Monthly Archives: March 2021

Cleveland Browns defensive coordinator Joe Woods aspires to play a defense with three safeties on the field, so former head coach Jim Mora Jr. explains the evolution and changing role of the position in defenses.

The Browns drafted Grant Delpit as the first pick on the defensive side of the ball under this new regime. Unfortunately, he suffered a ruptured Achilles' Tendon and missed his entire rookie season. They also went out and traded for Ronnie Harrison, who was a really nice addition to the defense.

The Browns could decide to resign Karl Joseph and have him play the third safety role or look for help elsewhere.

Between an NFL that is getting faster and spreading out more, the importance of the safety position has increased significantly for a number of defenses. Being able to coverage and run without giving up the necessary size to make tackles and stop the run.

This is particularly important in the current AFC landscape where the AFC championship was played between the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs. Neither team had much of any running attack, so having defensive backs that can cover while keeping the run in check are invaluable.

The Tennessee Titans are a team trying to go the other way, playing with more size, including Derrick Henry at running back. To their credit, in their matchup with the Titans, the Browns were able to hold Henry in check.

This offseason, the Browns will really have an opportunity to put a stamp on the defense Woods wants to run, including the safety position that should be featured prominently.

READ MORE: What's Reasonable to Expect from Grant Delpit in Year Two?

Read more:

The Evolution and Changing Role of Safeties - Sports Illustrated

For two years, a glance at a Wolves team-sheet rarely told you much you didn't know. Three at the back, Conor Coady marshalling the defence, Jonny and Matt Doherty out wide, Ruben Neves and Joao Moutinho in midfield, Raul Jimenez scoring the goals. Consistency in style, and in selection.

Inside the mind of head coach Nuno Espirito Santo was a question. What next? The secret to consistent success has always been, rather ironically, change. Sir Alex Ferguson once said: "Although I was always trying to disprove it, I believe that the cycle of a successful team lasts maybe four years, and then some change is needed."

This season, we have seen what comes next, partly born out of design. Wolves have experimented with a four-man backline for the first time in Nuno's three-year tenure. The rest has come from necessity, learning how to live without talisman and top goalscorer Jimenez following a long-term injury suffered in November.

"It is a mistake to try to reproduce what you had before," Nuno tells Sky Sports in a sit-down interview ahead of facing Liverpool on Monday Night Football, an opposition going through their own season of transition - and certainly not one they would say was of their own making.

"You have to find a new way. We've been fortunate to come up from the Championship and straight away start competing in the Premier League with seven players in the starting 11 who were already familiar with our ideas. Then the next season again, we competed in the Europa League.

"There were players that were playing every few days, over and over again. So that creates besides strong bonds among players, creates routines, creates knowledge, creates communication that in a normal period will take a lot of time. And when you don't have what you had before, you miss it. But you have to find a new way because things are different."

That Jimenez-shaped hole has played a large part in things being different. Before the striker suffered an accidental but horrific fractured skill against Arsenal, Nuno's side were enjoying their best start to a top-flight season since 1980. But from then on, they have suffered.

His absence has taken the shine off of what had otherwise looked a promising start for the club's "new way". Six Wolves players have featured in the Premier League before their 21st birthday this season. Diogo Jota and Matt Doherty have moved on, Nelson Semedo has arrived from Barcelona and Daniel Podence, when fit, has impressed in attack.

But 17 goals in 18 games since Jimenez's injury have unsurprisingly slowed up their points tally, which would have dropped Wolves just two points above the relegation zone if it had stretched across the whole season.

One thing Nuno does not want is sympathy. Jimenez is arguably the toughest player to replace in Wolves' line-up. Nuno is quick to shoot down any excuse for what, privately, he may consider to be a season below expectations, in an era where no team has escaped the challenges of Covid-19, and on Monday his side will come up against a team missing their own talisman in Virgil van Dijk.

In fact, he would rather focus on the positives.

