Thursday, March 22, 2007

Post-spring thoughts

I’ll have a story in Friday’s Opelika-Auburn News wrapping up spring practice and looking at what the team accomplished over the course of the 15 practices.

Practices may be over, but obviously the time for talking football never ends around these parts. I’ve pretty much covered everything I think of spring practice, both here and in the paper. As far as I’m concerned Brandon Cox the biggest story of spring practice. He proved to everyone—and maybe even to himself—that he can be a big-time playmaker when he’s healthy.

But spring football and fall football aren’t the same thing, as anyone who’s ever looked over the list of A-Day MVPs knows very well.

Cox will still have something to prove in the season opener against Kansas State, and in more or less every game after that. That’s a good thing: Anyone who’s followed Auburn football in the Tommy Tuberville era knows the Tigers play a lot better when they can convince themselves they’re the overlooked underdogs. Rest assured, Cox is anxious to prove everyone who doubted him wrong, even if it’s not in his nature to come right out and say it.

Wednesday’s scrimmage was fun to watch—anytime an offense scores 10 touchdowns, it’s fun to watch. But in the grand scheme of things, it meant more or less nothing, except as an exercise in confidence-building for the offense. The deck was stacked against the defense, with four starters out and plenty of walk-ons and scout-teamers playing a lot.

Still, what Mario Fannin did deserves some notice. I don’t care if you’re playing against Opelika Middle School, 206 yards and three TDs on 13 carries is pretty impressive. And though Tristan Davis didn’t have quite as many highlight runs as Fannin did on Wednesday, I thought he showed a lot of skill—especially for a guy who supposedly doesn’t have the hips to play tailback. I think Davis and Fannin will both play big roles on offense next season. But we’ll see.

On defense, Quentin Groves didn’t get a ton of work in Wednesday’s scrimmage after sitting out A-Day. But he had one of the day’s biggest hits, absolutely leveling Davis on a toss play near the sideline. Quentin has All-America talent...it remains to be seen if he’ll be able to put up All-America numbers, especially with opposing offenses sure to gameplan their pass protection around neutralizing him. He has to be praying that somebody—Michael Goggans, Octavius Balkcom, Darrell Roseman, Antonio Coleman, somebody—can step up as a legit pass-rusher on the other side of the line to take some pressure off him.

At safety, walk-on junior Jonathan Vickers, a former quarterback, looked good this spring, though he understandably had trouble keeping up with the likes of Fannin and Davis in the open field. But I think it’s clear to everyone that Vickers’ position as the second-team strong safety is a message to incoming freshman safety Michael McNeil: Playing time available here. It’ll be interesting to see how quickly McNeil can learn the defensive playbook and get himself onto the field. By all accounts, he has the talent to do it.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. There’ll be plenty of time to talk about fall football between now and July.