UMass held an open practice yesterday and I drove down to watch.
My observations:
Be of good cheer Minutemen fans, because I thought UMass looked impressive. First, numbers: if you remember the home game when it looked like BYU's travel squad substantially out-numbered the players UMass dressed for the game, then we had a full complement yesterday.
Size: again remembering looking at FCS Southern Illinois and thinking they looked bigger across the board than the Minutemen. Southern Illinois is a pretty good FCS team. If you missed it, the Saluki's beat a Big Ten team last year. UMass has a lot of big guys this year.
As I was walking past the end zone, I said "Hi" to Eni Falayi, who looked every bit of the 6-5 height listed in his bio.
Offense: the Minutemen offense held it's own against Don Brown's killer defense and made some nice plays. There were good catches by Mark Pope, Anthony Simpson and more. UMass gained yards running the ball inside and outside. The QB's looked good passing and pulling the ball out and running. This offense looks as if it has much more talent than we've seen in a long time.
The defense also looked good with close coverage of receivers and closing on run plays.
I don't know how many wins all this will produce in 2023, but I do think this is the most complete UMass team we've had since we moved to FBS..
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The New England Football Journal was there and they report the UMass QB battle heats up.
The NEFJ also has the Minutemen defense looks dangerous.
The NEFJ also has some video from the practice here, here and here.
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