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- Aug 24, 2011
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Well, the Coach P era is underway. A day and a half late, and without answering a lot of questions, but underway with a W. While there may have been fewer people in the building than we've had since moving into the Rent, given the combination of the change of date, the Holiday weekend, the opponent and what people had dealt with at their homes this week I thought everyone did a good job of getting their butts to their seats. That was the perfect storm of factors against attendance, and the building didn't look empty once people got in. Crowd wasn't enthusiastic at all, but when you play a noon game in high 80s weather against a I-AA opponent following a hurricane, it is was what you would expect. I hope for a much more enthusiastic crowd in two weeks, but I don't doubt we'll have one. A huge, less convenient gray lot was open, but for reasons known only to management they were keeping people from using the grey spaces closer to the stadium. I pulled in to the better spaces (don't know how, and someone yelled at me in spanish) at 10, and was 4 rows from the stadium, but no one ever followed me there. Weird. But, parking patterns switch, and I'm sure it will be worked out. Stadium looked great. Good to be back. I'll leave it to others to comment on the game experience changes. Frankly, I don't care a lot. I watch the football. When there is a break, I'm browsing looking at the stats or other scores.
What did we learn about the team yesterday? Not a lot frankly. The opponent was so overmatched, and you got the feeling that we were playing very vanilla, so I really don't think we learned anything about whether the team is better or worse than you might have thought. We'll know a lot more Saturday night. Overall, the D was impressive until Jerome Junior missed the tackle on the long pass (again -- I had hoped never to be typing that this year), and the O was much less impressive. Not enough happened on specials to say much. So, instead of focusing on the team, the rest of the report will just make notes about individual players and substitution patterns that you wouldn't know if you didn't follow the game.
On offense, Sr. Gary Barkzak got the start at LG, but I did see Steve Green get some run with the 1s there as well, so that battle may not be over. Other than that, the line didn't change until the end, when I saw Jimmy Bennett and Gus Cruz in. If Bullock and Brown got in (the remaining backup OLs), I didn't see it. All 6 WRs -- the Moores, Nick Williams, Jones and Davis and then Abrams -- played with the 1s (Abrams only a little in a spread goalline package). They will never have so much room to run patterns in again, so I'm not drawing any conclusions yet. At QB, McEntee proved to me he can make the short and intermediate throws, but here is my problem with him -- our WRs are not great, and don't necessarily have the ability to get open quickly. Can we win with a QB who can't buy some time getting outside of the p0cket? I'm not sure we can. And that is my guess as to why the coaches are still giving Nebrich time. He is probably further from being ready yet, but it may be that getting over .500 in conference may require what only he can bring. As for McCummings, but for the overturned fumble (it was first and goal from the 2 -- if you trip tuck it in and go down -- no time to be a hero), I'm sure we'll see him no matter who wins the job but to me that was just Tiquan Underwood from Rutgers. I like having QBs who can run, but they have to be QBs who can run, not just runners, and I'm not sure he is yet. At FB, Hinckley started but Ruben Frank may have gotten as many, or even more snaps. I saw Frank got run over by a LB on a blitz -- something I never remember happening to a UConn FB. McCombs showed he was ready to contribute, but don't read too much into that performance. What we really learned is how far he was ahead of JJL, who mostly came in when we played McCummings as part of a wilddog package. When Foxx played as the #3, it showed that the coaches already determined that they can't go this year without him.
On D, we saw plenty of subbing at DT but very little of the backup DEs. Marcus Campblell, until mop up time, played sparingly, and McBride, the 4th in Joseph's absence, not until mop up time. To get Stephen and Wirth snaps, they often moved Reyes to DE to give blows to Trevardo and Ted Jennings (who I thought played very well in what I think was his first start). At LB, while Ashiru and Vann were listed as backups, they did not play specials (as back up LBs do) or get in during mop up time, so we should assume the coaches want them to keep their redshirts unless there are injuries or the starters don't get it done. We saw a second unit of Kenney, Opoku and Osiecki, and saw much of Steg on specials. At DB, we saw each of Jones, Tymeer Brown and Wilburn play with the 1s on various nickel and dime coverages.
Not a good day from Cole Wagner punting. Chad Christen started well on kickoffs but faded in the heat. The snapping was perfect. The gunners on punts were Blidi and, surprisingly, David Kenney. The kickoff coverage was strange. All the beef was on one side of the ball, and all the speed on the other. Christen then has to kick it to the beefy side. I've never seen a team do it that way and am a little converned we're going to get blown up by a wedge against a better opponent. Congrats to walk-on RS Frosh Alex Kantor, who made his way onto the field for specials. Others not on the two deep playing specials included DBs Brandon and Lopes and LB Opoku.
