A note to "bison137" and the LSFF guys

I was looking over the Lafayette Sports Fan Forum comments from Saturday’s Bucknell football game and came across a comment from “bison137,” the forum’s resident Bucknell expert.

“Reinhard seems a bit confused himself.  He says:  "A familiar Bucknell misdirection play, a naked flanker reverse that should have been no surprise, fooled the Leopards not once, but twice."

In fact, Bucknell had not run that play even once this year, and I haven't seen it run even once in Carter's four years.  They do very occasionally use him on a jet sweep, where he gets the ball on a direct handoff from the QB, but never on the sort of misdirection toss play that produced the TDs.  That was new to the playbook.  

Also Reinhard has Bucknell getting a first down on a fake FG, even though they did not line up for a FG at any point in the game.”

I did mess up on the field goal – I knew it was a punt and made the error. Sorry about that.

As for the flanker reverse on which Will Carter scored a pair of touchdowns, I specifically asked Coach Tavani about that play after the game and got the following answer:

“We have seen it. We had young freshmen out there, two of them. By formation we knew it and we got burned on it twice. That’s obviously not good. [It was] nothing new. We’ve seen it in practice and we’ve run against it and we didn’t do a good job with it, obviously. You’re telling them and you’re screaming it out, telling them the play’s coming. Coaches are calling it out.”

I couldn’t use all that in the story.

I may be old, and often can be confused, but not this time.

Great play. Lafayette should add it to the playbook. It was perfectly run. I almost used the cliché: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” In fact, I think I said that very thing in the press box when it happened.

Here are just a couple of other leftover items from the Saturday game, etc.

Someone else on the LSFF mentioned something about the move that put RB Mike Dunn on defense for the Army game. FYI: Dunn was never intended to be a defensive player, but the secondary has taken some big hits because of injuries, so he was put over there as short-term insurance. Then, when C.J. Amill and Mayfield were hurt, Dunn was immediately moved back to offense. At Bucknell, DeSean Brown played the first series, Rajhan Meriwether the second series and Dunn the third series. Series #4, #5 and #6 featured the same rotation and Brown played the final series of the first half. Dunn got his nifty 18-yard touchdown run -- watch that one on film if you can -- and played the entire second half.  We may have witnessed a changing of the guard there. He's only a freshman, but he did have a post-grad year at Cheshire Academy.

I guess it's impossible to calculate how much the loss of Brandon Bryant has affected the Leopards' defense. But I have to say Michael Root and Rob Hinchen are really working hard at the LB spots, and both return next year. Root had 15 tackles on Saturday to bring his season total to 70. Hinchen had nine and is now at 55 despite having been a backup prior to Bryant's injury. those three guys, with some more experienced guys in front of them in 2017, should be solid.  

Contributing frosh -- Dunn wasn't the only Leopard freshman to play strong roles for the Leopards, even though the outcome wasn't what they'd want. DL Demetrius Breedlove had six tackles, five of them solos; Eric Mitchell had his first interception and a 31-yard return to help set up Lafayette's second touchdown and he also made three tackles; Yasir Thomas caught two passes and returned two kickoffs, the longest being 25 yards.

DISSA & DATA -- The Leopards came away without any serious injuries. T.J. Jones suffered a blow to the head and is under concussion protocol, which makes his availability for this week uncertain ... Hopefully C.J. Amill, who missed the Bucknell game because of a hip pointer, will be better this week and ready to contribute ... Only 25 defensive players were available for practice last week, Tavani said, and he said he may go to just one day of actual contact practice this week. Whether that day is Tuesday or Wednesday hadn't been determined when I spoke with him. Going to Wednesday would give players an extra recovery day from the previous weekend; going Tuesday would give them extra recovery time before this Saturday's game ...