Thursday, October 28, 2010

Always Check The Source




Blogs have become an integral way in which many people get their information. As a blogger I think that's a wonderful thing. Nowadays just about anyone can add their voice to just about any conversation about any topic with a blog. That means that more people are being heard and more opinions are being voiced.

But blogs can also be tricky at times. Because blogs tend to blend opinion with fact a lot of the time its hard to actually separate the two. That's made doubly hard when the blogger doesn't go out of their way to make a clear distinction themselves. For that reason its always important that when there are source links to the information the blogger is writing about included in the post or that can be found with search engines that lead you to the source material, readers should ALWAYS check it out for themselves. Its not necessarily that the blogger is trying to trick or mislead their audience, but at times they will allow their personal feelings or how they interpret the source material to color their posts. And that can in turn give their readers a much different impression of what happened or what was said than they would have had themselves when exposed to the same information.

Now obviously this isn't coming out of the blue. Here's the deal, for two weeks now there have been posts about different Buccaneers who went on Total Access after the games and I don't think either post accurately captured what they said. Geno Hayes was on and the impression given was that he was defensive about the notion that our defense played soft against the New Orleans Saints. Well here is the link to that interview.

Geno on Total Access

Did Geno say the defense didn't play soft? Absolutely he did. But it was in the context of explaining what DID happen. And if you read my blog posts I pretty much agree with him that the problem was more about guys not being in their gaps and being on the details than it was about anybody getting pushed around aside from Roy Miller. But what's more important is the interview in full. Not only was Geno NOT defensive, he repeatedly accepted responsibility about their poor performance and repeatedly promised that it would get fixed. And that includes when angry callers were getting after him pretty good. He had every opportunity to get defensive or act offended but I didn't hear any of that in the interview.

Did you?

The second incident is a post that inferred that Jeremy Zuttah said that the Bucs were running a lot of zone plays in the first half against the Rams but that at halftime they made adjustments and stopped running zones and started running other plays.

Well here's the link to that interview.


Zuttah on Total Access


On this one there really is no grey area. Zuttah tells Dave Moore repeatedly that there weren't ANY halftime adjustments and that guys just played better in the second half and were more on the details. And the truth is if you watched the game more than once you would notice that we didn't run the zone plays any less in the second half than we did in the first half. Overall the game plan was better because in BOTH halves we went more with power Os, ISOs and split bellies than we had in previous weeks and in BOTH halves we didn't run as much zone as we had in previous games.

Now the quote attributed him, which was accurate, was about how the Bucs prepared during the week to play the Rams. They decided BEFORE the game to add a little more to the running game to give them a better chance of success. One of those additions was the running play I drew up last week that the Saints ran so well on us and that the Carolina Panthers copied from them where the tight end bows outside to get the end up the field and then the fullback comes and kicks him out. They ran it and had some success with it which was good to see.

Let me say this, I am calling this out because I think its starting to become a recurring problem and people may be getting the wrong impression about some things that are being said.  Also I'm calig it out because I keep getting asked questions about what I see as erroneous impressions people have based on those posts. But by no means does that mean I'm perfect or exempt. You should ABSOLUTELY click on every source link I put in any blog post to keep me honest and if there isn't a source link you should be googling or binging or whatever to make sure you get to form your own impression about what I'm speaking on. And while my focus today is on blogs, the same applies for online editions of print media as well.

NOBODY is perfect and we can all subconsciously interject our own prejudices into any story without meaning to. That's why its on you as the reader not to ever just take anything for granted. It doesn't matter if it's your favorite blogger or someone you hate, if there is source material out there do yourself a favor and expose yourself to it for your own piece of mind.

By the way, for all Bucs fans you should note that all of the shows like Total Access, Coach Morris' show, and Gerald McCoy's show that air on 620 are also archived on Buccaneers.com so if you miss them you can go back and listen to them. So if there is every a quote that arises out of one of those shows that you want to check you can always do so.

12 comments:

  1. Well said, Steve - as Diogenes once said “Discourse on virtue and they pass by in droves. Whistle and dance the shimmy, and you've got an audience.” Bloggers who embellish with opinions aren't really doing us fans a bit of good.

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  2. Joe from JoeBucsFan.com here.