"It's something that all the teams, the managers and the technical staff are facing," he says. "And this particular season, there have been so many challenges we have faced, since the beginning. Planning has been very difficult, because it's constantly changing in all the aspects of the protocols. For sure, it will make us better and more prepared.

"To go through tough moments, you realise that you have to find new themes, new solutions, which makes you work harder and makes you more focused and relentless in the pursuit of those goals.

"But in the end they will make you better. Myself, I feel that this tough period made me realise things that maybe sometimes I ignore. So I believe that I can become a better person and a better manager."

In some ways, it may have been easier to hold on to Jota and Doherty for another year, and keep doing what Wolves have been doing since 2018. After all, Nuno had set them up to become one of the most predictable but, crucially, effective sides in the Premier League.

Even with a desire to freshen things up, he has not always found it easy to blend that evolution with the best bits of his side's existing identity.

"It's challenging, challenging," he says. "It requires dedication, commitment of everyone in the building. I don't make a difference between the seasons; the first season we had this, second season we had this, or the first season in the Championship we had this. It's always a daily process.

"Always, new things are happening to you. New demands are being made, you have to adapt. You have a player whose performance goes down, you have to improve his level of performance again, you have to establish new routines, new work. And it's challenging, challenging."

His short-term strategies feeding into long-term thinking are the preserve of any successful manager, and for Nuno also a measure of his wider personality.

In what has been a year like no other, taking a knee has provided a beacon for change for many in football and beyond. But some figures, and clubs, have decided it has run its course. Some say it has stopped having an impact, and is no longer fuelling change.

Rightly or wrongly, but typical of his holistic thinking, Nuno does not see it that way. And the only Black manager in the Premier League is in no mood to give up.

He said: "It will take a lot of time, possibly more than one generation. So I truly believe that is important that we keep pushing and showing that we need to change.

"Any kind of racism, all these situations, this is not only for Black people, Black or Asian or minorities, it is for everybody to realise that we need to try to eradicate racism.

"Taking a knee is just one of many, many things that we should do. It's a public situation. But there are many situations that are not so public - when we face something, and we feel that it is racist, we should speak, show our opinion. Even if it is in a private way. This is the better way to change things in the future.

"I see changes, I see people more concerned about it. Young people really showing that there is no difference between us. And I will continue. I'll continue, as long as I believe and I feel it, I will do so."

Read the rest here:

Nuno Espirito Santo on Wolves' evolution, dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and the fight against racism - Sky Sports

First-generation vape technology was basic, where direct power output to the coils could not be adjusted. With the push of a button, or by simply inhaling, the battery heated coils, changing the eliquid into vapour to deliver nicotine and flavours.

Second-Generation vape technology introduced variable voltage/wattage, where adjusting the power output to the coils increases or decreases heat to personal taste. With adjustable voltage/wattage technology, vaporizers became smarter and more user-friendly. The device chipsets read the coil resistance then automatically calculated power output to provide a safer, personalized experience across devices and tanks. The simplicity of variable wattage has made it the most widely used vape technology today, especially in intermediate and advanced ecigs.

Third-generation technology with Temperature Control utilized more advanced chipsets and new types of coil materials. Designed to eliminate dry-hits and reduce potential harm from damaged cotton wicking, third-generation vape technology used resistance-temperature correlation to calculate coil temperature based on detected coil resistance. Due to limited choices of coil materials and coil performance issues, temperature control is not used as widely as wattage mode.

Alternating Current Mode (ACM) is the Fourth Generation of Vape Technology. Earlier generations of vaporizers all used direct-current to power coils in a single direction. Alternating Current Mode sends electricity through the coil in both directions.

"Our goal in developing Alternating Current Mode is to provide vapers with an even better experience and the vaping industry new ways to grow and improve. This exciting new technology is easy to use, deep in complexity and can be used by all current tanks, coils and pods.We are looking forward to working with experienced users to discover the full potential of this exciting new vape technology in the hope of working together to create a smoke-free future," said Ivan Zhao, CTO from Fourier Technology and PHD of UCL.

