Lincoln Riley has been a head coach for 2 years. He has 2 Big 12 Conference Championships, 2 College Football Playoff appearances, 2 Number 1 ranked offenses and 2 Heisman Memorial Trophy winning quarterbacks. Basically, no other coach in the country has even been in the same conversation as Riley in terms of offensive production. However, Riley’s success extends beyond his as a head coach. It really goes back to his innovation as a play-caller. Even before he was hired at the University of Oklahoma as head coach he consistently coordinated one of the most productive and creative offenses. As the NFL has adapted more and more offensively to create systems that focus on quarterbacks individual strengths, Riley has gotten more and more calls from NFL teams looking for inspiration. Coaches around the country at all levels are looking to recreate and replicate the mastery of balancing running the ball and passing the ball that have become the signature of his play-calling. Riley has gained most of his success by aggressively challenging the defense by making the defense have to guess what the next play will be instead of traditionally being able to rely on tendencies and patterns of the offensive play-calling based on situation.

Fresh off of his biggest win in his short career, a 39-27 victory over arch rival Texas to secure the Big XII conference title and avenge his team’s only regular season loss, Riley is on the verge of his toughest test yet. In this season’s College Football Playoff No. 4 Oklahoma is slated to face No. 1 Alabama in the Orange Bowl. Alabama once again appears as if they are an unstoppable force in college football and Riley’s squad is looked at as severe underdogs, but if any opposing play-caller can put together a successful scheme to dethrone college football’s kings, it would be Riley.

Frank Wang, also known locally in China as Wang Tao, is Asia’s youngest tech billionaire. According to Forbes he is worth $5.4 Billion. He gained this wealth by becoming the largest producer and seller of consumer drones through his company DJI Technology. He originally founded the company in 2006 out of his dorm room after pursuing an interest in flying he had fostered since he was a child. From his youth he had been fascinated by flying and he would read all he could about model airplanes. He was turned more toward the machine aspect of handheld flying when he received a remote controlled helicopter at age 16. When he promptly crashed the helicopter and was forced to wait an absurdly long time for replacement parts he started to think about revolutionizing the user experience in human controlled smaller scale flight. Today his company is best known for its drones that primarily focus on photography and videography. Their latest released drone, the Mavic 2 Enterprise, which is marketed as a way to get closer to potentially dangerous situations without physically getting closer:

The success in creating stunning visual images has naturally led to the addition of high performance drone goggles that immerse the user into what their drone is capturing and, even more recently has led to the creation of powerful handheld and professional quality cameras. These cameras take the high quality drone imaging technology that has become DJI’s forte and take it even closer to the user. Wang was able to fully capture an emerging market by creating the highest quality drones and selling them to consumers to use as the newest innovation in the recreation and commercial spheres.

In the NFL, the youngest head coach in the league is teaching a lesson that everyone can learn from. He is taking a concept that many in business, entertainment, athletics and other fields identify as a priority, but few properly execute. His name is Sean McVay and he is teaching a master’s class in how to get the most production out of your personnel.

Coach McVay is in his second season as head coach of the LA Rams and over that short time he has managed to make them the most effective offense in the league over that short time. On the surface it might seem like you would have to come up with a revolutionary scheme to have this much offensive production. A philosophy with many aspects that overpower and outsmart opponents. However, the opposite is largely true, and McVay boils his philosophy down to this simple statement, “put the ball in the hands of your best players in favorable situations.” It seems basic and somewhat inherent common sense, but this embodies the extreme simplicity that has made McVay revolutionary.

What this means from a football perspective is that McVay has studied what defenses typically do in the situations that arise during a football game. He then uses this information to call plays that get his offense into favorable positions that take advantage of the weaknesses in the typical opposing defenses they face. Many coaches intentionally run plays that might not work to set up the defense for exposure later. The Rams avoid doing this by already knowing what the defense is susceptible to and therefore they have failing plays at a much lower rate than the rest of the league.

Now that we understand how the players get good match-ups, how exactly is the personnel maximized within these situations? They use a personnel group known in pro-style offense terminology as 11 personnel. This means the vast majority of their plays are run with 1 RB 1 TE and 3 WRs. They then run basically two to three main run plays with all of their pass plays based off of those. This means they run a few things with the same players that all do the same thing, but look very different. This extreme simplicity disguised as complexity makes the team thrive.

For an extended look at the Rams’ offense a link is attached below:

https://www.profootballweekly.com/2018/09/26/logic-simplicity-make-los-angeles-rams-sean-mcvay-nfls-brightest-offensive-mind/amzolzk/

Zach Weinberg and Nat Turner have developed a way to fight against cancer by using technology to connect medical personnel. They are sharing data from cancer treatment across the industry like never before.  This company, called Flatiron Health, seeks to learn from every cancer patient and his treatment experience in order to improve the lives of everyone. They wanted to fix the “fragmented and siloed” healthcare system by combining the best minds in medicine with modern technology in order to change how people think about and treat cancer. They believe that every cancer patient has something to add from their story that can help others. The branches of their interconnected web include community  oncologists, academics, hospitals, life science researches and regulators. They store the collected data on their OncoCloud software allowing them to access the information they need to provide better care for patients while still remaining their “efficiency, independence, and financial success”. The life science community is greatly impacted through the use of shared statistics that they use to accelerate their research and use as evidence for their studies. The impact on hospitals and universities is possibly even greater. They can now use high level research and conclusions found outside of their walls instead of being limited to what they find out within their own institutions. This can help accelerate discoveries and generate life-changing incites faster than ever before.

To learn more visit their website: https://flatiron.com/