House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi missed an essential vote Saturday night to fund the government and avoid a shutdown to celebrate her 50th wedding anniversary at an undisclosed location outside of Washington, D.C., Politico reports.
The California Democrat also skipped the critical caucus meeting prior to the vote, where the respective parties devise political strategy and whip votes.
In a letter to her colleagues, Pelosi said she would be "listening in on the conversations" of the meeting.
Obamacare: Massive New Rules Revealed for 2013
"Speaker Boehner has told me he has the votes for his proposals on his side of the aisle and that he will not need our help," Pelosi said.
In her absence, Roll Call reports that Pelosi's press office flooded reporters email inboxes throughout the day, slamming Republicans for their plan to defund Obamacare.
Roll Call also reported that Pelosi was spending her anniversary with her husband, Paul, at a "long-scheduled event."
Related stories:
US Shutdown Looms as Republicans Stand By Delay of Obamacare
McConnell to Newsmax: Defunding Obamacare Not 'Waste of Time' for GOP
Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,
Barack Obama promised to fundamentally transform America, and when it comes to health care he has definitely kept his promise.? Thanks to Obamacare, health care spending is up, health insurance premiums are up, the number of hours Americans are working is down and employer-based health insurance is becoming an endangered species.? Of course employer-based health insurance will not disappear completely any time soon, but it has been steadily shrinking for over a decade, and Obamacare will greatly accelerate that decline.?
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If you go back to 1999, 64.1 percent of all Americans were covered by employment-based health insurance.? That was pretty good.? Today, only 54.9 percent of all Americans are covered by employment-based health insurance, and now thousands upon thousands of U.S. employers are considering reducing the scope of the health plans they offer to employees or eliminating them altogether due to Obamacare.? If you are thinking that this sounds like a potential nightmare for millions of Americans families, you would be exactly right.
There have already been widespread reports of companies dropping health insurance, but nobody knows for sure how widespread the carnage will be.? According to Businessweek, the surveys that have been done up to this point have come up with widely varying results...
A Deloitte study last year suggested 10 percent of employers would stop offering group health plans. A widely criticized McKinsey report from 2011 put the number as high as one-third. The Congressional Budget Office?s latest projections suggest 8 million fewer people will be covered by employer plans five years from now under the ACA than without it. Many of them will get policies through health insurance exchanges instead.
But what everyone does agree on is that employer-based health coverage will continue to diminish.
And we are already watching this happen right in front of our eyes.? Just this week,?the Wall Street Journal reported that the largest security guard firm in the United States is dropping health coverage for 55,000 employees...
The nation's largest provider of security guards plans to discontinue its lowest-cost health plans and steer roughly 55,000 workers to new government-sponsored insurance exchanges for coverage next year, in the latest sign of the fraying ties between employment and health care.
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The U.S. arm of Sweden's Securitas AB is among more than 1,200 employers that offer the kind of bare-bones health plans that must be phased out beginning Jan. 1 under the health-care law. Nearly four million people are enrolled in these so-called mini-med plans, which cap benefits to participants, sometimes at as little as $3,000 a year.
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"The mini-meds go away and we're not replacing them," said Jim McNulty, a spokesman for Securitas's U.S. operation. "Their option is to go to the exchanges."
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Other big employers, including Darden Restaurants Inc., Home Depot Inc. and Trader Joe's Co., say they will stop offering health insurance to part-time workers, and will direct those employees to the state exchanges. Darden, Home Depot and Trader Joe's previously offered mini-meds to their part timers.
Speaking of Trader Joe's, I wrote about how they are eliminating health coverage for part-time workers?the other day.? Instead of providing health insurance for their part-time workers, Trader Joe's will be writing them a check and pushing them on to the Obamacare exchanges...
Trader Joe's, the grocer once lauded for providing health care coverage to its part-time workers, is about to push those employees off its plan.
According to?a memo obtained by the Huffington Post, the company will stop covering?employees who work less than 30 hours per week.
The change is set for the start of 2014.?Instead of insurance, workers instead will get a check for $500 in January.
"Depending on income you may earn outside of Trader Joe's, we believe that with the $500 from Trader Joe's and the tax credits available under the [Affordable Care Act (ACA)], many of you should be able to obtain health care coverage at very little if any net cost to you," said?Trader Joe CEO Dan Bane?in the memo.
And this is a huge reason why the shift from full-time work to part-time work in America has accelerated this year.? Obamacare creates an incentive for companies to have more part-time workers and less full-time workers.? In fact, almost all of the jobs that have been "created" by the U.S. economy in 2013 have been part-time jobs.