Vapers can now adjust the Hertz frequency waveforms as well as the wattage output. This upgraded output provides many advantages over the previous generation's single direction current.

By selecting different types of waveforms and adjusting the frequency, the full spectrum of flavours can be produced from eliquids and specific flavours enhanced.ACM increases the efficiency of heat transfer between the coil and eliquid, which improves flavours, extends coil life and much more.

Alternating Current Mode has been shown to help extend coil life by increasing coil saturation and reducing carbon buildup on coils."

For more information, please visit: http://www.fourierinside.com.

SOURCE Innokin Technology

Read more here:

The Evolution of Vape Technology -- A revolution for the E-cig industry inspired by Nikola Tesla - PRNewswire

In early March 2011, after popular uprisings swept Tunisia and Egypt, a group of young schoolboys in the small Syrian farming town of Deraa, 60 miles south of Damascus, painted messages opposing President Bashar al-Assad on a local wall.

Shortly thereafter, they were rounded up by the governments secret police and reportedly beaten and tortured sparking outrage that would help protests against the Assad regime in Deraa and beyond gather momentum by March 15, the date widely considered to be the start of the Syrian uprising.

As Syrians took to the streets to protest and to call for more freedoms, the response by Assad and his security forces was swift and brutal following a playbook for crushing dissent that his ruling family had honed over 40 years.

But the killings sparked further anti-Assad anger instead of suppressing it, and what began as peaceful protests evolved into an armed opposition movement as the governments tactics escalated. In the coming years, Assad and his allies would attempt to put down the revolution through a variety of means, including airstrikes that killed civilians, the use of chemical weapons and the Russian-aided bombing of hospitals.As foreign actors poured fuel on the fire, the tactics of some opposition groups also grew more brutal. Extremists, including the leader of ISIS, stepped in and exploited the chaos, with ordinary people caught in the middle.

Ten years in, weve collected a number of FRONTLINE documentaries on the origins and evolution of the Syrian conflict and its staggering human toll. Although precise counts are difficult to come by, the United Nations estimated in 2016 that deaths due to the conflict had reached 400,000. The UN Refugee Agency reported in February that more than 6.6 million Syrians have been forced to flee their country since 2011 and another 6 million people have been uprooted from their homes but remain displaced inside the country.

A recent report published under the umbrella of the UN Human Rights Council said that over the course of the conflict, pro-government forces, but also other warring parties, resorted to methods of waging war and used weaponry that minimized risks to their fighters, rather than those minimizing harm to civilians.

The horrors of the conflict, the report said, have left no Syrian family untouched.

Stream the documentaries below, grouped loosely by theme, for a better understanding of the past decade in Syria andjoin FRONTLINE March 26for a virtual event discussing the10th anniversary of the Syrian uprising.

This Oscar-nominated film documented the harrowing realities of the Syrian conflict hospitals bombed, children killed, Aleppo turned to rubble from a rare perspective: that of a mom married to one of the last doctors in the city, trying to raise her baby daughter, Sama, in the middle of the devastation.

Also an Oscar nominee, this documentary followed four children surviving in war-torn Aleppo, their escape to safety in Germany and their adjustment to life as refugees.

This panoramic film told the first-person stories of refugees and migrants fleeing persecution and war worldwide, including in Syria. It incorporated footage filmed by the refugees themselves as they left their homes on dangerous journeys in search of safety, including a harrowing sequence filmed by a Syrian refugee on a sinking dinghy crossing the Mediterranean a journey on which thousands have died.

A sequel to the 2016 film, this documentary followed more migrants and refugees displaced by conflict and expanded on the story of a Syrian family that was initially featured.

Filmed in Syrias rural Orontes River valley, this documentary looked at how the conflict pitted neighbor against neighbor: on one side, a young rebel soldier fighting to the death to bring down Assad, and facing him, a career soldier determined to preserve the regimes hold on power.

