As you could probably tell, we are ready for football to finally start. We've exhaustively discussed offensive and defensive philosophies that we expect to see out of the Tigers in 2011. We've also reviewed personnel available for Swinney and crew this season. Basically, we've shared about as much as we can on what to expect this football season and are ready to finally tee it up to apply the concepts we've examined.
If you've been reading our articles over the summer you should be an expert on scheme and position strengths heading into the season. When some yahoo behind you in the stands or a NCAA2012 Playstation All-American at work starts incorrectly discussing even and odd fronts, has no clue about the lack of complexity in Morris' HUNH offense, or pimps Brad Scott as an excellent recruiter/offensive line depth builder, you can correct this person (either verbally or with a backhand). If he/she still doesn't get it, just point him/her over here to Shakin' the Southland to avoid having to listen to a bunch more gibberish.
The football team begins its in-season routine this week and we will, likewise, establish a schedule of posts and features for your reading pleasure. We'll give you our opinions on gameplay, team management, and overall program progression as we move through the year. You'll also see our standard features including Question/Answer sessions with other blogs, game previews, film reviews, recruiting/depth chart comparisons, occasional technical posts and game threads.
I am sure that our schedule will be fairly dynamic early in the season and become more rigid as the season progresses. If there is something that you think we could add to our coverage, please let us know-preferably sooner rather than later so that we can add it to the routine and/or adjust assignments to incorporate better ideas.
This is a good place to inject our expectations, particularly for the football team. I encourage everyone to brush up on this post because we will not sugarcoat anything. Further, we call it as we see it, good or bad. Remember this, as some weeks over here are not for the weak at heart, sunshine pumpers, orange glass wearers, etc...
On to actual football. This past Friday afternoon our Clemson Tigers participated in the annual "Beanie Bowl." This allowed the team to go through a gameday once over that should be of benefit for the newcomers. This event also featured a minimal contact situational scrimmage-essentially a low intensity walkthrough but the main item of the day is the acclimation to the gameday routine.
We've embedded the CUAD practice overview below. If you are not familiar with how a walkthrough is conducted, you may want to check this out. Teams typically have at least one of these (often in shorts and tees or shells and not full pads) during game weeks, usually the final practice of the week because these are non-physical and won't drain the guys before gameday.