Troop's Takes: Spring football hints at some answers
By Caleb Troop
Athens NEWS Sports Columnist
April 21, 2008
I don’t mean to burst the hype bubble that is the annual Green and White football game coming up this Saturday. After all, the final spring scrimmage is a great event that can tell fans a ton about their football team.
But after I watched a 60-play scrimmage this past Saturday — the second of three scrimmages on the April calendar — two things are certain:
1. ’Cats quarterback Theo Scott does not have a lock on the starting quarterback position just yet.
2. The four-man running-back race to replace the NFL-bound Kalvin McRae is now a two-man race.
Throughout spring, Scott has appeared ready to be the number-one man under center for the Bobcats. But just as everyone — me, the rest of the media, the football team itself — was set to unofficially name Scott the starting quarterback, Boo Jackson told us to hold on.
The junior-college transfer completed five of seven pass attempts for 116 yards and two touchdowns. He found sophomore wide-out Robert Mercer in the back corner of the end zone on a beautiful fade route for an 11-yard score, and later hooked up with ’Cats senior tight-end Andrew Mooney for a 72-yard touchdown.
“The past couple of weeks I’ve been struggling to get down the offense,” said Jackson, “but today I finally felt like I actually got everything down.
“There are a lot of things I’ve got to improve on in order to take over for this team, but right now I think the scrimmage was good for me.”
I’m not saying one spring scrimmage automatically puts Jackson above Scott in the QB competition. Scott did OK, too, by completing four of six passes for 51 yards. And after all, the entire ’Cats offense went up against an injury-depleted defense that saw a large chunk of its starters on the sidelines.
But there’s something to be said about Jackson’s performance two days ago. Just three weeks after coming to Athens from the West Coast, it’s impressive that Jackson has been able to even compete at a level comparable to Scott.
“I’ve had a good mindset about Boo from the time he’s arrived,” said Ohio head coach Frank Solich. “He’s really picked things up pretty well now. He’s not satisfied with things, and that’s probably good. He’s somewhat of a perfectionist, and so he presses himself to be good. I think you kind of look for that in a guy.”
Jackson’s abilities are clearly not going unnoticed by the coaches. But his teammates also have been pleasantly surprised by his quick adjustment throughout spring ball.
“He hasn’t been here long, but it’s obvious that he’s a player,” said junior running back L.J. Flintall. “He came in with a lot of accolades and stats on his belt, anyways. So I felt like it was just a matter of time before he could unleash it and show what he had, and he’s doing that.”
Based on experience, Scott might have a leg up on the two-man competition. But this battle is nowhere near over. The exciting part is Jackson will only get better.
Flintall, meanwhile, is stuck in a four-man competition in the backfield. If you ask me, the competition has realistically narrowed down to Flintall and sophomore Vince Davidson.
Davidson, who showed flashes of promise in limited play last season, had eight rushes for 20 yards on Saturday. After an early fumble, Flintall recovered to steal the show with seven rushes for 84 yards, including a breathtaking 57-yard sprint to the end zone.
“I felt great,” Flintall said. “I’ve been running track since I was 12, so I felt like it was nothing new.”
McRae, who re-wrote the Ohio record book, does not singlehandedly get replaced overnight. And sure, redshirt-freshman Donte Harden and newly transformed junior tailback Chris Garrett are understandably still in the mix.
But Flintall and Davidson could be the best one-two punch in the Mid-American Conference.
No, not next year. Now.
Yes — the entire MAC.
“I could really care less about the depth chart,” Flintall added. “Of course in the end you want to be atop of it, but right now I just want to work as hard as I can to be the best back I can be.”
Asked Solich: “Do we have anybody that can hold like Kalvin did for us game after game? I don’t know. But we are going to have a number of guys that can step on the field and play really good football for us.”
As far as I’m concerned, that number of guys should be two, and no Green and White game will change that.
Caleb Troop is sports columnist for The Athens NEWS and can be reached at ctroop@TroopSports.com. He co-hosts “The SportsFan” weeknights from 6-7 on 970 WATH-AM.
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