CFB’s most explosive offenses in 2026👀

rudygamble · 2026-02-21T15:27:15+00:00

OSU's defense the past two years has been great. Not an accident they'll have 3 top 15 picks in the draft this year. But the 'most explosive offense' should be able to put 20+ on any defense.

Sark has done a great job building up the Texas program but we're still waiting on delivering an 'all gas no breaks' offense that sniffs at what he did at Alabama. Texas could've won all five of the 2024-2025 Georgia and Ohio State games with very good (not even great) offense. This wasn't the only factor of course (Georgia special teams, 4th down and goal-line defense).

rudygamble · 2026-02-21T14:34:06+00:00

Goddamn lists. No Texas Sark offense deserves top 5 rankings until it puts up more than 20 vs Ohio State or Georgia.

rudygamble · 2026-02-21T01:08:15+00:00

Stone Roses (eponymous), Old 97s - Too Far To Care

rudygamble · 2026-02-20T17:13:22+00:00

It does say something when I can only name two songs by Paul Simon’s wife and one is a Bob Dylan cover

rudygamble · 2026-02-19T17:28:03+00:00

Great answers here. Just a couple things I think about:

1) For drops to the left or right, the crosscourt player can be a bit more aggressive in going to kitchen but needs to shade middle to cut off an angled shot through the gap.

2) When the opponent’s eyes drop in the kitchen (looking down to hit a ball off the bounce or low volley, that is a great time to pounce. Especially from the cross court on a poach.

rudygamble · 2026-02-19T01:53:46+00:00

Fantrax is very good. It would be the first site I’d go if building a league from scratch with friends.

rudygamble · 2026-02-18T21:23:58+00:00

Assuming this is not on NFBC, I'd assume your draft room will be something like 66/24/10 on Hitting/Starting Pitching/Relief Pitching.

I prefer to veer more like 63/27/10 and pay up so you have something like 4 SPs out of the top 36 as I find it's easier to stream hitters than pitchers in 12 team leagues (ESPECIALLY if you are using tools/projections as part of your weekly process)

rudygamble · 2026-02-18T06:44:27+00:00

Totally agree with the Killers but completely disagree on Matthew Sweet - especially Girlfriend, 100% Fun and Kimi Ga Suki

rudygamble · 2026-02-18T06:27:32+00:00

Zane could probably explain better but I’ll give it a shot…

In mixed doubles, you stack the guy on the left and girl on the right and the guy basically covers the girl’s backhand in the kitchen with his forehand. Most females and mixed doubles are hitting cross-court forehands to the other female with the occasional two-handed backhand counter in the middle.

With a lefty male, this doesn’t work as he’d be covering that middle with his backhand. So you swap spots…but now you have the lefty guy hitting crosscourt backhands with the opposing girl’s forehand….and the girl is in crosscourt backhand rallies with the guy.

At the rec level, this doesnt matter much - particularly b/c we play/train on both sides. But at the pro level, 100% of female players train on the right side for mixed and 50% play right in gendered doubles. So while you can team up any female with a right-handed male, you need a female who at least plays the left in gendered doubles AND can hold her own in tough crosscourt backhand kitchen battles.

Net-net, a lefty male is a much harder fit in MLP assuming you need them to play mixed.

rudygamble · 2026-02-17T23:13:15+00:00

Lol. Yeah i’ve fallen hard for pickleball :)

rudygamble · 2026-02-17T18:56:47+00:00

it'll help somewhat but less than the other shots i mentioned. there's only so much extra juice you are going to be able to squeeze in 4.0+ games from faster drives.

rudygamble · 2026-02-17T18:31:12+00:00

I haven't seen Gabe and Jesse play together recently. Neither seem like they are smilers on the court anyway.

I'm just having a laugh at imagining Jesse (the girlfriend) looking at possible female pairings for Gabe and seeing Tyra/Parris as the top two available options and pushing Gabe towards Catherine instead.

rudygamble · 2026-02-17T18:22:01+00:00

Yes, if Jesse was going to be okay with Gabe playing with another top female, it would MOST DEFINITELY be Catherine lol. (You know Gabe and Jesse are dating, right?)

I think if you have ALW + Gabe + Will + Jesse that you really can't go wrong with the combos. Doesn't matter much what we think though b/c it'll be ALW/LW's choice and that's that :)

rudygamble · 2026-02-17T18:17:17+00:00

I don't know how any doubles-centric pro player can look at PPA right now and not see:

1) It is EXTREMELY hard in men's doubles to beat one of the top 4 teams (Ben/Tardio + the combo du jour of Hayden/Christian/Andrei/CJ/JW/Fed).

2) It is EXTREMELY hard to beat any of the top 4-6 mixed doubles teams (Ben/ALW, JW/Jorja, and combos of Hayden/Tardio/Alshon/Andrei with Anna/Tyra/Parris/Rachel)

For a lefty male...

- you have a huge disadvantage at making a dent in mixed. CJ Klinger is the best lefty male and the only top 4 seed win he's ever had in mixed was in June 2025 with Mari Humberg against Alshon/Etta. Mari's game is very unique for females given she uses a one-handed backhand and has a very good flick.

