Baylor Football Blog
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
General Stuff
I thought I might post just some general thoughts over the next few days, to get where I'm more consistent in my posting on Baylor football. These won't all be previews, predictions, etc, but more just thoughts that I'm having.
I've been thinking about the new offense a lot lately, as I'm sure most Baylor fans have. My biggest concern is that we are going to take a step back before we take a couple of steps forward, and that if we DO take a step back, we're running the risk of dropping games against teams that we must beat to get to a bowl game.
With the reports I've been reading from camp, the offense has struggled with different problems, ranging from pass protection on some days to receivers dropping easy passes to quarterbacks not being able to get the ball where it needs to go. These are serious problems if they aren't fixed, and I'm wondering how much can be fixed before the first game against TCU.
Our pass protection struggles have a couple root causes, the main one being the new splits. It will take these guys getting plenty of reps to get used to blocking in this scheme, which leads to the next biggest concerns. We have had as many as three projected starters out with injury at any given time, and Will Blaylock just started practicing for the first time this fall yesterday. He's not going through contact drills, just getting used to moving around again in the scheme. He was our best lineman last year, so I would expect it wouldn't take him long to pick things up, but missing that much time is cause for some concern. Yancy Boatner is out with a concussion and likely won't be back until the end of the week. As the starting center, this is the most concerning injury for me, because he is going to be called upon to call the blocking scheme and read the defense. I hope that the reps he's missing now isn't the difference in the TCU game.
Luckily, the dropsies we've seen in practice aren't the same person, they just seem to be going around. Yesterday it was Trey Payne. Before that it was Ernest Smith, or Quieto Teasley. With the depth of our receivers, if one is having trouble catching the ball, we should be able to pull them out for a while, no matter who they are, and get someone else in there without dropping off too bad. But I would rather the receivers work this problem out before the season comes around so we don't have to worry about even that.
Quarterbacks. Man, this has been a sore subject the last few years. I'm not even going to get into the 2nd string QB battle we have going on, the starting QB is concern enough. Bell has everything you need to be successful in this offense, and I hope that he can get on the same page as all the receivers. I'm not sure what the problem is with getting the connection working, but one practice we'll see Bell lead them down the field for consecutive scores and the next day we can't get off our side of the field. With two and a half weeks to game-time, I'm hoping that the offense starts to pick up some in the coming days and begins to round into shape.
I'll try to be a little bit more active between now and the start of the season updating the blog, and I would love to hear any comments anybody might have on what they'd like to hear about, or what they think about what I've got down here, or if they just hate the blog.
Thanks! ¶ 8/16/2006 2 Comments
I thought I might post just some general thoughts over the next few days, to get where I'm more consistent in my posting on Baylor football. These won't all be previews, predictions, etc, but more just thoughts that I'm having.
I've been thinking about the new offense a lot lately, as I'm sure most Baylor fans have. My biggest concern is that we are going to take a step back before we take a couple of steps forward, and that if we DO take a step back, we're running the risk of dropping games against teams that we must beat to get to a bowl game.
With the reports I've been reading from camp, the offense has struggled with different problems, ranging from pass protection on some days to receivers dropping easy passes to quarterbacks not being able to get the ball where it needs to go. These are serious problems if they aren't fixed, and I'm wondering how much can be fixed before the first game against TCU.
Our pass protection struggles have a couple root causes, the main one being the new splits. It will take these guys getting plenty of reps to get used to blocking in this scheme, which leads to the next biggest concerns. We have had as many as three projected starters out with injury at any given time, and Will Blaylock just started practicing for the first time this fall yesterday. He's not going through contact drills, just getting used to moving around again in the scheme. He was our best lineman last year, so I would expect it wouldn't take him long to pick things up, but missing that much time is cause for some concern. Yancy Boatner is out with a concussion and likely won't be back until the end of the week. As the starting center, this is the most concerning injury for me, because he is going to be called upon to call the blocking scheme and read the defense. I hope that the reps he's missing now isn't the difference in the TCU game.
Luckily, the dropsies we've seen in practice aren't the same person, they just seem to be going around. Yesterday it was Trey Payne. Before that it was Ernest Smith, or Quieto Teasley. With the depth of our receivers, if one is having trouble catching the ball, we should be able to pull them out for a while, no matter who they are, and get someone else in there without dropping off too bad. But I would rather the receivers work this problem out before the season comes around so we don't have to worry about even that.
Quarterbacks. Man, this has been a sore subject the last few years. I'm not even going to get into the 2nd string QB battle we have going on, the starting QB is concern enough. Bell has everything you need to be successful in this offense, and I hope that he can get on the same page as all the receivers. I'm not sure what the problem is with getting the connection working, but one practice we'll see Bell lead them down the field for consecutive scores and the next day we can't get off our side of the field. With two and a half weeks to game-time, I'm hoping that the offense starts to pick up some in the coming days and begins to round into shape.
I'll try to be a little bit more active between now and the start of the season updating the blog, and I would love to hear any comments anybody might have on what they'd like to hear about, or what they think about what I've got down here, or if they just hate the blog.
Thanks! ¶ 8/16/2006 2 Comments
