Ready to rumble
Miami and FAU battle tonight in season opener.
When Miami and FAU open their 2013 campaigns Friday night at Sun Life Stadium, be sure to hold off your judgments for at least a half.
For any team, pregame tape study can only go so far. For a season opener, it won’t even stretch to those normal levels. Both squads will be displaying new offenses, some different looks and players on defense and, in FAU’s case, a new quarterback.
Because of that, both teams expect first few series of Friday’s game to be a feeling- out period. The squads will see if their preconceptions of their opponents hold true, but either way, they’ll adapt to what they see on the field.
By the time the second half starts, both teams could have scrapped their offensive and defensive game plans, piecing together new ones on the sidelines amid a cacophony of yelling and whiteboard scribbling.
“Opening games are tricky, they always are,” Miami coach Al Golden said. “They really take a lot of your energy. They take a lot of focus. A lot of contingency plans. ... You have no idea what they have planned. That’s taking all of our energy.”
Because of that, FAU coach Carl Pelini said that halftime might be the most important point of Friday’s game.
“Not just halftime, even in between series, youhave tohave the whiteboards ready to go and you got to be ready to make some adjustments on the fly,” Pelini said. “It’s a good experience for our young guys, on defense especially, to have to do that and
the