Spring Practice: Special Teams & Run Game

It was a beautiful afternoon on the practice field today with temperatures in the high 70’s (might have even been low 80’s) and plenty of sun. Although it’s great for me watching practice, the players apparently prefer it to be cooler so that they don’t really sweat.

I missed yesterday’s practice, but it was only shoulder pads (no pants) and was a bit lighter day. Today it was back to full pads and high intensity. Things got chippy at a couple of points while scrimmaging, most notably when Alex Frye got into a small shoving match with Y’lou after a catch.

I saw two things today that were significant changes from the way practice had been running for the first couple of weeks. First, instead of only working on the punt game the team is now incorporating all aspects of special teams. “We felt like about half way through spring we’d start picking up the field goal and field goal protection, field goal block, kickoff, kickoff return, and we’re even working on our punt block and punt return stuff right now,” said Coach Grobe. “We’ve got all the kicking game going right now and we’ll work on that every day through spring.”

I saw a couple of interesting personel things going on in these special teams drills. McManus continued to snap for punts and Russel Nenon for fg/xp, but I also saw a couple other guys getting some reps as well. I may have had my numbers wrong (I was somewhat far away at the time) but it looked like Ted Randolph was getting some punt snaps and Gage Crews some with fg/xp.

The second change I saw today was that offense ran a much higher percentage of running plays than I’ve seen them run in any previous practice. This is something Coach has said he wanted to do and I’m glad he is because it’s allowing us to get a better look at what we have on the line and in the backfield. The defense continued to look very strong against the run, but I felt like the first string O-line held there own fairly well. They weren’t exactly parting the Red Sea, but they also weren’t getting beat for big losses. Depth is absolutely still an issue, because the second and third teams did not look very strong at all. I specifically saw center Ryan Britt get beat pretty badly one time, as well as tight end JT Dixon, but these were by no means the only instances of guys struggling.

Grobe had the following to say about increasing the focus on the run game: “We feel like the thing we need to most work on right now is running game. I think our defensive scheme is pretty good against the run so if we can get to where we have a little consistency against our defense then we’d go into the season thinking we can run and throw the football. That’s the thing we’re weakest at right now and the thing we need the most work on. It’s something we’ll look at on Saturday.”

Overall it was a pretty solid day. There were a few instances of coaches getting a bit frustrated with players and making them do up-downs, but all in all I thought it was a good practice. I'm very glad for the greater focus on the run game and I look forward to watching it develop over the next couple of weeks.