Wow - thanks for the kind feedback, everyone. Since my dissertation apparently wasn't too long - I'll go ahead and write up the things I left out.
I finally understood what O and others meant when they talked about GZ hitting the guy in the box. The coaches have these platforms that they stand on that elevate like 40 yards off the ground for an arial look. They have one of these behind the goal post - and while I didn't see Greg hit the guy - it's clear that he would need to be aiming for him - the guy is up there.
A guy I didn't touch on much was Tree. As a caveat, Tree was one of my guys pre draft so I look at him with rose colored glasses. He didn't flash a ton in this practice to me - but what I did notice is his coverage - especially on the tight ends in the flats - he was nice and physical off the line with them and stuck with them thru the sidelines on the skeleton drills I watched.
As for D Rodriguez, I think the PS is in his future. Yeah, he is catching the ball out there but he is going up against 2s and mostly 3s when he does.
All in all, I was surprised how quiet practice was. Greg Williams was animated early in practice but even he quieted down. Most of that is probably just a distance from the action thing. Hopefully, they will do more work on the near field next time. I mentioned a few skirmishes and they were just that. About 4-5 seconds of pushing for the worst of them - all followed by smiles - which I took to be a decent sign of discipline.
Chris Long was a lot like JL - just hustling from drill to drill. I didn't see him flash much - not sure if was full go for practice or not - but he was setting a good practice tone as a leader.
Every now and then I would catch a ball rocketing into the air and it would be Hekker just launching one. It's even more impressive in person than it is on TV.
For a team that wants to run the ball, they sure threw a lot in practice. Id say it was 65/35 pass/run at the best. May have been the focus of this practice - but that's about what I saw.
It was impossible to see what kind of holes the O line was putting together in the run game - a few runs got stuffed early and a few broke free - but they weren't tackling all the way to the ground and Mason was playing well thru the whistle which gave the impression that some runs were going longer than they really would have. Several of the deep passes clearly would have been sacks as well if the bullets were live.
101 ESPN was reporting live and interviewed Aaron Donald after the practice - he is a thick man and he was very patient with the fans to sign, take pictures, etc - even though it wasn't D Line autograph day.
Keep in mind with these "reports" that luck plays a big part in what I see. There are like 6 different drills going on at a time, so when I see a negative or a positive - it's just a chance thing. Extremely small sample sizes for my impressions on all of these guys. As I have said, I came to camp full of biases anyway - both for and against certain guys - which doesn't help much with objectivity. I'll try to keep making sure to caveat when my personal opinions color what I am seeing - I certainly don't want to give too strong of an impression for anyone on the team - good or bad.
Thursday's focus is going to be O line for me on offense and probably DBs on defense - assuming I can see a bit better. If anyone has anything specific they want me to look out for - let me know.
