Under Wraps

[TuffGuy84]

Surprised no one mentioned this. News broke tonight that the scrimmage for tomorrow is canceled and the practices are being made private. This is odd. Bustle's reasoning for the scrimmage is "he usually ends the last scrimmage half way through so no one gets hurt". That's fine and dandy, but why wait till the night before to make that decision and then why make practices off limits. I'm guessing that no answers about any of the player battles will be made in the immediate future.

[NewsCopy]

No scrimmage today

The rest of the story

[CajunZ1]

Well I guess I trust Bustle's judgement on this one, but it certainly isn't helping my perception on our QB situation. It would have been comforting to have a scrimmage where one or both quarterbacks play well.

C'mon Bustle! You gotta make me (the nervous fan) feel more comfy!!

Best case scenario is that the Southern game plays out like a scrimmage (i.e. we dominate) and McGuire or Masson get the opportunity to seal the job in front of one of the biggest crowds ever at Cajun Field.

[Just1More]

We don't need to know who the starters are. They might, we don't. Coaches probably have a good reason for what they decide to do in practices... or at least a heck of a lot better reasons than this panel of experts. I like the surface reasons given for the changes to this practice.

limit potential for further injuries (do you think last year factored into this?)
rest the wounded
work on some plays not intended to go public yet
get more plays into the time alloted
film specific offensive drills to make final starter analysis and decision
limit idiotic fan evaluations of the team play (in scrimmages)

I would rather the result on gameday be good rather than my curiosity be satisfied. I guess I'm unselfish like that. Unless you are under the age of 10, hopefully you want the team to benefit from whatever they are doing in practice more than you want your "cookie" of information.

[zephyr]

_ Surprised no one mentioned this. News broke tonight that the scrimmage for tomorrow is canceled and the practices are being made private. This is odd. Bustle's reasoning for the scrimmage is "he usually ends the last scrimmage half way through so no one gets hurt". That's fine and dandy, but why wait till the night before to make that decision and then why make practices off limits. I'm guessing that no answers about any of the player battles will be made in the immediate future. _

It does seem quite odd for Bustle. I don't know if something happened at practice yesterday that led him to not want to scrimmage. I am not surprised that no position battle will be announced, however, since it was kind of expected that he'd play two QB's for possibly the first few games to decide on the starter.

[zephyr]

_ We don't need to know who the starters are. They might, we don't. Coaches probably have a good reason for what they decide to do in practices... or at least a heck of a lot better reasons than this panel of experts. I like the surface reasons given for the changes to this practice.

limit potential for further injuries (do you think last year factored into this?)
rest the wounded
work on some plays not intended to go public yet
get more plays into the time alloted
film specific offensive drills to make final starter analysis and decision
limit idiotic fan evaluations of the team play (in scrimmages)

I would rather the result on gameday be good rather than my curiosity be satisfied. I guess I'm unselfish like that. Unless you are under the age of 10, hopefully you want the team to benefit from whatever they are doing in practice more than you want your "cookie" of information. _

I agree. They are still going to go hard today without the heavy contact. Rest assured, there will be hitting and they will be going full speed as per Bustle. That means they are still hoping to figure out the QB situation possibly today but I think that they are more concerned about the kicker position actually. I think the plan will be to play both QB's during the Southern game for sure no matter who may be named the starter because someone has to carry that title.

I actually like the hard practice while at the same time likely limiting the chances of injury to starters more than what we've already seen. Plus, I think the focus factor needs to be included. I think the players were tired that last scrimmage and certainly lost focus as they were just sloppy to say the least. I think its a good thing.

Note to coach: while you're adding the super secret plays, please put a package in where we actually run out of I-formation or Split Back or truly anything where we may be able to utilize the depth at the position and not have to rely on the option read every play.

Thanks

[CajunZ1]

_ I would rather the result on gameday be good rather than my curiosity be satisfied. I guess I'm unselfish like that. Unless you are under the age of 10, hopefully you want the team to benefit from whatever they are doing in practice more than you want your "cookie" of information. _

Geez... imagine if I hadn't used the "wink" emoticon...

[ULtimateCajun]

Anything to prevent any injuries this close to the season is a plus and if that means calling off a full contact scrimmage then i'm fine with that.

[Just1More]

_ Geez... imagine if I hadn't used the "wink" emoticon... _

I wasn't responding to you... I had read Tuffguy's thread first on this same subject... he beat Newscopy to the punch... and I really wasn't responding to him either. The way he seemed critical that Bustle "waited until last night to make this decision" and "why is it a closed practice" got me on my line of thinking. Again, I wasn't attacking your post... nor even his.

Taking in a lot of posting on here it seems to go the route of second-guessing all the time. I don't blame people for this mentality... based on past performances. But, in reality, it's a mental disease to keep being skeptical of everything, all the time.

I guess I'm just skeptical of the skeptics (place emoticon here that has a toothless grin)

[CajunZ1]

_ I wasn't responding to you... I had read Tuffguy's thread first on this same subject... he beat Newscopy to the punch... and I really wasn't responding to him either. The way he seemed critical that Bustle "waited until last night to make this decision" and "why is it a closed practice" got me on my line of thinking.

