Author: Reid

The Impact of Ball Control on Football Defenses

For a long time, I’ve believed that a team’s offense can have a significant impact on the performance of a team’s defense. Specifically, better ball control of a team’s offense–which involves running a lot of time and plays, as well as protecting the football–will lead to better performance by the team’s defense–or at least least better ball control would create better conditions to play good defense, while bad ball control would do the opposite.

To examine these claims, I’ve turned to stats like time of possession (TOP), totals and averages, and the number of snaps by a team’s offense and defense. There might be other metrics, but those are the ones I recently looked at. This will be a thread to discuss and analyze this topic.

Building a New Conservative Party

About the time Trump won the 2016 election, I suggested that principled and patriotic Republicans leave the GOP to start a new conservative party. I saw a tweet that made me think of this topic again, and I wanted to write about the benefits and drawbacks for doing this, and what this new conservative party could look like. But first here’s the thread:

Continue reading “Building a New Conservative Party”

Listening to Albums on a Saturday/Sunday Morning (2020-2021)

I’ve been picking great albums and listening to them in their entirety for the past several Saturdays. I don’t know why, but Saturday mornings seems like an ideal time for this, and since this feels like it’s becoming a routine, I’m going to start a thread to journal about these albums. Right now, I’m listening to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On?, which I picked because Rolling Stone chose it as the #1 album out of the top 500. I’ll write some thoughts in the first comment section.

(Note: I changed the title, expanding the thread to discuss albums that may not be considered great.)

Music of the 80s

Last night I was listening to Genesis’s 80’s stuff and Phil Collins, which I basically lump into the same category, similar to Steely Dan and Donald Fagen. Just looking over the number of songs that made it to top 40 radio or more rock oriented radio (e.g., 98 Rock), I think you could make a case for band/musician of the 80s. It’s not just the number of songs, but also that the songs are fairly representative of the 80s–i.e., they have an 80’s sound.

I liked a lot of what I heard, particularly with the horns. I like the bass parts as well, although I must mention a caveat–namely, that I listened to this on good headphones. When that happens, a lot of music sounds way, way better. I think this is partly because it allows me to hear all the instruments. So maybe I wouldn’t think as highly of the music on listening to them via another device.

We should do a top 10 list of the best Genesis/Phil Collins songs from the 80s? For me, “No Reply at All” and “I Missed Again” would be on there. I really like those songs.

Other questions:

Who would you chose as the band or musician of the decade?

What are the best songs of the decade, particularly in terms of making a case that the 80s were better than the 70s?