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13 Sep 2024

How Gophers revamped offense for better run-pass balance this season

by admin | posted in: News | 0

A person approached P.J. Fleck at the Minnesota State Fair this year with a burning question.

The Gophers football coach recalled the fan asking him: “‘Why do you keep running the same inside play?’”

Fleck took it as a fair question and showed a willingness to coach up his arm-chair quarterback.

“I was like, ‘You know there’s 57 ways to run that inside play?’ ” Fleck relayed, picking a number based on the multitudes of formations, motions/shifts and blocking schemes used for that inside zone run, a staple of the U offense. “They looked at me like I had eight heads because they didn’t expect that answer back.”

The observer still wasn’t satisfied, so the pair agreed to politely part ways.

But after two weeks of the Gophers’ season, that supporter probably appreciates some of the new wrinkles and variety within Minnesota’s offense going into a Week 3 matchup against Nevada at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at Huntington Bank Stadium.

“It’s just to evolve,” Fleck told the Pioneer Press this week. “You have to be able to change with the times.”

Fleck’s philosophical foundation of a strong running game to control time of possession and suffocate opponents will likely never change, but the Gophers are incorporating more quick passing concepts this fall. Fleck said a revamp of coaching schemes goes into each offseason, but he was willing to have this change be considered among his biggest shifts since he become the U coach in 2017.

“I think if you want to call it one of the bigger ones, sure, but I still don’t see it as huge,” Fleck said. “I see it as a change, and I see it as very different. But I don’t sit there and say, ‘Oh my gosh, we’ve completely reinvented the wheel.’ ”

The sample size has been small — only two games — and the biggest tests of the new schemes loom after this weekend: Iowa, Michigan and USC to start the string of nine Big Ten contests.

But the Gophers have deviated from heavy doses of the run-pass option (RPO) scheme they used so frequently with ironman tailback Mo Ibrahim to an attack that focuses more on new transfer quarterback Max Brosmer’s ability to process what coverages are being presented and distribute the ball as widely as he sees fit.

“It was kind of fun,” offensive coordinator Greg Harbaugh said about the offseason tinkering. “Because you put a lot of time and effort into that. It’s been the thing that, No. 1, we’ve studied, we’ve continued to work at (and) we addressed it with Max.”

Minnesota has still run the ball 56 percent of offensive snaps through two games, but that’s down from 62 percent across the entire 2023 season. Part of that shift is due to the Gophers’ current issues along the right side of its offensive line, which has contributed to only 2.7 yards per carry so far this season.

“We were going to take what the defense gave us,” Fleck said, while pointing out how Rhode Island committed to stopping the run with more defenders in the box. “We can sit there and be stubborn. … What you just said, whatever we’re averaging (per carry), and we need that average to go up. Or we could do what it takes to win the football game.”

Against Rhode Island, the Gophers’ 27 total completions (Max Brosmer’s 24 and Drake Lindsey’s three) combined for a single-game high across Fleck’s tenure at Minnesota. The Gophers also had 12 pass catchers against the Rams, another high since at least 2018. (Reminder: Rhode Island is a lower-level FCS school.)

“The key for us to have success is the ability to spread it around,” Fleck said about a season-long objective. He has routinely mentioned the added depth he sees on his team this season.

Fleck revealed that the Gophers coaching staff continually ranks their best players on offense and defense, from No. 1 to 20. (They do the same thing on defense, too.) It’s an effort to look in a slightly different way at how to get their best 11 players on the field.

When that list has included more offensive linemen — and Ibrahim or, say, Rodney Smith — the Gophers have run the ball at a higher clip.

“You rank them, you sit there and say, ‘OK, well, we got to find a way to get these guys the ball and have them impact the game as much as possible,’ ” Fleck said. “… So you’ve got to be able to adapt to that, too. And I think that’s what we’re doing.”

Through two games, Gophers receivers have had 60 percent of all pass targets, with tight ends at 15 percent. The most noticeable shift in the pie is running backs have received 25 percent of targets.

