Practice Report-August 11th: Barry says, "Get off my back!"

After a particularly frustrating first practice in full pads for the offense, the team returned today for a chance to give the crowd a little bit of optimism and I'm happy to report today that they did so in resounding fasion. If yesterday I was overly pessimistic about our potential for quality quarterback play, today was  a solid reminder that these players can show significant improvement, even in the short time of only a one day. But first, let's get to some surprising depth chart changes after the jump.

Today was the first day where the coaching staff truly shook up the offense with respect to stretching positions. While the first team offensive line and quarterbacks stayed the same, the new first team running back was Enrique Davis. Derrick Herman and Vincent Sanders stayed with the first team, but the surprise of the day was the replacement of Ja-Mes Logan in stretching with freshman phenom Nickolas Brassell.

On defense, the one first team newcomer was Ralph Williams, who was replaced on the second team by previous first teamer Mike Marry.

The second team offense contained Devin Thomas, Layton Jones, Philander Moore, and Donte Moncrief. The third team contained Zack Stoudt, T.J. Worthy, Terrell Grant, Collins Moore, and Jamal Mosley. Stretch Armstrong (Melvin Harris) was moved all the way back to the 4th string for stretches today.

I love the way Gunter Brewer works with our players. Prior to stretching the returners were taking kickoffs and punts and Gunter has some very creative ways to challenge them. As mentioned earlier in the week, sometimes they must hold a football in one arm and catch with the other. Sometimes they must lie on their back and then jump up, find the ball, and then catch it. Other times they simply turn around backwards and then jump forward to find the ball. Today, however, he went all out. He gave each returner a ball in each hand and made them attempt to catch the third ball without any hands to secure it. Impressively, Jeff Scott handled this challenged without much trouble. The others were not so successful. Snoop Brassell ran up to catch a shorter punt and just as he arrived the punted ball landed right in his mits. The result, however was the complete opposite than that of Jeff Scott; for Snoop, the punted ball knocked both of the other balls out of his hands and the rest of the guys started hooping and hollering and falling all over themselves laughing so hard. It was a fun moment, but In actuality there's a good explanation for why he struggled with the drill. Snoop has very good hands and when he is catching kicks, he almost always catches them with his hands, some what similarly to how Marshay Green used to receive kicks. Therefore, when he had the balls in his hands, he was not comfortable enough with trapping the ball against his chest since he doesn't really ever do that.

At this point, I think the Rebels should feel very comfortable with either Jeff Scott or Philander Moore returning kicks, and both Snoop and Korvic Neat seem to be great backups should we need their services. 

On the Punt block team we have Vince Sanders flying in from the outside. He seemed to be getting good pressure today, but his best play came after a ball was already punted.  After missing the punt, I looked downfield to see Jeff Scott receive the kick and before I knew it, Vince had already circled around from the line of scrimmage and laid a huge block some 30 yards down the field. Once again, Charles Sawyer got some great pressure on field goal kicks today from the edge.

Early in the practice, Derrick Herman could be yelling "It's a GREAT day for football!"  He was right. The sun was out, but it wasn't too hot. There was a wonderful little breeze, and the coaches loved the resulting energy from the players. I hope it's hotter than this for the BYU game, though.

There was a great deal of situational work done today with the offense (who I followed for most of the practice). Some of this deal with trickeration in the passing game, but the majority was spent on two different goals: working near the goal line and the option game. I'll address the goal line first.

FIrst we did a great deal of work with two tight end sets, and boy does it look nice to have 2 SEC caliber tight ends, neither of which we seem afraid to throw to. This will be a huge benefit near the goal line. While he lined up to stretch with the second team, when we went to a one wide receiver set on the goal line, our first choice was Ja-Mes Logan. Melvin Harris and Nick Brassell also got looks near the goal line. 

Next, and perhaps the most important development of the practice, was the implementation of our option schemes. Part of these schemes came out from under center with either a triple option using the fullback. Some came out of shotgun and employed a similar triple option or a read option look similar to much of last year's playbook with Jeremiah Masoli. The most heartening thing about this work was very simple - for 95%+ of these drills, Zack Stoudt was nowhere to be seen. He ran a few very simple option type handoffs at the end of the work, but he was mostly somewhere else working with a different group. It is so nice to see that we aren't trying to make him learn something he likely can't do on a high level in the SEC. Furthermore, both of the mobile quarterbacks looked plenty adept and comfortable running said option plays.

When the scrimmage got started, the coaches immediately hit the defense with 3-5 running plays, several of which were option plays. These were mildly successful as far as yardage went, but those play calls immediately changed the tone of the scrimmage. The defense was now slightly on its heels and Barry Brunetti seemed to settle in the pocket much better. He stepped into his throws down the field and was able to find a receiver more often than not. There was no throwing the ball away for lack of options, he did not stand around until a sacker got to him. It also helped that the receivers caught his throws, but the confidence was the biggest difference. He threw two beautiful fades to Donte Moncrief, who made spectacular over the shoulder catches against Charles Sawyer and Senquez Golson, one of which went for a touchdown. He even hit Justin Bigham (backup fullback) down the sideline for a big gainer. Brunetti's only struggle came in his next to last series, a goal line set of plays where he threw the last play over the middle incomplete.

Randall Mackey started out the scrimmage pretty rough, throwing one ball at the feet of the running back and misfiring on an out to a tight end. But once he got into the red zone, things changed. He decided to give Moncrief a chance and Donte made the most of it. Moncrief waved his hands in the air frantically before the snap (he noticed the CB playing off), Randall hit him quickly, and Moncrief juked 3 different defensive players on his way to a 15-20 yard touchdown. This kid is gonna be awesome for us in the future.

At one point, it seemed like every play was going the way of the Offense. The sideline was constantly jumping up and down, cheering each other on, and slapping each others backs after big plays and touchdowns - a far cry from yesterday's struggles. I'm sure that today was probably a little bit of an adjustment from the defense with respect to the option looks, but I do feel better about the ceiling of our offense than I did yesterday.

Lastly, if David Hankins were to put on about 15 lbs, he could have a really nice belly-fight with Sebastian Janikowski. Just sayin.