So that's it. The glorified scrimmage is done. A real game, albeit against a not strong opponent, comes next week. I hope we don't wait two months to give our best effort on the road, as we did last year. I hope we get to see DJ. And I'm not at all concerned if we keep the QB competition open for another week. If you have to pick for the season now it's Johnny Mc, and he will be o.k., but I think our lack of other offensive playmakres makes it important we give Nebrich every chance to win the job for a while longer.
What did we learn about the team yesterday? Not a lot frankly. The opponent was so overmatched, and you got the feeling that we were playing very vanilla, so I really don't think we learned anything about whether the team is better or worse than you might have thought. We'll know a lot more Saturday night. Overall, the D was impressive until Jerome Junior missed the tackle on the long pass (again -- I had hoped never to be typing that this year), and the O was much less impressive. Not enough happened on specials to say much. So, instead of focusing on the team, the rest of the report will just make notes about individual players and substitution patterns that you wouldn't know if you didn't follow the game.
On offense, Sr. Gary Barkzak got the start at LG, but I did see Steve Green get some run with the 1s there as well, so that battle may not be over. Other than that, the line didn't change until the end, when I saw Jimmy Bennett and Gus Cruz in. If Bullock and Brown got in (the remaining backup OLs), I didn't see it. All 6 WRs -- the Moores, Nick Williams, Jones and Davis and then Abrams -- played with the 1s (Abrams only a little in a spread goalline package). They will never have so much room to run patterns in again, so I'm not drawing any conclusions yet. At QB, McEntee proved to me he can make the short and intermediate throws, but here is my problem with him -- our WRs are not great, and don't necessarily have the ability to get open quickly. Can we win with a QB who can't buy some time getting outside of the p0cket? I'm not sure we can. And that is my guess as to why the coaches are still giving Nebrich time. He is probably further from being ready yet, but it may be that getting over .500 in conference may require what only he can bring. As for McCummings, but for the overturned fumble (it was first and goal from the 2 -- if you trip tuck it in and go down -- no time to be a hero), I'm sure we'll see him no matter who wins the job but to me that was just Tiquan Underwood from Rutgers. I like having QBs who can run, but they have to be QBs who can run, not just runners, and I'm not sure he is yet. At FB, Hinckley started but Ruben Frank may have gotten as many, or even more snaps. I saw Frank got run over by a LB on a blitz -- something I never remember happening to a UConn FB. McCombs showed he was ready to contribute, but don't read too much into that performance. What we really learned is how far he was ahead of JJL, who mostly came in when we played McCummings as part of a wilddog package. When Foxx played as the #3, it showed that the coaches already determined that they can't go this year without him.
On D, we saw plenty of subbing at DT but very little of the backup DEs. Marcus Campblell, until mop up time, played sparingly, and McBride, the 4th in Joseph's absence, not until mop up time. To get Stephen and Wirth snaps, they often moved Reyes to DE to give blows to Trevardo and Ted Jennings (who I thought played very well in what I think was his first start). At LB, while Ashiru and Vann were listed as backups, they did not play specials (as back up LBs do) or get in during mop up time, so we should assume the coaches want them to keep their redshirts unless there are injuries or the starters don't get it done. We saw a second unit of Kenney, Opoku and Osiecki, and saw much of Steg on specials. At DB, we saw each of Jones, Tymeer Brown and Wilburn play with the 1s on various nickel and dime coverages.
Not a good day from Cole Wagner punting. Chad Christen started well on kickoffs but faded in the heat. The snapping was perfect. The gunners on punts were Blidi and, surprisingly, David Kenney. The kickoff coverage was strange. All the beef was on one side of the ball, and all the speed on the other. Christen then has to kick it to the beefy side. I've never seen a team do it that way and am a little converned we're going to get blown up by a wedge against a better opponent. Congrats to walk-on RS Frosh Alex Kantor, who made his way onto the field for specials. Others not on the two deep playing specials included DBs Brandon and Lopes and LB Opoku.
So that's it. The glorified scrimmage is done. A real game, albeit against a not strong opponent, comes next week. I hope we don't wait two months to give our best effort on the road, as we did last year. I hope we get to see DJ. And I'm not at all concerned if we keep the QB competition open for another week. If you have to pick for the season now it's Johnny Mc, and he will be o.k., but I think our lack of other offensive playmakres makes it important we give Nebrich every chance to win the job for a while longer.
