The practices are over, the running is over and the game is over. For now.
The BG football team closed out its spring workouts last weekend with its annual spring game, a festivity which the White team captured this year, 27-7. The game capped four weeks of workouts for the squad.
The Falcons, coming off an 8-3 year, have seen a changing of the guard of sorts take place this spring. Fourteen seniors from last year’s team have departed, and the team’s underclassmen look to take over the leadership roles Coach Urban Meyer looks for.
“We have a lot of great athletes,” Meyer said before the spring game. “But we have obviously lost some great leaders, and we will have to lean on younger guys to lead the team on the field and off this year.”
Quarterback Andy Sahm looks to take over one of those leadership roles. Sahm, who has battled with sophomore Josh Harris the last years for the starting job, performed well in the spring game, completing 13 of 19 passes for 155 yards and two touchdowns in leading the White team to victory.
Other areas of concern for Meyer this spring fared well in the game, as the secondary intercepted three Orange passes, and the kicking game performed well. Senior Jerry Wagner picked off two Josh Harris passes, and sophomore Keon Newson intercepted another. Nate Fry, a freshman kicker from Findlay, booted two field goals, one less than the Falcon kickers made last year.
“Everyone is definitely happy with the progress our special teams have made,” Harris said. “That adds another dimension to our offense if they can put those points on the board. The team did pretty decent this spring; we didn’t take any major steps backward. We continued to take steps forward.”
Newson spoke of the Falcons’ continuous adaptation of the defense to play to their strengths.
“We have changed the defense to be more of a coverage defense,” Newson said. “The new strength of our defense is our speed, like in the secondary, so they’ve changed us a little bit to a coverage defense.”
Now, the Falcons will meet with their coach next week and look ahead to summer conditioning with Meyer’s new class of 26 new Falcons enter the program over the summer.
That list includes five offensive linemen, three quarterbacks, two quarterbacks, and one each at wide receiver, defensive tackle, defensive end, linebacker, cornerback and tight end.
“We’re trying to rebuild our defense and our team as a whole,” Newson said. “Those seniors did a great job last year of leading our team, and now we’re looking for some of our younger guys to step up and fill those shoes. I think we’ve gotten closer as a team this spring through all of the hard work we’ve done.”
After summer conditioning, the Falcons will begin practice again in the early part of August with a full squad.
