Great article detailing the NFLU of Hurricanes football in the Herald yesterday. Andrew Swasey, Miami’s Strength and Conditioning coach who orchestrates it all, has few people on his level (Barwis be damned! How many NFLers does he have again?) Many people thought Swasey should be let go in the off-season, and were incorrectly informed that he was gone. Hold on there people. This is the guy who Butch Davis brought in back in 2000, and has molded all these first round picks that permeate vast amounts of NFL rosters.
“Swasey’s offseason visitor list reads like a Dream Team: Jon Vilma, Roscoe Parrish, Kellen Winslow Jr., Sinorice and Santana Moss, D.J. Williams, Kelly Jennings, Plaxico Burress, Chad Johnson, Clinton Portis, Jon Beason and Reggie Wayne — to name some of them. The list includes four other former Canes — Ed Reed, Willis McGahee, Antrel Rolle and Edgerrin James — playing in this weekend’s NFC and AFC championship games.”
Take a look at the sidebar in the article and see the increases for players across the board. Swasey knows what he is doing, and Randy trusts him. Swasey sees a lot of similarities this season in lifting numbers with the 2001 team. It really is just a matter of time. ACC, you’re fucked! Well, except Paul Johnson and his genius triple option. But then you hear this quote from Vilma on a his favorite Swasey anecdote, and you realize once all of Comandante Coker’s joke soldiers leave town, it will all be A-OK.
Vilma, who overcame a major knee injury with the help of Swasey to record 153 tackles this season, plans to share some of his favorite Swasey stories about mental toughness. Vilma’s favorite: The day the national champions conquered the stairs and went out a day later “and ran 16 110s like it was a joke.”
”You got to have that confidence [that] nobody can stop you, and you develop that with Swasey,” Moss said. ‘We’d take on the sand pit and say, `We’re going to conquer the sand pit.’ We’d take on the hills at Tropical Park and say, ‘We’re going to dominate those hills.’ And we did.”
