2 hours and then some in the books and they're still out there lined up and going at it!
Looks like the crowd is slowly dwindling, though, and I'm wondering if they have the Sebo Cam automatically set to still photos only during Saturday afternoon/evening? It was streaming along just fine this morning, but now it's all static shots, updated on refresh.
Oh yeah, word from the "pep rally" is brown with white pants for next Saturday.
"I don't believe I can name a coach, anywhere, anytime, anyhow, who did it better than Doyt Perry."
-1955 BG Assistant Bo Schembechler
Glad they are going brown on white, I think that will look better, but if they didn't do it we would never know.
I don't know about my heart hurting, but it is making me excited to get to the Doyt bright and early on Saturday the 9th. It is nice that I can be so far away and peek in on stuff like that. After months of checking that site every free second and only seeing an plain, empty green expanse of grass , it is great seeing people in the bleachers and orange blobs moving around on the field.
Ed and I were at the pep rally and watched a little bit of the scrimmage. Our kickers and punters looked pretty good. I don't think Brandon will have to always go for it on 4th down this year becaused we don't have a kicker. One of our kickers nailed a 452 yard FG, it had a lot of air under it like he could have made it from the 50 yard line. Turner and Barnes looked pretty good at QB I thought. I think the defense looked pretty good for having so many young guys on it. Overall, I was impressed by how we looked.
There were probably 200 or so people there. Not a ton, but there were a few. I didn't get there till 6:00, so I don't know how many were at the earlier events.
The team looked okay in places and not so okay in others. They broke up and did a LOT of positional drills before starting to come together. Hard to really guage things from positional drills. Big Bird has one heckuva leg, lotsa kickoffs into the endzone. Made a 40 yard FG with about 15 or more to spare. Had a couple ugly kicks as well, but he's young and has a ton of talent in that leg. Punts looked terrible. Oh, not Rojas, he looks fine, but a new punter does not a puntteam make. First punt they ran out of a standard formation and some dude on the block team caught the punt right in his belly. No protection at all. They went to the spread out thing with the 3 guys back and there were consistently 4-6 guys going full speed into that 3 man wedge and throwing them back into Rojas. When Rojas did get the ball off they were pretty good, but the rest of the unit was fugly. They tried him doing the roll out punt once and it was awful. He totally shanked it OB for about a 10-15 yard punt.
When they first started throwing passes (no defenders) it was apparent that our passing game will struggle this year. They started lining up 2 WRs to the right and 2 QBs in the backfield. The outside WR would run a fake post-out route and the inside WR was running a corner route. One QB would throw to one of the WRs the other would throw to the other. They ran this probably 20-25 times rotating the WRs and QBs. We couldn't tell the QBs since none had numbers, but they all looked pretty similar. They'd do okay on the out route and of the 20 times I think there was only 1-2 decent passes on that corner. Ball either out of bounds, or floating and making the WR stop, or to the wrong shoulder, etc, etc. Very poor showing on that pass...also the LOS was the 25, so this was only a 25 yard downfield pass.
Then they started lining up DBs on the WRs. In this situation #12 & #86 looked to be the best of the WRs going. Freak told me that #86 was Charles, so that's promising, no idea who #12 was (Practice jerseys so numbers weren't even accurate). It should be noted that Charles also returned a kickoff that would've been 6.
Once they lined up on 11 on 11's they did a little work with 1s-vs-1s, but only a few plays. We ran the option with some success with almost nothing in the passing game.
Shortly thereafter they had the first teams going against the scout teams. Not sure what kind of practice this was for the starting defense because Hunter didn't make one decent throw the entire time. It was a lot of ducks thrown into triple coverage. So I didn't really watch the defense too much.
I watched thet first team offense versus the scout team and I'm not too enthused with whichever african american QB was playing tonight. I'm assuming that it was Barnes since he'll be the one starting next week, and that kid just flat out doesn't have a clue. They were rotating him & Sheehan in & out. Sheehan has only been here for a month or two & he already has a better grasp of the offense than Barnes (assuming it was him & not Turner). Barnes would drop back stutter in the pocket for a second then try to roll out one way or the other. He was a day late on a good portion of his throws, and there were guys open for him most of the time. Conversely, Sheehan would set up in the pocket and deliver the ball very quickly. In short, he looked a LOT more comfortable in the offense than Barnes.
The running game looked pretty strong. Winovich had one notable blow up block to create a big hole. Macon had at least 2, and probably a 3rd, run that were definite TDs. For the entire scrimmage #5 was the best player on the field, IMO. He does have issues catching the ball though, which is disheartening. He had 2-3 notable dropped passes.
