sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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- Aug 15, 2011
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Some quick, disjointed stuff from the outing on Monday...
It was sold out again. Very popular. The people that do it really do a good job. It is a shame the weather was bad again. 2nd time in 3 years it was rain shortened.
Good to meet some people on the board, lurkers and non-lurkers alike. Always nice to get together with like-minded SU football fans. The people on the board were talking during the rain delay, thinking it would be great if a similar event was created for Drumlins, or better yet, Turning Stone. Right now, unless you have an in, it is hard to get a new foursome into this event since they only have one course to work with and space is limited. I could see where a well publicized event that was priced reasonably held at the Turing Stone complex could attract hundreds of people.
Turning Stone has a bunch of courses and the ability to seat and feed hundreds without a problem. Their high tech presentation capabilities would allow the coaching staff to do some cool things, especially with Drew Robinson now on board. Turning Stone has a good relationship with SU, I bet they would work to help make it happen. I know the SU Football Club has their tournament there every year. Food for thought.
Anyway, played with Deubs and Carlos, who are lurkers on this board, and Coach Lea. Deubs was on fire and carried us most of the way. We had fun and enjoyed a lot of good football talk.
Some miscellaneous tidbits...
There was confidence that a QB was going to verbal on Tuesday. Good call.
Hearing the powers that be are leaning hard towards the fixed roof option for the Dome.
Hearing that SU is planning on spending big bucks to attract a well qualified AD. They are going to try and get someone with experience as an AD at a P5 school so big money will be a must to make that happen.
SU is in great shape with a couple players from NJ and Florida. A couple might verbal relatively soon. Several of the players closest to verballing are WRs.
Coach Acosta is making good inroads in Florida. The man has great people skills.
Among the incoming frosh, expect Strickland to play right away, as well as Blair. Those guys and Perkins will make contributions with their regular units and special teams. The staff is excited to have some special athletes to work with on special teams. Injuries really hurt performance on special teams last season...the coaches think these units can make a big jump forward this season.
Coach Gregory was not at the event but it was confirmed he was replace Coach Gould as the QC coach who focuses on special teams. Makes a lot of sense given Steve's background here. He was good at returning KOS and punts and great at blocking kicks during his time at Syracuse.
Coach Shafer asked Gregory to talk to the team and was surprised when Steve did not talk about things he did during his long NFL career (8 or 9 years) but about how when he was fighting for a spot on an NFL roster, and was surrounded by teammates who had new high priced luxury and sports cars, he bought a bicycle and rode that to camp each day. He did it to stay grounded, to remember where he came from and why he was there. That resonated with Coach Shafer, who hates entitled players. If there was a doubt whether Steve would get the QC job, there wasn't after that story.
The situation with Blair and whether he can gain eligibility is really a big story with the 2015 team. He brings things to the table no one on the roster currently can bring; he is perfectly suited for a Shafer/Bullough defense and is it really important he makes the grade.
Clark was mentioned as another frosh who will play right away. There is little doubt about that. Williams and Raymon are doing well recovered from their injuries but will have their hands full holding off Clark and Kayton Samuels, who every coach on the staff seems really high on. He keeps getting compared to Jay Bromley; high praise indeed. There wasn't a lot of talk on DEs but it was mentioned that while Jake Pickard is well thought off, he is going to have a hard time beating out the other DE from NJ in his class (Carter).
As of right now, Bennett going to be the third starting LB (Franklin and Hodges locked the other two spots up right away). He played well in spring game and distanced himself from the competition.
As is his wont, Coach Shafer talked about the three returned experienced CBs (Whigham, Morgan and Winfield) and warned that they better be on their game, otherwise the two youngsters (Hudson and Dowels) would beat them out. Ellison and Whitner are expected to play safety, as is Frederick.
Said Ron Thompson has the capability to be great but has to work on being great every play. It isn't enough to be great one out of every three snaps. If he can do that, he will be the leader this defense needs.
