Based on his assessment of where the players stand in the secret practiceses it sounds like Rome Odunze is tearing it up among the true freshmen
Where dis I miss this assessment? Link it up!
After two seasons as Washington's receiver coach, Junior Adams has acquired quite a bit of talent and now it's time for those young players to step up and make plays. In an interview with Tony Castricone during Husky Football Saturday over the weekend, he talked about a number of subjects, but when it came time to talk about the players in his room, he couldn't have been more excited about the future and what they can do in new coordinator John Donovan's offense.
"I'm very excited about John Donovan and what he's going to bring to us offensively," Adams said. "It's a pro-style system and the best 11 are going to play. It's going to be multiple personnel -- it's going to be '12' (one tailback and two tight ends), it's going to be '21' (two tailbacks and one tight end) and it could be a lot of '11' (one tailback and one tight end) -- the best 11 are going to play. With the players we have, he's got a lot of options.
"We've got one or two seniors in the group and there's some good young talent in there. It's going to be exciting to see how these guys compete and emerge as this thing goes throughout camp and JD, this system that he has, it's a vertical passing system, it's a vertical downhill running game, so I love this offense. The more and more I'm around (Donovan), the more I grow closer to him and so far it's been awesome to work with John. The other cool thing about him is he's a really good dude and he doesn't get too high and he doesn't get too low and that's what you want as your coordinator and your leader of the offense."
Adams also took the time to talk about the players individually and what it is they bring to the table.
"Ty Jones is a guy who has made plays here and started a lot of games," Adams noted. "He ends up having a few injuries last year that forced him to redshirt, which I think was good. Puka (Nacua) was starting to emerge as a guy for us last year and made some really big plays for us in big-time games and them 'boom' there he goes down, but what that did was it gave other guys opportunities. It gave guys like Terrell Bynum, who, probably the last half of the season, was playing as good as anybody on the offensive side of the football. He's a leader to me. He's a guy that knows what we're doing offensively. He's a guy, he does the dirty work, he's not scared to get his hands dirty in the running game and he's been really efficient for us on third down. You look at two games late in the season -- the Apple Cup and the Bowl Game (against Boise State) -- and he showed up. Hard work works.
"You have Jordan Chin who got the opportunity to get in there and make some plays and he had his first two touchdowns of the year in big games for us. Marquis Spiker started his role a little bit, taking advantage of some of the opportunities he got he made plays. Those were big third-down plays. He set us up with the fourth down play for us against Oregon and the big play right before half against Boise State, the first series of the game against Utah he had the big third-down play, so he's been big in those situations.
"Austin Osborne has been in and out of the lineup and he looks good right now, he's playing hard, he made some plays (last week) and then you go to the young guys, the true freshmen that we got on campus and we're really excited about them. Rome (Odunze) has made a lot of plays so far. It's pretty cool to see true freshmen come in here and they don't bat an eye, they don't flinch -- Jalen McMillan made some plays (last week) and Sawyer Racanelli made a third or fourth down play over the middle -- these are guys that are walking in here and they're not flinching, the moment's not too big. We're going to continue to get better, we're going to continue tightening up our technique, our fundamentals, tightening up what we're doing scheme-wise, and it's going to be fun to see this competition brewing in that room."
Washington continues preseason camp this week as they prepare for their first game of the season which takes place on Saturday, November 7th with a road game against Cal.
