Here is a brief recap of today's practice. Remember that this Saturday is the Spring Game at 6pm. The event is going to simulate a real game day atmosphere as best as it can. There will be tailgating before and plenty of activities to do during the game. Now on to today's practice.
- Hagerup continues to show off a very strong leg. He has made some progress with shortening up his motion but his leg strength has been very impressive. The kicking game should be improved all around.
-Justin Pagan was back in pads. This should help the o-line a good deal. There seemed to be a couple more holes for the running backs to get through today. Trea Burgess and Antonio Banks showed some good runs up the middle while Nick Turner showed off good speed getting to the edge multiple times.
-Our top 3 QB's had a pretty good day. Chappell was his usual self completing most of his passes. He seems to be getting some good chemistry with Duwyce Wilson. Duwyce had a great day. Not only did he catch a ton of passes but he caught a ton of difficult ones. He had a big catch in double coverage and a handful on the sideline keeping his feet in bounds. He has definitely taken advantage of the fact that Belcher and Turner haven't been able to practice this spring. Tandon Doss also had a pretty good day making some big catches in big situations such as 3rd and goal or 3rd and ten.
-Dusty Kiel also had a good day throwing the ball. His best performance was in the red zone where he completed back to back touchdown throws. One of them he had to escape the pocket and make the throw on the run. Ed Wright-Baker also looked better today but did throw an interception to Alex Webb. The receivers did a great job blocking today on a couple of plays that opened up big holes down the sidelines.
-Although the offense seemed to perform better today it seemed as if our coverage was a bit tighter than usual. During one on one drills Yatta Kiles, Matt Ernest, Richard Council and Adrian Burks all showed off some good coverage skills. Burks made a couple of great plays today swatting down some well thrown balls. Council knocked a ball or two loose out of the hands of our receivers.
- I like what I saw from redshirt freshman Damon Sims. His speed will likely be a good attribute for him in coverage and making plays all around the field. I also like how physical Chad Sherer has been playing.
-Max Dedmond had a couple of catches over the middle during 7 on 7 drills. Charles Love III also is looking like a decent receiving threat at tight end.
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Matt, Antonio Banks looks like he's been running the ball very well. Just as you are, I'm incredibly excited about Sims' potential at LB, and I think he'll see some playing time.
ReplyDeleteAre we throwing to the TEs more this spring? I think that's going to be really important to this team's success next year with guys like Dedmond and Love, as we've got to take advantage of the skills they've got.
It was reported that Eric Thomas, DE, was moved to TE at practice. Jack Denton was moved there as well. That may mean that while we have depth in pass-catching TEs, we don't have great blocking TEs, and either Brad Martin isn't working out as a great blocker or we're going to try and run quite a bit of 2 TE sets this year, which I'd disagree with since I'd rather see us spread things out more 3 to 4 WR sets and create mismatches.
ReplyDeleteTo answer the first post, I don't believe we are throwing to the TE's as much as we could. However, with such a great receiving core it hasn't really been necessary when most of them are open down field most plays.
ReplyDeleteI do remember seeing Eric Thomas in the white jersey's. I think it is a good move because it would've been difficult for him to see extended playing time on the d-line and we could use a bigger run blocking TE. We have a lot of pass catching TE's which is good but I would like to see us having a mauler at TE. I'm not sure how it will affect our sets just because we have so many great receivers it wouldn't make much sense to only have 1 or 2 receivers out there. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.