If you’re worried about how strength and conditioning has gone so far this offseason, let Lorenzo Carter ease your mind a bit.
Holy moly. That’s fit.
Daily Archives: March 17, 2015
If spring practice has started, it must be time for Dawg porn.
Filed under Georgia Football, The Body Is A Temple
The next all-name team candidate
Welp, I’m a little disappointed that Georgia’s lost out on a great name, with Chauncey Gardner’s re-commitment to Florida, but all is not lost on that front, it seems.
Georgia can always use a little more Character. Of course, in the immortal words of Winston Wolf,
Filed under Georgia Football, Recruiting
As spring practice gets underway, who rubs off on whom?
I won’t say it’s the biggest question of the spring, but it’s the most intriguing one to me:
Richt and Schotty have said multiple times that the offense won’t change much at all, but we’ll begin to see how much of that is coach speak and how much is true when spring practice starts today.
We all know Richt’s criteria in making the hire to replace Bobo, but there’s also this comment.
“If the staff doesn’t change at all, you’re still going to visit somebody to learn new ideas to stay on top of what’s going on out there,” Richt said. “When you change staff, then you have guys that live in house who maybe you would go visit, so you have that chance to exchange ideas and have it all come together to where it makes the most sense for us.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But it does make me wonder if Schottenheimer puts more of his mark on the offense than we might have otherwise expected. And, of course, what that leads to. Stay tuned.
Filed under Georgia Football, Strategery And Mechanics
Rodney Garner gets ready to do what Rodney Garner does.
That is, adapt to a new defensive coordinator’s scheme.
Will Muschamp explained some of the ways he is changing Auburn’s defense last week. “There were a lot of hybrid guys,” Muschamp told reporters. “They played the Star position, which is a Nickel for us. We ask our nickel to do a little bit more coverage in our scheme and system.” Former coordinator Ellis Johnson used the Star as a safety/linebacker combo in his 4-2-5 scheme. Muschamp’s Nickel is more of a third safety or third corner, depending on the situation.
Muschamp also uses a hybrid position called the Buck, which is a 4-3 defensive end who can move around the formation like a 3-4 outside linebacker. At Florida, Dante Fowler Jr. filled that role. At Auburn, redshirt sophomore Carl Lawson should thrive in the position. “I think he’ll be very effective,” Muschamp told reporters. “I know he has very good initial quickness and a very good first step. That’s one of the critical factors at that position that you have to have to be successful.” The 6’2”, 261-pound Lawson is still working his way back from a torn ACL suffered last summer, but he should be at full speed by preseason camp.
Really, think about it. How many defensive line coaches have played under as many different approaches as Garner has over the last fifteen years? He ought to write a survival book about it.
Eric Norwood’s latest successor
You know how we like to joke about certain kids who seem to have been in a program forever, as in “Norwood, the eleventh year senior…”? Last year’s standard-bearer, Florida’s Andre Debose, is gone. But John Theus has a suggestion as to who’s the next man in line.
The rest of the offensive line has the luxury of four returning starters in guards Greg Pyke and Brandon Kublanow and tackles Theus and Kolton Houston.
“It’s like Kolton’s ninth year and my fourth,” said Theus, a senior.
Houston received a sixth year of eligibility from the NCAA in December.
Make it a good one, Kolton. There won’t be a tenth, er… seventh chance.
Filed under Georgia Football
Change of possession
It’s too soon to know if Florida has improved itself in the change of head coaches, but judging from Jim McElwain’s comments on the first day of practice, it’s certainly mellowed.
But the 6-foot-2 Grier, a decorated high school quarterback from Davidson, North Carolina, took the first snap of the spring Monday. Although many outsiders viewed it as an indication that Grier has an edge over the 5-foot-11 Harris, McElwain acted as if he didn’t even know Grier would get the first snap.
”I didn’t know, did he?” McElwain said. ”Did he take the first snap? ”I didn’t (see that). I didn’t. Somebody had to I guess, so he must have ran in there first. Good for him, nice job.”
Regardless, the spring will give McElwain a chance to evaluate his players, devise an offense and have at least a better idea of what to expect in the fall.
”There’s some base principles you’re going to get in no matter what,” he said. ”I think the big part for us is just the discovery of what guys do best, what guys need to work on and hopefully then in turn not put them in situations to not be successful. It’s kind of like `In Search Of’ with Leonard Nimoy. You know the old show Leonard Nimoy used to have? `In Search Of.’ That’s what we are this spring.”
You think Boom even knows who Leonard Nimoy was?
Filed under Gators, Gators...
Actions speak louder than words.
And the words themselves are pretty loud.
“I just honestly want to do what’s best for my health,” Borland told “Outside the Lines.” “From what I’ve researched and what I’ve experienced, I don’t think it’s worth the risk.”
You wonder if Borland’s decision to retire in the face of concussion concerns does more to move the debate than the years of studies and untimely deaths have. It’s one thing for people outside the game, including retired players, to have doubts. It’s another to watch the talent walk away.
Filed under The Body Is A Temple
“The most important bill of the session, is it not?”
I haven’t said much about the Todd Gurley bill, the one that would criminalize people who lead college athletes into behavior that jeopardizes their NCAA eligibility, winding its way through the Georgia legislature because:
- I have a natural antipathy towards knee-jerk legislation that’s crafted in response to something that happened to a specific person. (“Numbered House Bill 3 to reflect Bulldog’s jersey number…”)
- It’s unlikely to pass in the Senate.
- It’s a really stupid idea.
Doubt me on the stupid? Let the bill’s author explain.
“The individual who enticed him to sell his autograph was not punished, and that is the reason for this bill,” said the bill’s author, Rep. Barry Fleming, R-Harlem.
A 2003 law allows colleges to sue one of their own alumni whose actions harm the whole school’s eligibility, but that didn’t cover the Gurley situation.
“We punish the person who sells alcohol to minors as well as the person who buys the alcohol,” Fleming said, arguing the buyer of the autographs should have been punished the way Gurley was with the four-game suspension he served during the fall.
Nice analogy. Evidently nobody has bothered to point out to Rep. Fleming that the NCAA’s rules aren’t codified criminal law in this country. Although I’m sure Mark Emmert wouldn’t mind if some legislative body out there wanted to make the attempt.
Oh, and as far as punishing somebody “the way Gurley was”, Fleming’s bill imposes a $25,000 fine and jail time on somebody who is doing nothing more than engaging in normal commerce. And by normal commerce, I mean doing something that with any person on the planet other than a college student-athlete wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. You know, that whole free enterprise thing that we love to sing praises to here.
Fleming’s a Georgia grad, natch, so I’m sure this will stand him in good stead at whatever tailgates he attends. But it’s a really dumb stunt.
Filed under Crime and Punishment, Georgia Football, Political Wankery, The NCAA
Get The Picture 