Big East: Sam Griffin
- The one word I would use to describe a Butch Jones practice is: Fast. Now, I've seen some up-tempo practices in my time. Bobby Petrino used to run his guys hard at Louisville. Heck, Brian Kelly's practices were up-tempo, so much so that Notre Dame is having to adjust to the new pace.
Still, I'm not sure I've seen a practice move as quickly, especially in the spring, as the one I saw today. The team took only one short break for water during the nearly 2 1/2 hour workout which covered 24 periods. When the offense was doing pass skeleton drills, the players had to absolutely sprint to the line of scrimmage after each throw. It's also a loud practice, as several coaches are yelling throughout. Usually, there's one or two extremely vocal, super-intense assistants on the field. At Nippert Stadium today, you would see several coaches sprinting and screaming all over the field.
At one point when a receiver failed to keep running down the field after a catch, Mike Bajakian chased him back to the huddle and then made him sprint with him for yards.
"Get the mentality!" Bajakian yelled.
So that was interesting.
- Some other differences included music over the loudspeakers at the start of practice, though it was turned off after assistant Kerry Coombs voiced his displeasure with Metallica's "One." Team managers wore referee shirts so players would know where to throw the ball after a drill. The team just bought six-foot screens on wheels that stood in for the pass rush on pass drills, as managers would push the screens toward the quarterbacks. And the players line up and shake hands like a postgame hockey scene once practice ends.
- Today was the first day in pads for the Bearcats, but they mostly avoided contact. So it was hard to draw large conclusions about the team as a whole. I would definitely say the receivers are impressive; the starting trio of Armon Binns, Vidal Hazelton and D.J. Woods all look great and it has to be the best group in the Big East. Jamar Howard looks bigger, and Kenbrell Thompkins looked like he could contribute down the line. Marcus Barnett, who has changed his number to 89, made some nice catches as well today.
- I thought Zach Collaros and Chazz Anderson looked sharp. Collaros is going to be the starter, of course, but this team can win with Anderson as well.
- Here was the starting unit on defense when the team went to 11-on-11 drills: Dan Giordano, Derek Wolfe, Brandon Mills and John Hughes up front, JK Schaffer, Dorian Davis and Walter Stewart at linebacker and Camerron Cheatham, Drew Frey, Wesley Richardson and Dominique Battle at defensive back. Cheatham made some nice plays, including an interception. Depth on the defensive line is a concern.
- The starting offensive line was C.J. Cobb, Sam Griffin, Alex Hoffman, Evan Davis and Jason Kelce.
- Jones has devised an interesting way to deal with Cincinnati's lack of practice space (Nippert Stadium is the team's only field). While at most other places punters do their thing on another field somewhere, they stood on the sidelines near the end zone Tuesday and punted the ball into the bleachers as a manager retrieved the balls.
O-line the secret to Cincinnati's spread success
Posted by ESPN.com's Brian Bennett
Cincinnati's offense is full of sound and fury. Heisman Trophy candidate Tony Pike, star receiver Mardy Gilyard and the rest of the skill players garner most of the attention.
 | |
| Rich Kane/Icon SMI | |
| Cincinnati prefers nimble, athletic offensive linemen, and even 313-pound Jeff Linkenbach is light on his feet. |
"We don't get a lot of notoriety, but that's kind of how we are," senior center Chris Jurek said. "We like not getting our names called. We create for everybody else."
Consider this stat: The offensive line has allowed just three sacks this year despite 188 pass attempts. That's one sack for every 63 passes. The Bearcats rank fourth in the FBS in fewest sacks allowed but have thrown the ball more times than the three teams in front of them.
Some of that stems from the fact that Pike is often in the shotgun, and head coach Brian Kelly's offense is designed to get rid of the ball quickly to receivers in the open field. Still, you shouldn't underestimate how much the offensive line has contributed to the most prolific attack in Kelly's three-year tenure at Cincinnati.
"The biggest change in our offensive structure has been the offensive line," Kelly said. "[Previous coach] Mark Dantonio did a great job of building his offense here, but the offensive linemen, quite frankly, didn't fit the same profile" as Kelly's offense.
"So Year 1 and Year 2 were really about getting our offensive linemen to fit our style. In Year 3, we're so much further along in their ability to play in space, to be more of a zone team than a gap team, a team that can put their linemen out and get out in screens and things of that nature."
Dantonio -- who's now at Michigan State -- liked a Big Ten-style line, with big, hulking guys who could plow holes for the power run game. Kelly has a high-tempo offense that often requires the linemen to run down the field and spring receivers free. That requires svelte, athletic players.
"It's been a pretty significant progression in terms of our body types and conditioning," Jurek said. "Coach's style is to get smaller guys who are more athletic and put good weight on them. That's one of the things I've seen here, and we've been able to do it with a high level of success."
