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#93 Gary McCrae
Class: Senior
Ht/Wt: 6-4/252
Position: Defensive Line
Hometown: Cuthbert, GA
Twitter: N/A
Thoughts: I will readily admit that I was drinking the McCrae Kool-aid this time last season. The 2016 season was a wash in my mind for the former 5* Goergia commit since he came into the program so late but I thought Gary may push for PT and possibly sneak into a starting position by season’s end up front. That…did not happen. Blame it on the scheme, blame it on the staff, blame it on the player, I have no clue what prevented that from coming into fruition, but McCrae not only saw limited time overall he was relegated to special teams the majority of the season. It was certainly not what I expected to see and based upon the “Where is McCrae?” tweets that flooded my timeline each and every Saturday I felt comfortable knowing I was not alone.
Gary ended the year with four tackles but grabbed half of those in the blowout of in state rival Kentucky (2 tkl). The positive for McCrae is that after seeing a few ‘DNP’s (did not play) to start the year, he appeared in the last seven games of the season, including the bowl game. During the spring McCrae and FamU were singled out as the Senior leaders up front and Petrino highlighted Gary a couple times for his speed rush off the edge and swarming to the ball. While the pessimist in me wants to believe that McCrae was a stud last year who just struggled to get time because we had lots of upperclassmen along the line, I know we saw numerous others get those reps who had far less experience and far less athleticism. A new staff will hopefully bring out the best in McCrae and we see this season what many of us hoped to see in 2017.
Sweet Tweet: Gary appears to have deleted his twitter so we go rouge with this one…
McCrae makes a quick cameo in the video below from the Spring, as do all three new coaches (BVG, Grady Brown, and Ryan Beard). Not to be overshadowed we also see my main man from way back Coach Mike Summers. He appears to be angry. Enjoy.