sutomcat
2024 Iggy Award (ACC Tournament Record)
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- Aug 15, 2011
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Great turnout for the game yesterday. As the CNY resident, I have felt for sometime now that the Coach Baber's hire is driving more interest and enthusiasm for the SU football program. I think that is now officially confirmed.
I tried something new yesterday. Brought an iPad, and used it and an application called Periscope to do a live broadcast of art of the spring game. I ran out of the space before the end of the first half, and the ability to see much is severely limited (I had no ability to zoom in, only had e one camera to work with and no one wanted to do color with me), but there are 4 or 5 extended videos I made that are still archived on the Periscope site. Look for SU Football Spring Game.
Anyway, apologies to people who sat next to him and tried to talk to me as I was doing the broadcast. It was interesting to do. I have a lot more respect for play by.play announcers now after spending an hour or so in their shoes. Also tweeted as much as I could of what was happening during the second half. Thanks to CuseLegacy for posting those tweets in the spring game thread...
On to what I saw.
Let's break things down by unit...
Offense
By and large the offense dominated the spring game. Most of the time it was first team offense against second team defense and the offense ate the defense up big time. That happened regularly even in the Shafer and Marrone eras. We traditionally have little depth on defense... The surprise, kind of,was how successful the second team offense was against the first tea defense. It beat up the first team defense badly...not as badly as the first team offense dominated, but pretty close.
Here is the breakdown based on who I thought played most with each unit. First, the usual disclaimers : Some players bounced between units due to depth issues. Coaches sometimes play players with units where they don't belong. It is dangerous to make judgments based on limited data. Your mileage may vary.
First team:
QB Dungey
RB Strickland
LT Lasker
LG Roberts
C Emerich
RG Palmer
RT McGloster
WR Estime
WR Philips
WR AC II
WR Ishmael*
Second team:
QB Mahoney
RB Neal
LT Conway
LG Duerig
C Hindy
RG Byrne
RT Evans
WR Womack
WR Custis
WR Austin/Enoicy@
TE MacPherson/Parris/Moore&
*=didn't play a lot presumably because the staff wanted to evaluate the other players...
!=didn't play a lot presumably because the staff is unhappy with his weight...
&=all seemed to play about equallY. Paris wore a green jersey and could not be hit...
@=Sean Avant did not play due to injury
Dungey looked sharp. Threw it well, ran it well, made fast decisions and looked surprisingly comfortable executing the new scheme. Was especially impressed by his touch and his accuracy on long throws. Mahoney got the second most snaps by a huge margin. He still lacks a powerful arm and about 20% of his throws are startlingly off the mark, but he makes most of the throws, appears to make his decisions and reads quickly and his athletic ability sometimes gets him out of bad situations. Wilson looked pretty confused, did not throw the ball accurately but still possesses perhaps the strongest arm on the team. Culpepper didn't get many snaps but looked poised when he was out there and made a couple nice throws to get his team into the end zone. He has a strong arm and a quick release.
Strickland has the best blend of speed and power among the RBs. Good vision, found holes well, looked really athletic out there. Neal has big time speed and cutting ability but looks really skinny. Most likely to take a snap all the way. Fredericks looked good too. Ran hard, showed some speed. He was stuck with the third team offense most of the time and didn't have much room to run.
I think Ishmael is front and center our best WR but he didn't get a lot of snaps. When he got the ball thrown his way, good things happened. Showed great technique catching the ball and he had a nice catch for a TD down the right sideline. If he stays healthy, he will get 1000 yards receiving in 2016. To my eyes, Bristly Estime looked like a real WR for the first time. Scored several TDs, looked really fast and physical. Alvin Corneilus II also had a terrific scrimmage wIth multiple TDs. Is noticeably stronger this spring, looked fast and got open deep every time the ball went his way.
Ervin Philips also looked really fast and athletic. I would say he is behind the others in technique...his route running, catching technique, ability to separate from a physical corner, etc., but he is blessed with a ton of raw ability and just needs some time to make the transition to WR.
Stop the presses: in one scrimmage, the new staff threw more fade routes to 6-5 236 pound Jamal Custis than the old one did in a couple of years. As expected, TDs ensued. Jamal looked good and I think will emerge as an important part of the WR Corp, particularly in the red zone. Kenterius
Womack had perhaps the best catch of the day, snagging on over thrown ball at the apex his jump. No question he has good hands, serious speed and crazy ups. Also no question he has work to do in the weight room...he looked really thin and is going to have issues beating man coverage against physical (read that as ACC) CBs.