From the first year of the conflict, this film looks at how the Syrian rebellion began, how Assad moved to crush it and how his regime originally came to power.

Eighteen months into the rebellion, this documentary examined how Assad held on to power via increasingly brutal means, including attacking civilian neighborhoods, as opposition tactics also escalated.

Filmed inside government-controlled areas of Syria, this documentary examined the contrast between the Assad regimes PR campaign and the reality of life on the ground, as well as why many regime loyalists equated all opponents of Assad with ISIS and the perspectives of some Syrians pushing for a political solution.

With undercover reporting, this film followed members of the Syrian opposition movement who were forced into hiding, revealing accounts of torture by government security forces.

This documentary followed Syrias rebel leaders and warring factions within the opposition movement, finding that some had turned to brutal means.

Believed to be the first in-depth U.S. TV report on the emergence of ISIS, this film showed how, three years into Syrias war, rebel forces were no longer fighting only the Assad regime but were also vying for control against a ruthless group calling itself the Islamic State.

This documentary followed Syrian rebel fighters who said they were being secretly armed and trained by the United States, part of a covert U.S. intelligence program.

This documentary chronicled how President Barack Obama responded to the Syrian uprising, the regimes crackdown and the chaos that followed. The film paid particular attention to deep divisions within the administration about what the U.S.s role should be, including what happened when the White House assessed that the Assad regime had crossed what Obama once called a red line: the use of chemical weapons on civilians.

This documentary traced how the extremist group that would become known as ISIS rose to power, including by taking advantage of the conflict in Syria, and examined the stakes of disagreements inside the Obama administration over whether to provide arms for moderate rebels.

As part of its examination of how ISIS came to be, this documentary recounted how Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi exploited the Syrian uprising and sent agents into Syria to commit bloody attacks and fuel the war, ultimately seizing large swaths of territory and declaring a capital in Raqqa.

This film examined the successes and failures of the U.S.-led effort to degrade and destroy ISIS, including the Obama administrations struggle to deal effectively with the crisis in Syria.

See more here:

10 Years In, Explore the Syrian Conflict in These FRONTLINE Docs - FRONTLINE

Two-time All-Star Roy Hibbert talks about how the traditional NBA big-man, around whom he modelled his game, has become extinct while centres have evolved to counter the three-point wave.

File image of Roy Hibbert (right) playing for the Indiana Pacers against the Milwaukee Bucks at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in 2014. Image courtesy: NBAE via Getty Images

Sometime in the 2014-15 season, one of the coaches at Indiana Pacers pulled Roy Hibbert aside for a chat. He wanted to talk analytics with Hibbert, who, by then, had been with the Pacers since 2008 as a traditional centre, a position also referred to as the five-man (the traditional jersey number for centres) or a big-man. The NBA, at the time, was in the early throes of its data analytics revolution, which was nudging the leagues big man into extinction.

That was the time when Golden State Warriors were really popping (shots from outside the arc). Things were changing in the league. The analytics said that the one-on-one post-up shots and the (consequent) one-on-one block is one of the worst shots in basketball. So my post touches started going down as the analytics were saying that shooting more and more threes were the way to win games. It was winning championships for certain teams, recollected Hibbert during a media interaction with Indian journalists on Saturday. I wish I could shoot like Kristaps Porzingis or was as athletic as him. Its a different breed (of big men).

The wave of three-pointers unleashed by the Golden State Warriors took them to the league title in 2015, and then again in 2017 and 2018, with players like Steph Curry and Klay Thompson at the heart of the shooting juggernaut, spearheaded by coach Steve Kerr.

But, more importantly, what it did was stretch the floor, which in turn, made it necessary for the power forwards and centrespositions on the basketball court which required the tallest playersto venture out from under the post to guard these smaller, swifter, and niftier shooters.

