I will be waking up early to make the 3 hour drive to catch the open practice this Saturday. Really excited to get my first look at the team.

Here's what I'll be looking for:

- How much has Schilz improved - Clawson has said that Schilz has improved as much this year as he did last year. I'll be curious to see how he handles pressure up the middle look to see if he has taken a true leadership role with this team.

- New Receivers! Pumped to see Joplin, Stokes, and Coby make some plays. Our offense w/ an improved o-line and Samuels has the potential to put up some major points this year.

- Shifts from the Oline. Kyle Bryant moves to right tackle, Roussos to guard, and Cooper as of now may have the starting role at LT. How will the young Cooper and Roussos look in their new roles? Also curious to see how the new JUCO center looks and if he could push to start at center.

- Secondary. Has the young secondary gotten better? Will we finally be able to play some press coverage this year and not have to play 10 yards off the ball - I sure hope so.

- DLine - Jones is the man...but how will the rest of young D-line look. We need to get a few other guys to make plays on the Dline so team won't quadruple team Jones this year.

I expect Schilz to be one of the top 3 QBs in the MAC this year. He was pretty good as a Freshman and much better last year than what folks wanted to give him credit for. If he makes a leap this year he could be a legit contender for All-MAC honors.

+1

If we have a line that allows Schilz to get set and throw, he could reallty light it up. He throws a real nice deep ball....

Did anyone attend the scrimmage? How did they look?

Agreed. And to add to that, he must stay healthy and we need to protect him back there. We should have a decent team this year, especially in the MAC, but as we learned when Omar Jacobs went down several years ago when we were rolling, you can't afford to lose your #1 QB. Our team was nowhere the same without Jacobs and neither would we be without Schilz.

Looking back I'm able to laugh a bit at the collective "holy sh*t" from everyone in the stadium when he went down.

Matt Schilz is outstanding. If he were to get hurt, I've got high hopes for Johnson. Stokes, I'm not sure if he'll remain at QB or not. He's a great athlete and I'd love to see him on the field.

Hey guys, so I went to the scrimmage Saturday and here are my thoughts:

I thought first of all that Wagner had an excellent write-up on the scrimmage http://www.toledoblade.com/BGSU/2012/04/01/Level-of-play-rises-in-BG-scrimmage.html

- The team as a whole is about 5 times ahead of where they were last year at this time. You can defiantly tell the team is stronger, faster, and going to be much more explosive on both sides of the ball.

- Although Jordan and Cooper will be missed, I don't think that we are going to skip a beat at the position. Je'Ron Stokes particularly looked great and on the first play from scrimmage breaking a few tackles, reversed field, and took a what would of been 5 yard play into a huge 40 yard gain on the sidelines.

- Schilz looks great. He is without a doubt the leader of this team and looked much more comfortable in the pocket than he did last year.

- Don't be surprised if they find a spot for DJ Lynch on the defense. He had a spectacular INT leaping about 5 feet in the air and had a nice run back - Although Woods and Swan will start at the LB position, he is just too good of an athlete not to be on the field somewhere.

- The young DB's played well! I thought that their coverage was solid and made some great plays knocking balls out of receivers hands.

- New faces on the Dline also played well. Based on what I saw, I think we'll be able to get more pressure on opposing QB's when we do not blitz - even if Jones is double teamed.

- Oline had some ups and downs, but I think they played solid overall. I really like the move of Roussos to guard - I though he had a good day. Cooper had a good day at LT - The Oline will be solid, especially in the middle with Robinson, Roussos, and Flewellyn. I do think depth has a chance to be an issue though - as I didn't think the 2nd team Oline played very well. Hopefully they prove me wrong and rebound next week.

- Schmiedebusch was kicking 50 yard bombs out of the end-zone and had every ball roll forward when they hit the turf - Just a usual day at the office for him.

- Stein had a rough start but rebounded nicely. The job for the starting kicker will be open, but its Stein's to take. Just needs to kick well from start to finish.

This team has a chance to be very, very good - all the pieces are there for them to make a run this year. No doubt about it.

Excellent! Thanks for the review!

I followed Jason Knavel's Twitter updates from the scrimmage, but it was more of a play by play, which in my head was followed by thoughts of "Offense did something good, defense must be bad." "Defense did something good, offense must be bad" posts around this place.

No kidding. I remember seeing and talking to a few players at Frickers after that game, and they also had that same look. Man did we struggle without him too.

At the end of the year Schilz made more bonehead plays then Jordon Crawford does. He seemed to have very few instincts at all. Was ridiculously frustrating. I think there is some brown and orange colored glasses going on in this thread. I hope he is good too and the coaches said he was improved...he needs to be.

According to these write ups the only negative for a team that went 2-7 to close the year is backup OL. Thats awesome.

I saw a bit of a UT scrimmage and it looks like we have walk-ons who have a very realistic shot at All-MAC. Most of the schollie guys are shoe-ins for All-American.

You like Crawford and hate on the guy who had one of the best seasons a BGSU QB has ever had? Wow.....