A Day of Blue and Gold: Southern Spring Game

A team of faith or a team of coincidence? In the 2022- 2023 season, our Southern University football team found themselves in the SWAC championship game after a series of trials and tribulations. However, with this upcoming season being stacked with home games fans might be disappointed with the results.
This year’s spring game was a matchup between the defense vs. the offense under the names team blue and team gold. Football has rolled around again as the Spring Game was on a hot sizzling day in A.W. Mumford Stadium. Usually, during these games, spectators can see the upcoming talent being showcased, but instead, fans witnessed our biggest determinators. Starting with the mystery at quarterback. All spring fans have heard fifth-year quarterback Harold Blood Jr. is the front-runner for QB1. Last season, Head Coach Dooley started his recruit #11 Besean McCray as QB1 even though he had #12 Bubba McDaniel in his arsenal with one year left of eligibility. With McCray in the transfer portal and McDaniel’s collegiate career ended, that only leaves Blood. Although he touched game time alternating between QB2 and QB3 last season, his level of playing is not equipped for the stacked schools coming out of the SWAC this season. No quarterback on the roster has even seen significant time on the field. Harold Blood received most of the reps and made some nice plays and throws, but a lot of room for improvement. During the spring game, Blood Jr. showed his field awareness leading team gold to score a pivotal touchdown only to throw an interception not even 2 minutes later. He finished the game 16 of 29 on pass attempts with two touchdowns and one interception.
UAB quarterback transfer Dylan Mehrotra saw some action but did not have a score. Grambling State quarterback transfer from last year Noah Bodden led some decent drives but threw an interception to veteran Kriston Davis. He finished 16 of 20 with a touchdown and interception. Despite no official starter being named at QB, Dooley provided his thoughts “I think right now, if I had to start a game tomorrow, it’d be Blood. I think he did some great things, some things that he hadn’t done all spring today.” In addition, the majority of the offensive line is out injured. The linebackers for team blue completely dominated team gold’s offensive line. In addition, this also aided in several holding penalties. With the offensive line being in the current condition they are in, it could be a long season for the Jags.
On the bright side, the highlight of the day was the depth of SU’s running back room. Sophomore running back Kendric Rhymes ripped off a 67-yard run for a touchdown for Team Gold. Veteran running back Kobe Dillon was back from an injury all last season. He managed to have a few nice runs. These running backs are just two of the five skilled players at running back. Finally, the Jags also had several mental mistakes, such as dropping the football, some errors in decision makings, three missed field goals and some bad holding penalties. Assistant Coach Terrence Graves provided his thoughts on the simple mistakes, “There’s some technical stuff — footwork, hand placement, keys, and stuff like that we need to correct.”
With Alabama State being September 2nd, the Jags will have a lot of things to work on to be prepared for a competitive SWAC conference.