Friday(8/2/13) training camp

I didn't focus much on the play-by-play of the 11 on 11 drills, because that's what all the beat reporters are. Here's some other stuff. It's in semi-coherent order, but I'm jumping around a bit.

• There was a fair amount of people there, more than most practices I've been to
• Dion Jordan is still practicing entirely with the DL, where a lot of the "mixed" guys(Misi, Kaddu, Trusinik) are at LB
• Serious ratchetness going on behind me. A couple of woman throwing all the football double entrendres they could think of regarding Dannell Ellerbe. Talk of tight ends, receiving, bum rushing, double teaming. It was amazing, they even referred to the device ball-carriers run through with all the rubber "arms" the dildo machine
• Runningbacks practiced a lot of different routes out of the backfield early on, and the short passing game seemed to be a theme.
• With Randy Starks and Jared Odrick out, Tracy Robertson and Kheeston Randall got the bulk of 3-technique snaps.
• The first 11 on 11 session seemed to focus on the run game, and I was a little surprised by the diversity- Only about one zone play, a couple of pin and pull/ and man blocked plays. Jonathan Martin and Mike Pouncey getting around end particularly well on the former.
• Offensive line rotation is continuing- Most 11v11 drills saw Josh Samuda at RG, but Nate Garner got work there and basically everywhere, pulling a heavy workload in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd teams at LG, C, and RG.
• Dallas Thomas was 2nd team LT, with a little bit of RT thrown in.
• They worked Garner a lot at Center, and his shotgun snapping is a bit questionable to say the least- He had a one-hopper and a high snap back to back.
• A couple of times they seemed to be playing with(and I forget what it's called) a technique where the backside tackle on an outside zone loops across the center to the frontside of the play almost like a pull.
• Michael Egnew threw a couple of good blocks- He put good effort in sealing the backside on one of those weird outside zones I mentioned, and he had a good block as an H-Back in short yardage later
• He did not have a good day passing, with a couple of drops. This was a trend today.
• They seemed to really be playing with the depth chart, at one point Dustin Keller was running with the 3rd string in the running drills.
• Mike Gillislee looked really good in the early runs drills, he had three quality runs where he got into the secondary, one where he made someone miss badly with a very subtle move.
• In passing drills, they played a lot of empty backfield, or with four players split wide.
• Marcus Thigpen plays exclusively at wide receiver
• Jorvorskie Lane plays a bit with the starters, and gets repetitions as the single back in shotgun formations.
• They pumped in crowd noise a lot, but it was really bizarre. It was almost like some weird halloween track, the yelling was strangely distorted and it sounded like someone was beating the **** out of shopping carts
• Jonathan Martin generally held his own pretty well without much in the way of pressures. I found it interesting he didn't really line up vs. Olivier Vernon at all that I noticed.
• When the first team offense and defense faced each other for 11 on 11 drills, interestingly it was someone named Emeka Onyenekwu was at RDE- Not Vernon.
• Dion Jordan has started to be worked into the "base" defense, rather than just the Nickel package I saw at the Sun Life scrimmage- He lined up at SOLB a couple snaps, and also the 6-technique position inside the tight end.
• He seemed to hold his ground pretty well in general, but Dion Sims got him turned and driven out of the hole at one point.
• Sims strikes me as quite a bit more fluid than he looked in any of his highlights I saw on Youtube, and he's pretty interesting to me- He looks like what they wanted Anthony Fasano to do in this offense. They gave him a bit of work in pass protection(and as the edge defender on field goal blocking units)
• The defensive backs played a good game today- Not much in the way of completions, but the passes were well-contested in most cases.
• Matt Moore had kind of a rough day in general. He was making questionable decisions and throws all around, with Daniel Thomas at one point having to jump and one-hand a screen.
• Keenan Davis had a really good day(I wrote Aaron Corp =/), holding on to the ball at one point getting blown up by someone(?), and having another diving catch down the field.
• Vaughn Martin is very much playing Jared Odrick's role with the second team.
• Seemed like they played a bit with the linebacker positioning in regards to left/right- Phillip Wheeler played down on the line of scrimmage outside of the end more than Koa Misi did, something Wheeler did a fair amount in Oakland
• Josh Samuda opened up a pretty nice hole working against Paul Soliai on 11 on 11's at one point, with the play coming right through that gap.
• A small child suggests that the players are all "garbage" as the scoreboard is 0-0 after playing for so long.
• Marcus Thigpen does not make good decisions fielding kicks and punts. He let a real head-scratcher go. The return drills in general were messy, with a fumble and another poorly fielded punt by I forget whom.
• Nolan Carroll had a nice return at one point(I think)
• "Ponzu" according to my notes. I do not know if it is heat stroke, or an error of auto-correct.
• It was very hot. Hot as balls. I tucked the roster handout they gave us under my arm and it ended up actually melting because I was sweating so much.
• Strange kicking unit stuff- As was reported Carpenter, Fields, and Denney all very much are constantly hanging together with Sturgis by himself.
• During kick-off drills with the JUGS machine(operated by Fields), Dan Carpenter lined up on the left wing and was actively involved with getting down field. He gave pretty good effort, too. Sturgis wasn't involved.
• They did a lot of different kicking game formations- 1 or 2 deep players and different formations of the wedge players.
• Saw a bit of Derrick Shelby standing up in Nickel situations.
• Tyson Clabo can clearly hold his own vs. Cameron Wake. Not much from him today, or the Sun Life scrimmage.
• Sims got a lot more starting work than Dustin Keller did today.
• They got a little weird with the packages at the end, at one point Ryan Tannehill was working with the 2's and 3's
  
  

 

I don't remember, to be honest. It may have been.

 

This is so good