sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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- Aug 15, 2011
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I went to the game. Got there early. Only the kickers, punters, holders and snappers were on the field then and it stayed that way a long time.
General observations of special teams pregame warmups:
Szmyt looked really good. The trajectory and crispness of his kicks declined fairly steadily after the great frosh season. He hit a disturbingly high number of low kicks the past couple of years. That has changed in a big way. He is consistently kicking his FG attempts high in the air. This is important because it makes it much harder to block his kicks. He also appears to have added some strength to his kicks. Was making 45 yards with at least 10 yards to spare. Probably more. I didn’t see him miss one. Looked dominant.
Williams, Von Marburg and Hawkins appear to be the backup placekickers. I think Hawkins looked better. But neither is close to Andre.
There were 4 guys practicing punts. Williams, Hawkins, Von Marburg.and Barker. Barker was a real mess. Didn’t see him lay into any of his punts. Von Marburg was better and fairly consistent. But he never turned the ball over and got it booming and didn’t get much hang time. Hawkins appeared to have a stronger leg than these two and was a bit more consistent too. He had a few terrific punts. But Williams was easily the best of the bunch. Way better hang time. More consistent than the others. Longer distance too. Even the ones he mishit a bit still had good hang time.
So I expect Szmyt and Williams to be out specialists. Barron was one of the holders. That surprised me. He was wearing an orange jersey, which I think means he is non contact. Not sure if he got into this to have something to do while he recovers from his injury. No idea where he is/was hurt. His arms looked fine and he moved around fine with no trace of a limp. But I think this is why Justin has not been in the discussion for a starting safety job in spring write ups.
Found out about when the whole team came out that a bunch of key players were going to sit this one out. Shrader, Tucker, Rhino and Bergeron. That was unfortunate. Assume all are fine and the staff decided to hold them out since they know what they can do and wanted to keep them healthy and evaluate some other players.
They appeared to be showing the ACCN feed on the main scoreboard most, perhaps all of the practice. The acoustics were uneven. The announcers were fine. Some of the interviews were fine. And some were harder to understand. They did have closed captioning in the corner of the ribbon scoreboard and that helped fill in gaps. I think Drew Carter was the play by play guy and a Syracuse grad.
It was unfortunate how they elected to have the players practice. The Blue team, which won the game pretty easily, had the first team offense. They played against the second team defense. Thought some players on both teams were actually 3rd team due to injury or coaches choice. Anyway, Lamson ran the blue offense, with a solid supporting cast, against the second team defense. For both units, there was a big dropoff from the first to second team units.
So Justin had a big advantage on the QBs assigned to the White team (Villari, Morgan and MacPhail0. They had the second team offense to work with, and had to play against the first team defense all the time. There was rarely time to throw and the coverages and tackling were a lot tighter.
Now Lamson was able to move the ball and score points pretty consistently. He looked really good. Made good reads and decisions passing it and threw it accurately. Also read the ball well and looked very capable on running plays. But he typically had a lot of time to make reads and for plays to develop. And his WRs got open consistently.
Villari and Morgan rarely had much time to do anything but run for their lives. That said, both looked good at times. They took what the defenses gave them, and I don’t remember any foolish turnovers from them. Villari made some plays with his legs. Morgan got out of trouble running around a couple of times but then threw the ball from just inside the LOS. I think Morgan managed the short passes well. Villari has a bigger arm and is a lot more dangerous running. He connected on at least one long pass (believe there was a PI called on it). I would say Villari looked beat between these two but Morgan was solid as well. Not sure if Lamson is better than Villari. They seemed pretty well matched.
Towards the end, the staff gave MacPhail extended minutes. He struggled some trying to dealing with an outmanned supporting cast but did make some plays, mostly to Donovan Brown. One was a long bomb to Brown where Donovan was tackled inside the 5. That was the last play of the scrimmage. Brown can really run and is going to be a solid deep threat soon. Very skinny now. His arms look very thin.
I think this was how the first team offensive line lined up most of the time;
LT Cruz
LG Hoeh
C Vetterello
RG Davis
RT Tisdale
Now Bergeron was held out and is surely going to be our LT. Ellis just got banged up and could not play, so Wes Hoeh filled in for him. But we also have Bleich recovering from surgery and when he is back he will need to start somewhere.
Anyway, thought all these guys looked good. Even Tisdale, who looked trimmer and more athletic than in previous seasons.
We have 3 really nice OGs in Davis, Bleich and Ellis. And Bergeron and Vet are veterans who almost have to start. I think those are our 5 best OL, assuming everyone is healthy. What do you do? Move one of the guards to center? Move Vet to center and an OG to RT? Davis did play there briefly last season when all 3 guards were healthy. Maybe they go that way. It will be interesting to watch this until the start of the season.