Other than left tackle Jeff Linkenbach, no Cincinnati offensive lineman weighs more than 293 pounds. And even Linkenbach's 311 pounds don't sit heavily on his 6-foot-6 frame. Jurek, Linkenbach and left guard Jason Kelce all started on last year's Orange Bowl team. Alex Hoffman and Sam Griffin are first-year starters who have made the right side just as formidable.
The line will face its biggest test of the season on Thursday night at South Florida. The Bulls' defensive front four, Kelly said, "is as good as you're going to see. They can match up with any SEC or Big Ten teams." Defensive ends George Selvie and Jason Pierre-Paul have been terrorizing tackles, and the interior linemen are nearly as fast and aggressive. The Bulls' No. 1 goal is to get to Pike and disrupt his timing.
"I don't feel as if these guys have been challenged up front like we are going to do on Thursday," South Florida linebacker Kion Wilson said. "They haven't been hit and been physically abused yet. That's what we plan on going out there and doing."
"Their offensive line plays very well together," Selvie said. "But I think we can do a very good job against them. We've just got to be aggressive, let them know we're ready to play and that it's going to be a long day for them."
Kelly will surely design his game plan around quick throws and screens, rolling the pocket and other things to slow down that South Florida pass rush. The rest of the job will fall on the offensive linemen. If that group remains anonymous Thursday night, then you know they got the job done.
"It will be a tough challenge for us Thursday night," Jurek said, "but I think we'll be up for it."
Even if he weren't the two-time, reigning Big East coach of the year, Brian Kelly would still be a go-to guy for us reporter types. Kelly is never afraid to answer a question, and do it thoughtfully and in an interesting. Which is why he's the perfect subject for this week's installment of our spring Q&A series:
First of all, where do you keep your Big East coach of the year trophies?
Brian Kelly: Well, they're not prominently displayed for you today because you have no eligibility. But if you had eligibility, they would be prominently displayed. Certainly we use that from a recruiting standpoint. I think when you get in this recruiting process, it's important that kids see that you can be successful, and the leadership has to have that type of credibility. So we pull them out when the big recruits come in.
What has the reception from recruits been like since the Orange Bowl? I assume they know more about you now.
BK: Yeah, I think the recognition end of things now is not an issue. "Cincinnati ... didn't know you were in the Big East." We don't have to deal with that anymore. The first couple of months when I got here, we certainly did, but now it's an easier sell because you went to the Orange Bowl, you were on TV 11 out of 13 weeks on some kind of ESPN platform. So we have no problem with the recognition end of things now. And kids clearly want to be in a winning program. So it has obviously, in the last two years, made recruiting a whole lot easier.
Looking at this year's team, the obvious issue is the defense, where you lost 10 senior starters. How much does that concern you at this point?
BK: Well, it's an interesting question because early in the year last year, our defense didn't play quite as well as people had expected with the number of seniors we had. And I had to remind them, that of the 10 seniors we had on defense, only three had significant playing time. Lamonte Nelms hadn't started many games, Tory Cornett hadn't started many games, Brandon Underwood hadn't started any games -- and the list goes on. So it's less of a concern because we did it last year, and we think that we've got similar players that have been waiting for that opportunity to go out and perform. I think the biggest concern for us this is spring is, who are our leaders on defense? Last year we found Connor Barwin as a leader. I think we've got enough players to compete in the Big East for a championship. We've got to find out who those leaders are on defense.
Do you have starters in mind at a lot of places or is there really a lot of wide-open competition?
BK: In reality you're always going to point toward the guys that have some experience. I would say not one of the positions is so far along that they couldn't lose that position if they didn't come to practice and perform every day, to be quite honest with you. There's no Mike Mickens. There's no Corey Smith, who was a three-year starter. We don't have those guys on defense. Which is kind of good. Becuase the energy and excitement you have among the ranks, those guys are pretty excited to go to work every day. We don't have to worry about the kids being motivated.
When you changed defensive coordinators from Joe Tresey to Bob Diaco, you said you wanted to go to a 3-4 scheme. Is that still your thinking, and what was the motivation for that?
BK: We want to be in a position that we can, if we want to, line up in a three-down defense and play our base. But, for example, we play Dec. 5 at Pittsburgh. If we feel like we need to move the front and be in a four-down because of weather conditions and (Pitt) running the ball, we can certainly do that.
I think today's defense has got to be able to move in and out of the three-down defense. And really what we're doing is, we're saying, "I don't want to be a sub personnel three-down defense. I want to be able to evolve where that becomes a base, and from that base I can get into whatever I want. I can be in four-down, I can be in three-down." It's pretty similar to what the New England Patriots do. One week you might see them in the 3-4, the next week they're four down. And Bob's background is with that Patriot background with Al Groh. Al was with Belichik and Parcells. So that's what I was looking for, was the ability to be in a three-down or four-down, depending on what the circumstances are in the game.
ABOUT THIS BLOG
Andrea Adelson
Adelson joined ESPN.com in 2010 after spending time as a college football columnist at The Orlando Sentinel. She has covered college football since her days as a University of Florida student, and lives in Orlando, Fla.