Standout sophomore tailback Darius Taylor, who played receiver in high school in Michigan, netted four receptions (on four targets) for 48 years against Rhode Island.

Harbaugh estimated three of Taylor’s grabs last weekend came on check-downs from Brosmer, who goes through his progression, starting with options downfield first. When they weren’t open, he quickly gets the ball to the running backs closer to the line of scrimmage.

The term “check-down” can be considered a pejorative in football, given its low-risk nature. But that’s not how Harbaugh sees it. He pointed to Taylor turning one check down into a big gain against Rhode Island; Jordan Nubin, for example, did a similar thing against North Carolina.

“I think Max does an excellent job when he feels those underneath defenders get out, he’ll either show that he’s going to take a shot and he’ll come down knowing that the shot isn’t there,” Harbaugh said. “… It goes back to what I said, probably in the first time I talked about Max: (His) high-end processing ability. If the pictures screwed up right from the start, he knows exactly where to go, right from the get-go.”

Part of the Gophers schematic alterations has included using more two-back formations. Sometimes it has been two running backs (Taylor and Oklahoma transfer Marcus Major); other times it has been a running back and a receiver (Daniel Jackson or Cristian Driver).

That formation is another nod to getting the Gophers’ best players on the field at the same time.

When Brosmer was brought in from New Hampshire — where he often threw to running backs — a quote from Detroit Lions quarterback Jared Goff was circulated before spring practices. Goff was describing offensive coordinator Ben Johnson: “He listens to his players and adapts what we do well.”

That has been Brosmer’s experience so far in Minnesota. “It’s pretty well defined in this spot,” he said this week. “I think Coach Harbaugh and his staff collectively have done an amazing job putting us as a team in a really good spot.”

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13 Sep 2024

Skeet, Pelissero: How to avoid AI-enhanced attempts to manipulate the election

by admin | posted in: News | 0

The headlines this election cycle have been dominated by unprecedented events, among them former President Donald Trump’s criminal conviction, the attempt on his life, President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance and his replacement on the Democratic ticket by Vice President Kamala Harris. It’s no wonder other important political developments have been drowned out, including the steady drip of artificial intelligence-enhanced attempts to influence voters.

During the presidential primaries, a fake Biden robocall urged New Hampshire voters to wait until November to cast their votes. In July, Elon Musk shared a video that included a voice mimicking Harris’ saying things she did not say. Originally labeled as a parody, the clip readily morphed to an unlabeled post on X with more than 130 million views, highlighting the challenge voters are facing.

More recently, Trump weaponized concerns about AI by falsely claiming that a photo of a Harris rally was generated by AI, suggesting the crowd wasn’t real. And a deepfake photo of the attempted assassination of the former president altered the faces of Secret Service agents so they appear to be smiling, promoting the false theory that the shooting was staged.

Clearly, when it comes to AI manipulation, the voting public has to be ready for anything.

Voters wouldn’t be in this predicament if candidates had clear policies on the use of AI in their campaigns. Written guidelines about when and how campaigns intend to use AI would allow people to compare candidates’ use of the technology to their stated policies. This would help voters assess whether candidates practice what they preach. If a politician lobbies for watermarking AI so that people can identify when it is being used, for example, they should be using such labeling on their own AI in ads and other campaign materials.

AI policy statements can also help people protect themselves from bad actors trying to manipulate their votes. And a lack of trustworthy means for assessing the use of AI undermines the value the technology could bring to elections if deployed properly, fairly and with full transparency.

It’s not as if politicians aren’t using AI. Indeed, companies such as Google and Microsoft have acknowledged that they have trained dozens of campaigns and political groups on using generative AI tools.

Major technology firms released a set of principles earlier this year guiding the use of AI in elections. They also promised to develop technology to detect and label realistic content created with generative AI and educate the public about its use. However, these commitments lack any means of enforcement.