The second team OL lined up like this most of the time:
LT Magnuson
LG Kauhi
C Ilaoa
RG Bradford
RT Petry
Sometimes Hoeh played center as well. Sometimes Barclay played OG. Sometimes Froumy played OG. Maybe they are members of the third team but they mix and match and I don’t think it makes sense to break them out separately. Didn’t see Red at all. Assume he is banged up.
Mang and Maher played a lot at TE. I think Mang was on the blue team. They didn’t throw much to either of them. Looked like they blocked okay. Guessing they don’t see them as good receiving targets. Makes me think it is a given we are bringing in a TE from the portal. Time will tell.
Courtney played a lot and got his shared of targets. Think he came though on all of them as well. Tough short passes over the middle. He did.a nice job. Alford played a fair amount and the one time they threw it long to him, he ran past his man and got a long TD down the left sideline. He can run. Looks bigger and very impressive.
They had a lot of interviews during the game. Some I could understand. Some I could not. At least 2 people said Isaiah Jones was a big surprise for the offense this spring. He made a spectacular catch on a drill and a couple nice ones on down and outs. CJ Hayes had a long catch and looked good but didn’t get a lot of targets. Don’t think he is a speed guy. Coop got some call outs for improved play in interviews and had a couple good catches. Another slot guy specializing in passes over the middle.
Hatcher has become the people’s choice on the board and he did not disappoint, getting open on a fly route pretty early and making an easy catch for a long TD. He also needs work in the weight room and is mostly now a deep play specialist.
Gadsden had some catches. Mostly short passes over the middle with no running room. He got open and caught the ball. Ja’Vontae Williams also had a couple of short catches for decent yardage in traffic. Don’t remember any drops all game long. Good to see our WRs catching it well consistently.
Don’t think Pena had any targets. He just got cleared to play and the staff might have opted to limit him to catching on special teams units.
Overall, thought the WRs played well. No drops. They looked tougher and more willing to fight for 50-50 balls.
At RB, Price looked really quick and nimble. Very impressive; And Allen, well, I think the first time he touched the ball, he went wide, took one side step to beat a guy and exploded down the side line for a TD. Had some other moments too. About as impressive a debut for a frosh RB I can remember in a spring game. And he only enrolled in January.
The first team defense was impressive. They put heavy pressure on all the QBs, pretty much shut down the run and had tight coverage all game long. G Williams just missed getting a pick. Chestnut had some nice breakups but he was beaten a couple of times (believe he committed PI).
I think the backup CBs were Wilson and Foster. Both got targeted a lot. Both had good and bad moments. I think Foster is a little ahead of Wilson right now.
The starting DL was Linton, Lockett and Caleb O. They all looked good. Good pressure from all of them. Simmons, Darton, and Geer were, I think, the second wave. They can play too, Fuentes-Candiff made a couple nice plays. Saw walk on Alberga make a nice tackle frorm behind as well.
I think Wax was out. Saw McDonald in playing with Thompson and Jones on the first group. They are an impressive group. All can run and fend off blocked with the best of them. They dominated things while they were in. Sparrow, Mason and Lowery are all capable of big plays as well. Sparrow is a good pass rusher and got a sack beating Cruz inside on one play. Mason though is the one that stands out to me. He can get to the ball and make tackles. I think he has a chance to be very good if he keeps working hard.
At safety, the starters were Coley, Carter and Simmons. Thought all looked good but Carter stood out. Just made a lot of nice plays. Was all over the field. Good to see him played at 100%. I think the second team was Folk, Greenwood and Oliver. They also played well. Especially Oliver. He is big, fast, anticipates well and tackles hard. Got a great pick jumping a route in the flat. It is going to be tough keeping him off the field. At least one of the interviewed people called him out as a player to watch out for.
It was a really well done practice and i greatly enjoyed watching it. What a vast improvement over the last couple of PR disasters. Props to Dino, the rest of the staff, the people from the ACCN and everyone else involved. Hope it was fun to watch on TV. Gotta check it out soon. I suspect it will be shown on ACCN dozens of times over the summer.
Lots of young people at the game. A bunch of HS sent people up, including Herkimer and Waverly. We like a QB from Waverly so this has to be a good sign. When I got to the dome, I wanted to get a soda but was behind dozens of kids. Someone from the concession stand came up to me and told me to go to a special line and bypass the kids. He explained that they were all from the same HS football team, which turned out to be from Herkimer. All the kids had gotten money from their parents for food but no one realized that the dome is now cashless. So all those purchased had to be made on the coaches credit card. Whoops.
Saw at least 25 recruits walk on the field just before the game started. A bunch looked really big.
They had like 25 kids have a 100 yard race on the field at halftime. The oldest boy won but a girl almost caught him. Good idea.
