I headed over to the McCue Center today with my amazing (holy shit she agreed to go watch a football practice) girlfriend, plus our friend Havens, to check out the first open football practice of the season. Unfortunately, there wasn't a whole lot going on to report back - the guys weren't in pads and largely worked out in small group drills. Here are my thoughts:
-I do not envy the coaching staff in their QB decision making. The three of us sat and watched the group of them for the entire 2 hours, and each came away with widely different opinions of the 4 guys.
-To me, the competition boils down to Metheny v Rocco, who both throw more consistently well than Strauss. However, Strauss just looks the part the most, plus I definitely see the "gunslinger" mentality in him. If more of his throws were dead accurate, he'd be the favorite in my book.
-Overall, I would feel most comfortable with Rocco - he's the most consistant and, most importantly, went for the difficult throws with precision.
-Metheny throws the ball fine, but I'm not sold on his delivery as much as the other two.
-Watford actually throws the ball really well, at least in practice (the spring game performance was certainly unimpressive). He's definitely in need of a redshirt, though.
-In the end, our group vote ended with 2 votes for Rocco and one for Strauss
-The depth at WR, RB, and DB looks great to me - though the live game experience isn't there yet.
-Kevin Parks looks very fast and very small.
-Clifton Richardson runs with authority.
-Darius Jennings is really really fast.
-Demetrious Nicholson plays very physical for his size, I think he'll start by game 3 at least.
-Anthony Harris had a really nice pick in the 7 on 7 stuff.
-Brandon Phelps also looked good in coverage.
-I like what I saw from Rijo Walker, hopefully he'll turn it on this season and we can get a solid CB rotation.
-I CAN NOT wait to see Tim Smith back on the field. He dropped a couple balls, but really looks the part to me, plus he was blowing by the defense most of the drills.
-Kevin Royal practices really hard, he's looking for some PT this year for sure.
-Tip drills are fun to watch, as well as the QB-dive-on-the-loose-ball drill.
I didn't really get a good look at the other position groups, or they weren't doing enough to really judge.
Got questions? Leave a comment!
Great stuff, Pierce. Thanks a ton for the info and observations!
ReplyDeleteI had a dream a few nights ago that Metheny ended up being the starting QB. That probably doesn't mean much, other than I'm just a giant dork for having dreams about football.
How did the o-line look to you today? Ready to pace this offense and protect a young QB?
(I've got a million more questions, but will limit to that for now.)
I couldn't really tell to much about the OL, no pads/contact and such...though they definitely look the part.
ReplyDeleteThe long snapper in practice looked good, also.