The sun was out today and it felt great for a Tuesday practice.
Here's a rundown of some sights I picked up. Please leave any questions/comments and I'll get back to you!
>Took longer stretching today before they continued the 10-15 minute segments that they normally do.
>QB's took some open field pitching lessons and worked on pitching with both hands. Most of them looked pretty good and nobody really stood out there.
>After the QB's did the open field practice they ran some triple option sets within themselves before going over to the wideouts and runningbacks.
>Ran some normal counter options/triple option sets and gave a lot of touches to the fullback up the middle and to the sides.
>No quarterback really stuck out today. Stachitas and Cross both looked a bit timid. Stachitas threw a couple of really good deep balls but struggled on the out routes and curls. Cross couldn't really hit the receivers in stride but was on the money with the outs. Both did fine on the checkdowns.
>The receivers were struggling a little bit today with the exception of Yloo Brown. He caught several balls in traffic and could not even be wrapped up by the first defender close to him.
>The fullbacks and tightends dropped a lot of passes that were hitting them in the hands when the QB was rolling out. Some of those were the quarterbacks fault on overthrows, but the majority of them were on the spot and just not caught.
>LD Williams stopped by for a few minutes and received several congratulations. He told a few stories about how big Dexter Pittman and DeMarcus Cousins were. Talked a little bit about the slam dunk contest in Indy next week, and what his future plans were. He's a pretty funny guy who knows a lot about sports.
>Bob Sapp, head coach for Mount Tabor for 12 years was there and talked to Grobe for a while, mainly about golf. They were talking to a recruit it looked like, but he was most likely a kicker based on his size and build.
>Brad Lambert was getting all over the cornerbacks for giving up the corner route, and was really focusing on them getting up close and forcing them to go inside. Looks like we may be playing more press coverage this year as opposed to giving the curls up as we have in years past. It was really good to see him getting after people for not listening to what he was saying.
>Jimmy Newman was absolutely crushing most of his punts. He was putting them into the end zone from about the 30 line pretty consistently. Most of them were on their 2nd or 3rd bounce, but he definitely has a leg. He also drilled a few long field goals as well. It appears that will go back to relying heavily on defense/special teams while running a conservative offense (if we do not pull more option stuff).
>It looked like Kenny Okoro was not on the field and he came to practice a little late. He didn't appear to be in any trouble and was not favoring anything that would indicate an injury. Probably had a tutoring session, but thought it was worth noting.
>The practice was a bit lackluster, but that's to be expected with it being only the 3rd-5th practice these guys have had this spring.
We have a lot of things to work on because it's a pretty young team, but it should be a fun year to watch. We have more talent on the field than we have ever had before and all the coaches seem pretty upbeat about it.