On offense, said one of the biggest keys will be to keep the unit healthy, especially the OL. There isn't a lot of quality depth behind the starters. He is definitely a fan of Strickland and Perkins and both/either will be factors returning kicks or playing on the field. I think he wants to get more speed on offense and both of these guys provide that.
On specials, said that Cole played well last year but Norton was embarrassed getting beat out by a frosh and really wants his old job back for his senior year. Look for a war between those two for the starting job at placekicker. Dixon has a chance to have a special senior season. Unless there are a number of injuries, Sterling is going to redshirt.
As TexanMark and maybe others mentioned, Coach Shafer badly wants the OOC schedule to be made more reasonable. Gave Duke great credit for their scheduling over the past 5 years, said it really helped to position them for success. Wants a similar approach for Syracuse. I don't know who the new AD is going to be but I really would like to see SU hire someone to handle the football schedule with good experience and contacts scheduling OOC games for a P5 team.
Coach said despite the adversity the team faced last fall (Mark already mentioned 17 starters missed at least 4 games, and the 4th string QB played a lot), they did great in the classroom. Had the highest GPA an SU football team has achieved since they have been keeping records. And more than half of the returning players had a GPA of 3.0 or greater in the spring semester.
The assistant coaches Coach Shafer was brought in are impressive. They are young, personable, friendly, articulate and all have the good people skills you hope for. I really hope that the players stay reasonably healthy this season and the staff is able to squeeze 6 wins out of this team. The foundation is being laid for a much stronger team down the road. Losing continuity and having to start over again from scratch would really set this program back. Don't want to see that unless a real disaster happens this season.
This is a really nice event. People came from all over to attend, including a group of guys from Amsterdam. Mark got singled out for traveling the longest to attend. Coach Shafer joked that they might need to hire him for scheduling or even as the new AD. There have been worse ideas.
Hope they are able to create another event like this one to allow even more people to attend. It think it would be great to have one west of Syracuse and one east of Syracuse in future years.
It was sold out again. Very popular. The people that do it really do a good job. It is a shame the weather was bad again. 2nd time in 3 years it was rain shortened.
Good to meet some people on the board, lurkers and non-lurkers alike. Always nice to get together with like-minded SU football fans. The people on the board were talking during the rain delay, thinking it would be great if a similar event was created for Drumlins, or better yet, Turning Stone. Right now, unless you have an in, it is hard to get a new foursome into this event since they only have one course to work with and space is limited. I could see where a well publicized event that was priced reasonably held at the Turing Stone complex could attract hundreds of people.
Turning Stone has a bunch of courses and the ability to seat and feed hundreds without a problem. Their high tech presentation capabilities would allow the coaching staff to do some cool things, especially with Drew Robinson now on board. Turning Stone has a good relationship with SU, I bet they would work to help make it happen. I know the SU Football Club has their tournament there every year. Food for thought.
Anyway, played with Deubs and Carlos, who are lurkers on this board, and Coach Lea. Deubs was on fire and carried us most of the way. We had fun and enjoyed a lot of good football talk.
Some miscellaneous tidbits...
There was confidence that a QB was going to verbal on Tuesday. Good call.
Hearing the powers that be are leaning hard towards the fixed roof option for the Dome.
Hearing that SU is planning on spending big bucks to attract a well qualified AD. They are going to try and get someone with experience as an AD at a P5 school so big money will be a must to make that happen.
SU is in great shape with a couple players from NJ and Florida. A couple might verbal relatively soon. Several of the players closest to verballing are WRs.
Coach Acosta is making good inroads in Florida. The man has great people skills.
Among the incoming frosh, expect Strickland to play right away, as well as Blair. Those guys and Perkins will make contributions with their regular units and special teams. The staff is excited to have some special athletes to work with on special teams. Injuries really hurt performance on special teams last season...the coaches think these units can make a big jump forward this season.
