I caught most of the scrimmage today.
Some thoughts:
- Injuries. Noticed that #52 (Gardner if the goviks roster is correct) went down with a knee injury, and saw another with his pads off that was on crutches with ice on the knee. Hope all is well. #52 was down for a bit.
- Receiving. There were some really, really nice catches out there today. Lot of quick hitting slants and outs. There were also some intermediate passes thrown into really, really tight spaces that seemed rather risky. A couple of them were caught with multiple defenders right on the receiver. Of course when I start thinking that we're not dropping passes, #19 clanks a perfectly thrown out route off the hands. Oh, I think that Toureen is going to rip it up this year with YAC numbers.
- Special Teams. Didn't see much, but it was nice to see Kinsella (I think) put a 41 yarder just inside the right upright. I doesn't need to be dead center, as long as it's through the uprights.
- Defense. Better, but not there yet. Credit Shaq with a damn fine TD run, but the defense can't give that up. Also, there was a pass completion to Toureen fairly late in the scrimmage where nobody was in the area. Burton was a bit animated, and at one point yelled 'I'm sick of this s*it!'
- Offense. The pace. There was an earlier comment about the pace of the scrimmage and here's what I saw. It wasn't the UO (well, or many other programs now) pace where you will run plays as fast as you can, pretty much all game long. More of a we'll huddle when we huddle, and when we get the defense on their heels, the pace will really pick up. Perhaps it was a scrimmage, and it just appeared that way, but if that's the OC's strategy, I like it. I know up tempo is the thing now, but there's nothing wrong with a long clock killing drive if you're able to move the ball. However, if you put together a 7 to 8 yard run on first down, by all means, get up to the line of scrimmage and up the tempo as much as possible. Also, there were some really well throw balls, as well as some really terrible thrown balls. The latter came with pressure, but they were also near open receivers. This was down in the QB depth chart, but the pressure didn't seem that bad.
Well, I guess fall camp is sort of over. From the story on goviks, it sounds like game preparation mode starts on Monday for the Eastern game. Seems odd to not have another scrimmage, but when it comes down to it, the Eastern game sort of is one.
