jimbo

Finally got to see some UA-UR highlights on this week's coach's corner. Some pretty slick moves and breakaway speed by E I-H. Delaware has been a bit odd this year, beating W&M and getting shut out by URI and Towson. GG says they are tough at home and have a problems on the road. So I hope we are competitive this week. Attending an event during game time so I'll have to sneak a peak at the score once in a while.

The Giants are down to Will Tye at TE after Larry Donnell went down yesterday with a neck injury….only one TE on the practice squad. That would be a good spot….UA and SB with the Jints. LOL. Yesterday, Tye made a nice grab downfield that got called back due to a hold.

Forgot to mention that during the UA-UR radio broadcast they mentioned that the UR Radio man told them that he hoped UA was not on their schedule in 2 years because they were going to be REALLY good.

Great finish in OT!

I missed the second half…was hoping he'd get a target but guess it didn't happen. But from what I saw he did great work.

Off topic, but Brian Parker is active and playing today. Just got a shout out for a beautiful block on a TD run. FOX from London vs Detroit.

Brian Parker is active today and playing right now in the London game vs. Detroit. Just got a shout out for a "beautiful block" on a TD run!

Yeah, Lee was out this week with a foot injury.

JMU just lost to Bill and Mary, Delaware got skunked and NH barely got by RI. If UA can play at this level for the last three games they should be very competitive.

Listening on the radio….fun! Proud of our team. Really fighting.

Well it worked…..at least it sounded good on the radio..LOL. Did he get caught or step out of bounds?

We're not…..7-0….missed the FG. ! And Alston fumbled……yikes! This defense does not have a chance with offensive performance like that. Wanted to point out that Ford went 9-2 in the last year of the NEC, then with mostly the same skill position guys goes 1-11 1st year CAA…then Gattuso (with mostly the same guys) goes 7-5…pretty good. So he loses a ton of offensive production and experience and then loses top O player and top D player and gets battered with injuries…yeah, they're struggling. Who wouldn't? I'm not throwing in the towel on GG…they need a number of years to get it going at this level. Oh, and they just stopped Richmond again! At least the D is ready.

Union-Hobart is on TW Sports today so I saved the trip. I know it's hard to compare at different levels, but if Shane Sweeney was lacking in the QB battle it certainly was not his arm. He hit two long bombs in the 1st quarter, hitting the the receiver in stride well down the field. His other passes looked crisp too. Nothing I've seen out of Crook so far was as good as what I saw in that sample in terms of arm strength and accuracy.

I heard on Roger Wyland's radio show that GG's comments re: starting QB were made at the taping for the Saturday pre-game show on My4. So that's where they came from. Maybe the game notes are just not updated to reflect that. Someone last week (maybe Samuel Gray) mentioned that their injury situation is the worst they have ever seen at any level. So we have to give them some slack for that. Senn has been out and Ritter have been out…2 big bodies on the O line. I'm in the "give them time" category. As far as QBs go, Fiacchi grew tremendously from Soph-Sr year. The coaches can't really know how well recruited player will be at QB. CAA is a huge step up from HS for most of them. Look at the NFL draft record for QBs. They have incredible resources and there are very few "sure thing" QBs that get drafted each year. Something else I have not seen discussed is there may be a dilution in CAA talent level overall. The Patriot League is going full scholarship and have a couple of years of recruiting so when they are done there will be an additional 450 +/- scholarships centered in the northeast, with some good schools competing for the talent. On top of that the NEC was not scholarship until several years ago and there's another 300+ scholarship FCS level players. I really think the southern schools have an advantage but I could be wrong. The concentration of football talent is definitely not in the northeast.

I think that I will wander over to watch Union-Hobart…see if Shane Sweeney is playing for the Statesmen. Where is the info on Sussman starting? I do like that idea. Starting Harding makes no sense as he's gone in 2016 and Crook has certainly not etched his name into the starting line up for next year either. Let's see what Sussman has got to offer with the first team reps.

Women's Soccer beat Maine today and gets a #2 seed in the AE Tourney, their highest seed ever! They get a home game next Sunday. Go UA!