Government regulators have responded to concerns about AI’s effect on elections. In February, following the rogue New Hampshire robocall, the Federal Communications Commission moved to make such tactics illegal. The consultant who masterminded the call was fined $6 million, and the telecommunications company that placed the calls was fined $2 million. But even though the FCC wants to require that use of AI in broadcast ads be disclosed, the Federal Election Commission’s chair announced last month that the agency was ending its consideration of regulating AI in political ads. FEC officials said that would exceed their authority and that they would await direction from Congress on the issue.

California and other states require disclaimers when the technology is used, but only when there is an attempt at malice. Michigan and Washington require disclosure on any use of AI. And Minnesota, Georgia, Texas and Indiana have passed bans on using AI in political ads altogether.

It’s likely too late in this election cycle to expect campaigns to start disclosing their AI practices. So the onus lies with voters to remain vigilant about AI — in much the same way that other technologies, such as self-checkout in grocery and other stores, have transferred responsibility to consumers.

Voters can’t rely on the election information that comes to their mailboxes, inboxes and social media platforms to be free of technological manipulation. They need to take note of who has funded the distribution of such materials and look for obvious signs of AI use in images, such as missing fingers or mismatched earrings. Voters should know the source of information they are consuming, how it was vetted and how it is being shared. All of this will contribute to more information literacy, which, along with critical thinking, is a skill voters will need to fill out their ballots this fall.

Ann G. Skeet is the senior director of leadership ethics and John P. Pelissero is the director of government ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. They are among the co-authors of ” Voting for Ethics: A Guide for U.S. Voters,” from which portions of this piece were adapted. They wrote this column for the Los Angeles Times.

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Farah Stockman: There’s a right way and a wrong way to wield sanctions

by admin | posted in: Politics | 0

Pascale Solages, an anti-corruption activist from Haiti, burst into tears of joy last month when she heard that the U.S. Treasury Department had finally slapped sanctions on Michel Martelly, a former president of Haiti who is accused of drug trafficking, money laundering and fueling violent gangs in Port-au-Prince. It was a sign that the U.S. government, which once supported Martelly, was actually listening to the Haitian people. And it raised her hopes that Martelly, who lives in Miami, might finally lose his political influence and be brought to justice.

“It’s a really important step,” she told me.

Her words struck me because I’ve been critical of the proliferation of U.S. sanctions in recent years, after binge-reading research papers on the collateral damage they cause. The more I read, the more convinced I became that crippling sanctions on entire countries — as in the case of Cuba, Iran and Venezuela — are counterproductive. They create widespread misery but strengthen autocrats’ grip on power by bankrupting independent businesses that might have served as counterweights. Those left standing become beholden to the regime or to criminal networks that can help them sidestep U.S. laws.

Sanctions also backfire by driving adversaries like Cuba, Iran and Venezuela further into the arms of Russia and China, solidifying what has been called an “axis of the sanctioned.” Don’t take my word for it. Read the analysis The Washington Post published this summer about how even senior U.S. officials fear that sanctions, which have become a tool of first resort, are being overused. Or read the letter that hundreds of legal scholars from around the world wrote to President Joe Biden last month, in which they described sanctions on Iran, Cuba, Syria and North Korea as “collective punishment.”

But asset freezes and visa bans on individuals — like the former Haitian president — can be a different story.

Targeting keptocrats and human-rights abusers

Targeted sanctions like those are often the only way kleptocrats and human rights abusers ever get held accountable. While the sanctions might not change behavior, they send a strong signal and impose a stigma that can serve warnings to others. They cause less collateral damage, and they provide more opportunities to craft deals that can change the status quo. After being imposed, they give the United States a valuable bargaining chip, such as the promise to unfreeze assets if the offender releases political prisoners or steps down from power.

Thomas J. Biersteker, who advises the United Nations and several governments on designing effective targeted sanctions, told me that targeted sanctions on individual people “offer more choices and opportunities” than sweeping sanctions on entire countries. He thinks governments should be more strategic about how they are used, and the governments should experiment more often with rolling them back to see if that produces a change in behavior. “That’s why I say that sanctions are overused but underutilized,” he said.

