The Plan For 2023
The Plan For 2023
What the newsletter has cookin' for Matt Rhule's debut season, plus one big change
What’s up, fellow Huskers! If you’re reading this, that means you’re signed up to receive free posts from my newsletter, Black 41 Flash Reverse. First off, thank you for your support. I started this project two seasons ago more-or-less as a place to casually put down some thoughts I had and research I was doing on Husker football. The two seasons I’ve covered ended up being two of the most psychically painful college football experiences in recent memory, but I’ve somehow still learned from and enjoyed compiling and sharing the data. I hope you’ve felt the same about reading it, and I appreciate anyone else who’s been able to stick with this through two years of football that have often felt like repeatedly getting hit in the shin with a sledgehammer.
As we embark on another season, I wanted to give you an update on what you can expect to receive this season and some changes I’m making to the newsletter.
As a brief overview on content, last year I was sending out stat-heavy game recaps breaking down certain tendencies for Nebraska’s offense and defense. Here’s one example. These were pretty arduous to compile; I was often not getting done with the analysis until Tuesday or Wednesday in the week and not getting the posts out until Fridays. And I also felt as if I was just throwing walls of contexless percentages at readers that were hard to decipher and didn’t mean much.
I’m going to pivot off that a bit for this season. I still want to get into some of that data because I feel it’s interesting and not many places in Nebraska media are getting in-depth with that sort of stuff. But I think I can do that in some ways that are more reader-friendly and don’t come out six days after the game. So instead, here’s what I’m going to try to do this season:
Separate offensive and defensive game recaps: I’m going to do a quicker breakdown of the games with the hopes of having the recaps out earlier in the week. The plan is for these to be shorter, more narrative-style, drive-by-drive breakdowns, getting into any interesting scheme things or adjustments I saw and incorporating some numbers/trends. More of an overview of what happened from a scheme perspective in the game as it progressed rather than some big overview breaking down every number.
Game previews: I’m going to return to doing some look-aheads for games this year, just getting into an opponent’s relevant stats, key players, etc., but hopefully with a more in-depth stat and scheme perspective than you’d get on mainstream sites. I’ll have an individual one for Minnesota next week, then will probably do them in batches: 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.
Tendency posts: These will be like the game recaps from last year, with the big charts of numbers on Nebraska’s tendencies. But I’m only going to release them intermittently throughout the season, as opposed to game-to-game as I was doing. I was loosely thinking a tendency post after the end of non-conference play, one after midway through Big Ten play, and one after the season’s end. Those felt like good benchmarks, but TBD on that. This will, I think, provide some better context to the numbers — 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, as opposed to the last third. I think that will provide better insight into scheme adjustments Nebraska made through the season or interesting trends, as opposed to just throwing a big batch of numbers at you every week.
Whatever else I notice/want to write about: Not spending 20 hours early in the week compiling numbers will let me write about any other big-picture things I notice: 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.
The other change I’m going to make is to introduce a paid element to the newsletter.
I understand some people who may be interested in this stuff can’t afford a subscription, so a good percentage of the content will still be totally free, and everyone will still get the e-mails in their inbox for free. But moving forward, at least some posts will only be available to paid subscribers. I’m not sure what that looks like — every third post, or every other post paid-only seems like what I’ll start with.
I’m largely adding a paid element because (a) I spend a large amount of time and effort on this during the season and believe I’m producing quality work, which I’ve always felt you should be paid for, and (b) I’m paying out of my own pocket for two databases (PFF and Sports Info Solutions) for this project that are reasonably expensive. The newsletter is first and foremost something I do because I enjoy writing and researching it, but at a certain point, putting in 30+ hours of work a week during the season into something that was costing me money became untenable. I appreciate all my subscribers and the love they’ve shown this project over the past two years, and I’m deeply thankful to everyone who does pledge money or support.
I’ve set the prices at the lowest they’re allowed to be set: $5 monthly, $50 yearly, or an option for a “founding membership” that allows readers to pay more than the listed price as an extra show of support, similar to a donation. Here’s what you’ll get with each:
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 on the newsletter and in the archive, charged monthly at an overall cost of $60 per year.
$50 yearly membership: Sends all posts to your inbox and gives you full access to every post on the newsletter and in the archive, charged yearly at an overall cost of $50 per year.
Founding membership: Sends all posts to your inbox and gives you full access to every post on the newsletter and in the archive, for however much you’d like to donate.
If you’d like to support my work with one of these options, click the button below to set it up:
And if you’d like to share this newsletter with anyone else you feel may be interested, use the button below:
As I said, this is primarily a labor of love; I’m only making these changes because I feel it will help me bring you better and more regular content, and I’m deeply grateful for anyone who pledges to support this project.
I have a post in the queue for tomorrow that I’ve been working on for a couple months, an in-depth statistical look at Marcus Satterfield’s previous offenses and how they compare to Nebraska’s previous offenses in personnel, alignment, pre-snap operation, and play selection (this one will be free). I also have a preview for the Minnesota game that will be out next week! Until then, GBR.