Well it's obvious that anything less than the 36-man roster we had a year ago kind of prevents us from running 3-teams deep at practice ... so we end up with 2-teams (and maybe 3 rotaters on each side of the ball when we start scrimmaging against one another).

It keeps everyone involved in the same drill, and hopefully rotating in and out every 2-plays or so ... that's what we tell the kids, "rotate in for so-and-so every 2-plays" ... hopefully they remember to do that as each coach is busy watching specific players to help improve their understanding and ability on each play.

I spoke to the younger kids who were running as an "offensive unit" against the older kids about this on Thursday ... they'd run a couple of rough plays in a row where runners got crushed, blockers got manhandled, and everything sort of blew up on us.

It will often appear that you see one team getting crunched physically by another ... you will. It's like that every year until the younger group gets their footing about them and can stand their ground against the older, more experienced, usually larger players.

The goal is not to get anyone mangled, but to get our younger kids used to being in the weeds against older kids.

I tell this story every year to my son, Clayton, and every year he laughs at me ... about how my freshman year playing football at Hampden-Sydney College, at 205 lbs, I was placed on scout-team (re: 4th String) at Center, and told to block our 265-lb, three-time all-conference, senior, starting nosegaurd who bench-pressed like 450 lbs ... and how for about 6 weeks after practice started, the guy used to throw me down on my face like a rag-doll, and stomp on me (that's what Clayton laughs at) on his way to tackling our unfortunate scout-team quarterback.

Somewhere along the way during that 6-weeks, I learned enough so that he didn't get by every play ... and eventually, I played him very evenly; I'm certain that largely because of that experience, or ordeal, however you want to look at it, that I became a better player long term, and because of that season, I was able to start for the next 3-years, and earn 1st Team All-Conference Honors at Center during a couple of them.

Our younger guys might get pushed around a bit at practice, but we have that luxury of having it happen at practice so that hopefully when they enter a game there's nobody on the other side of the ball who will push them around or intimidate them because they've already faced the biggest and best they can face ... in our practices everyday.