Recent Comments

He was in and out. Never emoted much, Searls would yell "Wyatt" and he'd go in and seem to perform well. Then he'd be swapped out. Overall, I felt like I saw 38 different iterations of the line today. Lots of guys shifting positions and switching 1st/2nd team. Kyle Chung was not blue for the first time I've ever seen. However he was limping a bit by the end. His left knee was heavily braced and you could see him favoring it. (Most ol have both braces, he just had one)

Yes the left side flew open and he was untouched. I did notice blocking by receivers all afternoon.

I'm new to this site and don't know how to embed videos or do gifs yet, but if I could, I'd embed that scene from Rocky I where he goes to the ring in the middle of the night before he fights Creed - he comes home and tells Adrian he can't beat him..."but if I can go toe to toe (or something like that) and go the distance," That's my realistic view of this thing - we have to go toe to toe with the champ and match up punch for punch and keep it close - we do that and I'll be proud - If we go in there and give up idiotic TDs (see bama 2013) I'm going to be bumming...we'll see.

Some notes I could recall. (I tried live tweeting as much to help my football overwhelmed memory). It's conditioning season for me as well.

First off, I sat too close down to the field to really watch individual line play. A couple of times I keyed in on Nijman and he looked great against Ekanem, and Mihota. Held his own, created space, etc.

Another lineman that stood out was Sobczak. He burst up the gut several times on third downs to end "drives."

Slye has a leg and a half. He was easily hitting from 55 in practice, made one during the scrimmage, but missed another (short) when he got underneath it a bit. Santamaria had one bad kick and one good one from 25-30 yards (again too close to the field to really tell). Both kickers get it off in a hurry. Is Beamer going with long kicker/short kicker like 2004/5 era?

AJ Hughes' back is all better. He's more than solid. I thought when Ludwig came in to punt, they were good kicks but took noticeably longer to get off.

Terrell Edmunds may be the gunner to watch this year. Great speed/strength to get down the field quick and squared up as if a sure tackler. (Returns weren't full-live, whistle blew on touch.)

CJ Carroll has a role on this team. I personally thought he was the third best receiver (Ford and Phillips took off the pads after warm ups). Carrol was quick/shifty as a returner. They blew the whistle on him more than once even though he wasn't touched not would have been tackled. Carrol also found space in zones, caught the ball with great hands and turned up field making moves. The catch was always first. Deon Newsome and Kevin Asante kept being targeted (as if to test them) but they made one (maybe a second) catch between them out of 5+ attempts.

Malleck was the standout in terms of receptions. Just solid plays with decent yards after the catch. Bucky made a play or two, but ended up getting dinged up on a deep ball where Stroman had him covered and Chuck Clark came in to break up the pass. Clark and Bucky met awkwardly impacting his shoulder. Nothing serious.

Not much to be said on defense, down to the 3s they were making plays and in position. Adonis Alexander stood out making an interception on Brewer (he threw it awkwardly after contact, should have been blown dead,) Adonis caught the ball at the highest point made a few cuts and took it all he way back for a TD.

There was a Jaylen Bradshaw sighting. That's about it though.

Penultimate note: every read option (zone read, veer, whatever you will) by Motley and Lawson was a keep. Each by Brewer was a give. Seemed like the coaches wanted to see something. My humble opinion, Motley did the better job (betwixt him and Lawson) and Brewer was better overall. Lawson was picked off, fumbled 4 times (one on his own and three bad snaps from Tyrell Smith, in a row...) but have you seen him run in open field, or scan the defense and rip a 25 yard pass on a rope with a wrist-flick? Lots of ups and downs with him.

Final note: it's plug and play at running back. I personally liked a combo of Shai (good vision, throws folks off of him) and McMillian (so quick at hitting an outside hole) best. Edmunds had a nice 30 yard td, but kind of took a while to get going today (mostly against 1 defense, so...) didn't notice JC a whole lot, but I trust him.

This thread has convinced me to spend my Saturday night watching the game on YouTube. If this doesn't tell you how ready I am for the season to start, I have no clue what will.

I hope opposing offenses feel the same.

My plan is to go into the game with the same expectation as last year, and that is that we'll probably play them close and most probably won't win. That way the letdown isn't so bad and the homerun is a grand slam.

In some places I believe that's considered consumation of the marriage.

Lmao I forgot about the giraffe