Spring Game Preview
As I’m sure everyone knows by now, tomorrow afternoon at 1:00 the Demon Deacons will take part in the annual Spring Game, an intrasquad scrimmage between the offense and defense taking place at the on campus practice field.
Coach Grobe’s stated goal for the scrimmage is “to let the kids have fun. I want to let them play a little bit; let them run around a bit. Let the fans see our guys. I think our fans are going to be excited to see the talent level we’ve got right now. Hopefully have a good healthy scrimmage and have everyone at the end walk off with a smile on their face. More than anything else, have fun.”
That’s not to say the scrimmage won’t be looked at by the coaches, but they also won’t be using it for any major decision making. “We’ll look at it as a staff, but we’re really not looking at it as a way to make or not make the team or anything like that,” said Grobe. “We’re just trying to let the guys compete and have a little fun.”
Grobe cautioned that if you want to see your favorite veterans play you’d better get there early. “It doesn’t take a smart person to figure out Aaron Curry can play, Alphonso can play, Stanley Arnoux can play, Boo Robinson can play. You can go right down the list; we’ve got a ton of guys who we know can play, so we don’t need to have those guys out there for two hours on Saturday. We’ll try to let the young guys have more reps than the old guys.”
Although the team has tried to come up with scoring systems in the past that allow both the offense and defense to score points in various ways, there will be no such format this year. Grobe has said these guys are competitive enough as-is and that they don’t need to be pushed any more in that direction. I guess I can understand that from his perspective, but I know that as a fan I’d rather see something competitive with a winner and a loser. Nonetheless, it should be a fun afternoon and I hope to see many of you there.
Some have asked about whether or not there will be rosters available at the scrimmage, and I’m guessing there may be a few but definitely not a couple thousand of them. Therefore, I’ve scanned the roster so that you can print it off for yourself at home and bring it with you.