The traditional centre that I modelled my game around is going that way (at the risk of getting extinct). Centres that stand in the paint are going extinct. I saw that coming, said Hibbert, who is a two-time All-Star. But thats not a bad thing. Those back-to-the-basket centres are not as seeked after (by teams) as opposed to a floor-spacing five-man or a number five like Joker (Nikola Jokic), who can stretch the floor by playing away from the basket for the Denver Nuggets. The big-mans role is evolving. At the same time, I like seeing how the new guys like Joel Embiid can score from inside and out and also facilitate.

I was just put under the basket and told to shoot jump hooks if needed, while everybody else in team would do the shooting (from mid- or long-range), said Hibbert remembering his own youth basketball days, where he played for Georgetown. On Saturday, he hosted alive clinic for youngsters in India via Zoom. I have a son, who is three years old. But hes as tall as a five-year-old. If he chooses to play basketball, I would tell the teams coach that just because hes the tallest dont make him stay underneath the basket and just shoot jump hooks. He needs to be dribbling, shooting... he cant just be a five-man!

How the NBAs evolution hurt Indian big-men

The evolution of the big mans role on the court has also coincided with Indian players who have come within touching distance of playing in the NBA. At 72, Satnam Singh was drafted by the Dallas Mavericks and assigned to their D League (as the G League was previously known) affiliate, the Texas Legends. Amjyot Singh, who is 68, has had stints with two NBA G-League teams: first, he was drafted by OKC Blue in 2017 where he spent a season and a half and he was later picked by Wisconsin Herd. Palpreet Singh (69) was also close to playing in the G-League.

The newest prospect from India, Princepal Singh (610), can play both as a power forward and as a centre. The 20-year-old just ended his first season in the NBA G-League with the Ignite team featuring some of the top youngsters who will eligible for the upcoming NBA Draft. Despite his promise, Princepal played just 28 minutes over 16 games.

Ignites coach, Brian Shaw, mentioned that it was difficult to hand Princepal more minutes because the G-League was a league of speedy guards.

As you have seen throughout this season, this is not a league for big men. This is a guards league, Shaw had told Firstpost. Most of the teams we have here have at least four guys on the floor between 63 and 66. The biggest guy on the floor a lot of the times is 67. Maybe 68. Theyre all fast. They can all shoot from the outside. They can all handle the ball. Thats not something that Prince is accustomed to facing. So it was hard to put him into a lot of the games.

Big men from abroad

Another trend in the NBA thats been apparent is the proliferation of the big-men from foreign shores. Some of the top centres in the business currently are foreigners, be it Denver Nuggets Nikola Jokic (Serbia), Dallas Mavericks Kristaps Porzingis (Latvia), Utah Jazzs Rudy Gobert (France), Orlando Magics Nikola Vucevic (Montenegro). Add tall power forwards like Milwaukee Bucks Giannis Antetokounmpo (Greece) and Philadelphia 76ers Joel Embiid (Cameroon) to the list and a pattern starts to emerge.

While Hibbert credited Team USA, popularly known as the Dream Team, at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 with popularising the game around the world and bringing some of the best centres into the league like the German Dirk Nowitzki, he agreed that given the way the NBA evolved into a league where three-pointers were the preferred weapon for many successful teams like the Warriors and the Houston Rockets, colleges with decent basketball programs too changed their tactics to incorporate more three-point shooting to attract the best players.

Im sure college team coaches were thinking that they wanted the best players in the country to come to their school so they needed to teach an NBA-style program. So colleges probably adjusted too. There was a shift there. They needed bigs who could run, space the floor, said Hibbert, who is the son of Caribbean immigrants.

Last season, Hibbert was on the coaching staff of Philadelphia 76ers where he says he would advice young players coming into the league to space the floor and shoot. You have to shoot like Steph Curry. I used to tell young guys that they had to be a threat from the outside too.

Subscribe to Moneycontrol Pro at 499 for the first year. Use code PRO499. Limited period offer. *T&C apply

Read the rest here:

Roy Hibbert interview: Two-time All-Star talks about the evolution of big men in the NBA - Firstpost