YankeeVol
To some, war is hell. To us, it’s sanctuary.
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This is very surprising to me. My thinking has been that Butch's practices were soft...that we weren't hitting enough. I get guess we can hit hard without full tackling. Whatever the case, I trust this guy and his staff. We have a football coach now. And my guess is that these are going to be some very hard practices. We should come out tougher in late August than we've been in a while.
What exactly does he mean by "practicing on the ground"? It's not completely clear to me.
Regardless, there's definitely something to the idea that our practice habits are a reason for injuries. It seems like we lost an abnormally large number of players from injuries in practice over the past two seasons. Particularly true for the DL and OL where practice injuries were happening all the time.
In 2013, I thought Butch walked into a tough situation and he did. Dooleys disastrous 2012 recruiting class and losing to UK was bad. Honestly though, I didnt think it could get worse.
I was wrong.
I believe Butch has left this program in worse shape than Dooley did. And Pruitts statements here reinforces my opinion. We have a small football team and we need to teach our guys how to practice tell me all I need to know.
It's just odd to me how we went from a very tough and physical team in '15 to a team that is soft and injured in '16 and '17. Whatever Butch did it was the wrong move.
I have had a theory, especially concerning our offensive line, that a big part of our problem has been our scheme. We have run, what appears to me, a read and react scheme. This puts our players in a position of always being on their heels and losing leverage.
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I saw that too and it never made sense to me. It seemed like the first couple of years Butch was always complaining about how the team needed to get stronger and they did. I thought they were headed in the right direction, the linemen started looking solid and the skill players started looking chiseled. Then around '16 all of a sudden the team comes out and they look like a mid major team and the skill players looked small and the linemen looked out of shape.
Back in my day it was bull in the ring. One man in the middle surrounded by six players. Coach would assign numbers to each of the six. When it started, he'd call out numbers. That player would charge the bull. If the bull was too slow he got the sheet knocked out of him.
I saw the same things you did. During the first 2 years under Butch our teams were way tougher and more physical. Hell I remember we knocked out like 3 starting QB's in one season. We lacked talent but we played hard.
The difference between the first 3 years and the last 2 was Dave Lawson. Firing him was one of the worst mistake Jones ever made. Size wise, we looked like a mid-major school last year.