First Fall Practice...Punting, Shotgun, Quizz, Canfield and more!

I finally got out to see my first fall practice on Monday at Reser Stadium. It was a pretty laid back practice with a bonus of lots of special teams work.

Some notes:

Special Teams

There were three punters practicing and only two were really any good. #7 Hekker had some very good punts. And generally he was kicking them fairly consistently. Some didn't have a ton of hang time which could hurt, but enough did that I think we may be better off in the punting dept. this year. #18 Sehnem looked pretty good too, but his best punts just weren't as good as Hekker that day.

The punt blocking looked pretty good and Sammie was as quick as ever returning those punts. The punt rush seemed good as well, but they never got a block so it was hard to tell.

I think Kahut was kicking again, but it was pretty limited. Overall they did well, but they didn't practice anything very long (maybe 30-35 yards).

Offense

Moevao took most of the snaps on the live drills. They are clearly really concentrating on getting him ready for Stanford. He looked pretty good overall, but they may have been implementing some new plays because he was forcing the ball a lot on certain routes that seemed to be covered well (to me at least). But the few times someone was wide open, he seemed to hit them. So that's good. They worked on shotgun, which I don't remember seeing in the past. That should give our O Line some extra time on key passing downs.

Canfield did all of the drills that the other QBs did. He didn't get many reps and he threw nearly all short balls, but he never seemed in pain. Engstrom got a few reps too, but I don't remember anything spectacular. Katz had a good arm, but I saw almost nothing of him in the live drills.

The running backs all looked good. Quizz just looks so fast. Probably because he is fast. And strong. He will make an impact this year. I liked how McCants looked as well. Fast and strong. Francis looked OK, but I don't remember seeing him do much.

The WR and TEs looked good. Nothing spectacular, but everyone looked pretty sharp.

Defense

It was pretty non-contact so it was hard to evaluate the front 7. They definitely would have had a few sacks if they could have. The secondary looked really good. almost stifling at times. They and the LBs definitely swarmed to the ball very well on anything underneath. If our pass rush can be close to last year, teams will have a tough time against us. I didn't really get much of a sense for the rush defense because there were almost zero inside run plays, but the couple I saw looked like they had it stuffed.


Overall, I came away a little happier about the punting situation, the secondary, and maybe the running backs. Everything else was either hard to judge or I expected better.


Go Beavs!