But it is incredibly difficult to try to support a family on a part-time job.? Sadly,?the quality of our jobs continues to decline rapidly and only 47 percent of all adults have a full-time job in America today.? This is only going to continue to get even worse under Obamacare.
As a result of these trends, more Americans are going to be forced to go out and buy health insurance "on the individual market".? When they do, they are likely to be in for a really nasty surprise...
Andy and Amy Mangione of Louisville, Ky. and their two boys are just the kind of people who should be helped by ObamaCare. But they recently got a nasty surprise in the mail.
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"When I saw the letter when I came home from work," Andy said, describing the large red wording on the envelope from his insurance carrier, "(it said) 'your action required, benefit changes, act now.' Of course I opened it immediately."
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It had stunning news. Insurance for the Mangiones and their two boys,which they bought on the individual market, was going to almost triple in 2014 --- from $333 a month to $965.
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The insurance carrier made it clear the increase was in order to be compliant with the new health care law.
Are you ready to have your health insurance premiums potentially double or triple?
In other cases, families are discovering that health insurance companies are simply?cancelling their health insurance plans...
Across the country, insurers are sending out ObamaCare-induced health plan death notices to untold tens of thousands of other customers in the individual market. Twitter users are posting their ObamaCare cancellation notices and accompanying rate increases:
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Linda Deright posted her letter from Regency of Washington state: "63 percent jump, old policy of 15 yrs. cancelled." Karen J. Dugan wrote: "Received same notice from Blue Shield CA for our small business. Driving into exchange and no info since online site is down." Chris Birk wrote: "Got notice from BCBS that my current health plan is not ACA compliant. New plan 2x as costly for worse coverage." Small-business owner Villi Wilson posted his letter from HMSA Blue Cross Blue Shield canceling his individual plan and added: "I thought Obama said if I like my health care plan I can keep my health care plan."
In fact, this even happened to one member of Congress.??U.S. Representative Cory Gardner had purchased health insurance on his own because he wanted to experience what his constituents were going through, and he recently got a letter informing him that his old plan had been "discontinued"...
"After my current plan is discontinued," he wrote last week, "the closest comparable plan through our current provider will cost over 100 percent more, going from roughly $650 a month to $1,480 per month." He now carries his ObamaCare cancellation notice with him as hardcore proof of the Democrats' ultimate deception.
Is this what Obama was talking about when he promised that we could keep our old health insurance plans if we were happy with them?
In the end, millions upon millions of us are going to get pushed on to the Obamacare health insurance exchanges.
We were promised that there would be lots of competition and that prices would be reasonable.
Unfortunately, in some areas of the country it turns out that the "exchanges" are turning out to be "monopolies" where consumers?will only have one company to choose from...
?Although seven insurance companies currently operate in North Carolina, under the new Obamacare exchanges, those options will dwindle down to one in the majority of counties,? Ellmers said Thursday following the disclosure of figures by federal health officials showing that more than 60 percent of North Carolina counties will have only one insurance provider option under Obamacare: Blue Cross Blue Shield.
?The whole point of an online marketplace was to provide options, so North Carolinians could go online, compare prices, and choose plans from different companies. That is how competition is supposed to work!,? Ellmers said.
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Beginning October 1 under Obamacare, Blue Cross Blue Shield will be the only health insurance provider serving the entire state of North Carolina in the new Obamacare exchanges, serving all 100 of the state?s counties. Its competitor Coventry Health Care, which is owned by Aetna, will only reach 39 counties.
That leaves 61 counties, or 61 percent of all the state?s counties, in a Blue Cross Blue Shield-only zone.
Not only that, but a lot of these exchanges are not even going to be ready to function properly on October 1st.? For example, according to the Washington Post, the D.C. "health marketplace" is a complete and total mess at this point...
Just days away from launch, the District of Columbia's health marketplace is announcing a pretty significant delay.
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While the D.C. Health Link will launch a Web site on October 1, shoppers will not have access to the their premium prices until mid-November. The delay comes after the District marketplace discovered "a high error rate" in calculating the tax credits that low- and middle-income people will use to purchase insurance on the marketplace.
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The insurance marketplaces, if working as plan, are supposed to spit out an estimate for a tax credit after a shopper enters in some basic information about where she lives and how much she earns. In the District, that won't happen next month. Instead, the eligibility determination will be made "off-line by experts" by early November.
So who is going to benefit from this new system?
Well, it turns out that the health insurance companies will greatly benefit.? Health insurance companies helped write Obamacare, and their stock prices have absolutely soared since Obamacare was signed into law.? If you doubt this, just check out the amazing charts in this article.
