Scrimmage/Season Ticket Event

So, this time I was at the scrimmage and can provide some first-hand observations, such as they are.

First, though, from the part where Coach Jinks spoke after lunch.  He spoke directly about the awful summer the program had with the off-the-field issues.  You have to give him credit.  He took the issue on, accepted responsibility, said that players would be held accountable and then made a pitch that the program is headed in the right direction.

That last bit will be tested by events (or lack of events) in the future.  But, I have often said, if Coach Jinks could win some games, he's the kind of guy a fan base could really get behind.  Compare, for example, the reactions from Coach with those of, say, Art Briles, Phil Fulmer...you get the idea.

The most important thing is that he acknowledged that the fan base doesn't accept this from our program.  We understand how difficult it is on a team, but we expect to have good representatives of our university.  And Coach said something I think is very important and often forgotten among our transient coaches...and that is that his first responsibility is to the University.  It's not about a coach or a program or a career...it's about a University and a place we love (probably 75% of the room raised there hand when asked if they were BG alums).

OK.  Onto the field.

My wife asked me who was winning, and I said "everyone on our schedule," which is 100% just a joke because I love.

It was limited. I don't think Doege played, unless I missed him, and it was a lot of 2s and 3s for the day.

The defense had some moments, but then again they were often playing against the offensives 2s or 3s.  Brandon Harris made some big hits in the backfield.  BG really could use the help at LB and he seemed to be dominating, as you would expect in a scrimmage.

I thought Grant Loy made some nice throws and seemed to be more complete than what we saw previously.  Veasley also seemed to make some good throws, those he was hampered by the fact that our ability to protect the QB apparently does not extend to his level of the depth chart.

There was only one TD, and that was Hargroves on a long TD run.  He is definitely a dynamic player, but I don't think he was running against 1s either.

There was a lot of special teams work.  Both the punting and the placekicking were better than I expected, but the expectations were pretty low.  There were a couple of really nice punts and a couple of really low ones with terrible coverage.  BG made its XP and the only FG they tried (which was about 40 yards I think and done on a hurry-up drill).  The kickoffs were mixed, too, a couple good ones and then one or two low, short ones that would have been returned.  BG muffed a short kickoff attempt, too.

One last thing.  Before the scrimmage actually started, BG was running through a defensive drill of sorts where the LBs were in position and there were some guys acting like offensive players.  And the LBs were just walking through what their first two steps were based on certain movements of the offense.  It was super slow and repetitive.  I never saw anything like it in this kind of practice or this close to the start of the season.  It will be really interesting to see how Pelini's defense develops over the course of the year.  Nowhere to go but up.

Anyway, it was great to be back at the Doyt.  The University put on a nice event for the fans and I'm counting the days for the two weeks to go by.