Well, this is going to be a pretty short report today. There isn't a whole lot new stuff to talk about. I will be gone tomorrow-Saturday, so I won't be doing any reports on those days. Hopefully, someone else on this blog will be there or put together some sort of report. Let's get started, shall we.
Today was the first day in shells. There was a little more contact involved in drills today because of that.
1. No one new on the beach. We need to keep this going.
2. First quarter of practice was devoted purely to special teams. They worked on punt returns, kickoffs, and field goals. The kickers and punters all looked pretty good out there. There were very few kicks to me that stood out as being below average. They used several returners, but they really didn't do any real returns today because they weren't in full pads. They basically just went through various drills and alignments.
3. One on one passing today with the receivers, A-backs, and DBs looked very sharp. The QBs were putting the ball where the receivers and A-backs could catch them and there were only a few dropped passes early on. Josh looked settled and seemed to deliver very accurate passes and rarely overthrow his receivers. Jaybo was also very accurate. Tevin had an occasional pass that fluttered in the air, but about half were tight accurate spirals. Sims and Luallen looked about the same and had trouble on occasion.
4. Today marked the first day back with towel drills. This is my favorite drill and they introduced it in the Spring. The premise behind it is that the coach holds up a towel behind the receiver and then proceeds to throw it down on the ground. The DB, who is about 5 yards in front of the receiver, then tries to get to the towel. It is the receiver's job to keep the corner away from the towel. It is a lot of fun to watch. The receivers didn't fair too well today. It appeared that the DBs were just too hungry and wanted to win the battle more. Bebe performed the best like expected.
5. The highlight of the day came in the 7-on-7 passing drill. The coaches were very vocal today in teaching the QBs. There were at least a couple of really frustrated yells. Nesbitt looked like a starting QB for the first real time today. He made his fair share of mistakes, but he showed some amazing passing skills today that I didn't really think he had. He managed to thread a couple of passes into tight coverage that not many QBs can make, period. I was thoroughly surprised. He only got chewed out once by CPJ, when he failed to see a wide open receiver and threw the ball into triple coverage instead. Jaybo had a up and down day. He looked amazing at times and plain stupid in others. The rest of the QBs were much the same way. Luallen probably had the worst day of them all. He had several passes intercepted and just stared down his receivers sometimes. The defense had a couple of really nice breakups. They were fired up and swarmed to the football every time the ball was in the air. Morgan Burnett chest bumped the hell out of Lucas Cox on one play where Lucas caught a pass up the middle and then turned around to go up field. This only fired up the defense even more. One play that probably stood out the most today was a catch by Jamal Paige. He was working a route over the center of the field with tight coverage when a QB threw him the ball. He caught the pass but was immediately leveled by a linebacker. Amazingly, he held onto the ball. All the other receivers and A-backs looked pretty good today.
I said this was going to be short, but I guess there was more to write about then I thought. If you leave any comments, it might take me a day or two to get back to you since I'm traveling.