MAC Football Meetings....some uninformed analysis

First of all, it appears from my perusal of the MAC blogs, some of my "peers" were actually at the meetings. Me? Not so much. We have our editorial standards to maintain.

Anyway, there are some things to use here. First, the University has some stuff on the official site...there are some photos, and these make me ask precisely where in Ford Field they held this so-called media day because it looks like it was in the boiler room.

There is audio with Coach Clawson, Tyler and Jahmal Brown, the Falcons who were in tow. The announcer is Todd Walker, though he sounds like he has pneumonia.

So, I listened to the Clawson interview, and here is what he had to say, in general, and editing out the blah-blah like how hard he is working and how much he loves it, etc.

The key thing I noticed what there was one word he seemed to use quite a big... it was "overachieve." I thought that was interesting. After a few years of feeling like we underachieved, it would be nice to overachieve. I'm not sure Falcon fans view it as bleak as need to overachieve, but that might really be how it is.

Offensively, he said that we want a commitment to running the ball. The reasons: protecting leads, excelling in short yardage and the red zone, which are precisely the things that had the nation gnashing its collective teeth. However, he points out that the offensive players were recruited to play a spread attack, so we have to figure out how to run without a bunch of FBs and TEs. Our best players are QBs and WRs.

He talked about Tyler Sheehan, saying that the team needs Sheehan to have his best season, with more accuracy and better decisions. He hopes that a better run game will help but that the team needs Tyler to have a huge year.

On defense, he said we can expect to see a 4-man front as the base defense, and that the team has to excel in its base before it can vary. He noted that Sanderson, Mahone and Brown are all very good players, and "they better be" because everyone else is new....not without experience, just new to their role.

Finally, they talked about special teams. Beyond general agreement that the punting is in good hands, the kicking is as "big a concern" as he feels we have. The job is "wide open," which might mean we have two good kickers but probably means the opposite. This is scary.

My perception is these open kicking deals are very problematic, and when a guy misses a FG the instinct is to run the other guy out there next, and they never get any confidence (This has been a Wolverine specialty in recent years).

He said Jerry Phillips (the holdover who redshirted) was good in spots but inconsistent, and the other kicker is Matt Oczypok, a FR who (I can only guess) was recruited as a walk on. He is from Pittsburgh.

So, we'll keep our fingers crossed on that one. The inability to make a FG and a basic kickoff can really impact a team, so I hope we get this worked out, though the initial signals are not too positive.

The BG News has a little video with Coach, too