Palmetto Proving Grounds

A couple of things that I stood out to me tonight:
-I thought the LB's looked really athletic overall and our 2-deep looks like a group of 4 experienced seniors should. The freshmen didn't look that out of place either. TJ Holloman has a really long body frame to build on, from a distance I thought he looked like a really tall 6-2. I thought Kaiwan Lewis looked pretty good running drills too.

-Our DL is huge, I was standing a few feet from these guys while they were doing some of the sled drills and these are some big men. I saw it as a positive sign that once when Deon Green did one of the drills wrong Lawing had Phillip Dukes demonstrate the right way to do the drill. To me, Darius English physically looks almost identical to Devin Taylor as a freshman. I'll be very interested to see what English can do in about a week, when he has all the drills down pat and the pads go on.

-Out punting situation still looks somewhat dicey to me. If you go by tonight it's between Williamson and Fish. From my vantage point Williamson has the stronger leg, but Fish is more consistent. Both of them still have too many ugly kicks though.

-Ace and Shaw opened up the 1-on-1's with a beautiful long throw and catch for a TD. Later on in the drills Ace made Victor Hampton look real bad on a great route and then juked him out of his shoes after the catch. Shaq Roland didn't make any catches during the drill that I saw but he's very fast, capable of getting open, and showed the ability to get way up on an attempt to catch a high throw. Kwinton Smith got open once but the ball was thrown behind him a little and broken up. Our DB's look like they are going to be much more aggressive in coverage this season judging by the 1-on-1's, they were pressing a lot and there was a good bit of contact down the field. I also thought Nosovitch looked good for his first practice completing several good looking passes.

-After a couple of early drops in practice and a fumble, I thought Damiere Byrd bounced back and did really well in the 7-on-7's making several catches. I was really impressed with Kelvin Rainey's ability to get open in the spring and that just continued tonight although he did have one drop on a ball that may have been slightly overthrown but was still a catchable ball. I think the coaches are going to have to find a way to get him on the field some this season. Lattimore and Carson both looked like themselves tonight, both actually look like they are hungry for some contact. The defense also looks like they're itching to put the pads on as well.

-Obviously you can't tell that much without pads on, but tonight for me was pretty about getting a look at all of the newcomers and seeing if the team looks rusty or not and I came away from tonight feeling pretty good about where it looks like we are for a first practice.