I just re-read your Larry Berroya tribute post from 2020 this am. I never met him, but love his dedication to Cal sports and am glad you all were good friends. Thank you (I know, off-topic, but I'm sure he would have shared my football season excitement right now.....).
It's a joke, but also an observation - once Alamar went to Stanford, their special teams were just fine. I've never played or coached college football - but the general wisdom is that special teams quality & success is a combination of special players (DeSean Jackson) and also without that, a direct result of amount of practice time spent on drilling everything. Frank Beamer famously spent a lot of time on special teams, thus Beamer ball could be counted on to turn 2-3 games a year for VTech.
Thanks for this, Nick. I'm definitely worried about special teams, but I'm not worried about the specialists. My concerns are completely centered around blocking, coverage, and not committing penalties. It seems like units were impacted by some of the players held out for covid, but it's really hard to have transparency into how much of a contributor that was. Anyone seen work in the fall or spring camps to focus on that? Are they focusing any more on those units than normal?
I just re-read your Larry Berroya tribute post from 2020 this am. I never met him, but love his dedication to Cal sports and am glad you all were good friends. Thank you (I know, off-topic, but I'm sure he would have shared my football season excitement right now.....).
Alaammmmmaaarrrrr!!!!!
It's a joke, but also an observation - once Alamar went to Stanford, their special teams were just fine. I've never played or coached college football - but the general wisdom is that special teams quality & success is a combination of special players (DeSean Jackson) and also without that, a direct result of amount of practice time spent on drilling everything. Frank Beamer famously spent a lot of time on special teams, thus Beamer ball could be counted on to turn 2-3 games a year for VTech.
Thanks for this, Nick. I'm definitely worried about special teams, but I'm not worried about the specialists. My concerns are completely centered around blocking, coverage, and not committing penalties. It seems like units were impacted by some of the players held out for covid, but it's really hard to have transparency into how much of a contributor that was. Anyone seen work in the fall or spring camps to focus on that? Are they focusing any more on those units than normal?