Physicality and player evaluations

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early season player evaluations (game 1 losses) are likely due to Kelly prioritizing team health.

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Examples?

Not having much live-play contact may reduce practice-related injuries, but there is a tradeoff. Tackling a live RB is much more difficult than a tackling dummy. The result is that limiting live scrimmages and drills leads to a team that many times tackles poorly.

The tradeoff is in missed tackles. So. . . you may have saved some of your players from live practice-related injuries, but you have poor tackling and the opposing team can take advantage with long runs, breakaways for first downs when they should have been tackled behind the line, etc. no matter who is available to play for the defense.

I would rather see a team of players who can tackle very well. It's a team sport, and you need great jimmies and joes, but those cats need to be able to function on the defense by tackling soundly. In the end, I'd risk the injuries that may come from live practices to enable that.

We lose every first game. Starters who can't handle their assignments and replaced quickly for better looking players. We look unprepared every first game. We start almost every game slow, and always feels like we're coming back, or the offense can't not score each drive, otherwise feels like an L is coming.

Results definitely haven't been bad overall, and trend is definitely up regarding roster, etc. OP makes good points, valid callouts.

This year alone some specific examples :

3 sr safeties have been horrible, sage at cb, Perkins at mlb when told staff first time asked more comfortable at star, defense as whole looked better in 3 lb set, Durham doesn't get meaningful carry until game 3 and looks to clearly have best vision, burst, ability to break tackles.

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In the end, I'd risk the injuries that may come from live practices to enable that.

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I hear y’all, but it’s a long season and there’s a cumulative effect over the course of that season. You can go hard in camp like Miles and maybe be more ready to play by Game 1, but by game 12, 13 weeks later, you’re gassed. Former Miles players talk about that all the time—they were tough and physical out of the gate, but oftentimes wore down by the end of the season.

Kelly has proven that his teams get better over the course of the season. He wants them playing their best football later in the season in the heart of coherence play and hopefully into the postseason. It’s more of an NFL approach. Unfortunately, in college, Game 1 matters as much as Game 12, and losing Game 1 has really put us behind the 8-ball the last 3 years.

So there’s a balance he’s trying to find. Want to be ready enough to win a tough Game 1, but not be so physical in camp that it wears on you down the stretch. I’d imagine he really doesn’t like these big Week 1 matchups and would prefer to have an Ole Miss like start. Or at least save a big OOC game for Week 2 or 3 like Bama did this year going to Wisconsin after playing a couple of cupcakes.

But he didn’t have that luxury. And won’t for a couple more years as we open up with Clemson in ‘25 and ‘26. With the expanded playoff, I’m sure we regret having scheduled those now. But, it is what it is, so I’m sure Kelly will adjust how they handle next season’s fall camp. But he’s not gonna do a compete 180 and be ready to dominate Clemson, but be so tired we’re limping to the finish line. He’ll tinker to continue to find that right balance.

I will say that we’ve had very little depth at certain positions all 3 years and really couldn’t afford risking getting a bunch of guys hurt. But we should have a lot more depth next year as the big recruiting class comes in after the big one from this year. Especially with the scholarship limit going up to 105 next year. I think most top teams will be able to go a little harder in fall moving forward.

Here’s an opinion that has been frequently put out there to partly address the situation of game one: schedule a cupcake. That way you can get some live tackling in, but the game is never in doubt despite any rust that needs to be knocked off.

I know we can’t control the schedule for the next couple years—the die has already been cast. But it’s something to keep in mind for the future

hopefully next offseason, we won't have too many new faces and the coaches will know their players better.

adding new transfers every year makes it tough to eval in just a few weeks of practice. having our guys from this season carry over to next should help with the eval portion. now as far as physicality goes, that's up to each player

Obviously, the old school hard nose, 3 yards and a cloud of dust, two-a-days is not possible given the length of the season and the speed and size of the athletes these days; however I do think whatever we are doing step it up a notch.