5 Things on a Friday: @ Duke

We’ve got a game tonight.  You may say that it’s not a big game, but Duke Head Football Coach David Cutcliffe and his players would probably not agree with you.

Duke HC David Cutcliffe says the practice after last season’s loss to Army might have been the best practice of his career. Says he slept well that night pic.twitter.com/MqSNav902m

— Jeff Jones (@JeffJonesSports) July 18, 2018

You think these guys don’t want it?  They circled this one on the calendar before last season even ended.

NFL Previews: Playoff Predictions

I’m gonna keep this real short.

#SBRLLR: Firstie (Part 3)

I hit the pool for captain’s practices and was dismayed when my buddy Dave smoked me for more than an hour doing the kinds of rote 100-yard interval sets that had been the mainstay of our time together for the past three years.  Try as I might, I simply could not keep up.  Soon I realized that it wasn’t just Dave.  Over the course of that first week, I found myself swimming back a lane and then two, following kids I’d led through the last year and more.  I’d swim as hard as I could, going completely balls-out, but my body simply would not perform the way that it was supposed to.  To that point, I’d set my Cruise Interval at 1:05 or better for three years running.  As a firstie, I realized that I’d be lucky to set it at 1:15.

Army Football Preview: at Duke

Here we are at last.  It’s finally time to open the 2018 Army Football season, which means it’s finally time to talk in detail about the Black Knights’ first game—at Duke!

Previewing this first game is tough.  There’s not a lot of data, and what data we have comes entirely from second-hand sources.  I’ve not attended any of Army’s scrimmages, and even if I had, I’m not sure what we’d have learned.  From all reports, Army has a remarkably good class of plebes.  Also, QB Kelvin Hopkins has supposedly thrown the ball really well.  So what?  The plebes aren’t going to contribute this week unless something truly astonishing occurs, and Hopkins’s passing is similarly unlikely to make-or-break the contest.  

How does the new O-Line look?  Can this team replace Alex Aukerman’s production at rush linebacker?  Can the secondary stay in position without Rhyan England?  Unfortunately, the only way to figure any of this out is under live-fire conditions.

Crunch: Entry-Level Weight-Lifting Concepts (Part 1)

Talking to my buddy the other day, I mentioned that I’d started taking my daughters to the gym again recently, and he got surprisingly interested.  He and his son met us on Tuesday, and when I showed him what we were doing, he said, “Oh wow.  You have, like, a plan and everything.  I always just come here and do maybe half an hour on the treadmill and then hit some of the machines.  I’ve never, like, tried to hit multiple muscle groups on purpose or anything.”

His son followed up with, “I always just do five sets on the leg-press machine and a bunch of arms.  This is cool.”

Remembering Navy's Best

The New York Times obituary for John McCain https://t.co/3deMbFqo4I

— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 26, 2018

5 Things on a Friday: Showing Your Work

Good morning, folks!  It’s Week 3 of the preseason, which means we might see some actual starters in uniform tonight, and college football kicks off tomorrow!

Hallelujah!  Our long national nightmare is almost over.

NFL Preview: NFC West

Welcome to the fourth and (presumably) final week of the joint Casa Cabeza / Hoosier on the Potomac NFL Divisional Preview series.  Joe has talked some about doing a bonus fifth week in which we make playoff and Super Bowl predictions, and we’ll probably do that, but this week marks the end of the actual work.  

If there’s a post next week, we’ll be straight talking out of our asses.  I mean, that is usually the plan regardless, but it’ll be even more egregious than usual.

#SBRLLR: Firstie (Part 2)

A lot of guys stayed in Europe following the staff ride, but I caught a flight back to Rhode Island and spent my time laying on Newport Beach with my girlfriend Marla.  Alas, we didn’t have much longer as a couple.  She’d decided to head to California for college.  We made the most of what we had, however, and we parted without regrets.  In another life, our relationship might’ve had legs.  At the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, respectively, neither of us wanted anything permanent.  We held tight to what we had, though, and if we parted mostly without tears, this was only possible because each of us realized that we had the rest of our lives ahead of us.

Army Football Preview: Preseason Power Rankings

ESPN updated its Football Power Index (FPI) at the end of July, and the revised rankings hit Army right in the mouth.  The Black Knights are now the lowest-ranked of the service academies with an FPI of -9.7.  That puts them 103rd out of 130 total FBS teams.  ESPN projects that they would lose to an “average” team on a neutral field by something like 10 points.  The Four Letter Network projects that would-be “average” team as Fresno State out of the Mountain West, with an FPI of +0.3 points above the mean.

So Army’s doomed, right?  I mean, why even play the games when we have preseason computer projections?

5 Things on a Friday: Pics from Our Camping Trip

We're back from vacation today, having spent a few days camping up by Lake George.  It was much cooler up there, but we got rained on a few times.  The trip was a lot of fun, but I'm sort of enjoying being back, too.

How was your week?  Good?

NFL Preview: NFC South

Yay football.  Granted, it’s only preseason, but still…  Some football is better than no football.  I mean, the Giants haven’t looked great, but what can you do?

For those keeping score, this post marks the halfway point in the joint Casa Cabeza / Hoosier on the Potomac NFL divisional preview series.  This week, we turn our attention to the NFC/AFC South.  The AFC South is Joe’s favorite division in that it’s home to the Colts (boo!) and the Titans (yay!), but that’s for later.  For now, we’re talking NFC.

#SBRLLR: Firstie (Part 1)

" I, ___, having been appointed an officer in the Army of the United States, as indicated above in the grade of Second Lieutenant, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter;. So help me God.”

― U.S. Army Officers’ Commissioning Oath

I met my counsellor at the end of cow year to again discuss my options.  He’d been happy to see me the last time, but this time he looked a little more serious.