Weis Notes – Thursday 8/21

Here are some notes from Weis’s meeting with the media Thursday.  It sounds like we will be seeing a lot of Michael Floyd this fall.

• The team will have off from practice Saturday and won’t practice until Sunday night after Friday’s practice to give the players a full 48 hours to heel up some bumps and bruises.  Freshman orientation starts Friday which is why the team will have off Saturday.
• Weis said he didn’t see 8 freshmen starting like last year, but could definitely see 8 in the deep playing a lot this year.
• Health wise the team is in pretty good shape.  Junior center Dan Wenger was sick yesterday and missed practice, but was back on the field today.  Will Yeatman missed some timed with a concussion, but there are currently not any players on the injured list with a concussion.
• Weis made mention again that this has been a very physical camp.
• The team will start preparing for San Diego State next week and will have two full weeks to prepare for the season opener.
• Weis talked about starting the season with the bye week and said it didn’t bother him.  Weis did say that he offered one school a chance to move a game to the last weekend in August, but they didn’t bite.
• All three freshman wide receivers were described as “pretty good football players”, but Michael Floyd has been ahead of the Deion Walker and John Goodman.
• Weis said again that they are trying to do fewer things this year, but doing them better than they did last season.  It sounds like part of Weis evaluation of what went wrong last year was realizing he tried to do too much with a very young team last year.
• Michael Floyd can “run all of the routes” and is “pretty polished for a freshman” and “he’s got plenty of toughness”.  Translation – get ready to see a lot of #3 very early on.
• Weis talked about the spread offense being “en vogue” and said that eventually defenses will catch up to the spread and offenses will move on to the next offensive system just as happened with past offensive systems like the run and shoot.  He also said we will see it more and more till the defenses do catch up.
• In talking about the spread, Weis said the toughest thing to defend about it is defending players in space and that recruiting players that are capable of making plays in space.
• This year’s freshman class is the closest class that he has seen since he’s been here.  Apparently the entire freshman class shaved their heads and said, “Who does that?”  He said that they have been extremely close since the beginning of recruiting
• The defensive line looks like they are playing fast and the defensive staff is developing depth that they can trust playing.   He mentioned Morrice Richardson and Paddy Mullen as guys who people might not know about now but are developing.
• Tomorrow is freshmen media day so check back here tomorrow for a bunch of updates.