Quick Reactions: Spring Game

I went to the scrimmage today, and I'll just jot down a few quick thoughts.  I may try to give something deeper later, but I'm sure either PB or Big Roy will do that.  It's hard to tell much in these games because one unit's good play can be construed as the other's bad play, and it was certainly hard to try to look at several things at once (hopefully I can get a recording of the game and watch it again), but I think there are a few things that can still be gained from this.

I like what I saw in the secondary

This unit already had hype and it might have more so after this scrimmage.  Both coverage and tackling looked pretty good.  Earl Thomas got himself a pick-6 and he also made a great play on special teams running down Malcolm Williams.  Christian Scott looked fast and physical, as did Aaron Williams.  I have no major complaints.  We did give up a 4th and 17, but to be fair, Colt threw that into a fairly tight window.

McGee looked the best out of the RBs

Fozzy started out well but couldn't get much going after that, while Newton and Hills were fairly mediocre.  I thought McGee looked very quick and decisive and he ran with power.  He did screw up by dropping an option toss, but... it's just spring, I guess.  To Fozzy's credit, I thought his TD run was a very impressive display of vision and quick feet.

Run game is still a big question

While I liked McGee, we still don't know much about how the run game is going to look.  Of course, this is only the spring scrimmage, and we didn't even have Cody Johnson, but we still saw a several no gains, 1-2 yard gains, or losses.

John Chiles got nothing thrown his way

Bummer.  I thought he got open a few times but that's the life of a receiver.  I can't tell how much of an impact he can make there, but I'm still very optimistic.

Receivers look like a strong unit

We had some ugly dropped balls, but overall, I thought the unit looked good.  Collins made some good catches and showed good speed and quickness on a reverse, while Malcolm Williams continually looks like a future star.  I would have liked to see more out of Buckner, while Kirkendoll was okay.

I didn't see anything out of our TEs

I need to watch this game again, but I can't really say much about how our tight ends looked because I don't really remember.  Hopefully, that's just me not seeing and not because they generally didn't do anything worth praising.  Edit:  I remember now some dropped balls.  Sigh.  We miss you, Irby, and I would have loved to see Grant out there.

Linebackers looked pretty solid

I was mainly just paying attention to Robinson here, and I thought Robinson was very active and covered well, and he made some solid tackles.  I like the 4-2-5 look and I feel pretty good about our back seven.

Sherrod Harris threw the ball poorly

I probably don't need to elaborate much more than that.  He also didn't scan the field with good vision and also hesitated too much.  He's a good athlete and made some nice moves with his feet, but needless to say, we'll be very, very afraid if Colt McCoy ever went down.  Gilbert is just a freshmen and Harris can't throw accurately.  This game, he even got safetied, but he got lucky since the ref didn't see him get tagged.  On another sack, if it was a real game he would have been blown up because he totally didn't see it coming.  Obviously, he needs to work on his pocket instincts a bit more as well.  At the least, I'll give him a pass on his interception since the receiver dropped that into the hands of the defender.

I'm not a big fan of the rugby punts

Sorry, Tucker.  Nothing against you, but I just don't like it, and we saw a couple crummy ones.

We have exciting returners... and perhaps mistake prone-ones

We can see why Mack chose to entrust Quan with the returning duties even though we had other players who were better returners.  We saw some good returns out of Malcolm Williams, Aaron Williams, and even Deon Beasley, and then we saw some muffs by Kirkendoll and Earl Thomas that resulted in turnovers.  Thomas' muff was pretty funny as he juggled the ball right into a walk-on's hands, but of course, it wouldn't be that funny if that was a real game.  I'm not sure what to do with Shipley; I think that he takes care of the ball AND gives us explosive returning, but I'd rather not risk our best receiver.  Perhaps Shipley can stick with punt returning to make sure we catch those things and leave Aaron Williams and Malcolm Williams for kickoffs.

D-line looked decent

I need to re-watch the game to look at the D-line more closely, but overall, I thought they did fairly well.  They didn't dominate or anything, but they got some good penetration and after the beginning part of the game they made running the ball inside pretty difficult.  Did Kindle get his number changed?  Can't recall seeing him.  Houston looked pretty good, I thought, and drove up the middle into Harris' face a couple times.

Hunter Lawrence didn't kick well, but he made a heck of a tackle

Lawrence missed a FG and was short on some kickoffs (granted, it was breezy), but I'll give him major props for coming seemingly out of nowhere and making an impressive tackle on Aaron Williams, who potentially could have turned that into a long return.  Very impressive, and we all got a good laugh out of it.

Short yardage without Cody Johnson = not scary

McGee can run it tough inside, but obviously, we'd much rather have Cody Johnson.  When we got near the goalline it often seemed like we just couldn't go anywhere.

Still need to work on deep passing

Colt's an accurate guy, but he did misfire on some long passes.  With a guy like Malcolm Williams, it is absolutely necessary to get some chemistry going on those long balls.

Anyway, players I was most impressed with, for now:

-Earl Thomas, except for his muffed punt
-Christian Scott
-Chykie Brown
-Vondrell McGee
-Aaron Williams
-Malcolm Williams
-Brandon Collins

Four of the players are in the secondary.  It's probably unrealistic to expect this unit to be as good as the 2005 secondary this season, but I think they can be hands down our best since those players left us.  If I had to choose a winner of this game, I'd say the defense.  The crowd often got bored since our offense didn't go anywhere, and while I understand they were only using a pretty basic offense, I'm still happy to see a lot of speed and activity on our defense.

Thoughts?  Parking around campus sucks, by the way.  It keeps getting worse every year.