Planning on it if I can clear out of work early. Have the camera with me as well and will try to take and post pics.
OK, here goes. Arrived a bit late, and spent a bunch of time watching the receivers in individual drills. Phillips knows what he's doing out there. Crisp cuts, presents a good target, solid hands. He had a couple of catches during the scrimmages, but didn't light things up. In the one on one drills he blew by Gratz once when I was watching. He also had a sequence, can't remember whether it was in the scrimmage or in the matchup drills with the QB, receivers and DB's, where he beat Blidi on a post route. Blidi came right back on the next one, jumped the route, and picked off the pass. Foxx can fly, but needs to work on footwork. Cuts were rounded and he has trouble finding the ball. In one on ones he gave Lee a hesitation move and blew by him. He got open a few times in the full squad scrimmages but I don't recall any catches. Mike Smith is what we know he is - solid. He also got some play as the wildcat QB. I also saw Abrams catch a nice ball over the middle from Nebrich. Nebrich was getting almost all of the work with the second string. He looks better than he did in the spring. Defense dominated the full squad scrimmages, as you would expect early on. Very tough to get a read on the RB's, given how good the D seems to be at stopping the run. J. Williams is fast, but couldn't find much running room. It looked to me like Gus Cruz hurt his shoulder near the end of practice in the one on one drills vs. the DT's and DE's. Jimmy Bennett had a nice battle with Trevardo. The first time Bennett completely locked him down. Second time through Trevardo blew by him, and Bennett was visibly pissed, screaming "I $ #&ing had him!!". Dalton Gifford was really struggling in the one on one pass rush drills. DeLeone called him out as "soft". Angelo Pruitt is really freaking strong. If he learns how to use it, he will be a beast. I'm very impressed with Matt Cersosimo as WR Coach. Very detailed, pays attention to everyone, doesn't seem to miss anything. The drills that the WRs run in individual skills are much more complex than what they were three years ago. One thing that did concern me was the number of bad snaps. There were a lot of them, mainly in the shotgun. OK I'm going to post this now before putting pictures up.
Now those are practice notes! Thanks for the follow up. I'm assuming the Blidi pick was off a Whitmer pass? I know its early but do you see any chemistry building between WR's and QB? Also, knowing that the D isn't in his face yet, does Whitmer read the field well .. i know that past QB's had a habbit of locking onto a single WR.
It was tough from ground level to see how Whitmer scanned the field. I was looking more to see how quickly he released the ball and whether it was on target. I think Blidi's pick was more of a case of Phillips tipping off the route.
We had too many bad snaps last year too. Maybe we can borrow a gymnastics coach or something to get this down to a science. Seriously, reps reps reps and any drills we can dream up to fix it - please! Good news for the most part and thanks for the report.
