Double-T Nation News:
DTN plans to release an updated depth-chart and a final draft of the BlogPoll over the weekend.
DTN's Top Five:
- Some of you may or may not know this, but I've adopted the Arsenal F.C. as my official futbol team and Arseblog has a tremendous preview of the team.
- The Coaches Hot Seat on the spread offense.
- Martellus Bennett is going to fail at the NFL if his attitude doesn't change.
- Coach K doesn't care that you hate Duke.
- ESPN's Big 12 Blogger Tim Griffin asks where are all of the running backs and a Q & A with Griffin and Mark Schlabach.
Texas Tech Football:
Lots of stuff today, we'll start with the national items and then go to the more local stories.
ESPN's Ivan Maisel looks at the crop of Big 12 quarterbacks from the standpoint that they all have something to prove, the skepticism of Graham Harrell being the system argument. I'm ignoring the "system" stuff and focusing on this exchange that Captain Leach had about Harrell working on throwing to receivers not named Mr. Crabtree:
Leach said Harrell has worked on throwing individual routes to receivers not wearing No. 5, which would be a problem for any quarterback when Michael Crabtree is wearing No. 5. "It may not be perfect," Leach said of Harrell and Crabtree, "but one knew what the other was doing."Such as?
"Just subtle little things," Leach said. "Crabtree's got a little knack on a dig route, and they're on the same page on this. If the situation's right, instead of coming all the way across, he'll return. When he does that, he's wide open. I think as they're wandering around playing video games, doing whatever they do, some of that is rolling though their head. It brings out some positive things."
ESPN Big 12 Blogger Tim Griffin says that Texas Tech's window of opportunity is now. Much of the post talks about the bad loss, which we've talked about before, but it appears that the players feel the same way. Here's cornerback L.A. Reed acknowledging the bad loss:
"I've been here for four years and we were right there about winning the Big 12. And we always lost a game to mess it up," Reed said. "This year, we don't have any excuses."
And receiver Eric Morris:
"In the past, we've been known to come up with one or two big victories a year that we shouldn't get and then turn around the next week and lose a game that most people think there's no way we should have lost," Tech inside receiver Eric Morris said. "We're just trying to stay on more of an even keel this season."
Honestly, I'm just glad they all acknowledge the bad loss, that's a step in the right direction. It's all about consistency with this group and if this team can figure out how to hold onto the ball and occasionally stop the run, we'll all feel better.
LAJ's Don Williams focuses this morning on safety Anthony Hines' recovery from injury last year to compete for the starting strong safety position. Hines credits his roommates who helped him through the rehab process:
"My roommates … I live with some of the best guys," Hines said, naming McBath, Bunton and 2007 senior cornerback Chris Parker. "When that happened, I didn’t have to worry about anything. They made sure I was taken care of. I was sitting in bed most of the time with a brace on me. If I needed anything, they helped me up, they made sure I wasn’t too down, and they kept me company. I had a great support system."
LAJ's Williams' also has his Red Raiders Football Notebook that begins on the new 15-yard penalty for any facemask, but I thought this quote was awfully telling (emphasis mine):
"We tackle every day, and we tackle properly every day," he said. "They’ve never tackled this much before. Now they’ve got to learn to transfer what we do pre-practice to the field. They’ll get it, but I’d rather be (flagged) now in practice than in a game."
More evidence of things changing. Still strange to think that a football team didn't tackle that much, but things are different.
Williams also notes that Julius Howard continues to rise up the depth charts and has replaced Tyrone Sonier as the back-up strong side linebacker, while Eric Morris returned to the practice field.
RaiderPower's Mitchell Fish has a tremendous run-down of Wednesday's scrimmage. I'm not going to blockquote anything, but this is worth your time this morning. Mitchell does mention that Batch looked like the best runner today, which leads me to this . . .
Neglected Videos: Make sure and check out the scrimmage video from Fox34, there's a running play in there where Baron Batch looks amazing for a 10 yard TD run, Detron Lewis and a beautiful pass by Harrell in the corner of the endzone to Mr. Crabtree. There's commentary from Craig James, father of inside receiver Adam James. KAMC28 also has some video and player reaction from the scrimmage.
I noticed this too, but dedfischer of Barking Carival wondered what would happen in Mr. Crabtree were playing in the UT secondary, in reference to ESPN's Bruce Feldman's article on Mr. Crabtree earlier this week and I wondered the same thing, but didn't think to ask the question, as dedfischer did, if UT really did recruit Mr. Crabtree.