Thirty-yard touchdown strikes. Big rushing plays. Massive hits. Sounds like I’m describing scenes from a Saturday of college football, right?
Actually, I’m talking about practice (cue Allen Iverson monologue).
Yes, we’re talkin’ bout practice. Ever since East Carolina head coach Ruffin McNeill sailed home to Greenville, North Carolina, to revive his alma mater, the Pirates have run a weekly in-season scrimmage on Thursday nights for players outside of the two-deep depth chart. The scrimmage is live, physical, and a birds-eye view into the next great crop of ECU playmakers.
McNeill told charlotteobserver.com that he uses the live scrimmages–which he’s consistently implemented into his practice schedule for the last 15 years –to better prepare players on the scout or travel teams who normally go through the motions during regular practice days with very low contact to avoid injuring first-team players.
“Those guys on the [scout team] … we call them ‘Victory Teams’ – they run every other team’s offense, defense and specials teams and don’t get much of a chance in our own schemes,” McNeill said. “So every Thursday, they get 20-25 snaps and they’re live.”
Quarterback Shane Carden, 2014 American Athletic Conference Offensive Player of the Year, reached legendary status this season, passing for 4,309 yards, 28 touchdowns, and completing 65 percent of his passes on the way to becoming the school’s career leader for passing yards (11,564), touchdown passes (84) and completions (67.2 career completion percentage).
Carden’s meteoric rise from two-star afterthought, playing for a program more than a thousand miles from his Texas home, to Captain Carden, three-year starting FBS quarterback, began on the Pirates “Victory Team.”
The ECU senior reminisces on one of his first Thursday scrimmages as a wide-eyed freshman trying to show coaches he was worth his last-minute scholarship in a torrential downpour.
“We will always remember that,” Carden said. “We’ve talked about it a bunch of times this year, saying, ‘Hey, remember that one time on a Thursday night it was raining so hard and we had all those huge hits. … But, we did all right, the offense ran pretty good.”
Now Carden is practicing as a member of the Pirates’ starting 11 for the last time this week as his team prepares for the Birmingham Bowl against the Florida Gators out of the SEC. After January 3, McNeill will look for a new signal caller, as well as a new top receiver (NCAA receptions leader Justin Hardy is also graduating) to replace the departing Carden-Hardy experience.
Replacing Carden and Hardy’s productivity, if it’s even possible for next season, will emerge from a new quarterback-to-receiver relationship budding on the Victory Team.
Redshirt freshman QB Kurt Benkert, 6-3, 220 pounds, will battle rising seniors Cody Keith and Blake Kempt to become the new captain driving the Pirates’ offense. Benkert is the only quarterback of the trio to complete passes this season in the regular season (8-for-10, 58 yards), giving him the early lead in the competition.
Benkert says the live scrimmages under Thursday night lights allows players “to gauge where [they’re] at with everyone else.”
A handful of wide receivers, including the Pirates’ third-leading receiver Isaiah Jones (766 yards, five touchdowns) and rising junior Jimmy Williams (230 yards, one TD), will race to replace Hardy’s productivity on the field.
“You looked at it like a game,” Williams said of Thursday scrimmages. “I looked at it as a chance to get better. You’re going live every play. I went as hard as I could.”
Treating each scrimmage like a Saturday game day experience will perhaps be the difference between Williams earning his chance as an every-down player, or seeing the field as an occasional pass option.
If you follow the AAC, then you automatically know Ruffin McNeill is one of the conference’s top head coaches – just look at ECU’s success during his tenure. But what often separates the great coaches from the average ones is the ability to find creative ways to gain an edge. The Pirate’s Thursday scrimmages illustrate the above-and-beyond approach McNeill takes as a head coach, and how he strives to make all of his players better, not just his best 22.
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