Not that they were hurting under the old system either.? They have been raking in gigantic mountains of cash for years while trying to provide as little health care as possible.? For much more on this, please see my previous article entitled "50 Signs That The U.S. Health Care System Is A Gigantic Money Making Scam".
For the rest of us, Obamacare is going to be even worse than the old system.? A 2013 Health Care Survey that polled 200 top health care professionals discovered the following about what they believe Obamacare will bring...
-- 53 percent, ?Quality of health insurance policies will suffer.?
-- 51 percent, ?Quality of care will go down.?
-- 49 percent, ?The law is overly complicated.?
-- 42 percent, ?Insurance exchanges will be poorly managed.?
-- 37 percent, ?The law still allows insurance companies to be the middleman.?
-- 32 percent, ?Too complex for businesses.?
-- 19 percent, ?Americans will die earlier.?
So Americans are going to pay more, get worse care, have more paperwork and a more complicated system, and they are likely to die younger too?
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Government shutdown. Federal default. These looming political threats to the U.S. economy might scare investors to buy more U.S. Treasuries in the coming days as they seek a shelter for their cash.
While a protracted government shutdown, and particularly a default, could harm to the image of Uncle Sam's debt, its safe-haven appeal looks unchallenged in the short term.
Worried about rising chances that federal workers and contractors won't get paid if much of the government shuts down on October 1 amid a political standoff in Washington, investors are expected to go by the conventional crisis playbook - dumping assets perceived to be higher-risk and rushing into those seen as lower risk.
An extended shutdown, which would include furloughs and temporary unpaid leave for many government employees, would have a direct impact on businesses who rely on government contracts or spending by government employees. It could also lead to delays in spending on big-ticket items by companies and consumers as confidence takes a hit.
That could all harm economic growth and make it less likely that the Federal Reserve will curb its stimulus program through bond buying, further supporting prices of government debt.
Congress must also raise the federal borrowing authority by October 17 - when the government is expected to exhaust its $16.7 trillion debt limit.
Failure to do so could threaten a debt default but many analysts think the government would slash spending before declining to pay its creditors, leaving Treasuries relatively unscathed, at least initially.
Analysts said a risk-aversion move could push benchmark yields on 10-year notes below 2.50 percent, more than 0.50 of a percentage point below the two-year high above 3 percent set in early September. Late on Friday they were trading at about 2.63 percent.
"It's paradoxical that a government shutdown or hitting the debt ceiling is good for Treasuries, but you most likely would see a flight-to-safety into Treasuries," said Bill Cheney, chief economist at John Hancock Financial Services in Boston.
INVESTOR CONFIDENCE
Any fears about a protracted government shutdown haven't been reflected in recent trading. This month, Treasuries are likely to post their first gain in five months as the sector recovered from its summer swoon, sparked by the Federal Reserve decision last week to maintain its bond purchase program.
Growing demand for some Treasury obligations that mature before the October 17 debt limit deadline knocked their interest rates to below zero this week. A month ago, they traded at 0.02 percent.
The yields on benchmark 10-year Treasuries have already fallen to their lowest levels in six weeks partly on safe-haven bids on bets about a possible government shutdown next week.
Still, a long-lasting government shutdown, or, even worse, a default, could harm the Treasuries market.
"You don't want to damage investor confidence in U.S. Treasuries," said Craig Dismuke, chief economic strategist with Vining Sparks in Memphis, Tennessee. "If there is a flight-to-safety, it would a temporary one."
Ironically, the wrangling between President Barack Obama and Republican lawmakers over the budget, the debt ceiling and the Affordable Care Act - also known as Obamacare - was renewed at a time when the U.S. fiscal picture has improved this year.
Higher tax receipts, even in this sluggish recovery, have helped lower the federal deficit and reduced the government's borrowing needs.
PAST LESSONS
Washington last shuttered government offices and stopped paying workers for five days in November 1995 and then from mid-December 1995 to early January 1996.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury notes ended that year at 5.76 percent, down from 7.88 percent at the beginning of the year. The yield had begun falling earlier that summer after the Fed started cutting interest rates in July.
More than 15 years later, under the threat of a federal default, the 10-year yield has fallen 0.6 percentage point from just above 3 percent in three weeks during late July to early August of 2011, when Republican lawmakers and President Barack Obama were also bickering over raising the debt ceiling.
In the derivatives market back then, traders ratcheted up their bets on a U.S. default. The price of thinly-traded credit default swap contracts, which might have paid out if the U.S. government missed its debt payments for an extended period, jumped to 62 basis points, which was the highest since the worst days of the global credit crunch, according to data firm Markit.
