Albin relying on “special” veterans to carry over success from 2022

ATHENS — Every now and again, you’re going to need some adults in the room.
In all sports, but especially in such a physically grueling game like football, athletes need to keep a youthful exuberance and excitement of the sport in order to get through some of the harshest times. In the end, it’s still a kids game that these grown men are playing.
With that being said, in order to be successful, you can’t really act like a child anymore. In one of the tougher sports we’ve got, there’s always got to be an influx of stoic wisdom from one of the elder members in order to keep the whole team in check. Returning a large percentage of starters and a significant amount of the team’s leaders from a year prior, Tim Albin has no shortage of confidence that he has the right men in the locker room in 2023.
“The young guys will be swimming a little bit but we’ve got a great staff. But when those older guys, when they’re not taking reps, guess what they’re doing? They’re coaching, and that’s why they’re special,” Albin said in his press conference with the media on Wednesday. “They’re coaching the right way to help bring those guys along. Because those veterans know that at some point in time, in the course of the season, that one of those young guys are going to step in and play just like last year. We had some young guys that did that. They kept believing, with what we went through injury wise, and we were able to have a really, really good year. We got a veteran bunch and we’re going to move pretty, pretty quickly and use that experience to our advantage.”
Whether it be the veteran leadership of Keye Thompson, Bryce Houston or any of the offensive weapons teams will continually stress over, Albin has character guys littered through the locker room. Most of the guys that he’s truly counting on have seen the highest of highs while ripping off a seven-game win streak last season and they’ve also seen the lowest of lows with a three-win 2021 campaign.
The expectations are far different than what the Ohio program has seen in years, but that’s going to have a very limited impact, if any, on how the Bobcats prepare for the year.
“Going into this year, we’re not going to shy away from the expectations. We’re going to embrace it and accept, and accept the challenge. We’re humbled with the vote but we all know it’s preseason. You go back, I’ve been here a long time in this league, the pick, you know, who they pick to win and the percentage of that happening, you gotta go out and do it,” Albin said. “I think I feel comfortable because of the wealth of experience, again, that we have on the football team. There’s some veteran’s veterans in there and they will not let some of those younger guys fall into those types of things.”
Not only does the wealth of experience offer consistency off the field when trying to approach the mental battle, it allows Albin and his staff to tinker with and be creative on the field. In his press conference, Albin noted the importance of being able to speed through installation periods.
Not having as many new starters to fully become engulfed with the playbook has its advantages. It allows Ohio to quickly move through install while having ample time to figure out what is working best or not. They won’t have as much time with the Week 0 game on the schedule, but it’s still invaluable that the team is able to be progressing so fast.
“How I see it after one day of practice is we’re going to progress pretty rapidly into some really good situational football much sooner than we did a year ago. We’re going to be pressing, we’re going to be doing four minute, two minute stuff in five days. We didn’t get to that last year until two weeks in. We’re gonna be day 15 last year by day five.”
However long it takes for Ohio to fully prepare for the season, it hardly matters because Albin and his staff know that they have the right guys leading in order to accomplish whatever dreams they set in front.