In the end it's hard to really guage the team after watching these things. The defense looked good, but the guys they were going against looked lost. The first team offense looked good running the ball, but the passing game has a LOOOOONNNNNGGG way to go to be serviceable. Sheehan looked better than Barnes, IMO, but in straight up passing drills none of the QBs really stood out. Macon looks very fast. DB #21 had a nice hit to jar a ball loose, well timed, but it was a nother lower shoulder close eyes and hit the guy...had the receiver held the ball and made a move immediately he would've been gone as whoever the DB was was totally selling out on the hit and not even thinking about using his arms to wrap up. Charles looked pretty good at WR, but he too had a couple drops.
This team has a long way to go to compete for a MAC title. There looks to be some talent here, but they players are not nearly as ready for the season to start as we are, IMO.
Thanks for the info hammb. I think that #12 is Chris Wright, who was listed as a DB, but someone in an earlier thread said they moved him to WR. I'm excited to see Macon play, I think he can easily be a 1,000yd back this year! But now I'm nervous about Barnes at QB, I was hoping he would be good at running the offense but just bad at throwing. It sounds like he isnt comfortable with O either? Maybe give Sheenan a crack or is he too slow to run the option? Lots of ?'s going into the opening game it sounds like, but I am still excited!
4th & 13 on PU 32yd line.. 56,000 fans up on their feet screaming, i held my breath the entire play trying to make as little noise as possible.. wouldnt u know Sharon would make the biggest touchdown catch in the history of BG Football, FALCON UP!
Based on what I saw tonight...we're going to have a more balanced running game this year than we have in my recent memory. Winovich is a quality FB and Dan Macon is going to run for a ton of yards. Bullock and VanDemark look like capable backups. We'll be fiene there. The Qb's looked a little better. They were all wearing blue jerseys, so it was kind of hard to sort them out, but they looked a bit more consistenet than they did in the spring. They were accurate for the most part. Sheehan has perhaps the strongest arm of the top three, but he's also the least accurate.
Big Bird has a monster leg...he put a couple of FG attempts through from 40 yards out that looked like they had an extra 10-15 yards under them. He alos put a kick off or two in the endzone.
Rojas has a strong leg too, but seemed a little less consistent.
We worked out of the same punt formation as last year for the most part...
I still think it's neutral in its sexual orientation.
The defense looked very quick and disruptive. Jacob Hardwick was giving them fits from left DE. The RT couldn't block him. PJ Mahone made some nice plays at safety...Brandon singled him out a time or two.
The most postive thing I took away from the scrimmage was the approach of the coaches. They were a lot more vocal and they pushed the team harder than I've seen in the past few years.
We have a chance to be a really good fototball team by the end of the year...the first few weeks might be a tad rough until the talent jells.
Flipper must've been watching the QBs different than me. I didn't think any of them looked particularly accurate when throwing without defenses, but I put way more stock in how they looked in 11 on 11.
In 11 on 11 drills I thought all the African American QBs looked pretty poor. Barnes looked especially bad. It wasn't so much that his throws sucked, it's that he didn't look comfortable running the offense. He was consistently a second or two late on making his reads, and almost looked afraid to throw the ball at times. Sheehan looked much more comfortable setting up and throwng than any of the other guys, IMO.
It is hard to get a real good guage for the team as a whole when the defense is letting up on QB pressure and they aren't really tackling.
It should also be noted that we're running some very strange formations this year. Most of the formations look like pro-style offensive sets but with the QB in shotgun like about 4 yards behind the LOS. This was unusual and different than what we've seen in the past, I think. We ran a lot of sets with a single tailback 7 yards deep (like you would in a standard one back), but the QB would be lined up at 3 deep...it really looked like a standard I formation, with nobody under center These formations may confuse some teams early, because I've never seen them. It was wierd to see a guy take a shotgun snap and still drop back a couple steps before setting up to throw.
I was watching the positiondrills and they were doing a pretty good job of hitting there WR's in stride. There wasn't a lot of zip on some of the throws, but they were usually on the money. Barnes and Turner both threw (at least I assume it was them because Sheehan was paired with another african american QB that I assume was Glaud) some very nice balls on the corner routes.
Hammb, I think you may have mistaken Glaud for Barnes. In my opinion Barnes looked fine today, but Glaud looked very uncomfortable running the offense. I do agree that Sheehan is coming along well.
Can anyone confirm and tell everyone on this board that is true that Aaron Davis is now a linebacker, so they believe me....
These formations may confuse some teams early, because I've never seen them. It was wierd to see a guy take a shotgun snap and still drop back a couple steps before setting up to throw.