This meant an investor would have paid 62,000 euros a year to insure 10 million euros worth of Treasuries against a default within a five-year period. The contract is denominated in euros to offset the impact of a default on the U.S. currency.
On Friday, the price on the five-year CDS on U.S. Treasuries was nearly 32 basis points, the highest since May.
It is difficult to predict what might transpire the coming days.
"Looking at history, there is not a clear pattern," said Cheney at John Hancock.
The 1995 government shutdowns barely interrupted a Standard & Poor's 500 index's <.spx> winning streak. It ended up 34 percent that year.
In contrast, the S&P tumbled 14 percent in the summer of 2011 during the first debt ceiling fight between Obama and the Republicans and following Standard & Poor's stripping of the United States' AAA-rating. Investors stampeded into Treasuries from stocks.
While many still expect that the White House and Republican leaders will come up with temporary fixes to avert a government shutdown and a default, analysts said there is some nervousness given that political leaders have remained far apart.
"We are conditioned for an 11th hour deal, but you can't take anything for granted," said Eric Green, global head of rates, currency and commodity research at TD Securities in New York.
If Washington were able to keep the government running and paying its bills, the 10-year yield will likely rise back to around 2.75 to 2.80 percent. It would also allow Wall Street to focus on whether the economy is showing any signs of picking up steam and the timing of the Fed's bond buying pullback, analysts said.
"The Fed tapering is way more important than all of this," Cheney said.
(Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Martin Howell and Tim Dobbyn)
SOCHI, Russia (AP) ? A man named Ravil catapults onto the dance floor and starts stomping out the lezginka, the arrogant rooster strut of the Chechen national dance.
Ravil's spontaneous performance is made even more unusual by the fact he's in one of the two gay clubs in Sochi, the southern Russian town that will host the Winter Olympics amid Vladimir Putin's harsh crackdown on gays. The morality campaign ? centered on a law banning homosexual "propaganda" ? has threatened to overshadow the games as it provokes an international outcry.
Paradoxically, Sochi is a far cry from the conservative lifestyle that the president is trying to promote.
At club Mayak, for example, the dancers are as diverse as the city itself: a Muslim who is a former market butcher, an Armenian who owns a strip club in a nearby town, a Ukrainian who loves to sing like Whitney Houston and dress like Adele.
And the men behind Mayak are hopeful that Sochi can remain the exception to the rule as its entrepreneurial, anything-goes crowd prepares to welcome the world. "This is a resort town," says Andrei Tenichev, the owner. "We have a saying: Money doesn't smell of anything."
Tenichev moved to the south from the bustling boomtown of Moscow when he saw that Sochi desperately needed another gay hangout. Opening Mayak was a no-brainer ? "money lying on the ground," he says ? and even on a rainy Monday in September the club's cabaret show attracted at least 70 guests.
The club owner, who worked in a gay bar in Moscow before opening Mayak eight years ago, says the climate for his line of business is even better in Sochi. In Moscow, some liquor brands refused to sell to the bar, saying: "A gay bar isn't our style."
"(In Sochi) we sell more expensive liquor than anywhere else in this town," Tenichev proudly says.
He expects tacit cooperation with the local government to last at least through the Olympics in February. The Russian Olympic Committee has not made any trouble for the club, he says, because "they don't want the slightest scandal" ahead of the games. But he also hopes that gay culture in Sochi has a better chance of surviving than in other parts of Russia, despite Putin's crackdown.
The city was a gay hub in Soviet times, a fact facilitated by the Soviet Union's closed borders, an easygoing southern temperament and, for many visitors, a healthy distance from family and friends back home ? giving the place a "What-happens-in-Sochi-stays-in-Sochi" appeal.
Valery Kosachenko, an enormous man in a Hawaiian T-shirt and tiny rain boots, is a regular at Mayak. He was born in Azerbaijan and spent much of his life working in a cafeteria in Novy Urengoy, a city on the subarctic tundra most known for its bountiful gas fields. Every year since the early 1980s, Kosachenko and his Ukrainian truck driver boyfriend would make the liberating trip down south.
Kosachenko, 56, still gets misty-eyed over Soviet-era gay culture, where gays would gather under the watchful eyes of the local Lenin statue. They referred to it as Grandma Lena, a disgruntled but beloved patron saint of their nightly romps.
Homosexuality was a federal crime in Russia until 1993, but in Soviet times caf? owners were tacitly glad to garner a reputation as a gay hangout: It brought extra cash flooding in, and a few extra bribes were enough to keep the police at bay.
