Saturday, April 02, 2005

Spring Football Practice is Underway

On the fields by the Doyt, spring practice is underway. Obviously, given last year's success, there's a lot of anticipation. The team is senior-laden, and in as good a position as they ever will be to bring a championship back. (A MAC Championship, not a division championship.).

Only two things really stand in the way. The first is a road game at Miami. As documented here, we have only won one road game in the Meyer/Brandon era against a team which went on to have a winning record, and that was Purdue. As documented here and elsewhere, in those games our performance tends to be very poor. When last year ended, we expected to be playing NIU and UT at our place. Now that we are in the East, we are back to have a tough road game. We need to leap that hurdle.

In a related matter, there is great concern over the D. Not only were there graduation losses, but our best pass rusher left school. Can the D be the kind of D that delivers in a big game, on the road, against a team that has the talent to exploit weaknesses, and in a game where we aren't ahead 21-0 after five minutes. (Or, in the case of Toledo, a game where we were?)

Here's an article on the defensive preperations from bgsufalcons.com. One short editorial note. The big peformance against Memphis came when their All-American running back was essentially incapicitated for the whole second half, and for a signficiant time while we had a large lead. I don't really think that's when we turned the corner.

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