Yeah, I meant defense. Just saw it and edited. Of course looking at some of the FBS scores, defense seems to be in short supply. On yesterday's UA Game Day (yeah, they had one) GG said RIchmond was perhaps better than JMU and that they were going to be very tough to play. They have two tall GOOD wideouts. The modestly good news is that he said there was a decent chance that that players who were not out with season-ending injuries could all be back for the UR game. For you out of towners, here's the link to the video segments: http://wnyt.com/article/12817/ Barring some incredible performance by our team, I would say the score will be determined by how much UR decides to run it up. I think we all need to realize that it'll take some time before UA is in shape to compete regularly with the upper half of the CAA. Last year was an aberration because of the presence of all of the seniors and a schedule that included a patsy like Columbia and they were a fluke play against HC of going 6-6. Coach points out that young players are one thing and it's great to get them experience for the future, but they would normally be playing 20-25 plays a game and are being asked to go 60-65 plays. So they get worn out and our back ups are not as good as the back ups for the other side due to a short amount of time recruiting CAA level talent.

So Richmond just beat JMU 59-49. Not a whole lot of defense but dang…..how's it look for UA?

WSOC outscored the football team this past week….4-0.

Adding to what Dane Pound said, here are the stats for rushing yards per game: 2011 181.7 2012 202.9 2013 151.7 2014 140.8 2015 97.3 What's even more striking is that UA put up 141 rush yards against UB, 120 against URI and 186 against JMU (our toughest opponent…does anyone not believe they would cream UB?) Since that time, the team has averaged 58 yards rushing. Duquesne created the template for teams to beat us with ease…stop the run and the pass game will fold up too. We had just enough to beat the Dukes but then the wheels came off.

Reefer Madness!!

After taking one on the chin early, the defense stiffened and was coming up with big plays when they needed them. The defense held VU scoreless for about 20 minutes and during that 20 minutes the offense misfired on two golden scoring opportunities and then started handing the ball back to VU over and over and over. The offense was running out of feet to shoot themselves in…penalty after penalty. The defense came to compete and the offense was not ready (see earlier OC comment). Again, this QB is not good enough to be a back up for the teams we face. Some of the passes he chucked were so bad I can't even call them a wounded duck. Then Sussman throws an INT on his only pass. The only good part about that one is that I was already in my car with the seat warmer on! Did anyone notice that the VU QB was 12 for 12??? I can never recall a QB throwing a perfect game like that even if it wasn't too many passes. The kid was on the money every time. Ah well……basketball season please…..

I waited a while before posting…after leaving with 6 min left in the 3rd quarter. And then VU scored again before I was out of earshot of the stadium. This points out how far we are from the upper echelon teams of the league. Our starting QB is light years behind their FRESHMAN 2nd string QB. Our starting RB is not as good as their # 2 or # 3. Their O-Line completely dominated our D-Line. Our pass defense seems to be "let them catch it and then tackle them." GG made a jerk out of himself going into halftime by badgering the refs until it began to look like security was going to intervene. When the new coaching regime came out last year, the one thing that stuck out to me was Joe Bernard, our OC. He looked to me like a guy who knew the head coach and needed a job after being stuck in the HS ranks for 3 years. From his resume it's apparent that he's never been an OC except at the HS level….what??? Been bothering me since it was announced. Maybe I'm wrong. So you have the ball 2nd down at the 1 foot line and you line up in a shot gun and completely blow the execution and the time management….then a penalty on the rushed FG attempt. Pathetic and demoralizing. Unless it's a beautiful day and I have absolutely nothing else to do I doubt you will see me for the NH game…that disgusted. BTW, Samuel Gray was playing his heart out. Too bad hardly anybody else showed up. Today UA played like a D3 team.

Martin is missing from the team site roster too. He was featured in the spring game, then was a fullback and is now missing. Maybe he dropped out of the program as he was getting squeezed out by the new recruits…or other reasons. Madaras brothers still MIA too.

This has nothing to do with Villanova, but I've been following Brian Parker. He's not been activated for a game yet but has been sitting solid at #4 on the 53 man TE depth chart. They have no TE's on their practice squad so he seems to be pretty safe for now. Since the Chiefs are 1-4 and appear to be going nowhere this season, maybe they'll give him a chance in some live game action as the year goes on. That would be great to see. According to my math, his weekly checks are $25,588. That's not too hard to take. Go Brian! (wish you were still here though).