According to Kosachenko, public affection with other men was easier than it is now. In his opinion, the laidback lifestyle and southern effusiveness for which Sochi was known meant that few people interpreted such casual displays as immoral ? partly because of a widespread ignorance about homosexuality.
"Sochi is a multinational city, they're relaxed about everyone," he said. "And before, people didn't know anything about it (homosexuality), and so no one thought much of a hug or putting your arm around someone."
The ethnic diversity applies to Mayak itself, where Tenichev estimates that over 30 percent of his clientele is from the Caucasus ? the mountainous ethnic patchwork that encompasses Georgia, Armenia, and much of Russia's restive south. Next to Halloween, the club's biggest events are its "Caucasian Nights" ? in which dancers dress up like big-eyed Armenian girls or Chechen warriors.
Ravil, the lezginka dancer who had just turned 29, sat in the back of the club with three dozen roses in his lap and held hands with Sasha, his boyfriend. Neither gave their surnames in Russia's current homophobic climate.
"There's a tolerance here? both in terms of ethnicity and orientation," said Sasha. "But you see for yourself what kind of laws our government is passing, how people relate to us, how religion relates to us. The iron curtain starts here."
Sochi, however, isn't an escape for everyone. Many gays who grew up here are chained to the same family and social pressures as in any other Russian provincial town.
Vlad Slavsky, 17, realized he was gay two years ago. He didn't tell anyone at school, but his classmates found out ? and he thinks they may have hacked his social network account.
"In school there's a prison mentality, they live by prison rules," he said, describing more than 10 physical attacks near his home and constant taunts from other schoolmates. He now carries pepper spray and takes a taxi if he's coming home late.
But those at Mayak manage to live fluid and flexible lives. Sergei Baklykov, the 32-year-old Ukrainian who sings like Whitney, says he wanted to be a woman for a while ? and the others rib him, joking that he gave up "because it was too expensive."
While Mayak's regulars have been able to adapt, they're hardly activists. Baklykov said he was "apolitical" and didn't want to be involved in the LGBT movement in its present state because he believes "it doesn't have a leader."
And while Sochi still serves as a refuge for Russian gays, the growing conservatism of the Russian public has meant that many find it easier ? and cheaper ? to travel abroad. Those who are left tend to be older or poorer.
Tenichev says that the number of gay visitors is naturally dropping, which has meant opening Mayak's doors more and more often to other visitors ? in particular to straight women.
"It's hard nowadays to call this a gay club," he said, noting that the average age of the gay visitors is increasing, and is now easily over 30.
"I'm drawn by what's abroad," said Kosachenko, who described a recent trip to the Canary Islands as mind-blowing. "But this is my own, and I'm used to it. Here I feel at home, so I'll learn to adapt."
UNITED NATIONS (AP) ? A meeting of the Pakistani and Indian prime ministers in New York this weekend is a fresh chance for one leader to push for peace on the subcontinent ? and likely the last chance for the other.
Three-time Pakistani premier Nawaz Sharif and India's Manmohan Singh are due to meet Sunday on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. It is their first face-to-face since Sharif's election victory in May. Singh will step down next year.
Sharif calls the meeting a chance for a "new beginning," but Singh has tamped down expectations for the talks which take place amid an upsurge in militant attacks in disputed Kashmir. Speaking Friday after a White House meeting with President Barack Obama, Singh said, "the epicenter of terror still remains focused in Pakistan."
The need for peace between the South Asian nuclear rivals has rarely been greater. They have been at loggerheads since Britain granted independence and carved up the subcontinent in 1947, but the impending U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan adds new uncertainty to a region increasingly threatened by Islamic militancy.
"It's timely for them to meet," said Karl Inderfurth, a former top U.S. diplomat for South Asia and now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington.
"It's Nawaz Sharif's first chance as the new prime minister to reach across to his Indian counterpart and it's maybe Manmohan Singh's last chance to do what he has repeatedly said he wants to do, which is open up a new relationship with Pakistan."
Both men are familiar with the pitfalls of seeking to improve ties between India and Pakistan ? a relationship scarred by three wars and deep mutual suspicion.
Sharif was in power when Pakistan first tested a nuclear bomb in 1998. But he also presided over one of the more upbeat episodes in recent relations with India.
He hosted then-Prime Minister Atal Vajpayee for a summit in Lahore in February 1999, where they signed a landmark declaration on avoiding nuclear conflict and opened a cross-border bus service.
Three months later the impetus for peace was crushed when a Pakistani military quietly infiltrated into an area of Indian-held Kashmir called Kargil, sparking fighting that left hundreds dead on both sides and could have sparked nuclear war. Sharif, who said the army acted without his knowledge, was ousted in a coup five months later.
