Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Black 41 Flash Reverse. I’m Jordan Fox, a former sports journalist and football coach, Xs & Os enthusiast, and Nebraska fan.
I launched this newsletter in 2021 to provide a more nuanced and analytical space that I felt was missing from the Nebraska media sphere. My primary focus is on examining what schematic and play-calling trends can tell us about the Nebraska team on the field, what hidden edges or deficiencies may be revealed through non-traditional advanced statistics, and what interesting or counterintuitive storylines may be playing out that aren’t evident at first glance. My perspective is process driven, examining the quality of the decisions or actions that led up to the outcome — not just the outcome itself.
Those interests and guidelines have led my writing and research to a lot of different places and formats over the last several years:
From weekly game recaps and breakdowns for the offense and defense charting the mechanics and play-calling for each drive; to
larger tendency roundups evaluating season-long trends in formations, alignment, and concepts; to
longer-form pieces on the history and ideas behind the 3-3-5 defense, the success of true freshman five-star quarterback starters, and what scheme a new offensive coordinator might bring; to
This, and more, is the type of work you can expect to receive if you join Black 41 Flash Reverse by selecting the “subscribe” button at the bottom of the page.
What Exactly You’ll Get
During the 2023 season, here’s what you can expect to receive if you sign up for the newsletter:
Separate offensive and defensive game recaps: A detailed, drive-by-drive breakdown for each game of Nebraska’s season, getting into any interesting schematic developments, adjustments, or tendencies.
Game previews: Look-aheads for each grouping of games this year, getting into an opponent’s relevant advanced isolated statistics or schematic tendencies that you might not get on mainstream sites. These will be released in batches sporadically throughout the season: one for non-conference opponents the first week of September and then two batches of the rest of the Big Ten (the later in the season the previews get posted, the more relevant data they’ll have, which is why I’m not releasing them all at once).
Tendency posts: These are analysis of Nebraska’s relevant tendencies, with large charts comparing and contrasting the numbers to previous points in the season. These will be released intermittently in batches throughout the season. Through these, you should be able to see, for example, how often NU was running counter during the first third of the season and how good they were at it, compared to the same for the last third. For a near-example, read this (I previously used to do all game recaps in this style).
Whatever else I notice/want to write about: Does NU have a tell on its running back alignment when it runs outside zone? Has the D switched to more two-high coverages the last several weeks? Things like that. No timetable, just if something merits mentioning, I’ll write about it.
In the offseason, I try to explore larger questions or longer-form research projects without the week-to-week immediacy of the games. The research and charting behind these pieces can, at times, be pretty substantial and make the release schedule more sporadic than other publications, but the pieces will be longer and more substantial. By taking my time, I try to give you something worth yours.
Subscribing and Cost
By subscribing, you’ll have every post from the newsletter delivered straight to your e-mail inbox, and to the Substack app if you have it on your smartphone. Having the newsletter delivered to your inbox is always free.
Before the 2023 season, I instituted some pay tiers to fund the newsletter’s continued operation:
Free membership: Sends all posts to your inbox at no cost, with full access to a limited number of the newsletter’s posts.
$5 monthly membership: Sends all posts to your inbox and gives you full access to every post and the full archive for one month, charged recurring each month (an overall cost of $60 each year).
$50 yearly membership: Sends all posts to your inbox and gives you full access to every post and the full archive for a year, charged recurring each year.
Founding membership: Sends all posts to your inbox and gives you full access to every post and the full archive for a year, for however much you’d like to pay above $50.
I’m deeply thankful to everyone who does pledge money or support to the newsletter. In an ideal world, I’d be happy to do this for free. But I do contribute significant time to the research and writing and some personal monetary expense (and generally also believe people should be compensated for good work), so this helps make up for that. And the more people who subscribe, the more runway and time I have to devote to this project. At least half of the content will be free; the other half will be behind a paywall. I’ve set the subscriptions at the lowest they’re allowed to be set. If you’re interested in becoming a full subscriber and not in a monetary spot to contribute, send me an e-mail at the site address and we can potentially work something out.
If all of this sounds like your thing, smash that “Subscribe Now” button below and enter your e-mail address to become a free or paying subscriber. And if you know of anyone else or any other communities who might be interested in reading the newsletter, please share it with the button below or gift it to someone else. The site no longer has a Twitter presence, so I rely on fans spreading it to others or word of mouth to get new traffic (of course, please OK posting it with any moderators first if you’re posting it on a message board or online community).
Thank you, again, to anyone who does sign up or shares my work. Hearing from and creating a Husker community is a big part of why I began this project in the first place. And thank you, as always, for taking the time to read this. GBR!
