Cougars dealing with the wear-and-tear of a long, grinding season
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Mounting injuries and the late open date in the schedule has Herman planning to revisit his stance on what he calls “the hardest training camp in the history of college football.”
“The right answer is I don’t know,” Herman said earlier this week when asked if the Cougars are worn down from such a rigorous training regimen. “It’s on my list of things to evaluate.”
Thanks for posting. I was asking this question yesterday about whether Herman would change anything about the training camp given the injuries, recent decline in on-field performance knowing that the bye week was late in the season…I was called out for “speculation” – not sure when asking questions became speculation but good to see Duarte asking the question.
Didnt we have a ton of injuries last year on the o-line and our running backs? So why is this year its such and issue?
I believe in his weekly press conference CTH said most injuries were game related not practice. Either way a bunch of injuries, and a looooong wait for bye week, IMHO, have taken a big toll. A military axiom; the more you sweat in training the less you bleed in combat.
I would think that clearly we don’t have the depth of prospects we had last year. Not sure why, given the quality of last year’s recruiting class. But the “what” is pretty clear. Take running back. We’re still looking for that guy who can consistently break loose. Problem is you need help from the O-line and that just hasn’t been there. You could even see that in the OU game. We had a really hard time getting past the line of scrimmage. By the same token our line doesn’t seem as adept at sealing the ends for Ward so we don’t see as many of those spectacular sweeps as last year. It all starts and stops with the O-line. Hopefully Herman can shore up that part of the team. No boom without the bang.
We had better depth on the O-Line last year with Cooper and Freeman. Depth just isn’t the same this year, especially at Guard where we haven’t found a good combo.
We also don’t have the depth at RB that we had last year with Jackson and Farrow and then using Brandon Wilson late in the year. Wilson’s injury this year didn’t allow for that and Catalon and Car’s injuries have set us back. Just haven’t had that big play back this year.
Everyone is eventually going to play the same amount of games, but I can’t remember any recent schedules where the Coogs hadn’t had at least one bye. It’s not an excuse, but this team could have used one in the worst way since about the UConn game.
Saw that this was the longest without going with a bye since 2006.
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