Coach Gregory was not at the event but it was confirmed he was replace Coach Gould as the QC coach who focuses on special teams. Makes a lot of sense given Steve's background here. He was good at returning KOS and punts and great at blocking kicks during his time at Syracuse.
Coach Shafer asked Gregory to talk to the team and was surprised when Steve did not talk about things he did during his long NFL career (8 or 9 years) but about how when he was fighting for a spot on an NFL roster, and was surrounded by teammates who had new high priced luxury and sports cars, he bought a bicycle and rode that to camp each day. He did it to stay grounded, to remember where he came from and why he was there. That resonated with Coach Shafer, who hates entitled players. If there was a doubt whether Steve would get the QC job, there wasn't after that story.
The situation with Blair and whether he can gain eligibility is really a big story with the 2015 team. He brings things to the table no one on the roster currently can bring; he is perfectly suited for a Shafer/Bullough defense and is it really important he makes the grade.
Clark was mentioned as another frosh who will play right away. There is little doubt about that. Williams and Raymon are doing well recovered from their injuries but will have their hands full holding off Clark and Kayton Samuels, who every coach on the staff seems really high on. He keeps getting compared to Jay Bromley; high praise indeed. There wasn't a lot of talk on DEs but it was mentioned that while Jake Pickard is well thought off, he is going to have a hard time beating out the other DE from NJ in his class (Carter).
As of right now, Bennett going to be the third starting LB (Franklin and Hodges locked the other two spots up right away). He played well in spring game and distanced himself from the competition.
As is his wont, Coach Shafer talked about the three returned experienced CBs (Whigham, Morgan and Winfield) and warned that they better be on their game, otherwise the two youngsters (Hudson and Dowels) would beat them out. Ellison and Whitner are expected to play safety, as is Frederick.
Said Ron Thompson has the capability to be great but has to work on being great every play. It isn't enough to be great one out of every three snaps. If he can do that, he will be the leader this defense needs.
On offense, said one of the biggest keys will be to keep the unit healthy, especially the OL. There isn't a lot of quality depth behind the starters. He is definitely a fan of Strickland and Perkins and both/either will be factors returning kicks or playing on the field. I think he wants to get more speed on offense and both of these guys provide that.
On specials, said that Cole played well last year but Norton was embarrassed getting beat out by a frosh and really wants his old job back for his senior year. Look for a war between those two for the starting job at placekicker. Dixon has a chance to have a special senior season. Unless there are a number of injuries, Sterling is going to redshirt.
As TexanMark and maybe others mentioned, Coach Shafer badly wants the OOC schedule to be made more reasonable. Gave Duke great credit for their scheduling over the past 5 years, said it really helped to position them for success. Wants a similar approach for Syracuse. I don't know who the new AD is going to be but I really would like to see SU hire someone to handle the football schedule with good experience and contacts scheduling OOC games for a P5 team.
Coach said despite the adversity the team faced last fall (Mark already mentioned 17 starters missed at least 4 games, and the 4th string QB played a lot), they did great in the classroom. Had the highest GPA an SU football team has achieved since they have been keeping records. And more than half of the returning players had a GPA of 3.0 or greater in the spring semester.
The assistant coaches Coach Shafer was brought in are impressive. They are young, personable, friendly, articulate and all have the good people skills you hope for. I really hope that the players stay reasonably healthy this season and the staff is able to squeeze 6 wins out of this team. The foundation is being laid for a much stronger team down the road. Losing continuity and having to start over again from scratch would really set this program back. Don't want to see that unless a real disaster happens this season.
This is a really nice event. People came from all over to attend, including a group of guys from Amsterdam. Mark got singled out for traveling the longest to attend. Coach Shafer joked that they might need to hire him for scheduling or even as the new AD. There have been worse ideas.
Hope they are able to create another event like this one to allow even more people to attend. It think it would be great to have one west of Syracuse and one east of Syracuse in future years.
