Spring Football Journal With Dane Robinson

Dane Robinson

Well, another week in the books and you know what? We're starting to look like a shade of our former selves. After an up and down week of practice that really challenged us defensively in being able to stay sharp mentally and challenged the offense to have some continuity it all culminated with our second scrimmage on Saturday.

Here's the thing...whenever you scrimmage its hard to kind of decipher who you want to see do well. If the offense scores that's all well and good but then you scratch your head about the defense and where the improvements lie there. If the defense is shining then what's going on with your offense? It's kind of like when the Lakers and Celtics used to play when Magic was matched up on Larry. No matter what our preference you wanted to see a battle but in the end you really didn't want to see either person do badly. And neither squad did badly we just took constant shots at each other which made for an interesting afternoon. A long pass gain here, a sack there. A first down run there, an interception here. Which is a huge step from where we were at where it just looked like a Chinese fire-drill out there. Pause!....... For those of you that don’t know, it’s when a group of people in a car (usually 4 people) get to a red light and hop out of the car and run around the car as fast as they can with arms flailing and yelling only to get back in the car before the light changes red. Now imagine this scene and just replace the traffic intersection with a football field and those four people with about 22 UB football players...glad we're all caught up now.

The competitiveness between our offense and defense is hilarious sometimes from ugly celebrations (the one you kind of shake your head at) to even the coaches getting in on some of the trash talk. Naaman runs down the sideline as the ball is seemingly overthrown Coach Dodson calls Naaman out saying he would have never got that ball anyway...Naaman laughs as he just walks back to the huddle and subtlety points to his jersey that is pulled down exposing his shoulder pad (he thinks he was held, I really don't know what he's talking about ...there's no such thing as holding on defense, duh)

This team is taking the steps that we need to take to achieve what we want, what our family and friends want, and what Buffalo wants with another MAC championship and another amazing bowl game experience but there are still some hurdles we have to get over to get to that goal. From the young guys learning the system so they can step up and contribute, to our go-to guys not being able to practice with us because of injury, to our go-to guys that are healthy now getting injured there are a lot things that we have to conquer to get ready for this 2009 season. Our defensive coordinator, Coach Reed put it best, “We got to weather the storm men…”, he says as he addresses us after practice comparing our first game in 2009 to us dealing with the challenges of getting ready for the season, “They gonna think they got you against the ropes. Oh UB is done! Finished! And then we gon’ give em’ a little rope-a-dope action (as he bobs and weaves in his little imaginary ring) and then….BAM!!! WHAM!!! (he streams a mean right jab and left hook on air that would have quite possibly made De La Hoya look silly if you ask me) ...KNOCKOUT!!...Weather the storm the men.”

Three weeks down, two more to go....until next time.

#92
GO BULLS
2008 MAC CHAMPS