island eagle

I'll second that!

Sounds to me like a lot of people want to shoot the "messenger". As much as I would love to see us improve dramatically from last year and hope for sure that we do, the bottom line is we are rolling into 2008 with paper thin OL and DL's and mediocre to average talent in those areas to boot. It will be a miracle if anyone picks us any higher coming into the season. As I said, I hope they are wrong, but when I take off my green glasses I see a lot of issues that have to be resolved for us even to make the top half of the Sun Belt, much less rack up a winning record.

Go, Johnny go!

Seems like an excellent hire to me.

What "implications". I haven't seen any. Perhaps you are looking for a beef.

What 1-AA opponents are we getting at home? Would like cheese with that whine?

The point isn't that the words are either incorrect or undeserved after last year. The point is they are FIGHTING words none-the-less.

Let's hope we give them a "tune up" they will never forget!!!

Amen. Some fans want big time football at 1-AA prices. It doesn't happen that way!

You're not the only one. I've been worried about it since last fall when it was evident we were going to be very thin at those positions. I wish they had been someone higher on the recruiting priority list. It's nice to WR's, but they won't mean much without a defense and an offensive line to support them.

Not from what I saw in high school. If that is the case, then Dodge laid a major egg with his recruitment.

My oh my. Whatever happened to Jordan Scoggins? He is too talented an athlete not to make a top-two roster.

I truly hope that DeLoach makes a strong case for Troy remaining on the DL. We are really thin there unless we get some big surprises out of our practices between now and September.

Thanks for the links.

Going well as long as you don't need a defensive line.

Hard not to be concerned about DT at this point. If Cantly were to come in, with his limited playing time in high school, and have any impact at all, then we'd be looking at the second coming of Booger or Mean Joe Greene. Possible, but highly unlikely. Given their high school experience, I'd expect Joe Hawthorne to have more of an upfront impact, through he may have to take a year or two to put on sufficient weight. For Joe to make it, he will need to weigh at least 275-280.

I'm surprised that DeSoto and Scroggins are more in the mix at DT. They have some size and had pretty good high school credentials.

His stats are decent all around- 73% FT, 41% 3 points, etc.

Walk-on linebacker Robbie Deheck, 6-1 219 4.7 was a unanimous pick as all-district LB (4A-6) in 2006. His junior year in high school (2005) he had 100 tackles at the LB position. I don't have his senior season stats. 2006 Texas Football described him this way: "LB Deheck (100 tackles) is a playmaker with a nose for the ball and a great leader on defense". I also don't know where he spent last year, but he sounds like a pretty good walk-on for us at the LB position.

You're not the only one. This is the thinnest (unproven talent wise) that I've seen in the OL and DL, especially, since the Simon era. Maybe DeSoto and Scoggins will turn out to be super-studs. I certainly hope so, because we are nowhere near top Sun Belt quality at the DT's without their unexpected development.

That may be, but it wasn't true in my case. I looked at UT-Austin, SWT (as it was called in those days), Texas Tech and North Texas. I ruled out UT, because I didn't want to go to college in my home town, SWT seemed too "small time" in those days, and Tech (ugh!). The only logical choice seemed to be North Texas, which seemed to have more of what I was looking for in a university. I never regretted the choice.

Meant to say "off-the-wall".

The main character in an "off-the-war" Coen Brothers movie. You'd have to see it to understand what a Lebowski is.

If we take care of business on the road.

Or at least break the ice!