The Blazers are going to make some serious noise this year. Yesterday, on a rainy, miserable September afternoon, our Blazers made a statement to C-USA and the rest of the country that we weren’t going to be a penciled in Win anymore; we’re here to contend (off-rhyming unintended). As someone who’s been following the Blazers hardcore for the past 4 years I can honestly say this is one of the most talented teams I have ever seen wear the Green and Gold.

In case you haven’t heard through the elated Facebook Statuses and Twitter updates of soaking wet, sniffling Blazer fans (it rained ALL day!) UAB dominated in conference foe Rice yesterday by a score of 44-24. The score marks only the third time in the Neil Callaway era that the Blazers have scored over 40 to win a game and only the second time this has been done over a D-1 opponent.

I know there’s a lot of football left to be played but going off of what I saw yesterday I’m not gonna lie to you dear reader…we look good.

Our offense had staggering 516 yards of total offense in the contest with Joe “Spiderman” Webb accounting for 415 of those yards :jawdrop:.
Webb looked superhuman yesterday running away from defenses and completing some sick passes all the while doing it in the rain for the most part.
Webb made it onto ESPN’s top rushing performances of the day with his 194 yards rushing performance (a C-USA record for quarterbacks) on 20 carries.

Frantrell Forrest and Jeffrey Anderson led the Blazers in receptions with each accumulating 64 and 65 yards respectively and Forrest scoring twice (one of the TD catches being top 10 worthy, if it gets uploaded on youtube I’ll definitely post it).
Yesterday we also saw the debut of the Blazers’ Vulcan formation and 2nd string quarterback David Isabelle. In case you didn’t know the Vulcan formation is where we split Joe out at receiver and let Isabelle come in and either throw it, run it, pitch it to Joe to throw it or a combination of the few.
Our offense is really going to be something to watch this year as we have so much more talent, experience and speed than last year.

On the defensive side of the ball Terrell Springs Chase Daniel and Keon Harris led the Blazers in tackles with 6 each. While the Blazers gave up a total of 391 yards on the day the D still looked strong considering the average starting point for the Rice Offense was around our own 45 yard line. A little fine tuning and some adjustments and the Blazer defense should be ready to make a serious statement this year. Also yesterday I noted the defense was playing with what football coaches call, “reckless abandonment.” They were flying to the ball, making some big hits and making defensive stands when they had too. Our D looks much improved this year and I look forward to seeing them further compliment our offense.

As a whole the Blazers played great for their first game of the year. While the score was nice the game was far from perfect. The Blazers HAVE to get better on special teams and quit putting their D in a hole to start off. Also while Joe’s 4 touchdowns were awesome we don’t need to put so much pressure on him and have him carrying the team the entire year. We need to get Forrest and the other WRs involved more and we need to establish a running game outside of Joe.
But, at the end of the day the score is still 44-24 and it’s now time for the Blazers to look forward to next weeks game against C-USA opponent SMU.
The game is @ 3pm @ Legion Field again and if you missed out on yesterdays game you really missed out on a treat. This year is going to be a special one DO NOT MISS OUT! See everyone next week! GB!

-CJ OUT

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