- McNair, from Jacksonville, NC, projects as a hard hitting inside LB in our 3-4 scheme. A good athlete with solid football instincts, McNair chose Tech over UNC, NC State, Arkansas, West "By Gawd" Virginia, & Clemson, to name a few. While he'll need to work on his tackling form, you can see from his junior year highlight video that McNair likes to bring the lumber. There's a lot for the staff to work with here.....
- Noble is the prototype Cover 2 corner for Groh's defense. In fact, it's uncanny how he resembles former Groh corners Chris Cook & Ras-I Dowling, both of whom proved to be excellent ACC players (Cook was drafted in the 2nd round by the Vikings this year). Noble has great size & is able to set the edge on the run force while also having good enough hips to play solid zone coverage. Noble had a plethora of offers & ended up choosing Tech over Penn State & Notre Dame which should give you an idea of how highly recruited he was.
A most cordial welcome to the Flats, gentlemen. We now have 13 commits for what I anticipate will be 22 or 23 spots in the 2011 class. One brief aside on this year's class. We are off to a very good start this year in recruiting and have really benefitted from new recruiting coordinator & defensive line coach Andy McCollum's connections in North Carolina. We now have four solid players from NC (Willis, Lee, McNair, & Noble) and with McCollum's late arrival to Tech this year from NC State, it makes sense he use his connections there to get the best recruits possible. Long term, however, focusing on North Carolina for talent is a bad strategy. First off, after Georgia, Florida is the state we need to most heavily recruit. Not only is the talent base huge, but we have traditionally done very well in the Panhandle down through Orlando & into Tampa. To focus heavily on North Carolina & neglect Florida would be a HUGE mistake, in my opinion. It's okay this year, particularly the way Giff Smith departed & McCollum was brought on, but it won't serve us well in the future. Go where the talent is & that's Florida......
On to some linkage:
- Seniors Joshua Nesbitt & Brad Jefferson were named permanent captains by CPJ for the 2010 season. The other two captains on game day will rotate through the senior class. No big surprise here & the contrast in leadership styles will be fun to watch. As far as talking on the field, there aren't two more diametrically opposed players on our entire team.....
- With all the awards "watch lists" coming out, Matt Hinton, aka Dr. Saturday, had a cool list here. We'll pat ourselves on the back for nominating Bedford for the good Doc's list. Can't think of a more deserving player across the entire college football landscape.....
- It's this type of thing that makes us feel good about our football program and our future. That is a young man of discriminating taste and outstanding breeding. Now if we could only sneak him into practice & get some updates.....
- Speaking of feeling good about our football program? We came across this little post the other day. Pretty prescient stuff from 2007. That's one guy who certainly had it figured out. So we got Paul Johnson & mighty Michigan, they of the "Big House", got Rich Rodriguez. I'd say we won that round.....
- I generally love Mr. College Football, Tony Barnhart. But this is a bit much? CAN we win another ACC title? Seems a ridiculous question. CAN we? Of course we can. We return 15 starters from the team that did so last year. I don't think anyone would debate that we have the talent to win the ACC crown. Will we? That's an entirely different matter......
- Mark Schlabach gets some words of wisdom from CPJ: "I tell [the players] every day they haven't done anything, and they haven't," Johnson said. "We're 0-0, haven't won a game. There is no defending. Every year starts over. It's not like they say, 'You're the defending champ, you get to start out in first place, and somebody has to get you.' You start over every year, and every team's different. They all have their different identity." That's the beauty of college football.....
Kam Chancellor made ol' Frank a little sick last year.....
- Frank Beamer certainly deserves the contract extension. Is there a no whining clause?
- Another thing we at Tech can take credit for: the fumblerooski. Hey, no wonder they named a trophy after that guy.....(if you've never read the link to the New York Times article in Weber's piece we HIGHLY suggest you do so, as a Tech fan, you won't regret it).
- The problems for Turner Gill & his Kansas Jayhawks continue to mount. First they have QB named Pick, who will be starting only his second game when facing our vaunted.....option attack. Yeah, that's some good news for our "learning" defense. Secondly, they've lost another player, by our count the sixth potential starter this off-season. This time it's RB Rell Lewis who suffered a knee injury. We're now concerned about just leaving Lawrence in one piece the way things are going up there.
- Probably not the best way to get that $1500 buy-in for the poker game (yes, that's allegedly what the money was for). Looks like Mr. Dasher will escape the gnarly claws of justice on this one. We might recommend a low profile.....
- Finally, All Hail the Victor:
This bodes well for us.....
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