They aren’t perfect. Questions about due process — how much proof of bad behavior should be required to impose sanctions on someone, and whether their spouses or children are fair game — remain unresolved.

Yet, in countries that are keen to stay on Washington’s good side, subjecting one bad guy to sanctions can produce swift results.

Examples …

In 2019, sanctions against a corrupt Latvian oligarch prompted the government of Latvia to strip him of control over a port that he ran. In 2022, U.S. sanctions against a notoriously corrupt Ukrainian judge helped spur some long-awaited judicial reforms.

And last year in Guatemala, targeted sanctions helped rescue the country’s democratically elected president, Bernardo Arévalo — an anti-corruption crusader — from a coup by the kleptocratic elite. When powerful forces looked poised to block Arévalo from taking office, two things saved the country’s democracy. The first was an unexpectedly strong protest movement initiated by Indigenous leaders and young people in Guatemala. The second was the Biden-Harris administration, which canceled nearly 300 U.S. visas of members of Guatemala’s elite and slapped sanctions on Miguel Martínez, a close associate of the incumbent president, Alejandro Giammattei, for corruption and “interfering with the country’s democratic transfer of power.”

A month later, Arévalo was sworn in. “The Biden administration and Kamala Harris has been very important for democracy in Guatemala,” Andrea Reyes, a Guatemalan lawmaker from the Seed Movement party, told me.

Of course, such victories are fragile and most elusive in countries that don’t mind antagonizing Washington. In Venezuela, the bleeding wound of the Western Hemisphere, the Biden administration eased oil sanctions in exchange for a free and fair election. But President Nicolás Maduro has refused to give up power since the presidential election in July, in which he was almost certainly defeated. Instead, he is digging in, cracking down on protesters and political rivals. Edmundo González, a former diplomat who is widely believed to have won the election, fled the country for Spain. María Corina Machado, the leader of the opposition, has gone into hiding.

The United States can’t just sit back and do nothing. It has little choice but to continually add people to the list of sanctioned Venezuelans. Even if the sanctions won’t pry Maduro from power, they are one way to extract some modicum of justice for the people of Venezuela.

Infamous members of the Maduro regime

Maduro and his wife have already been hit with sanctions, but there’s a slew of businessmen connected to the regime who remain untouched, including 232 current and former military officers who live in Florida or own businesses there, according to Ewald Scharfenberg, a Venezuelan investigative journalist.

“It is almost a joke,” he told me.

His reporting suggests that one of the most infamous members of the Maduro regime, Alexander Enrique Granko Arteaga, who was accused of torture by the European Union, manages to keep a financial foot in Florida through a network of companies owned by his relatives and allies, despite being hit personally with U.S. sanctions in 2019.

He argues that targeting businessmen connected to Maduro in Florida might weaken support for the regime. “They want to enjoy their wealth not in Havana or Belarus, but in London or Paris or Miami — mainly Miami, which is the dream of every Venezuelan,” Scharfenberg said.

It may well be that the biggest benefit such sanctions can bring is boosting the morale of activists on the ground who are risking their lives and searching for signs that the dictatorship might one day be defeated. Adam Keith, director for accountability at Human Rights First, who works with human rights defenders around the world, told me, “Hearing from an outside voice as powerful as the U.S. government means something to them.”

Fighting corruption and impunity

For Solages, it means vindication. She has spent the last six years fighting corruption and impunity in Haiti through her organization, Nou Pap Dòmi — and trying to get U.S. officials to acknowledge that the former president was involved in drug trafficking and gangs, and do something about it. She’s been forced to flee her country, and friends of hers have been killed in the struggle for justice and better governance of Haiti.

Sanctions alone are not enough, she said. “We want to see them go to jail,” she told me. “We want to seize what they stole from the country.” But sanctions at least serve as some sort of promise that Haitians’ struggle will not be in vain.

Farah Stockman writes for the New York Times.

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