Again, great job by SUAD to pull this together. Really enjoyed it!
General observations of special teams pregame warmups:
Szmyt looked really good. The trajectory and crispness of his kicks declined fairly steadily after the great frosh season. He hit a disturbingly high number of low kicks the past couple of years. That has changed in a big way. He is consistently kicking his FG attempts high in the air. This is important because it makes it much harder to block his kicks. He also appears to have added some strength to his kicks. Was making 45 yards with at least 10 yards to spare. Probably more. I didn’t see him miss one. Looked dominant.
Williams, Von Marburg and Hawkins appear to be the backup placekickers. I think Hawkins looked better. But neither is close to Andre.
There were 4 guys practicing punts. Williams, Hawkins, Von Marburg.and Barker. Barker was a real mess. Didn’t see him lay into any of his punts. Von Marburg was better and fairly consistent. But he never turned the ball over and got it booming and didn’t get much hang time. Hawkins appeared to have a stronger leg than these two and was a bit more consistent too. He had a few terrific punts. But Williams was easily the best of the bunch. Way better hang time. More consistent than the others. Longer distance too. Even the ones he mishit a bit still had good hang time.
So I expect Szmyt and Williams to be out specialists. Barron was one of the holders. That surprised me. He was wearing an orange jersey, which I think means he is non contact. Not sure if he got into this to have something to do while he recovers from his injury. No idea where he is/was hurt. His arms looked fine and he moved around fine with no trace of a limp. But I think this is why Justin has not been in the discussion for a starting safety job in spring write ups.
Found out about when the whole team came out that a bunch of key players were going to sit this one out. Shrader, Tucker, Rhino and Bergeron. That was unfortunate. Assume all are fine and the staff decided to hold them out since they know what they can do and wanted to keep them healthy and evaluate some other players.
They appeared to be showing the ACCN feed on the main scoreboard most, perhaps all of the practice. The acoustics were uneven. The announcers were fine. Some of the interviews were fine. And some were harder to understand. They did have closed captioning in the corner of the ribbon scoreboard and that helped fill in gaps. I think Drew Carter was the play by play guy and a Syracuse grad.
It was unfortunate how they elected to have the players practice. The Blue team, which won the game pretty easily, had the first team offense. They played against the second team defense. Thought some players on both teams were actually 3rd team due to injury or coaches choice. Anyway, Lamson ran the blue offense, with a solid supporting cast, against the second team defense. For both units, there was a big dropoff from the first to second team units.
So Justin had a big advantage on the QBs assigned to the White team (Villari, Morgan and MacPhail0. They had the second team offense to work with, and had to play against the first team defense all the time. There was rarely time to throw and the coverages and tackling were a lot tighter.
Now Lamson was able to move the ball and score points pretty consistently. He looked really good. Made good reads and decisions passing it and threw it accurately. Also read the ball well and looked very capable on running plays. But he typically had a lot of time to make reads and for plays to develop. And his WRs got open consistently.
Villari and Morgan rarely had much time to do anything but run for their lives. That said, both looked good at times. They took what the defenses gave them, and I don’t remember any foolish turnovers from them. Villari made some plays with his legs. Morgan got out of trouble running around a couple of times but then threw the ball from just inside the LOS. I think Morgan managed the short passes well. Villari has a bigger arm and is a lot more dangerous running. He connected on at least one long pass (believe there was a PI called on it). I would say Villari looked beat between these two but Morgan was solid as well. Not sure if Lamson is better than Villari. They seemed pretty well matched.
Towards the end, the staff gave MacPhail extended minutes. He struggled some trying to dealing with an outmanned supporting cast but did make some plays, mostly to Donovan Brown. One was a long bomb to Brown where Donovan was tackled inside the 5. That was the last play of the scrimmage. Brown can really run and is going to be a solid deep threat soon. Very skinny now. His arms look very thin.
I think this was how the first team offensive line lined up most of the time;
LT Cruz
LG Hoeh
C Vetterello
RG Davis
RT Tisdale
Now Bergeron was held out and is surely going to be our LT. Ellis just got banged up and could not play, so Wes Hoeh filled in for him. But we also have Bleich recovering from surgery and when he is back he will need to start somewhere.
Anyway, thought all these guys looked good. Even Tisdale, who looked trimmer and more athletic than in previous seasons.
We have 3 really nice OGs in Davis, Bleich and Ellis. And Bergeron and Vet are veterans who almost have to start. I think those are our 5 best OL, assuming everyone is healthy. What do you do? Move one of the guards to center? Move Vet to center and an OG to RT? Davis did play there briefly last season when all 3 guards were healthy. Maybe they go that way. It will be interesting to watch this until the start of the season.