    Steve,

    Have to say there is grey area here. Yes, Zuttah said there were no adjustments at halftime to the line, but when Dave Moore pressed him on it further, here's what Zuttah said. (8:49 of the audio).

    8:49: If you guys didn't make any adjustments, what was the difference?

    "It was just about being focused on our pad level, our technique and seeing a few keys that the defense was giving us. You know, there were a couple of things that you could see presnap that would, you know, help us out that I guess we just weren't seeing the first half. And we were able to just take advantage of them."

    To me, Joe, this was represented a second-half adjustment. There's semantics here, but I don't think it's the twisted words that you say they might be.

    Would love any feedback on it. As you know, we try to be as on the money as possible within a few hundred workds.

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  3. @Joe I'm not sure how you see that as a grey area. He basically said they played better and noticed stuff they should have noticed in the first half as far as keys. That's not a half time adjustment, that's PLAYING BETTER.

    But the specific issue is whether he said they stopped running zone plays at halftime and started running other stuff and he absolutely did NOT say that.

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  4. Joe from JoeBucsFan.com here again.

    Steve,

    Was hoping you could explain how in the Geno Hayes post the impression given, as you say, is that Geno was being defensive?

    JoeBucsFan.com went out of its way to say that Geno's quote was "without being prodded," meaning he wasn't being defensive or even responding to an are-you-soft question.

    Regarding that Geno Hayes post from last week on JoeBucsFan.com, here it is in its entirety:


    When the Bucs have the ball run down their throats for weeks in a row, and on the heels of many games in 2008 and 2009, it’s hard not to view the defense as soft.

    Former Bucs offensive lineman Ian Beckles, co-host of The Ron and Ian Show on WDAE-AM 620, was flat out calling the Bucs defense “soft” following Sunday’s gashing at the hands of the Saints.

    Beckles singled out Gerald McCoy as extra soft, and explained that the Bucs are running a defense that calls for undersized players, but when soft meets undersized that makes for the ugly results the Bucs are experiencing.

    During the Buccaneers Radio Network Total Access show on Monday night, also on WDAE-AM 620, linebacker Geno Hayes, without being prodded, went out of his way to say the Bucs aren’t soft while explaining the problems with the run defense.

    “It’s all about us killing ourselves,” Hayes said. ”It wasn’t something that [the Saints] were doing, you know, really just going down our throats and forcing like was were just a soft team. It wasn’t that. It was really us being out there and not making the tackles that needed to be made and not being in the gaps sometimes. And just really getting a little lost in the adjustments as far as making checks and things. But other than that, it wasn’t anything they did that was real big.”

    Now Joe’s not sure how “soft” is defined. But surely the Bucs aren’t the opposite of soft.

    If Hayes is correct (and Joe hopes he is), and the Bucs were merely lost and clueless at times and not soft, then that means the run defense should be fixable quickly. That would be a good thing and something fans should look for on Sunday against the Rams.


    **Again, just trying to understand how this mis-led anyone in anyway. At JoeBucsFan.com, we devote a lot of time to word choice to make sure the message is delivered properly. In this case, saying "without being prodded" was a direct effort to show that Hayes was not being defensive.

    Thanks for the feedback. Without overanalyzing this stuff (aka caring) none of us can be our best.

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  5. Joe from JoeBucsFan here again,

    Steve,

    Regarding the Geno Hayes post, you wrote"

    "Geno Hayes was on and the impression given was that he was defensive about the notion that our defense played soft against the New Orleans Saints."

    Below is the Geno Hayes post on JoeBucsFan.com in its entirety. JoeBucsFan went out of its way to say Geno's quote was "without being prodded." (See below) This was done specifically to make sure no reader got the impression Hayes was being defensive. ...We take great care in word choice on JoeBucsFan.com to make sure the message is clear and not distorted.

    Here's the post in its entirety.


    When the Bucs have the ball run down their throats for weeks in a row, and on the heels of many games in 2008 and 2009, it’s hard not to view the defense as soft.

    Former Bucs offensive lineman Ian Beckles, co-host of The Ron and Ian Show on WDAE-AM 620, was flat out calling the Bucs defense “soft” following Sunday’s gashing at the hands of the Saints.