Back in office again, Sharif is particularly keen to increase cross-border trade to jumpstart Pakistan's stricken economy.
"Pakistan and India can prosper together, and the entire region would benefit from our cooperation," Sharif told the General Assembly Friday.
But Singh has said relations can only improve once Pakistan cracks down on militants accused on staging attacks in India ? a perennial concern that has only intensified since the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 164 people in India's commercial hub. On Friday, Singh said, "the epicenter of terror still remains focused in Pakistan."
A renewed spate of violence along the disputed Kashmir frontier this year has threatened a decade-long cease-fire. On Thursday, suspected separatist rebels killed 10 Indian security forces in the Indian-held portion of the Himalayan region ? an attack that the top elected official there said was aimed at derailing the meeting of Sharif and Singh in New York.
Yet with time running out on his nearly decadelong premiership, Singh will be thinking about his legacy.
He was born in the northern Punjab village of Gah in what later became Pakistan, and within a year of taking office invited then-Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf to a cricket match in India. The two made heartening progress in talks and even pronounced in 2005 that the peace process between India and Pakistan was "irreversible."
Subsequent events, particularly the Mumbai attacks, proved that to be a folly.
Formidable obstacles remain toward achieving a lasting peace. Despite increasing people-to-people ties and tentative moves to ease barriers to commerce and travel, the security establishments on both sides still regard the other as the enemy. As well as the core dispute of Kashmir, the two nations competing interests in Afghanistan could intensify when the U.S. withdraws.
Arkansas' game with Texas A&M could turn into an offensive shootout, featuring the Razorbacks' running game, led by Alex Collins (pictured left) and Jonathan Williams, and the 2012 Heisman trophy winner, Johnny Manziel (pictured right).
After getting torched for over 300 passing yards by Rutgers, Arkansas faces one of the most formidable attacks in college football, in Texas A&M?s Air Raid with Heisman winner Johnny Manziel as its trigger-man. The Aggies torched the Razorbacks for 700 yards in 2012, winning 58-10 in College Station.
QUICK FACTS
TEXAS A&M
Head Coach: Kevin Sumlin (14-3, 2nd season)
2012 Record
11-2 (6-2 SEC)
2013 Record
3-1 (0-1 SEC)
Starters Returning
11 (6 offense, 5 defense)
Offense
Air Raid
Defense
4-3
KEVIN SUMLIN
Texas A&M head coach Kevin Sumlin and Arkansas offensive coordinator Jim Chaney should be familiar with one another, since Sumlin worked under Chaney as Purdue?s wide receivers coach from 1998-2000. Neither has the scoop on the others? offense, however, since both run different systems now. Sumlin made it to Oklahoma in 2003 and learned the Air Raid under offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson, who had learned it from Mike Leach before him. Sumlin headed out to Houston in 2008, taking the Air Raid with him. There, he found Case Keenum, and the Texas Tech-style Air Raid was his offense of choice.
TEXAS A&M OFFENSE
The offense Texas A&M runs may be described as an ?improvised Air Raid.? It often does not look like what Mike Leach or Kliff Kingsbury are doing due to the improvisation abilities of its quarterback, Johnny Manziel. Sumlin also inherited a better run-blocking offensive line than most Air Raid coaches have at their disposal, so the Aggies have added some zone running plays to the playbook. The between-tackles running ability of tailback Ben Malena against spread-out defensive fronts provides a great complement. These runs plus Manziel?s scrambles (over 1,000 rushing yards, mostly improvised but some called runs) helped A&M lead the SEC in rushing yards last season.
Texas A&M?s offensive line took a dip in quality when left tackle Luke Joekel was drafted second overall in the NFL draft. Right tackle Jake Matthews is still pretty good, and the line overall is quality. The wide receivers are where A&M is truly amazing. Mike Evans (6-foot-5, 225 pounds) is a mix of size, speed, and athleticism unlike any in college football. He had seven receptions for 279 yards against Alabama. If a team is able to contain him with only a couple of defenders, the rest of the A&M receiving corps isn?t quite as deadly. Malcome Kennedy is the next-best target for Manziel. They throw a lot of bubble screens (often packaged with zone runs) to keep the defense honest, and then take deep shots when the defense creeps up. If Arkansas is unable to tackle in the open field against these physical wide receivers, this game will turn into a rout rather quickly.
