Breaking Down Fall Camp Highlights

If you haven't had the chance to checkout the highlight videos on virginiasportstv.com, do yourself a favor and catch up firsthand on how the team's looking so far in fall camp. Over the course of the videos the two things that have jumped out to me the most are Smoke Mizzell's ability and David Watford's obvious improvement from two years ago. Let's take a closer look at video number 10 from earlier this week and see what else stands out:

(Hit the highlights here to follow along)

• 0:02 - I've really warmed up to the giant Chris Long sign.
• 0:16 - Touchdowns are touchdowns, but why does it seem that the vast majority of our wideouts over the years only catch balls after pinning them to their chest or bobbling them a bit? We need more Billy McMullens. 
• 0:19 - Just recently, I read that the designed QB runs in the offense were there for every QB's disposal. It's not a David Watford playbook specifically, but rather whoever's in could still have a called run. Here we have Greyson Lambert running a read option. (Or, moreso, I fake to Mizzell with a Lambert run that would've happened no matter what the DE was doing...). Lambert looks mobile enough there, to me.
• 0:28 - #26 is a freshman walk on, but looks like he's got plenty of wiggle. OR MAYBE OUR DEFENSE IS MAKING ANYONE RUNNING THE BALL LOOK GOOD /panic
• 0:43 - So for roughly 17 years now, we've been hearing whichever of our 17 offensive coordinators say in the preseason: "We're looking to get the ball to our playmakers out in open space."
  Well, outside of the occasional Dom Terrell screen play, I haven't seen much execution of this strategy. Here we have Tim Smith catching the ball in the flat. It's a good sign, in my opinion.
• 0:48 - Fine throw. Definitely a sign of a strong play by the DB and not a poor play by Lambert.
• 0:58 - Sign of things to come: Mizzell out in space catching passes. He may even line up in the slot at points this year. If the throw hits him in stride, easy touchdown. Instead, he has to slow up and wait for it. We don't know if he still scores, but we do know that the defenders have a chance to prevent a score, only because of a less-than-stellar throw. 
• 1:07 - With all the (deserved) talk of Mizzell, we've still got two VERY good backs in Parks and Shepherd.
• 1:22 - Watford does well stepping up into the pocket here to make a good throw, but does he get sacked if this is a live game? The end (Jake Snyder) clearly beats the linemen (Connor Davis) here. Nice throw, though (with another bobbled TD catch).
• 1:31 - Smooooke.
• 1:37 - Poor tackling/effort because it's practice? Or something more indicative of a weakness of the unit? OR freshman walk on Anthony Calloway is simply a good player. All of the above.

Two weeks and two days til BYU, yall.