Often I've seen where a reserve that screws up in practice only gets to play because the player in front of him gets hurt and the bad practice player shines in the bright lights. It is true in all sports not just football. A prime example is Warren Sapp...he hated practice and rarely visited the workout room...was no golden boy who came to the U as a TE but was a football player with natural instincts. Devin Hester had problems learning to be at any position except returner, the greatest ever. I'm sure others here can point out examples (especially like Tom Brady in college and at NE). How does a coach decide to play a reserve over a great in practice? How often do we see "his lights went out when the bright lines came on" or inversely needed the pressure of the bright lights showed us a football layer. Who is a reserve that can play better than the person he is second to????? Tough decision for any coach.
It does seem to be a problem at UM. That's where the greentree all-american comes from.
It is the million dollar question too, which is probably vastly different for every coaching staff. Coaches can only really go off what they see in practice. Whenever I was on my gradeschool teams, I played terrible during practice so I had to sit during games. Whenever I finally got in, I started balling out. I don't know what it is. This is almost the opposite because you have guys that practice good, but don't perform when the bullets start flying.
It's hard to say because we can only go by what we hear of practice or the 15 minute clips of their lackadaisical drills.
I think another issue is coaching up the younger guys (especially the more talented ones) The coaches issue is: will the young guys know the plays, do their assignments, play without the football, etc if they go in? Since there is uncertainty there, they go with their tried and true upperclassman who they
feel they can trust. After watching all the media related to the CC state game, it's pretty evident that the staff knows the younger guys are ballers, but they still struggle 'trusting them' enough to get them snaps? So that is where this whole "Manny only plays upperclassman" thing comes from. I mean there are *some* positives we've seen like James Williams getting a lot of reps early and Brinson getting into the games a little (prior to CC state). But you've got guys like Wiggins who has just shown he cant catch during the game. You've got guys like Mallory who is a greentree all american, but suffers from not a baller syndrome during games. Can't block, and decides to not be able to catch either. It's ridiculous when you have that many other talented players on the roster. But it goes back to your point, how can you tell who is going to be good in the games? Personally, I believe you find the dogs and you play them. Stevenson and Restrepo are those guys. Troutman, Williams, C Smith appear to be those guys too. Trajan Bandy was that guy. Maybe we just don't recruit enough of them? idk.
I think if we dig deeper into the problem there needs to be more development when the guys first come into the program. I know there are some weird NCAA rules that limit the amount of practices, coaching interactions, number of scrimmages, etc, but I think we haven't figured out a way to 'get ahead' and operate in the grey maybe. Maybe this is due to it being too big of a risk for the university who always seems to be a target? I don't know. I know at Baga, they have 20,000 former NFL coach "analysts" who are able to skirt the system somehow and get information to the players. This is complete opinion, but this is where I think we struggle. We need to get the young guys learning the playbook and all that stuff on their own time. And maybe they ARE "doing that", but obviously there is some level of disconnect there.
Also obviously no, LT isn't going to start as a true freshman who missed spring camp in the 1st game of the season vs Bama. But you can also tell that the young and talented guys are the ones who should be playing more snaps. So why aren't they? For example we know that Cam is probably starting at RB because he blocks well, and you need that extra pass protection when your O line struggles as bad as ours does. I know that RB is one of the easier positions to play as a freshman, so really in this case, how hard is it to coach up the young guys to pick up blocks?
I don't really know what the point of this post is, just that yes, there is something there, and I think they all come back to the same root problem. Player development is of the same problem family.
tl;dr play the young, talented guys and let them learn on the fly/coach them on the fly, they will make mistakes, but they will also compete and give us a chance to win. Figure out how to coach up the young guys sooner so that they know how to do their "job" if/when they do see the field.
