A few things I thought were particularly interesting:
- Two true freshmen at Jack OLB...Anderson starts and Sanders is #2. Missouri will try to confuse them early and often. Saban knows that, and still feels they are our best options. Says a lot for the young men. Just listen to the leaders, do your job, and don't fall for the eye candy.
- Two true freshmen tied for #1 at Star. Same comments about opponents attempting to confuse them.
- Love having Mac and Slade Bolden as the holder on PKs. Both are athletes, and you have a chance at a play if something goes wrong. Also, you don't telegraph if you call a fake, and either of those guys could run or throw in that situation.
- Will Reichard won the PK job, but I wonder about KOs. While he was nowhere near as reliable as we need on PKs, Bulovas did a pretty good job on KOs. Guess we'll just have to see on that.
- Skyler DeLong is nowhere to be found on the punter depth chart. Guessing he's headed elsewhere. I feel bad for the kid because it's 100% a mental thing. But there are 84 scholarship players, not to mention a whole bunch of coaches, who depend on the punter to at least not be a liability. And after two years of in-game futility, you have to move on for the sake of the team.
BUT it also appears that three are tied for the top spot. Don't know how I feel about that. It may mean that nobody has really pulled out ahead. Or it may be all of them have some of the attributes, but no one of them has all the pieces -- distance, consistency, and speed getting the ball off. Guess we'll see on that, too.
I am excited. I honestly didn't think we'd be playing this fall, and I'm still far from convinced of a full season. But I didn't think we'd play at all, and it's not the first time I'm glad to have been wrong.
Tangential subject -- I'm really not that concerned about our players getting covid on campus. I think they're disciplined and hungry enough to be taking the right preventive measures in the football complex and away from it. Not to say we won't have any cases. Just that I think we'll skate through better than most programs.
I am, however, concerned about our players getting covid from other less-disciplined players on other teams. And I would not put it past any coach in the SEC (other than Saban) to be willfully ignorant of a player's status when he's been exposed, but isn't exhibiting symptoms -- you know....jiggering with test dates, "delaying" turnaround times, etc.. Not sure what you can do about that, but it does bother me.
