Archive For April 26, 2013
There have been many football offseasons when I’ve covered the possibility of one, or perhaps two, Patriot League players getting signed as free agents playing at the next level.
This offseason, we might see something unprecedented.
Four Lehigh football players – QB Mike Colvin, TE Jamel Haggins, LB Billy Boyko, and, of course, WR Ryan Spadola – all have an excellent chance at finding themselves in NFL training camps in the next couple of months.
One – Spadola – is a strong candidate for being drafted this Saturday.
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(Photo Credit: Stephen Flood/The Express-Times)
Below the flip get all the links and wrapups of this weekend’s Spring Game.
In the meantime, check out rising senior S Rickie Hill about to deliver some punishment to senior WR Sergio Fernandez-Soto!
(Photo Credit: Kevin Mingora/The Morning Call/April 20th, 2013)
By any measure the defense probably had more of its share of concern – and attention from coaches and fans alike – in this Spring season.
They had heard the issues all Spring long – the fact that only three starters returned on defense, including four new starters in the secondary and three new starters on the defensive line.
“The defense needs to get better,” Coen said in the release before the Brown/White game. “They didn’t perform very well in our last scrimmage and our coaches have challenged them.”
The defensive Brown team, led by new team captains senior LB Nigel Muhammad and senior FS Tyler Ward, responded to the challenge.
Using a modified scoring system, the Brown defense scored 14 points off of sacks and 12 points off of turnovers as the defense put up a solid performance in a 46-37 victory.
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Last season, there was little drama on the defensive side of the ball going into the spring season.
With all-Patriot League names like DT Sajjad Chagani, DE Tom Bianchi, LB Billy Boyko and CB Bryan Andrews on the roster, you knew that the squad was more in a mode to “tweak” rather than to “retool”.
This season sees not only these three position leaders graduate, but plenty more, making the defense much less experiences, and a much larger area of competition, than last season.
“The defense needs to get better,” head coach Andy Coen said in this week’s release. “They didn’t perform very well in our last scrimmage and our coaches have challenged them. We haven’t had a lot of live tackling because we’re in a tailback situation. Last week we got more into it, we scrimmaged, and we didn’t tackle very well. We have to improve upon that.”
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Can it be already that half of spring practice is already in the books?
While many of us were watching the NCAA Tournament, ripping up our office pools while watching Louisville upend Michigan in the championship, the Lehigh football team was getting better.
“We’re just trying to learn and get better each day,” head coach Andy Coen said in Lehigh’s mid-season spring report. “We’ve got so many young, young players… I think we have a lot of talented players here, but a lot of the guys haven’t had the type of opportunity that they’re getting now.”
“I think this team is lacking experience,” Coen told me, “but I don’t believe we are lacking talent. We have been fortunate over the past three years to have some very talented players and they have kept some other guys off the field.”
As we take a peek at the offense today, we see some of the players that have impressed the coaching staff thus far – and, what has to be top on Lehigh fans’ list of wonder, how the battle for quarterback is shaping up.
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