FAU’s defense once again owned the day in Saturday’s scrimmage. The offense struggled to mount drives and managed only five touchdowns. FAU is at the midpoint of fall camp. Here are five things we learned from Saturday’s scrimmage.
1. De’Andre Johnson isn’t progressing. He shows flashes of brilliance, but often has longer stretches of pedestrian play. It’s almost as though he’s regressing, which is quite puzzling. He looked like a much different quarterback at the start of spring ball. That may be part of what coach Lane Kiffin eluded to after the scrimmage when he mentioned where the offense is now in relation to how well it started the spring. Johnson was incredibly inaccurate on Saturday passing the ball, but he was something to behold when running it. They have different body types and running styles, but Johnson’s play makes him look like Quez Johnson 2.0. The good news is that there’s still time for him to get right.
2. Jason Driskel is a Phoenix. For the second consecutive year it seems like everyone wants to bury the idea of Driskel being the starting quarterback, but he rose again on Saturday and was the best of the three. Daniel Parr played well, but he did much of his damage against the third string defense. He’s certainly worked his way into the starting QB battle, but Driskel looked like he should be the starting QB is the season started tomorrow. It doesn’t, though. The next week should be telling in the QB battle.
3. The defense looks better. Kiffin wasn’t happy with the tackling on Saturday, but the Owls certainly looked like a better tackling team compared to last season. That’s encouraging. The defense also plays with an energy level that wasn’t present last season. It would have been interesting to see how many sacks Trey Hendrickson could have totaled in this system. And if he plays this way all year, cornerback Shelton Lewis will be an All-Conference USA selection.
4. The two-minute drill looks good. This has been the case throughout the past couple weeks at practice. All three quarterbacks moved the ball when running the two-minute drill. That wasn’t the case during the rest of the scrimmage. “When you’re at the end of the game, two minute, you have four downs,” Kiffin said. “That’s always easier.” It should be noted that offensive playcalling was pretty vanilla on Saturday. The Owls have been more dynamic during practices.
5. The decision to bring back Karmin Solomon needs a better explanation. FAU president Dr. John Kelly and athletic director Pat Chun took the cowardly way out by declining to answer questions about the reinstatement of suspended wide receiver Kamrin Solomon, both to the team and to the school. They owed the FAU community an explanation as to why they feel it is safe to allow Solomon back into the FAU community. There is video evidence of the incident that prompted the school to issue a No Trespass order. Does the school believe that the second attacker wasn’t Solomon? If that’s the case, why was he banned from campus? If Solomon is the second person in the video, the one who sucker punched a fellow FAU student and kicked the victim when he was down, does that mean there is a chance that wide receiver Kalib Woods, who was arrested on two counts of felony battery in connection with incident, will be welcomed back to campus, too? Is the only difference between Woods and Solomon that the police arrested Woods but didn’t arrest anyone else? Should that matter? Hey, Solomon should help the Owls win football games. That’s what universities exist for, right?
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