The Draw Play

Shoutout to apparent Draw Play reader Brett Kollman, who came up with this idea during my AMA two weeks ago. I gave him a shoutout on one of my better comics from last season so I’ll just say if you like film study analysis and are also usually confused by football film nerds talking, he does fantastic videos that help break down film in everyday language you’ll actually understand. Recommended. Thanks for the idea, man!

Since this comic isn’t really related to current news so there’s no real blog to write I’m just gonna take this time to talk a little upcoming 2019 Draw Play planning, mmmkay?

We’ve got one week left of this offseason and then it’s all finally done. Are you ready? I am so ready. This offseason has been difficult on my end due to personal life events and just a general creeping apathy knowing my team is garbage and probably not worth watching this year but against those odds I’m finding myself excited once again to watch some ball. I’m excited to see the stories that come out of the year. I’m excited to see what the NFL screws up this season. I’m betting it’ll be related to the pass interference challenge rule. I’ll likely end up making a comic on that subject once it has a genuine impact on a game. Knowing the NFL, it will actually have very little impact, except for the random time it costs Detroit a win.

I might even hit comic 1000 by the end of the year, depending on how many Checkdowns I do for Mondays since doing full comics on a Sunday gets tough. I’m thinking I’ll probably end up making two regular comics a week, plus up to 3 checkdowns a week, with no set schedule outside Mondays simply due to not knowing how much time or material I’ve have to work with. I do want to make more checkdowns, especially early on. I get asked “when is the hardest time to make comics” a lot, and while the obvious answer is July (because by then I’ve exhausted my backup supply of weird shit that didn’t fit anywhere in the regular season), the second hardest time is actually September.

During the first few weeks of the season, the news is a complete nightmare. Why? Because we don’t know what is important yet. Every win and every loss could potentially be the beginning of a season-long storyline. By October the season has settled in and we have started to get a sense of which teams are good and which teams are bad, and overall what stories we will be following that year. But September? Everything is possible, so everything gets roughly equal value in the news, and it’s easy to get caught up in a story that ultimately ends up nowhere. Last year the Bengals started 3-1 and had buzz. By October we knew the Bengals were not worth paying attention to. So with all this noise, I never know what to make comics about early on. But at least having too much material is better than having too little.

Also, just in case you forgot about it because I literally always forget to share it, I still have a Podcast.