Spring Practice and Recruiting

Check out Manny's blog to hear news straight from the players' mouths about the 2008 football team. I really got a kick out of Shannon tossing everyone out after finding out that some website posted the entire previous scrimmage online. The tough guy attitude doesn't necessarily work (see Saban and the Dolphins) if you don't have the players, but it's still nice to see some fire from the coaching staff. Coker would have probably expressed mild disappointment and let it continue.

From what I've gathered over the past few weeks, it will be a shock to see anyone but Robert Marve starting. I'm not sure I like the idea of rotating quarterbacks per se. It worked for UF in 2006 with Tebow and Leak, but this team is nowhere near a championship. There are examples of other semi-successful experiments with it (David Greene and DJ Shockley come to mind, and no it's not a white/black QB thing), but this is a young team. I'd rather have one guy back there leading them.

If we do end up going with just one quarterback, from reading Jacory Harris' quotes, it seems we won't have much of a controversy. Granted, he's saying all the right things now, but it appears young Harris has his head in the right place and is really a team player. Same goes for Cannon Smith. We heard similar talk from Kyle Wright and Kirby Freeman last year, but there were still whispers about jealousy and potential transfers. We'll see how this one turns out.

I'm particularly interested in seeing who wins the two starting wideout spots. I think with the emergence of Pat Hill and John Calhoun at FB, we won't be running as many 3-wide formations out of the I as we have before. That would create a bit of a bottleneck. I would venture to say that Leonard Hankerson will take over the split end position while either McKenzie (who I'd give the edge to) or Aldarius Johnson will take over the flanker. I might be way off on this, but I haven't heard much about Sam Shields this entire Spring.

As far as recruiting goes, I don't know much about any potential commitments anytime soon. We've offered Kansas MLB Jaydan Bird (4 stars on Scout) and Rivals said he was expecting to announce early. That might be something worth watching. Most of the LBs we signed in this class will eventually end up as OLB or other positions. Despite the fact UM coaches say Spence will eventually move to the inside, landing another MLB would be great in this next class.

We've also offered Devon Kennard, 5 star DE from Arizona. Rivals mentions he is interested in the Canes, but it's not a good sign that the #5 overall player on Scout doesn't even have us listed on his list of schools. It's way too early to tell, but it might be a pipe dream to think about landing this kid. He's already attended USC's camp and is in close proximity to the recruiting powerhouse, in addition to UCLA and Arizona State. Still, we all thought Arthur Brown was an Oklahoma lock this time last year, so that's why following recruiting can be so fun.