Just watched parts of the NU-Stanford game to start getting a feel for your team. Here are a few thoughts:
First, a side note: the telecast's opening scenery of Lake Michigan was beautiful. It is easy for us down south to forget the natural gift our country has in the Great Lakes. If it weren't so cold for 7-8 months of the year, you guys would have an ideal set-up!
Okay, football.
I see a lot of similarity in our defenses. Both teams use the 4-3 as our base, though you guys stick with that more than us...we tend to shift into nickle a little more frequently. Then again, that's pretty much just a function of the offenses we face. Anyway, both Wildcat and Volunteer fans are going to be very familiar with each other's Ds, there's familiarity there.
This could be wrong because I have only seen parts of one game, but seemed to me that you guys' three key defensive playmakers are:
--> Dean Lowry at DE (our counterpart player: Derek Barnett)
--> Anthony Walker at LB (our counterpart: Jalen Reeves-Maybin)
--> Nic VanHoose at CB (our counterpart: Cam Sutton)
does that sound right?
On offense, I was impressed with your young RS Fr QB, Thorson. Kid has a nice arm.
Would you say that you guys run a spread offense? That's how it seemed to me, though there are elements of a more old-fashioned power run formation to it, too. Your look seems unique to me (but maybe it's more common in the B10?).
Your OLine looks really solid, both in run block and pass pro.
Justin Jackson seems like a stud. And Vitale is intriguing, I'd never heard of the "superback" notation before learning about him. He's going to be a bit of an enigma for us early on in the practices prepping for the bowl. He's like a cross of our largest RB (Jalen Hurd), our best TE (Ethan Wolf), and the fullback that we don't have (we typically use a TE in the FB role when we--rarely--go with a lead blocker).
Would you say Christian Jones and Miles Shuler are your best receivers? Jones looks a bit like our Von Pearson to me, and Shuler reminds me of our Josh Malone.
Anyway, that was an impressive win for you guys. I'm going to pull up another game from later in the year some time tomorrow, see how the team evolved as the year went on.
Best!