At TE, MacPherson, Parris and Moore all played about the same amount of snaps. To my eye, Mac looked like the best blocker, Moore the best receiver and Parris the best combination. Parris wore a green jersey but looked like he was running fine. Pretty sure Moore is the fastest of the bunch...
Defense
First team:
DE Ruff
DT Slayton
DT Clark
DE Pickard
LB Cullen
LB Henderson!
LB Thomas&
CB Winfield
CB Dowels
SS Cordy
FS Scissum
Second team:
DE Dunkelburger
DT Samuels
DT Cross
DE Laguerre
LB Hodge
LB Kleinberg
LB Taylor
CB Morgan
CB Hudson
SS Williams
FS Whitner
!=Franklin wore a green jersey (injured)
&=Bennett wore a green jersey (injured)
By far the two most impressive players on defense were Slayton and Clark, who dominated anyone put in front of them and looked like men amongst boys. Large men with speed, power who are not nice at all. Slayton almost killed a man with a rare vicious hit in the trenches.
The most notable thing Samuels showed was a huge belly. He appears to have gotten even fatter. Not moving well, appeared in distress most of the time. This fast pace is tough on him. Cross is the other DT. He looked in good shape and played pretty well. I think he is going to get a lot of PT in 2016.
At LB, Franklin and Bennett both wore green jerseys. Thomas filled in at the SAM position and did not impress. Strickland beat him in the open field repeatedly. He struggled to even touch him. Henderson filled in at the MIKE position. He can run and hit but he looked raw, overran plays a lot and looked very green. Which is to be expected. Shy Cullen beat out Hodge for the WILL position this spring. Pretty amazing given the experience Hodge has and with Shy adjusting to a new scheme for him. Shy runs well, tackles well, looks fundamentally sound and I don't see him losing this spot in the fall. Sometimes hard work pays off. This looks like one of those times...
Already mentioned the surprise seeing the second team offense beat the starting defense. A big part of that was the poor play of Henderson, Thomas and the secondary in general.
Hard to tell who the first team is and who the second team is in the secondary. Players moved around a lot. I would say that Corey Winfield is clearly a first team CB. It looked to me as though Dowels got more snaps than Hudson at the other CB position. I think Morgan is the other CB in the two deep. ChrIs Frederick got his share of snaps too...he worked exclusively at CB and looked promising too.
At the safety positions, it looks like Chauncey Scissum has the lead for the starting spot at FS over Kielan Whitner, but the competition is tight. I thought both played okay but not great. Rodney Williams actually started before Antwan Cordy, though I though Cordy played more snaps. Cordy made one of the plays of the game: a great Willie Mays type back to the LOS interception. He also had at least one huge hit, as is his wont. I think strong safety is wide open but Cordy will eventually win out.
Special teams:
First team
P Hofrichter
PK Murphy
LS Keller
Second team:
P Grossman
PK Hofrichter
LS Hinds
First, note that I did not list the PR or KOR positions. This was not an oversight. There were no live punts or kick offs during the scrimmage, so I could not make judgments on these positions.
In the pre-scrimmage warm-ups, Hofrichter looked reasonably good punting the ball. He didn't kick any shanks. Had about 70% of his punts with good hang time and 40 yards of distance. Had about 30% with excellent, Dixon-like hang time and about 50 yards of distance. We will get worse here from last season but I don't think we will be bad. Don't remember anyone else even trying a punt, so the job appears to be his by default...
At place kicker, there was a lot of practicing before the scrimmage and some live drills where kickers kicked FGs in rapid-fire fashion after some TDs. The guys that participated in the live drills the most were Murphy and Hofrichter. Murphy showed a stronger leg but was a lot more inconsistent, both in terms of kick trajectory and accuracy. Hofrichter was really accurate and got the ball consistently high in the air. Murphy hit some kicks really low and missed about 25% of them. Pretty similar to his performance in games.
In the pre-game, Zack Mahoney was holding the ball for Hof on his place kicks (he or Hof are going to hold for place kicks next fall). But something surprising happened. Zack started kicking field goals with the Hof. And he kicked them well. I saw him make 4 of 5 and at least one of them was more than 40 yards long. The dude is an athlete!
But that wasn't nearly the most interesting surprise of the pregame warm-ups. Another walk on, this one named Alex Grossman, was also practicing kicking field goals. Alex is left footed. He is a senior from Woodbury, NY. He is only listed at 143 pounds. But he was KILLING the ball on his kicks, repeatedly drilling them down the middle from everywhere. He has 50 yard plus range and best of all, he consistently kicks the ball really high in the air, which makes blocking his kicks close to impossible. Think 8 iron loft. Anyway, I liked what I saw from him.
