BOCA RATON – During fall camp, linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair enjoyed one of the best possible vantage points from which to judge FAU’s offensive struggles.
He isn’t one bit worried about the Owls’ ability to score points once the season kicks off against Navy on Sept. 1.
“I can promise you, if we played tomorrow the offense is something different,” Al-Shaair said. “We’ve been practicing against them since spring so for us we understand some of the tendencies and things like that. But, man, if you asked me would I want to play against our offense having to game plan them and I only had one week to prepare, I would tell you I wouldn’t even want to play them.”
FAU’s defense dominated the offense in the the spring game and has held them in check in all three of the fall scrimmages.
Al-Shaair, a junior who exceeded 100 tackles in both of his first two seasons, believes the extra time the defense spent going against the offense – more than two months now, counting spring football – allowed defensive players to pick up some of the nuances of offensive coordinator Kendal Briles’ offense.
“It’s one of those things where you really have to be locked in mentally and scheme wise and everything thing like that, you really have to know what you’re doing inside out and be able to adjust to what they do because (Briles’ offense does) a lot of things that the average offense, you just wouldn’t catch – you just wouldn’t understand,” Al-Shaair said. “They might make the smallest adjustment that can change the whole defensive scheme.”
At FAU’s media day Briles said the offense is “a long ways from where we need to be” but also shared an opinion similar to Al-Shaair’s as to the cause of their most recent struggles.
“You go against the same defense for 20 practices in a row, those guys kind of understand what you are doing,” Briles said. “We got here in the spring and the first 10 practices we’re lighting it up and then they kind of figure out what you’re doing.”
Briles added that FAU’s isn’t the only version of the Baylor offense that’s experiencing a difficult camp.
“I’ve talked to several of the guys that run the same offense across the country and it’s the same deal – completion percentages are down,” Briles said. “It’s tough.”
FAU’s offense will get it’s final shot at the defense during Friday night’s scrimmage, which will likely serve as the final opportunity for either Jason Driskel, De’Ande Johnson or Daniel Parr to separate from the others in the quarterback battle.
Offensive players believe the unit is close to breaking out.
“I think the mistakes we are making are fixable,” Driskel said. “They’re not things that are uncommon in football, They are things that can go away really quickly, which is good.”
It’s unclear whether Al-Shaair, who suffered a stinger a couple weeks back in camp, will be allowed to participate in the scrimmage, which coach Lane Kiffin said will focus more on specific situations than a trues scrimmage would.
Not to worry, Al-Shaair said. He’ll be ready for Navy.
“If the game was the day that I got the stinger I probably would have never stopped playing,” he said.
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