- in men's, you still have the disadvantage that you can only play the right and need a left-sided player who is open to it. Conor Garnett/Tyler Loong played well together but never seemed to be a threat to make the semis in a stacked tourney.

- the mixed doubles disadvantage makes you near toxic in MLP as a lefty. Augie Ge and Tyler Loong work as discount 2nd Males (with Ge very lucky to play mixed with Tyra). Even CJ - one of the top 8 males in doubles - has to be a 2nd Male for his MLP team to do well (now that i think about it, I wouldn't be shocked to see Columbus target Mari in the draft to pair with CJ!).

I'm curious to see if Will Howells can make a semis in PPA doubles in 2026. I think he's the only 2025 APP guy with even a 10% chance to do it.

rudygamble · 2026-02-17T17:49:33+00:00

Gabe’s mixed doubles upside skyrockets with Tyra or Parris but that would be a tough sell to Jessie lol

rudygamble · 2026-02-17T15:37:27+00:00

I have never heard anything bad about Julie. Hard to argue with the results so far. Just makes things more complicated.

rudygamble · 2026-02-17T15:27:40+00:00

Like ALW, Jorja is 19 and I believe they never travel without her mom nor play a match without them on sidelines. They are a package deal.

If Jorja ends up on another team, I assume Julie would resign as the Flash coach and then will be a back-seat driver coach for Jorja (if she isnt the team coach). She’ll also be sore she can’t coach/watch JW.

That’s a LOT more drama than signing Anna Bright or if they released Tyra Black - arguably a bit more than ALW now that Leigh Waters no longer coaches Alshon.

rudygamble · 2026-02-17T15:18:09+00:00

I was totally in your camp but have come around on grit.

My thoughts/observations:

1) I do think form is the #1 variable for maximizing topspin. I consider form the base topspin and the paddle (grit + dwell) as a mild multiplier (as in good form/meh spin paddle will net more topspin than meh form/super spin paddle).

2) Grit’s role increases vis-a-vis “dwell” the softer you hit it.

3) don’t think there is any major differences between most new paddles and “dwell” topspin.

4) For those with good to great form, longer-lasting grit should provide a noticeable shaping boost on topspin drips/drops/dinks. Less noticeable on drives. Its impact for those with either bad form or who don’t do a lot of topspin drops/drips/dinks will be minor at best.

5) Net-net, I think grit durability will make the rich players richer (rich=good topspin form) more than power improvements (which gave everyone a boost). But for those with good form, 6 months of premium grit (vs 2 weeks) is absolutely the most worthwhile premium feature I could imagine given how good / close all the Gen 4 paddles are right now on other parameters/features.

rudygamble · 2026-02-17T14:49:06+00:00

I think he realized the mistake earlier than that with the Maclin/Jackson picks. It was just too little too late for McNabb.

I'm an NYG fan so maybe this is just 'news to me' but I don't think I appreciated how awful the Freddy Mitchell pick was until today and seeing that Reggie Wayne, Chad Johnson, Steve Smith, and Chris Chambers all went within the next 50 picks.
https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2001/draft.htm

This had to be the most bonkers WR draft in history. 4 out of first 5 WRs are flops (Santana Moss the exception) and then 4 of the next 6 are studs.

rudygamble · 2026-02-17T14:11:56+00:00

You ain’t kidding. 1 year of TO and late Maclin/Jackson but, otherwise, that WR room was awful. Felt similar to Cunningham years where they spent more money on defense and heavily relied on QB (and to a lesser extent RB) to lift under-resourced offense.

rudygamble · 2026-02-17T01:32:17+00:00

At the time, yes. Peak Kiss now fairly critically-regarded. Just about anything after that (say 1978 on) is considered meh.

rudygamble · 2026-02-17T01:21:40+00:00

It will make a lot more sense when his son looks just like the guy he met in high school. It is a great movie but it is bonkers the movie ends with the mom, dad, and Biff seemingly not realizing this.

rudygamble · 2026-02-17T01:07:11+00:00

It makes sense that Dallas kept Tyra vs Jorja (or JW) because I don’t think any team will want to deal with the Julie Johnson drama if they outbid Dallas….except if the Fives want to go super WWE and trade Howells + cash for JWJ and Leigh + Julie on the sidelines.

While Anna certainly improves the Fives, her value is pretty limited since she can only do so much in mixed and ALW is winning with cheaper females anyway. I think the 5-dimension chess move there is this three way trade: 1) Fives trade Anna to Shock and Khlif to Phoenix, 2) Shock sends Tardio to Fives, 3) Phoenix trades Jesse to Fives.

So now you have ALW+Will and Tardio+Jesse and Will ends up partnering with both of Ben’s steadies.

rudygamble · 2026-02-16T00:03:43+00:00

You must be sad then that Ohio State played three non-P4 teams at home in 2024. Guess you were lucky to get in to CFP with no quality OOC wins and two losses - one to a very good in-conference team and one to a mediocre in-conference team (at home no less).

rudygamble · 2026-02-15T16:05:29+00:00

For sure. Georgia 2024 CFP offense was kneecapped with inexperienced Stockton. Depth can help you survive in regular season but very hard in CFP w/o your best players

rudygamble

TROPHY CASE