Players of the day; 8-19

Submitted by octal9 on
I know not everyone uses twitter here, so per @UM_CoachRod: Players of the Day from yesterday: Off. Mark Ortmann & Def. Steve Brown. Good Work. Go Blue! Arg Sept 5, please hurry!

KTChicago

August 20th, 2009 at 1:07 PM ^

of a player who had three bad years but then kicked a$$ his senior year? I'm optimistic his new position will be just what he needed to break through, but I'd like to have some precedents to temper my "he deserves it" logic.

jg2112

August 20th, 2009 at 1:37 PM ^

tweeted yesterday: Gophers had a great day today! 90 play scrimmage this morning and a full special teams practice this pm!! The Time Is...........Now!!! Awful. - 1 to the Lolphers. Enjoy the 4-8 season.

Magnus

August 20th, 2009 at 1:38 PM ^

If Brown has a good year, I don't think that will necessarily prove the doubters wrong. The doubters had huge issues with his a) pass coverage and b) inability to tackle in open space. Brown won't be covering the deep middle or a deep third or a deep half or whatever this year. He'll be locked in man coverage with a TE, slot receiver, or RB; or he'll have some sort of curl/flat zone. He also won't be the last line of defense in the run game. His job as a force player will be to maintain outside leverage and funnel plays back inside to Ezeh, Mouton, and the converging defensive linemen. Anyway, the doubters doubt his ability to play safety. I'm one of those doubters; so are Rodriguez and Robinson, obviously, since they changed his position. So, in effect, the doubters have already been proven right. He CAN'T play safety effectively and he's getting a chance to play a new position. I suggested last year that they move Brown to SS instead of FS and play him closer to the line; that didn't happen and Brown had another bad year. I'm not saying he would have been great at SS, but I think that would have camouflaged some of his faults. Robinson went one step further and turned him into a SAM.

jg2112

August 20th, 2009 at 1:39 PM ^

the last two Ron English tweets. Tackle better, and prepare your callous: Good third down scrimmage this afternoon. The Lads got after it. Single tomorrow and double Friday! Camp rolls on. GO GREEN! GO NATION! about 15 hours ago from TwitterBerry Back to doubles today. Defense is flying around but MUST tackle better! It's humpday for camp. We must keep forming our callous. GO GREEN!