Nice post....
This is great for a go fast situation, if your not so much worried about ground clearance. Most people on red dirt have issues with rock trails. A trailing arm setup should be designed to lower the center of gravity in a vehicle and this in turn allows you to run a shorter shock. Even the upper shock mounts are lower. All of the effort put towards moving the weight towards the center of the vehicle and as low as possible can be seen on many desert vehicles. Given, that may have been said already but who wants to run a 28 inch shock....
While you think about your suspension setup, I'd say focus on what type of trails your going to run 80% of the time.