    Beckles singled out Gerald McCoy as extra soft, and explained that the Bucs are running a defense that calls for undersized players, but when soft meets undersized that makes for the ugly results the Bucs are experiencing.

    During the Buccaneers Radio Network Total Access show on Monday night, also on WDAE-AM 620, linebacker Geno Hayes, without being prodded, went out of his way to say the Bucs aren’t soft while explaining the problems with the run defense.

    “It’s all about us killing ourselves,” Hayes said. ”It wasn’t something that [the Saints] were doing, you know, really just going down our throats and forcing like was were just a soft team. It wasn’t that. It was really us being out there and not making the tackles that needed to be made and not being in the gaps sometimes. And just really getting a little lost in the adjustments as far as making checks and things. But other than that, it wasn’t anything they did that was real big.”

    Now Joe’s not sure how “soft” is defined. But surely the Bucs aren’t the opposite of soft.

    If Hayes is correct (and Joe hopes he is), and the Bucs were merely lost and clueless at times and not soft, then that means the run defense should be fixable quickly. That would be a good thing and something fans should look for on Sunday against the Rams.

    ***Just hoping you could explain what in here give the impression that Geno is being defensive?

    We love the feedback, as that's the only way to improve.

    Thanks.

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  6. @Joe That whole "went out of his way" part. Thats the part that had people coming to me about Geno being sensitive. I listened to the interview and he didn't sound sensitive at all, he sounded matter of fact about it. And the explanation he gave was the same exact explanation I gave after the game about what the problems were with our run defense. Notice I didn't say you intentionally misled anyone, as a matter of fact I posited the opposite. But listening to the interview in full gave the people who came to me about it a different view of what was said than they came with after reading your post.

    I also checked the comments section and its pretty evident that many of the readers thought he was being defensive.

    At the end of the day I stand by everything I said in my post. First and foremost that readers should check source materials every time they read a blog post. It just so happened that it was your blog posts this time but as I said before it could just as well be mine. It is what it is.

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  7. @Steve

    Here's the first three paragraphs of the Zuttah post blow. What's misleading?? Seriously. I never wrote that the Bucs switched out of zone blocking in the second half.


    Chatting away with fellow Jersey native Dave Moore on the Buccaneers Radio Network, Bucs center Jeremy Zuttah said the Bucs running game came alive Sunday behind changes along the offensive line.

    Zuttah alluded to halftime adjustments born from reading the Rams’ defense, and Zuttah said a gameplan that included less zone blocking paid dividends.

    “We just ran a few different types of plays. We’d been running a lot of zone plays, and we threw in some other stuff just to mix it up a little bit and I think it paid off,” Zuttah said.

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  8. Look Joe or Joes, perhaps you are sensitive about this, and that's fine. But maybe you should check your own comments section and or ask some of your readers the impression they got from your post. Here's what was asked of me in my other thread.

    "Apparently the team was running a significant amount of zone blocking in the first half and changed up in the second half. Did you see this, and what's your take? I figured we'd abandon the zone blocking for the most part. It doesn't seem to suit the linemen or the backs. Our running game seems to improve when we go away from zone blocking. Why don't we us more power blocking from the start?"

    Now where do you think the reader got that idea?

    Again, if you conflate halftime adjustments with the changes in the gameplan made durinig the week, and people don't listen to the interview themselves (which I didn't notice a link to in the original post) then this is what some or many will take away from it.

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  9. @Steve

    Just one Joe.

    Was definitely sensitive about it. And I totally get what you're saying. Some people misinterpret what's written on every post on JoeBucsFan. Some posts more than others. That's just the nature of thousands of people reading anythiing. People read between the lines incorrectly on all kinds of stuff. I'm sure you experience this here.

    Probably wrong on the halftime adjustment thing. Was assuming that maybe some of the keys they were missing in the first half that Zuttah talked were discussed by coaches at halftime.

    We link to everything, but for some reason linking to Buccanneers Network Audio causes a bug on our site, so that's the only reason on that.

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  10. And sorry about the double post above. Not sure what happened there.

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  11. Steve,

    Thanks for pointing this stuff out. The Joes are pretty delete heavy in their comments section, so these issues never get aired.

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  12. Anonymous - The Joes are not delete heavy in their comments. There is a filter in place for profanity and other words of hate. So that stuff never makes it through.

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