By December of 2010, Syracuse Football was a product set in stone. Just a few months later, the entire team is like a gelatinous blob unable to take shape. Doug Marrone even says as much.
"Nothing’s set in stone."
The stone-setting begins tomorrow as spring practice gets underway. As we head into the first official act of the 2011 season, the questions are only beginning to bubble to the service.
How will the defense regroup after losing so much talent? Is Macky MacPherson the next great MacPherson? Will Marcus Sales and Antwon Bailey become the stars we expect them to be? Will Ryan Nassib be The Man?
These questions and more won't get answered for a long time, but we'll start to see a little bit in the coming weeks.
When it comes to position-battles and the incumbants trying to maintain their spots, Doug Marrone is already in full-on, gibberish deflection mode:
"Everyone is like, ‘Well this guy’s going to be this, and this guy’s going to play here.’
Right now I have no idea," Marrone said."Now, some people have built some things up. They have a body of work and you tend to say, ‘Oh, okay, if it drops a little bit, we’ve seen him do this before. We might hang with this person a little bit longer.’
"But there are no set positions. We don’t know who’s definitely going to be anything right now in the 2011 season when we open up against Wake Forest."
In other words, don't ask me about any of it. Check out the full spring schedule here and stay tuned for TNIAAM's full coverage of spring practice.