My biggest take away from watching the scrimmage comes down to one word. Hope. It is good to have that feeling about the football program once again. War Damn Otto! I am looking forward to the fall!
I tried something new yesterday. Brought an iPad, and used it and an application called Periscope to do a live broadcast of art of the spring game. I ran out of the space before the end of the first half, and the ability to see much is severely limited (I had no ability to zoom in, only had e one camera to work with and no one wanted to do color with me), but there are 4 or 5 extended videos I made that are still archived on the Periscope site. Look for SU Football Spring Game.
Anyway, apologies to people who sat next to him and tried to talk to me as I was doing the broadcast. It was interesting to do. I have a lot more respect for play by.play announcers now after spending an hour or so in their shoes. Also tweeted as much as I could of what was happening during the second half. Thanks to CuseLegacy for posting those tweets in the spring game thread...
On to what I saw.
Let's break things down by unit...
Offense
By and large the offense dominated the spring game. Most of the time it was first team offense against second team defense and the offense ate the defense up big time. That happened regularly even in the Shafer and Marrone eras. We traditionally have little depth on defense... The surprise, kind of,was how successful the second team offense was against the first tea defense. It beat up the first team defense badly...not as badly as the first team offense dominated, but pretty close.
Here is the breakdown based on who I thought played most with each unit. First, the usual disclaimers : Some players bounced between units due to depth issues. Coaches sometimes play players with units where they don't belong. It is dangerous to make judgments based on limited data. Your mileage may vary.
First team:
QB Dungey
RB Strickland
LT Lasker
LG Roberts
C Emerich
RG Palmer
RT McGloster
WR Estime
WR Philips
WR AC II
WR Ishmael*
Second team:
QB Mahoney
RB Neal
LT Conway
LG Duerig
C Hindy
RG Byrne
RT Evans
WR Womack
WR Custis
WR Austin/Enoicy@
TE MacPherson/Parris/Moore&
*=didn't play a lot presumably because the staff wanted to evaluate the other players...
!=didn't play a lot presumably because the staff is unhappy with his weight...
&=all seemed to play about equallY. Paris wore a green jersey and could not be hit...
@=Sean Avant did not play due to injury
Dungey looked sharp. Threw it well, ran it well, made fast decisions and looked surprisingly comfortable executing the new scheme. Was especially impressed by his touch and his accuracy on long throws. Mahoney got the second most snaps by a huge margin. He still lacks a powerful arm and about 20% of his throws are startlingly off the mark, but he makes most of the throws, appears to make his decisions and reads quickly and his athletic ability sometimes gets him out of bad situations. Wilson looked pretty confused, did not throw the ball accurately but still possesses perhaps the strongest arm on the team. Culpepper didn't get many snaps but looked poised when he was out there and made a couple nice throws to get his team into the end zone. He has a strong arm and a quick release.
Strickland has the best blend of speed and power among the RBs. Good vision, found holes well, looked really athletic out there. Neal has big time speed and cutting ability but looks really skinny. Most likely to take a snap all the way. Fredericks looked good too. Ran hard, showed some speed. He was stuck with the third team offense most of the time and didn't have much room to run.
I think Ishmael is front and center our best WR but he didn't get a lot of snaps. When he got the ball thrown his way, good things happened. Showed great technique catching the ball and he had a nice catch for a TD down the right sideline. If he stays healthy, he will get 1000 yards receiving in 2016. To my eyes, Bristly Estime looked like a real WR for the first time. Scored several TDs, looked really fast and physical. Alvin Corneilus II also had a terrific scrimmage wIth multiple TDs. Is noticeably stronger this spring, looked fast and got open deep every time the ball went his way.
Ervin Philips also looked really fast and athletic. I would say he is behind the others in technique...his route running, catching technique, ability to separate from a physical corner, etc., but he is blessed with a ton of raw ability and just needs some time to make the transition to WR.
Stop the presses: in one scrimmage, the new staff threw more fade routes to 6-5 236 pound Jamal Custis than the old one did in a couple of years. As expected, TDs ensued. Jamal looked good and I think will emerge as an important part of the WR Corp, particularly in the red zone. Kenterius
Womack had perhaps the best catch of the day, snagging on over thrown ball at the apex his jump. No question he has good hands, serious speed and crazy ups. Also no question he has work to do in the weight room...he looked really thin and is going to have issues beating man coverage against physical (read that as ACC) CBs.
At TE, MacPherson, Parris and Moore all played about the same amount of snaps. To my eye, Mac looked like the best blocker, Moore the best receiver and Parris the best combination. Parris wore a green jersey but looked like he was running fine. Pretty sure Moore is the fastest of the bunch...
