Practice has continued this week, and the news has been a little better: in a scrimmage Tuesday, the offense showed marked improvement, particularly in the passing game. The timetable on how long it took the offense to get things under control seems about right to me. I won't lie and say Stephen Garcia's struggles over the first week weren't slightly disturbing, but teams do get rusty over the summer and need some time to shake the rust off. Hopefully that's what has happened and Tuesday's performance will now become the norm. Of course, Wednesday's practice brought a little of the frustration back to Steve Spurrier's voice, so maybe we're not there quite yet.
The following are some notes about how things have been going.
- Jarriel King sat out yesterday with an irregular heart beat. This has been an occasional problem in the past for King, who is confident he can work through it.
- Freshman defensive lineman Ronald Byrd hurt his knee and will likely redshirt. Spurrier claims that Byrd probably wouldn't have played much this year and may have redshirted, anyways. I kind of wonder how true that is; we probably could have used a guy like Byrd in the rotation. However, there are worse guys to lose to injury.
- Akeem Auguste is back on the field and should be ready for the first game.
- Bryce Sherman continues to play well. I wasn't sure what to think when I first heard about this guy last week, but I'm really beginning to think we're going to see him on the field quite a bit this year. I also wonder how this guy didn't get any scholarship offers if he's good enough to hang with our best backs, some of whom were fairly highly recruited.
- Former UNC kicker Jay Wooten has joined the team. He will have to sit out a year before getting a chance to play.
So sound off: how do you feel about the team right now? Are you confident the offense can keep it together? Or are we walking towards another version of 2008's offense? Or somewhere in between?