Belated Spring Game Thoughts

Hello everybody. It's been a while (4 posts in April!), but your favorite NIU blogger is back with a vengeance. I just want it to be football season again!

Since the last time I've posted, the baseball team has continued to have success and spring practice culminated with a spring game for the football team to showcase their talents.

Since then, we've obtained a new AD (more on him later) for NIU and a new writer for this site. I'd like to welcome Nick aka 7 aka G-Force to write for this site. He adds a little more flavor and will pick up my slack when school and other commitments get in the way.

You have to feel kinda bad for the football team this year throughout the spring practicing outside. The weather has been a complete turn of a roulette wheel with most of the days ending up either very cold or rainy. By the time the spring game was about to start, it was windier than it ever was in Dekalb all year. I definitely knew that the main focus of the game will be to figure out some of our running game.

It wasn't much of a game or scrimmage. Score wasn't kept, but there were people that did score. I guess that's the best they could have done with such a depleated roster because of injuries. It was just one offense against one defense with a lot of people switching in. It wasn't terribly exciting, but then again what spring games are that interesting?

QB Controversy

The star of the spring game was clearly redshirt freshman QB DeMarcus Grady, who rushed for 118 yds on 8 carries. He also threw 4 for 7 with 36 yds and a TD. This is foreshadowing for what Grady is going to be used for during the season. Either Dan Nicholson or Chandler Harnish is going to start the regular season. More than likely if Dan N is healthy the job is going to be his. Harnish does have entire spring under his wings running the offense more efficiently than anybody, so he currently has the upper hand.

Let's just face it. Kill is going to be running the spread offense and Ryan Morris is just not suited for the job. I would say from what I've seen is that Harnish is more suited to run the spread than Nicholson, who is not as mobile as the Indiana native. Morris may have the most experience because he's been here the longest, but he sure isn't as talented. Grady is a little slow to adjust to the college game because he mostly just ran the ball in high school.

If freshman QB Brandon Rogers is going to make an impact...well I'm pretty sure he's gonna redshirt this year for the success of the future of our program. If not that, then he is a mid-season emergency QB which we don't want to see happen.

Harnish moved around really well, except one of his passes was right to the defense. DeMarcus of course moved around great as well.

Both the Daily Chronicle and the Northern Star have all their money on Dan Nicholson being the starter and I'll have to go on ahead and agree with what they're trying to say. He'll get his chance with all these freshmen biting at his heels come summer/fall.

Does anybody understand this quote?:

The most interesting thought is what to do with Grady. The coaches made it abundantly clear that they won't be switching his position and they won't be rotating quarterbacks.

“Will I package some people? You bet,” head coach Jerry Kill said. “Maybe we'll see two quarterbacks in a game. We'll see how everything progresses.”

OK. So you're not going to rotate the QB's, but we might see 2 QB's in the same game???



I actually have a better version of this run and others, but I was a little too lazy and video-illiterate to post it...

The Rest

Running backs Justin Anderson, David Bryant and Chad Spann all looked like they were in mid-season form. I'm excited about what they have to offer along with Montell Clanton coming back. Alan Smith and Rickey Crider are darkhorses.

Our offense looked horrible. Of course this was going to be expected somewhat with the experience of our defense and the fact that throwing against this severe 35 mph was insane. Walk-on TE Jack Marks had a decent outing pulling in a TD from Grady and another catch for 35 yds total. K Mike Salerno looked good cleaning up for Chris Nendick in the kicking game. He did kick with the wind from 40 yds twice, but it was impressive nonetheless.

WR Chase Mejia looked bad throughout the beginning of the spring game. He dropped passes and wasn't running the right routes. I'm happy he was able to turn around and make some good plays towards the end of the spring game. Not bad for a true freshman! LB Tim McCarthy was back from injury and playing like it was nothing. Can't wait for him to be back on the field.

As for what kind of plays we were running, it was nothing but 4-wide, trips to one side spread out stuff. There was no 2-back power offensive game of any sort throughout the spring game. I found this interesting, because I felt disappointed not getting to see most of the offense be set into motion. The defense looked very fast and ready to take people down.

On the NFL Draft front, TE Brandon Davis got an invite to the Redskins camp, while K Chris Nendick didn't get a call from any NFL team.