Archive For The “Spring Football” Category
According to the FCS record books for 2017, there are 123 Division I schools listed in the team statistical Rankings.
Out of 123 teams, Lehigh was ranked 119th in total team defense, allowing 477.7 yards per game.
And the defensive numbers don’t get much better the more you look.
Rushing defense, 117th. Passing yards allowed, 89th. Team sacks, 118th. Red zone defense, 103rd.
Total sacks in 12 games: 10, or 0.8 per game. Total interceptions in 12 games: 4, or 0.25 per game. Total takeaways: 13, or a little over 1 per game.
Though the final defensive numbers from 2017 are unable to be sugar-coated, nobody involved with Lehigh’s defense is running away from the facts this spring. In fact, they feel they are better than this.
“When you hear so much about your defense not being good,” defensive coordinator Craig Sutyak said this week, “you start to believe it, and I think our kids started to believe it too the last couple of years. But we’re not going to beat ourselves. We’re going to have faith in ourselves, faith in the guys next to us, and we’re going to continue to grow as a unit.”
According to the FCS record books for 2017, there are 123 Division I schools listed in the team statistical Rankings.
Out of 123 teams, Lehigh was ranked 119th in total team defense, allowing 477.7 yards per game.
And the defensive numbers don’t get much better the more you look.
Rushing defense, 117th. Passing yards allowed, 89th. Team sacks, 118th. Red zone defense, 103rd.
Total sacks in 12 games: 10, or 0.8 per game. Total interceptions in 12 games: 4, or 0.25 per game. Total takeaways: 13, or a little over 1 per game.
Though the final defensive numbers from 2017 are unable to be sugar-coated, nobody involved with Lehigh’s defense is running away from the facts this spring. In fact, they feel they are better than this.
“When you hear so much about your defense not being good,” defensive coordinator Craig Sutyak said this week, “you start to believe it, and I think our kids started to believe it too the last couple of years. But we’re not going to beat ourselves. We’re going to have faith in ourselves, faith in the guys next to us, and we’re going to continue to grow as a unit.”
Lehigh’s spring session is in full swing, and there’s no question who the opening-day starter will be at quarterback, barring injury – that would be rising senior QB Brad Mayes.
Mayes had a great season last year, helping the Mountain Hawk offense to tremendous production again, picking up exactly where Montreal Alouette QB Nick Shafnisky left off after the 2016 season.
That doesn’t mean Mayes is sitting back sipping an iced tea while his teammates are busting their humps this spring, however. He’s been busy.
“This off season was a lot of fun for me,” he told me. “I got to take on more of a leadership role which allowed me to make great strides in the weight room. We had an outstanding leadership council as well make some great strides in equipment and gear, nutrition, and alumni partnership. Although those may seem like little things when it comes to the game of football, stuff like looking like a team and matching on Saturdays really go a long way.”
Lehigh’s spring session is in full swing, and there’s no question who the opening-day starter will be at quarterback, barring injury – that would be rising senior QB Brad Mayes.
Mayes had a great season last year, helping the Mountain Hawk offense to tremendous production again, picking up exactly where Montreal Alouette QB Nick Shafnisky left off after the 2016 season.
That doesn’t mean Mayes is sitting back sipping an iced tea while his teammates are busting their humps this spring, however. He’s been busy.
“This off season was a lot of fun for me,” he told me. “I got to take on more of a leadership role which allowed me to make great strides in the weight room. We had an outstanding leadership council as well make some great strides in equipment and gear, nutrition, and alumni partnership. Although those may seem like little things when it comes to the game of football, stuff like looking like a team and matching on Saturdays really go a long way.”
Lehigh’s spring football practice segment officially starts tomorrow, ending an agonizingly long period of football inactivity from the end of the 2017 football season.
Tomorrow, the beginnings of the 2018 football team will take shape – a team that waves goodbye to WR Troy Pelletier and WR Gatlin Casey, but welcomes back rising senior QB Brad Mayes and some changes on the defensive side of the ball.
What sort of questions will be answered by by the end of this spring segment? Here are five of my questions.
Read more »
Lehigh’s spring football practice segment officially starts tomorrow, ending an agonizingly long period of football inactivity from the end of the 2017 football season.
Tomorrow, the beginnings of the 2018 football team will take shape – a team that waves goodbye to WR Troy Pelletier and WR Gatlin Casey, but welcomes back rising senior QB Brad Mayes and some changes on the defensive side of the ball.
What sort of questions will be answered by by the end of this spring segment? Here are five of my questions.
Read more »
Some spring games are loaded with drama as to who might be rising into starting positions.
On Lehigh’s offense, which boasts a backup quarterback-turned-starter that threw for 1,000 yards last year, a 1,000 yard rusher, and two of the Top 10 receivers in all of FCS, drama for starting positions was, shall we way, lacking.
Instead, the scrimmage became a show as to what Lehigh fans might be able to hope to see in Setpember, a reminder of all the good things that may be in store.
In that sense, even though they started out slow, junior QB Brad Mayes, junior RB Dominick Bragalone, senior WR Troy Pelletier and senior WR Gatlin Casey showed that they indeed still knew how to play some football.
They all came to play, and in the process gave Lehigh fans a taste of an offense that has the potential to be special yet again.
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Many will look at the spring game final results and stats and see that the offense “won” this Saturday’s Brown/White game, 48-34.
They’ll see a stat sheet they might expect from a Mountain Hawk team: 121 yards passing from junior QB Brad Mayes, touchdown receptions from senior WR Troy Pelletier and senior WR Gatlin Casey, as well as a touchdown run by junior RB Dominick Bragalone.
But that doesn’t tell the full story of the game, played on a wet Saturday morning under mostly overcast skies.
In the early portion of the scrimmage, the Brown defense racked up sacks, tipped passes and shut out the White offense for nearly an hour before Mayes would finally find Casey in the end zone.
If there was any question how the new four-man defensive front might work out for the Mountain Hawks, they were answered today with a solid performance early.
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It was good to see some football in Murray Goodman stadium today.Battling raindrops under an overcast, spring sky, Lehigh’s offense (the White team) won the “official” game, 48-34 over the Lehigh defense (the Brown team), using a modified scoring syste…
(Photo Credit: The Morning Call)
Going to practice this Wednesday, I wondered how things were going with the Mountain Hawks this spring.
You never really know what to expect until you go, and on a surprisingly chilly evening, I arrived up at Lehigh’s practice fields.
A lot of times at practice you hear jeremiads from the coaching staff on “spirited competition” and competing for positions. But you don’t always see it on the practice field.
On Wednesday, though, it was there. I saw it.
Maybe it’s a product of a lot of players knowing where they fit on the team, and that’s certainly what is my impression in regards to the Lehigh offense.
When you have returning all-Patriot League players at running back, wide receiver, and the offensive line, that’s one level of comfort. When you have a returning quarterback that started three games, including an FCS playoff game, and led an 63-35 win over Yale with 524 yards passing, that’s yet another level of comfort.
Perhaps that’s why it was an entertaining scene of players jawing at one another and competing against each other.