TEXAS A&M DEFENSE
At this point in the season, it appears that Texas A&M?s defense exists to fulfill the requirement that they keep 11 men on the field when the other team has the ball. Last season, Mark Snyder?s unit was rather feisty, though. They gave up a lot of yards and points, but much of that was because they were on the field for large chunks of time and had a lot of blowouts, which led to junk time scoring by their opponents. If the 2013 defense can reach the level of the 2012 defense, the Aggies will be right back in the national title picture. Until then, the Razorbacks are providing a tough matchup.
Texas A&M lost both interior defensive tackles. Opponents have had major success running the football straight up the middle. Two of the three linebackers are gone as well, and the Razorbacks' offensive line have an easy time opening up holes through the middle. The Aggies defense is pretty fast, however, so if they stack the box, getting the seal on the edge will not be as easy as it was against Louisiana-Lafayette and Southern Miss.
Therefore, in order to soften up the A&M defensive front, Arkansas must be able to throw the ball. If AJ Derby is the Razorbacks' quarterback (Bret Bielema tweeted that Allen will be available Saturday), he does not provide much of a deep threat, but did a decent job working the middle, underneath routes. Giving him help is the offensive line, who has given up just three sacks this season. The only sack allowed against Rutgers (top-10 nationally in sacks by coming in) came in desperation time. Texas A&M?s pass rush is not as good as Rutgers?, so Derby (or Allen) should have all day to throw on most plays. The Aggies will blitz a lot, but it will probably take a six-man rush (two blitzers) to generate major pressure. As long as whoever is playing quarterback for Arkansas can recognize blitzes and read his hot routes (not a given), the Hogs should avoid taking sacks.
HOPE
Hog fans want something to hope for against an old SWC rival that is bursting with confidence. Here are some nuggets to hang your hat on.
Opposing quarterbacks have rushed 27 times for -72 yards against the Razorbacks this season. Half of those runs (14) are sacks, but Arkansas did a fantastic job of containing two mobile quarterbacks (Terrance Broadway and Gary Nova) this season. Every quarterback has been sacked at least twice and rushed for negative yardage. Next up? Containing Johnny Manziel, whose ability to scramble supplements his ability to pass.
A Bret Bielema-coached team has never surrendered more than 48 points. This may be a moot point because it?s debatable that Arkansas could possibly score near 48 even if A&M did, but Bielema-coached teams rarely get torched defensively. The most points scored by a Bielema team (84) is nearly twice that number.
The matchup of Arkansas? offense vs. Texas A&M?s defense may actually be more favorable than the matchup of Texas A&M?s offense vs. Arkansas? defense. The Aggies? D is truly bad. Despite just one noteworthy opponent (Alabama, whose offense has floundered in its other two games), the Aggies are dead last in the SEC and 110th nationally in total defense. They are 106th against the run and 87th against the pass.
FILM STUDY
Let?s start with how NOT to stop Johnny Manziel. Alabama came out shockingly unprepared for the game a couple of weeks ago. They did change their usual 3-4 defense into a 4-2-5 look with some 4-1-6 dime packages, but other than that, they tried to play base defense, with their usual man-to-man bump-and-run coverage on the outside. Their early-game blitz packages were very vanilla and not tailored to A&M?s attack at all. Perhaps this was just so Saban could make Sumlin show his hand, because as soon as A&M jumped up 14-0 six minutes into the game, Saban abruptly switched to a better attack, apparently a more A&M-specific game plan. Although the Aggies still scored 28 more points, the defense did enough the rest of the way to allow the offense to win the game.
Here?s a bad blitz from early in the game. Linebacker CJ Moseley is going to blitz around the A&M right tackle, while the Tide defensive end (#42) is going to stunt to the inside, attempting to draw the tackle into blocking him and freeing up Moseley to have a free run at Manziel.
However, as you can see, this play breaks the cardinal rule of defending Manziel: NEVER LOSE CONTAIN. Manziel is much too fast for the blitzing Moseley, whose momentum carries him away from Manziel and allows the speedy QB to get outside the box for a 15-yard gain.
LSU had it right. The Tigers held Manziel to 27 rushing yards on 17 carries in 2012, and won the game 24-19, keeping the Aggies scoreless during the second and third quarters and half of the fourth.
Here, Barkevious Mingo crashes hard at left defensive end (bottom), but he?s not going straight for the quarterback. His job is to pull up and close off Manziel?s scramble lane to his right side. At the top of the screen, fellow defensive end Sam Montgomery is crashing hard to force Manziel to make a decision. If Manziel wants to scramble to his left, the spy linebacker (highlighted) is there to close off that lane. LSU is also reliant on its two defensive tackles to get pressure straight up the middle.
Here?s the result. Notice that Manziel has no scramble lane. The defensive tackles are coming up the middle, and the spy has closed off the lane around the defensive end. Manziel has to look to a running back screen that is not open, but since he has nowhere to go, he has to throw it and the play goes for no gain.