Ah, ok. That's what got me confused. The posts got merged afterwords.

I trust Bustle's judgement in these situations. But it sure would have been nice to read the article on the scrimmage Thursday morning! I'm hungry for cookies.

[cajun4life]

Note to coach: while you're adding the super secret plays, please put a package in where we actually run out of I-formation or Split Back or truly anything where we may be able to utilize the depth at the position and not have to rely on the option read every play.

Thanks _

Dude you must hate the spread! lol We do not have the personnel to line up in the I-formation and be successful. Our offensive line is not physical enough to accomplish this feat. They are very good at the spread and the specific schemes that we use to run the ball. We are a finesse offense that can run the ball. To run the I formation you need mean, angry maulers on the o-line. What we have is mean, quick, agile and disciplined offensive linemen. We have not had an o-line that could run the I since Anthony Clement and company were here.

[DrumRoll]

_ Dude you must hate the spread! lol We do not have the personnel to line up in the I-formation and be successful. Our offensive line is not physical enough to accomplish this feat. They are very good at the spread and the specific schemes that we use to run the ball. We are a finesse offense that can run the ball. To run the I formation you need mean, angry maulers on the o-line. What we have is mean, quick, agile and disciplined offensive linemen. We have not had an o-line that could run the I since Anthony Clement and company were here. _

You probably know a great deal more than I do about football and UL's O-Line, but the off tackle running game appears to be a sure thing to me. I think the I formation would be VERY effective against some of our opponents, a situational thing. I think we have some personnel that can properly staff up the I, would love to see us give it a try.

[zephyr]

_ Dude you must hate the spread! lol We do not have the personnel to line up in the I-formation and be successful. Our offensive line is not physical enough to accomplish this feat. They are very good at the spread and the specific schemes that we use to run the ball. We are a finesse offense that can run the ball. To run the I formation you need mean, angry maulers on the o-line. What we have is mean, quick, agile and disciplined offensive linemen. We have not had an o-line that could run the I since Anthony Clement and company were here. _

All I ask is that you read my post completely. I understand the spread is the offense we incorporate and quite frankly is needed since we are usually going to have to match teams with speed rather than size. However, I'm simply implying that we use other formations to change things up a bit. We've run the zone option read for years now and I don't think the zone option is necessarily the best formation to run ALL of the time given our personnel. With Des and Fenroy it was perfect for them because Des could easily beat you if you took Fenroy away. You saw what happened last year once Des got the knee injury and his running ability was hampered. Mike Price went as far as to say that he was surprised we kept running the same offense against UTEP since all they did was take Fenroy away and let a hobbled Des try to beat them. We do not have QB's that are efficient running the ball 20 times per game as Des was. Hence, It may be a good idea to throw different formations at teams from time to time. Coach Bustle agrees and has several times during the spring mentioned that he'd run more from under center to utilize the talents of certain backfield personnel especially using the playaction capabilities of the QB's . However, as of present, the coaching staff hasn't incorporated any type of variation into the offense. Maybe that is what he was doing in the super secret quasi-scrimmage today that was closed to the public. However, a little variation never hurt anybody and only gives the opposing team more to gameplan for.

[cajun4life]

_ All I ask is that you read my post completely. I understand the spread is the offense we incorporate and quite frankly is needed since we are usually going to have to match teams with speed rather than size. However, I'm simply implying that we use other formations to change things up a bit. We've run the zone option read for years now and I don't think the zone option is necessarily the best formation to run ALL of the time given our personnel. With Des and Fenroy it was perfect for them because Des could easily beat you if you took Fenroy away. You saw what happened last year once Des got the knee injury and his running ability was hampered. Mike Price went as far as to say that he was surprised we kept running the same offense against UTEP since all they did was take Fenroy away and let a hobbled Des try to beat them. We do not have QB's that are efficient running the ball 20 times per game as Des was. Hence, It may be a good idea to throw different formations at teams from time to time. Coach Bustle agrees and has several times during the spring mentioned that he'd run more from under center to utilize the talents of certain backfield personnel especially using the playaction capabilities of the QB's . However, as of present, the coaching staff hasn't incorporated any type of variation into the offense. Maybe that is what he was doing in the super secret quasi-scrimmage today that was closed to the public. However, a little variation never hurt anybody and only gives the opposing team more to gameplan for. _

I agree with some of this, but to get back to my point, our personnel do not equate to the I formation. So we could line up in the I, but it would more than likely just be a wasted play. You witnessed that several time in goal line situation in the past. We do not create a big enough push up front to run successfully out of the I. We might be able to play action with some success, IMO.

[Boomer]

OK guys it is close enough to game time to let the Cat out of the bag--that would be Gauthier----He will start in the backfield with one of the Ms---he will run mis-directional sweeps on nearly every play with both RBs and FBs alternating on different plays----It was the offense that Rickey finally realized would be great after I tried to implement it during the Des and Morel years---If only they would actually use this!!!----Oh if only they would use it!!!!!