Friday, July 13, 2007

Tiger Football 48 Days Away and Counting

There are 48 days until the start of the 2007 LSU football season, and it can't come soon enough for me. The full Tiger squad is at LSU at this time taking part in volunteer Summer workouts, except for Ryan Perrilloux and Ricky Jean Francois. The squad including five invited walk-ons will officially start Fall practice on August 03 with the full coaching staff. All other walk-ons will begin practicing with the team the day that classes start in the Fall semester.

Coach Les Miles will be entering his third season at LSU with a 22-4 record and with high expectations from the news media and LSU fans. LSU is loaded with great talent at each position with a mixture of experience and young talent with great potential. In my opinion, the 2007 team has as much talent as the 2003 national championship team and as much talent as the 2006 team that finished third in all of the major polls.

If the 2007 team has any weakness, it would be lack of depth in the offensive line and at wide receiver. In my opinion, the 2007 starting line of Brett Helms at center, Will Arnold and Herman Johnson at the two guard positions, and Ciron Black and Carnell Stewart is better than the 2006 starting OL but not as deep. Ryan Miller, Lyle Hitt, Matt Allen and Andrew Decker are the key backup offensive linemen. I am very worried about replacing Dwayne Bowe and Buster Davis at the wide receiver position. Early Doucet is rock solid but there is a huge drop off after Doucet. Brandon Lafell showed some signs in 2006 of being an SEC caliber receiver and I believe that Terrance Tolliver will have a solid season. Trindon Holiday, Chris Mitchell, Jared Mitchell and Ricky Dixon have unproven talent. Certainly, Holiday has great potential as a special teams player.

I know that some of you are probably saying "How about the quarterback position?" LSU will not be able to replace JaMarcus Russell in terms of size, arm strength and potentials as a great pro quarterback, but Matt Flynn will do a great job, in my opinion. The 2007 season will be Flynn's fifth year at LSU and he understands the system and has earned the respect of the coaching staff and players. I am not one bit worried about the quarterback position as long as Flynn stays in good heath.

In other football news of interest: Rolando Melancon, a 6'2", 290, DT from Lutcher that signed with Tennessee, is enrolling at City College of San Francisco for the next two seasons because of grade problems. I wish Melancon well in junior college and I hope that LSU will work hard to sign him in two years.

In recruiting news, Les Miles appears to be in great shape with all of the remaining top rated players in the state and in great shape with four or five highly recruited out of state players.

Below is some great baseball news from the LSU Sports Information office to the news media.

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