With every new coach we also get a healthy dose of how his Strength and Conditioning coach is so far superior to the previous one. Paul Longo was expected to produce players that could go full out for 60 minutes and if necessary another 60 minutes–remember Longo Camp–so grueling you were lucky to survive it. Stamina all over the place from every player. Diets specific to each individual player, remolding bodies etc etc etc. We even have new dining facility and dieticians to hover over the team so that they were not forced to get by eating snicker bars all day.
So what have we seen so far:
Injuries–seems like almost half the team had hamstring or foot, shoulder or clavicle injuries.
60 minute football–did not happen and certainly not in the big games. Players swooning all over by the 4th quarter.
Toughness–here too the OL got punked especially by USC and Stanford–they played like frightened players and the opposition players commented on it.
If a guy is gassed, get a reserve in there for a few plays or replace that guy and let him know he’s sitting until he wants to give 100% effort.
Easy to say Golic was the problem–I’m not buying that–they all got manhandled by teams mentioned above.
Defense–when will Nix be able to play more than a few plays–Tuitt also taking time off. If I can see it–the DL coach should yank them and get on them.
From what I could see from last year only 3-4 players on defense gave 100%–Teo, Slaughter, Harrison Smith and Aaron Lynch.
So where are we–we are only a few injuries short of disaster. If Teo and Eifert go down and with no QB this season could get ugly fast and that could easily happen in the very first game against Navy who in my opinion are first class cheap shot artists that we should drop from our schedule and I don’t care about the history.
New season New hope but let’s see it on the field for a change.
I’m just hopeful we can go 8– 4.