA players. The Jazz assistant’s resume includes three players he worked with, either privately or with the Jazz, who went on to become All-Stars: Damian Lillard, Paul Millsap and Gordon Hayward. His latest big project is Donovan Mitchell, a Rookie of the Year candidate who was considered an offensively raw draft prospect.
The Jazz trust Bryant to develop their potential stars because he pushes them farther than they know they can go.
If you ever dreamed of being a real-life cyborg, researchers at Stanford University are ready and willing to help. They developed a new type of tiny nerve-stimulation implant, which could be used to treat a wide range of different medical conditions.
“The biggest application for this work is for what are being recently called ‘electroceuticals’ and ‘bioelectronic medicine,’” Jayant Charthad, a researcher on the project, told Digital Trends. “The idea is that many diseases that are currently treated using drugs or pills can be more effectively treated — and with fewer side-effects — by using stimulation of nerves. Examples of diseases that can be treated by nerve stimulation include chronic pain, rheumatoid arthritis, epilepsy, inflammatory bowel disease, bladder incontinence, even diabetes, and many more. In addition to therapeutic applications, medical researchers could also use our device for conducting scientific experiments for further understanding the nervous system and discovering new treatments for diseases.”
The hits just keep on comin’. On Thursday afternoon, the Boston Celtics announced Kyrie Irving’s season was finished due to a bacterial infection in his left knee, which had already sidelined him since mid-March after it was determined he needed a surgical procedure to clean up a previous repair. He is expected to make a full recovery in four to five months, according to the Celtics.
… “Sometimes, mentally, you have to find ways to fight through it and it’s not easy,” Malone said, “because some days you wake up, you literally wake up and you go, ‘What city am I in? Who are we playing tonight? And what happened last night?'”
That’s life for any team abiding by the NBA’s schedule, although Malone’s squad faced more than its fair share of fatigue in 2017-18. This season, the Nuggets played a league-high six schedule alert games. For context, the Nuggets played three schedule alert games in January alone. Meanwhile, the Pelicans, Knicks, 76ers and Cavaliers did not play in one all season.
The Nuggets lost their first four schedule alert games before winning their final two. In those six games combined, their point differential was minus-22 in the first half and minus-one in the second. In their four schedule alert losses, the average margin of defeat was 11.25 points, ranging from 2-32 points. In one such loss, on Jan. 13 against the Spurs, the Nuggets trailed by 38 — and shot a season-low 34.9 percent.
… To understand why this would matter so much to coaches at Texas—and specifically to the football coach at Texas—consider the case of the unintended mud pit. On a small hill above the Texas practice fields is a covered area. This is where the players seek shade during breaks. It’s also where they drink copious amounts of water. When a hundred large men open water taps for a few minutes from an elevated position, that tends to lead to significant runoff. That runoff would pool at the bottom of the hill and turn part of one of the practice field sidelines into a mud pit. The solution Texas staffers devised was simple and cheap. They realized that if they covered the hill with artificial turf and created a small turf landing, the water would evaporate before it could mix with soil and create mud. For the nation’s wealthiest athletic department, this low-tech fix should have taken a few days.
It took months.
This is only one small example, but multiply that by several hundred and you’ll understand the aggravation of Texas football coaches relative to some of their peers who have dealt with less bureaucracy on a daily basis.
The role of the full-back has changed dramatically in recent years, with many teams across Europe now focusing predominantly on how they can get their full-backs involved in attack, even more so than protecting their defence. Indeed, the use of wing-backs has seemingly come back into fashion, most prominently with Antonio Conte’s 3-5-2 formation working to great effect in Chelsea’s stroll to the Premier League title last season. But rather than subjectively observe the different playing styles of full-backs across Europe, can these styles be quantified?
We focused on full-backs as their playing style has become so varied in recent seasons, but this method can be applied for any position. What we wanted to do was provide a more detailed, objective measure of the different profiles of full-backs, which accounts for the broader dimensions of a player’s style rather than their individual statistics.
To hear Rahul Bhargava tell it, too many people are afraid of data.
“The first thing you feel is their trepidation,” says Bhargava, a research scientist at the MIT Center for Civic Media who speaks with organizations and workers about the power of digital information.
The apprehension, he says, is rooted in a common misperception. Data management is seen primarily as a technology challenge—one that requires sophisticated software and technical know-how. Bhargava says, in reality, analyzing data demands little more than the ability to spot patterns and the stories they reveal. As for the math, he says, “Statistics is mostly about counting, and most people are pretty good at that—even my 7-year-old daughter.”
To help people overcome the unease, Bhargava recently helped launch the Data Culture Project, a set of free online tools and activities designed to help organizations build data skills across their teams. The platform aims to take the fear out of data analysis through exercises that are meant to be fun and engaging for employees. One activity asks participants to find commonalities among details about dogs registered in New York City or UFO sightings in Massachusetts.
The project’s underlying premise is that many business leaders mistakenly believe they need to hire scientists to get data right—when all they really need is to build a data culture.