bosoxs45's Blog

I was very happy with what happened today.Both units clicked and played well for the most part, although I felt the defense had the slightly better day. Before the game, I attended the Gridiron Club breakfast at Conte (sat with BJ Raji - great guy), and Jags mentioned that at the conclusion of every team meeting, he asks the question "What are you here for??". The answer is "championships". In his brief speech, Jags went out of his way to mention his belief that anything less than a championship this season will be a disappointment. Seriously, how can you not love this guy?? Tom O'Brien never even BELIEVED we could win a championship, and he sure as heck was too scared to say something like that publicly and raise expectations. The days of excuse making, expectation managing, and an air of arrogance around the Yawkey Center are over. The Jags Era has begun. Raji mentioned to me that the new coaching staff is far more personable and hands-on than the old regime, and while we all kind of knew that already, it still impresses me to see, for lack of a better word, how happy all the players that I've talked to--whether it was Raji today, the guys I ran into in the Philadelphia airport a few days before the bowl game, or guys I just see around campus--seem to be under the new staff.

The game itself was fairly boring from a detached perspective, but there were a lot of very interesting things. The offense, as I expected would be for this game, was pretty vanilla--more aggressive than it had been under Dana Bible, but nothing really fancy.

What impressed me more than anything else was the play of Matt Ryan. I'm not talking about his stats, which were impressive but not overly so (19-33, 233 yards, 1 TD). He simply has "it". As good as he was last year, his pocket presence and decision making today looked vastly improved over what we saw previously.

The big surprise to me was the play of Billy Flutie, who underwhelmed me as a punter (I don't think he's good enough to be "the guy" after Johnny Ayers graduates) but had a very nice game at wideout.

The major thing that disappointed me was the crowd(its no Alabama who did 92,000,lol). Absolutely beautiful day (mid-60s), new coaching staff .They'll show up for the real games, but a lot of them probably don't even know what a spring game is. Although it should be said that the baseball game going on next door was siphoning off a number of fans.

All in all, an excellent day, at least until the Eagles' draft pick. I literally could not possibly be more excited for this season. I'll have some more thoughts in the coming days as I have time to think about and digest what I saw a little bit more.