Defense
First team:
DE Ruff
DT Slayton
DT Clark
DE Pickard
LB Cullen
LB Henderson!
LB Thomas&
CB Winfield
CB Dowels
SS Cordy
FS Scissum
Second team:
DE Dunkelburger
DT Samuels
DT Cross
DE Laguerre
LB Hodge
LB Kleinberg
LB Taylor
CB Morgan
CB Hudson
SS Williams
FS Whitner
!=Franklin wore a green jersey (injured)
&=Bennett wore a green jersey (injured)
By far the two most impressive players on defense were Slayton and Clark, who dominated anyone put in front of them and looked like men amongst boys. Large men with speed, power who are not nice at all. Slayton almost killed a man with a rare vicious hit in the trenches.
The most notable thing Samuels showed was a huge belly. He appears to have gotten even fatter. Not moving well, appeared in distress most of the time. This fast pace is tough on him. Cross is the other DT. He looked in good shape and played pretty well. I think he is going to get a lot of PT in 2016.
At LB, Franklin and Bennett both wore green jerseys. Thomas filled in at the SAM position and did not impress. Strickland beat him in the open field repeatedly. He struggled to even touch him. Henderson filled in at the MIKE position. He can run and hit but he looked raw, overran plays a lot and looked very green. Which is to be expected. Shy Cullen beat out Hodge for the WILL position this spring. Pretty amazing given the experience Hodge has and with Shy adjusting to a new scheme for him. Shy runs well, tackles well, looks fundamentally sound and I don't see him losing this spot in the fall. Sometimes hard work pays off. This looks like one of those times...
Already mentioned the surprise seeing the second team offense beat the starting defense. A big part of that was the poor play of Henderson, Thomas and the secondary in general.
Hard to tell who the first team is and who the second team is in the secondary. Players moved around a lot. I would say that Corey Winfield is clearly a first team CB. It looked to me as though Dowels got more snaps than Hudson at the other CB position. I think Morgan is the other CB in the two deep. ChrIs Frederick got his share of snaps too...he worked exclusively at CB and looked promising too.
At the safety positions, it looks like Chauncey Scissum has the lead for the starting spot at FS over Kielan Whitner, but the competition is tight. I thought both played okay but not great. Rodney Williams actually started before Antwan Cordy, though I though Cordy played more snaps. Cordy made one of the plays of the game: a great Willie Mays type back to the LOS interception. He also had at least one huge hit, as is his wont. I think strong safety is wide open but Cordy will eventually win out.
Special teams:
First team
P Hofrichter
PK Murphy
LS Keller
Second team:
P Grossman
PK Hofrichter
LS Hinds
First, note that I did not list the PR or KOR positions. This was not an oversight. There were no live punts or kick offs during the scrimmage, so I could not make judgments on these positions.
In the pre-scrimmage warm-ups, Hofrichter looked reasonably good punting the ball. He didn't kick any shanks. Had about 70% of his punts with good hang time and 40 yards of distance. Had about 30% with excellent, Dixon-like hang time and about 50 yards of distance. We will get worse here from last season but I don't think we will be bad. Don't remember anyone else even trying a punt, so the job appears to be his by default...
At place kicker, there was a lot of practicing before the scrimmage and some live drills where kickers kicked FGs in rapid-fire fashion after some TDs. The guys that participated in the live drills the most were Murphy and Hofrichter. Murphy showed a stronger leg but was a lot more inconsistent, both in terms of kick trajectory and accuracy. Hofrichter was really accurate and got the ball consistently high in the air. Murphy hit some kicks really low and missed about 25% of them. Pretty similar to his performance in games.
In the pre-game, Zack Mahoney was holding the ball for Hof on his place kicks (he or Hof are going to hold for place kicks next fall). But something surprising happened. Zack started kicking field goals with the Hof. And he kicked them well. I saw him make 4 of 5 and at least one of them was more than 40 yards long. The dude is an athlete!
But that wasn't nearly the most interesting surprise of the pregame warm-ups. Another walk on, this one named Alex Grossman, was also practicing kicking field goals. Alex is left footed. He is a senior from Woodbury, NY. He is only listed at 143 pounds. But he was KILLING the ball on his kicks, repeatedly drilling them down the middle from everywhere. He has 50 yard plus range and best of all, he consistently kicks the ball really high in the air, which makes blocking his kicks close to impossible. Think 8 iron loft. Anyway, I liked what I saw from him.
My biggest take away from watching the scrimmage comes down to one word. Hope. It is good to have that feeling about the football program once again. War Damn Otto! I am looking forward to the fall!
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