Brandon Hogan's Heroes

Did you see what I did there? I took a regular name, Brandon Hogan, and added a word to the end and -- voila! -- a hilarious pun. Chris Berman would be very proud. You must be rolling on the floor, convulsing with laughter. Oh, you're not? You say you're not laughing at all? You're actually angry with me? Oh, OK. Let's pretend this didn't happen.

Anyhoo, Brandon Hogan is getting a lot of praise from CRR this fall camp. As you know, Rodriguez generally dislikes most his players in fall camp, at least to the media. Here is what CRR has been saying:

Of the newcomers, Hogan has probably had the most extensive background playing in a spread offense in high school. The Virginia player of the year at quarterback seems to be understanding things pretty quickly so far.

"Brandon seems to pick up our concepts really quick and he’s playing slot receiver," Rodriguez said. "The other guys are doing a good job, too, but Brandon has kind of stood out."

Many more high school programs are beginning to adopt the spread offense and Rodriguez says that removes some of the guess work involved in evaluating prep prospects.

"Now you find all kinds of athletic quarterbacks with the spread systems where 10 years ago you wouldn’t find that," he said. "I think concepts help somewhat, especially at the quarterback position.

"Brandon ran a similar system in high school and a lot of the concepts I think he understands. The higher you go the more technical it gets and we probably make it too technical," Rodriguez said.

Hogan is a smaller guy (think: Reynaud) with great athleticism (think: Reynaud) and speed (think: Reynaud). I wonder who on our team I would compare him to? Hmmm?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xym7lnaH31c]
UPDATE: Watch for the block at the 1:10 mark, which conveniently happens during the best run of the Charlie Chaplin silent film.

[courtesy of MSNsportsNET]