Arkansas is going to be best served by trying what LSU did. Unfortunately, Arkansas? secondary is not near the level of LSU?s, so the Razorbacks will either need some luck or they will need the defensive line to have a truly legendary game. The Hogs will need all of the following to use the "contain Manziel" strategy:
Extremely fast and agile defensive ends, capable of tackling Manziel in the open field... If they do manage to contain. Just getting leverage on Manziel isn?t enough, as he?s perfectly capable of escaping the grasp of even the surest tacklers.
Defensive tackles capable of getting pressure up the middle. Spread offenses like to ?spread? a defense out and attack in space, but the same concept can be used by a defensive line to get one-on-one blocking matchups. If Byran Jones/Darius Philon and Robert Thomas can get pressure up the middle, they can force Manziel to react quicker, shaving precious seconds off the amount of time the secondary has to hold coverage.
The Hogs have to be able to survive with just one or two linebackers on the field. Lake and Mitchell have to spy and make open field tackles, along with covering the zone read plays to Texas A&M running back Ben Malena.
KEYS TO THE GAME
ARKANSAS MUST win first down, offensively and defensively. This was a key to the game last week, and the Hogs failed on offense but were mostly successful on defense. Offensively, the Hogs faced way too many 2nd-and-9+ situations. For the game, Arkansas averaged 3.14 yards per play on first team. The goal needs to be 4.5-5.0 yards per play on first down. Arkansas' three best first-down plays were Williams? 21-yard pass to Henry on a trick play, and two runs by Keon Hatcher, one for 11 yards and another for an 8-yard gain. Without those three plays, Arkansas averaged a meager 1.53 yards per play. That is not going to win games. Defensively, the Razorbacks need to hold Texas A&M to under 4.0 yards per play on first down. Rutgers managed 4.44 yards per play on first down. These numbers include gains of 33, 16, 16, 11, 25, and 42, but also include three sacks and nine incomplete passes.
TEXAS A&M MUST slow the Arkansas running game and force the Razorbacks to beat them through the air. This one seems pretty obvious. Rutgers was very successful against Arkansas? run, holding the Hogs to 107 yards on 30 called runs (sacks and sneaks taken out). It might be tougher for the Aggies, who are 101 spots lower than Rutgers in the rush defense rankings (5th vs. 106th), and who gave up over 300 rushing yards to Rice.
ARKANSAS MUST be at least +3 in turnover margin. This may not be as hard as it appears. Arkansas finished +3 against a Rutgers team that traditionally takes care of the football. One of the turnovers was a little fluky, but the other two were forced by the defensive line getting pressure. AJ Derby hasn?t turned the football over in seven quarters as the Hogs QB and Allen threw just one interception in three starts. The Razorbacks will not win if they turn it over. Defensively, pressure will force turnovers, as Manziel is apt to make a bad decision with the football when under duress.
TEXAS A&M MUST be patient with the underneath routes. Arkansas blew a couple of coverages against Rutgers, but the Razorbacks are probably more stout against the deep pass than they looked in that game. Almost every successful pass route thrown against Arkansas? defense this year has been into the seam and hook zones (4-10 yards across the middle of the field), where Razorback linebackers and safeties rolling underneath have given coverage that is too soft. The Aggies are too good for the Hog defenders to slow down on shorter routes, but if Johnny Football gets an itching to go deep, the Hogs may have a chance at some turnovers.
MATCHUP OF THE GAME is Arkansas? offensive line against Texas A&M?s defensive front. To put it frankly, Arkansas is going to have to get lucky on defense to hold A&M under 42 points. Either the Aggies are going to have to come in unfocused, Manziel is going to have to try to force some passes that aren?t there, or he?s going to have to try to scramble against contain and get sacked or fumble against the Razorbacks' defensive ends. Or, perhaps less politically correct, some Aggies are going to have be injured or suspended. Ultimately, Arkansas? best defense is its offense. If Arkansas can work the clock, keep the defense resting, and score almost every time they have the football, it could be a relatively close game.
Without Brandon Allen, I don?t think Arkansas would be able to produce the offense necessary to keep up in a shootout. The Razorbacks should still rush for over 200 yards, and will probably top 400 yards of total offense either way, but they?ll need to score on every possession to keep up. I think Arkansas? defensive line is able to get penetration against a very good Texas A&M offensive line, but once you are through the line, actually corralling Manziel is a whole different animal. Arkansas? secondary often struggles to cover for five seconds, but 10, 15 seconds? Gulp.
