Friday, August 11, 2006

A Few Friday Notes

Scott White returned to the team a day after letting off a lot of steam. I think it's good because honestly he would have left a big hole in the depth. Scott is one of the biggest LB's we have, and the guy's that would have replaced him would have been twenty or so pounds lighter which isn't good. We lack size at LB, something that needs to be addressed in the next recruiting class. People on the message boards were pretty tough on Scott, and rightly so, Seniors aren't supposed to quit when faced with minor adversity. Scott will play quite a bit this year, but it is Howell's time to shine.

How is Ty handling it?

Well, he understands the frustrations that these kids have, and he is a great father figure to the kids because most of all he is fair, and he is understanding. As far as Ty is concerned it is buisness as usual, and this is done, over, and settled, he won't allow it to become a distraction.....welcome back Scott.

My feeling are simple, we can use him, and this experience has taken him down a peg which is exactly what the coaches had in mind when they did it. Demoting a returning senior takes moxie, and it shows the coaches aren't just giving lip service to playing the best players. Howell worked his tail off, won the job, now White has to win it back.

Tomorrow is the first day of practice in pads and full contact.

This is a very big day for players looking to make a move in the depth chart, it is one of the few days all year where you can just go out, strut your stuff, and make an impact. A week from now things will be mostly settled and the team will start concentration on game planning. The JC's are still absent, and it is going to be hard for them to make up for the lost time and have much of an impact during the first four games.

After a lot of news midweek info has slowed down coming out of Montlake which is understandable because there really isn't any news until they put on the pads. Expect quite a bit of new stuff on Saturday night and Sunday morning.

I want to take the time to thank the new posters for coming over and posting, as we get closer to the season I am sure it will start rocking, once again thanks to everyone who has been visiting, or posting. If you guys have idea's on how to make this site better, don't hold back, let me know!

Some of you may notice some posts that are deleted each day. I am not censoring anything, just removing spam links that people leave on the site to direct people to Viagra ads, casino's, or whatever.

5 comments:

hairofthedawg said...

I've already said how I feel about Scott in other comments, but yes, I feel the coach(es) handled it right. Reminds me a bit of my grandfather...great guy to work on a farm for, until you screwed up. Then you heard about it and if you didn't do it again, it was back to normal, as it should be. A little like basic training, I guess.

I'm most looking forward to seeing Garcia play. I've been hearing about his attitude for years, but haven't been able to see its effects.

You also mention a lack of size at LB. You have a better grasp of Husky history than I do, but didn't we downsize a bit when James realized that we were lacking team speed? I don't think it was drastic, but more that we had heavy SS types at LB. I don't know that that would work in today's game, but there is a tradeoff, obviously, with size for speed. Which is better, recruiting speedy guys and growing them into fast LBs or recruiting the guys who know how to hit, have size and teaching them techniques to increase their speed, or increase their speed by better angles and smarts?

John Berkowitz said...

We did go for more speed at LB years ago, but the past 5-6 years we have lacked both size, and speed.

We have lacked a definite thumper in the middle for quite awhile. you know the 6'3 235-245 pound kid that is a commanding presence in the middle that can run like a deer.

Need to run to bed, but will get into it more tomorrow, in fact it is a great idea for a new post Hair....thanks!

Sean Hawkins said...

Good stuff about White. Sometimes you have to wonder, he's from the old regime, back to RN if I'm not mistaken, and he might be more that school vs. TW. Either way he's an asset on that D, and as we know, this year for you guys (and us) is going to be GRIND. 12 games, touch OOC on the road early in the year, you know the injury bug will bite as the season drags on. Having him either starting or backing up is a plus.

On the speed/size argument? It's what Mike Price and Bill Doba have done for years as a staff - speed on defense overrides most everything else. The philosophy is take fast safeties in high school and make them OLB's; take fast OLB's from high school and make them MLB's; take fast MLB's in high school and make them DE's, and so on. Yes, in some matchups you lose out, because speed as we know tends to get tired late in games. But ask yourself this - what conference do we play in? Doesn't pretty much everyone throw it 40 times a game? For that reason alone, I'd choose speed at LB!

hairofthedawg said...

Very true, especially with our JC recruits being delayed. I was bummed reading about Armstrong's injury simce he's from my neck of the woods, but those are the breaks.

I enjoyed your thoughts on how recruiting for speedy LBs goes and am also looking forward to John's thoughts. I understand the need for speed and if you can find the special guy who has both that's great but mainly it just reminds me of what a crapshoot recruiting really is. I don't really believe the Dawgs were lucky all those years so there must be some sort of science or sorcery behind it, but I'll be damned if I can figure it out.

Don't be a stranger!

cheers,

Dick

John Berkowitz said...

Speed is king especially in this conference, but my point is we have lacked size, and speed for awhile at LB.

I was looking at the depth if White left, and we simply didn't have anyone left behind Howell except for Trew and he just isn't an option, that is why they were talking about moving in some walkons.

Let me make an example out of Joe Lobendahn. Joe was undersized, but he had a warrior mentality and they felt his lack of size could be compensated for by quickness. It never worked, he was robbed of his speed and quickness by injury early in his career.

Taj Bomar actually was an improvement because he was fresh, and most importantly healthy.

Sedihawk, have to agree on White we need him, we are a much better team with him on the squad despite the attitude. I have a feeling the coaches have him under control for now.

Size and speed, that is what the game is all about, we sure could have used Felder, that kid was the real deal as he is showing at Cal.