TINKERING

One of my own personal struggles this season has been trying to find out how much to tinker with the football team that I have. On the one hand, it's nearly a brand new team and I need to find out how the pieces best fit together. On the other hand, most of the players do have experience – after all, many were on hand to support the starters they replaced in the national championship seasons. So, can you make a change just to see how it will work out, or should all of the changes be well thought out in advance?

The fact that we have players playing out of position up and down the roster would probably make fans and onlookers think that I'm eager to experiment. But up to this point, I've only moved players out of necessity. Making a linebacker play the offensive line can certainly help when you don't have enough linemen, but, of course, it's not as good as having a true lineman. We have had success, so far, with such changes with players like Sean Thomas and Tim Gravelin playing exceptionally well on the offensive line, but they would help us so much more if they could concentrate on the defensive side of the ball.

With the injury to C Rudy Castro last weekend, we found that we needed yet another player to "fill-in" on the offensive line. The suggestion was made to move starting TE Jeff McMahon inside to play the tackle position and I was quite reluctant. McMahon is the ideal TE and has a rare combination of size and speed that made him a perfect fit for our offense. To change his position meant bringing in a slower player at TE. Though the replacement was just as big and strong and has great hands, he won't stretch the field as much as McMahon can. So, I hesitated and dismissed the change, but finally gave in to see what would happen.

We made the switch during the last half hour of practice on Thursday and the impact was almost immediate. All of a sudden, the offensive line looked like a unit and it happened as fast as turning on a light switch. We had great running lanes and excellent pass protection at a practice for the first time all season, and that's a huge relief to not only me but to our entire team. And great thanks to Jeff McMahon who sacrificed his desire to play TE for the good of the team. That's Ice Storm football.

I usually say that football is a team game and it takes a team, not an individual, to win or lose. That being said, what a difference that one move has made so far. Now, it's only practice, and only one practice at that. I don't know if this is a sign of better things to come for our offense, but if this experiment does work, we'll all have Jeff McMahon to thank for it.

Steady Improvement

A few weeks ago I talked about being optimistic that our team would hit its stride but not knowing exactly when that stride would be hit. I think that you could see a bit more rhythm from out team in this past weekend's 13-6 loss to the Quebec Titans. We had several offensive drives of 40-yards or more, were able to create stops and turnovers on defense, and ran a punt 103-yards for a touchdown.

However, miscues again cost us a victory. Four interceptions, several fumbles, and penalties disrupted the rhythm of the entire team, but especially the offense. The difference in the game might have boiled down to two big plays. The first was a late first quarter interception that Quebec ran in for a touchdown. The second was the aforementioned 103-yard punt return that was called back because of a penalty. If these two plays had gone our way, we might be talking about a 13-7 Vermont victory.

Quebec is a big, powerful football team and we took everything they threw at us in stride. That's quite encouraging considering they are the defending EFL champions. Our defense held them for three and a half quarters until giving up a touchdown. However, our offense gave away too many opportunities for us to earn the victory. We need much more steady play from that unit to be where we want to be at the end of the season.

We get another opportunity to play better, more consistent football this weekend against Plattsburgh. The North Stars, like the Titans are a well-coached and disciplined football team and we will have play much better than we have been so far to come away with a victory. Our team is learning a lot of lessons about team football the hard way, but we are learning quickly. If we can execute and play to our potential, we have a great chance to win. Only time will tell.