The second team OL lined up like this most of the time:
LT Magnuson
LG Kauhi
C Ilaoa
RG Bradford
RT Petry
Sometimes Hoeh played center as well. Sometimes Barclay played OG. Sometimes Froumy played OG. Maybe they are members of the third team but they mix and match and I don’t think it makes sense to break them out separately. Didn’t see Red at all. Assume he is banged up.
Mang and Maher played a lot at TE. I think Mang was on the blue team. They didn’t throw much to either of them. Looked like they blocked okay. Guessing they don’t see them as good receiving targets. Makes me think it is a given we are bringing in a TE from the portal. Time will tell.
Courtney played a lot and got his shared of targets. Think he came though on all of them as well. Tough short passes over the middle. He did.a nice job. Alford played a fair amount and the one time they threw it long to him, he ran past his man and got a long TD down the left sideline. He can run. Looks bigger and very impressive.
They had a lot of interviews during the game. Some I could understand. Some I could not. At least 2 people said Isaiah Jones was a big surprise for the offense this spring. He made a spectacular catch on a drill and a couple nice ones on down and outs. CJ Hayes had a long catch and looked good but didn’t get a lot of targets. Don’t think he is a speed guy. Coop got some call outs for improved play in interviews and had a couple good catches. Another slot guy specializing in passes over the middle.
Hatcher has become the people’s choice on the board and he did not disappoint, getting open on a fly route pretty early and making an easy catch for a long TD. He also needs work in the weight room and is mostly now a deep play specialist.
Gadsden had some catches. Mostly short passes over the middle with no running room. He got open and caught the ball. Ja’Vontae Williams also had a couple of short catches for decent yardage in traffic. Don’t remember any drops all game long. Good to see our WRs catching it well consistently.
Don’t think Pena had any targets. He just got cleared to play and the staff might have opted to limit him to catching on special teams units.
Overall, thought the WRs played well. No drops. They looked tougher and more willing to fight for 50-50 balls.
At RB, Price looked really quick and nimble. Very impressive; And Allen, well, I think the first time he touched the ball, he went wide, took one side step to beat a guy and exploded down the side line for a TD. Had some other moments too. About as impressive a debut for a frosh RB I can remember in a spring game. And he only enrolled in January.
The first team defense was impressive. They put heavy pressure on all the QBs, pretty much shut down the run and had tight coverage all game long. G Williams just missed getting a pick. Chestnut had some nice breakups but he was beaten a couple of times (believe he committed PI).
I think the backup CBs were Wilson and Foster. Both got targeted a lot. Both had good and bad moments. I think Foster is a little ahead of Wilson right now.
The starting DL was Linton, Lockett and Caleb O. They all looked good. Good pressure from all of them. Simmons, Darton, and Geer were, I think, the second wave. They can play too, Fuentes-Candiff made a couple nice plays. Saw walk on Alberga make a nice tackle frorm behind as well.
I think Wax was out. Saw McDonald in playing with Thompson and Jones on the first group. They are an impressive group. All can run and fend off blocked with the best of them. They dominated things while they were in. Sparrow, Mason and Lowery are all capable of big plays as well. Sparrow is a good pass rusher and got a sack beating Cruz inside on one play. Mason though is the one that stands out to me. He can get to the ball and make tackles. I think he has a chance to be very good if he keeps working hard.
At safety, the starters were Coley, Carter and Simmons. Thought all looked good but Carter stood out. Just made a lot of nice plays. Was all over the field. Good to see him played at 100%. I think the second team was Folk, Greenwood and Oliver. They also played well. Especially Oliver. He is big, fast, anticipates well and tackles hard. Got a great pick jumping a route in the flat. It is going to be tough keeping him off the field. At least one of the interviewed people called him out as a player to watch out for.
It was a really well done practice and i greatly enjoyed watching it. What a vast improvement over the last couple of PR disasters. Props to Dino, the rest of the staff, the people from the ACCN and everyone else involved. Hope it was fun to watch on TV. Gotta check it out soon. I suspect it will be shown on ACCN dozens of times over the summer.
Lots of young people at the game. A bunch of HS sent people up, including Herkimer and Waverly. We like a QB from Waverly so this has to be a good sign. When I got to the dome, I wanted to get a soda but was behind dozens of kids. Someone from the concession stand came up to me and told me to go to a special line and bypass the kids. He explained that they were all from the same HS football team, which turned out to be from Herkimer. All the kids had gotten money from their parents for food but no one realized that the dome is now cashless. So all those purchased had to be made on the coaches credit card. Whoops.
Saw at least 25 recruits walk on the field just before the game started. A bunch looked really big.
They had like 25 kids have a 100 yard race on the field at halftime. The oldest boy won but a girl almost caught him. Good idea.
Again, great job by SUAD to pull this together. Really enjoyed it!