I was a big supporter of Lavon's in HS. In 2014 I thought he would take the job and he looked pretty good the first couple games, but then he got hesitant and lost confidence.
I would say the biggest change is his confidence. I know Socha and the training staff has done a great job, but the reason he looked slow early was because he's a one-cut back and early in his career he was dancing around and making multiple cuts. He got bottled up a lot. Didn't run hard consistently, etc.
Fast-forward 2 years (seems like longer) and he's making one cut and exploding. A lot of that has to do with Bonapha and emphasis on being consistent in giving top effort.
We saw flashes of it his freshman year, but in 2016 it's so awesome to see a kid actually GET BETTER.
So much of the Sark/Neu bullshit was predicated on denying that players could improve that much. Just throw them out there and if they aren't great, run them out of the program and find new guys. It was a way to justify them playing with their new toys and explain why they were playing a bunch of freshmen who should've redshirted (wouldn't it be fun to have Cory Littleton on this team? Or Joe Mathis, Daniels and KevKing back next year?)
Lavon Coleman is in the year (his redshirt junior year) where most players should start to see the lights come on unless they are truly exceptional. Physically they are mature, mentally they are mature, and they've had 3 years in the program to learn what they are supposed to do. Under DJ, I know the mantra was that they should play when they are RS-Sophs and start when they are RS-Jrs.
Now that we have a good (probably great) coach, I'm going to have to retire* the Sark ideal of ragging kids out when they first play and don't look amazing. We're going to have to wait for RS-Jr years and then see.
It's a weird new world, but Coleman isn't really doing anything but fulfilling the promise he showed at Hawaii in '14. He's just gotten more decisive, more confident, bigger, faster and stronger.
*does not include Jomon Dotson.
* ensures Dotson will be all conference in two years so we can bump this post and make fun of Dennis
Nailed it Dennis and it means something coming from you as you've been pretty guilty of kicking guys to the curb (figuratively but as an influential internet analyst) early in their career. I think we're all still scrubbing off some of the stain from years of gobbling up a shit product.
Good/great recruiting means you find a few amazing players in every class who can have a real impact as teenagers, but most of them start to show up in their third year when they start to grow up and shine in their 4th. RN and Sark never understood this, and TyGilby...well it just didn't matter.
To be fair, we were always right to kick guys to the curb. If they weren't playing by their R-Fr season they sucked. I remember dogman poster saying "Potato, Kohler, Criste, etc were only sophomores, but unless you were an idiot, you already knew they were worthless.
@DerekJohnson@NeGgaPlEaSe they give Coleman a bunch of carries when they think the defense is worn out (which they usually are). That's why his allotment is so uneven. Gaskin is still your most consistent back in every situation.
I agree though he is a fucking beast and I am thankful he didn't vag out along with Not a Dry Eye.
To be fair, we were always right to kick guys to the curb. If they weren't playing by their R-Fr season they sucked. I remember dogman poster saying "Potato, Kohler, Criste, etc were only sophomores, but unless you were an idiot, you already knew they were worthless.
Talking about my buddy Yaledawg? Yeah he was bad about that. I think he watched a lot of practices or something and seemed to know more about the players who weren't playing yet...or at least he was good at acting like he knew. I argued with him about a fair # of young players and turned out to be wrong in every case. I still think that the only reason he was always right, though, is that we were arguing about players who Sark and staff had already given up on and weren't even coaching or treating like part of the program anymore. The staff was so unprofessional that they let Kim et al be privy to this kind of info and it made its way to posters like Yaledawg who were in tight with them.
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Good/great recruiting means you find a few amazing players in every class who can have a real impact as teenagers, but most of them start to show up in their third year when they start to grow up and shine in their 4th. RN and Sark never understood this, and TyGilby...well it just didn't matter.
I agree though he is a fucking beast and I am thankful he didn't vag out along with Not a Dry Eye.