Early Impressions from the First Practice

Take most of these with a grain of salt since they are based on just a few minutes of video, but here’s some early observations.james-aldridge.jpg

  • Mike Ragone looks like a wide receiver – he is going to have bulk up quite a bit before he is ready for playing time at tight end. Ragone also got a crash course on how to carry the football from Mike Haywood during on the drills.
  • James Aldridge looked even more comfortable making cuts than he did in spring
  • Chris Stewart looks very quick for a guy his size. I keep thinking Weis would have kept him on defense if he didn’t have a good chance to start on offense.
  • I thought Thomas Bemenderfer moved really well laterally for an offensive lineman in the one drill.
  • Emeka Nwankwo was practicing with the defensive linemen and got told “Emeka watch everbody else. You’re the last one in line. Pay Attention,” pay d-line coach Jappy Oliver.
  • Robert Hughes had the ball in the wrong hand during one of the drills, but he looked as big as the tight ends. Hughes is easily the biggest half back on the team already.
  • Konrad Reuland looked very agile making lateral cuts in one drill.
  • Armando Allen was told “good feet right there” at one point by Haywood.
  • Geroge West and Robby Parris look the smoothest of the wide receivers in the one cone drill – their cuts looked effortless.
  • Richard Jackson had a great catch in the same cone drill on a pass thrown behind him. Jackspn showed some suspect hands in the spring game, but he looked good Monday.
  • The order of the wide receivers in this drill was Grimes, West, Parris, Gallup, then Jackson – take that for whatever its worth.
  • Golden Tate looked like someone getting used to wide receiver in the same cone drill – he looked a bit tentative making his cuts. This much is to be expected though considering he played running back in high school and will have a steep learning curve.
  • Duval Kamara looked like the biggest wide receiver and physically looked like he could be the veteran of the group and not a freshman.

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One Comment

  1. frank,
    1. ragone looks like a wr and has fast wr speed.
    2. he may have to bulk up to play te in the future, but he and duvall can play wr this year.
    3. nd already has 3 dynamite te’s for this year, carlson, reuland, and yeatman. breaking in a new qb, we may see many 3 te sets, with 1 or 2 to stay back to protect the qb and 1 or 2 to get out to catch passes.
    4. ragone is simply too talented and too fast to have him sitting on the bench while he bulks up.
    5. true, we have not really seen much of reuland and yeatman on the playing field, unless you followed yeatman’s national freshman of the year lacrosse campaign.
    6. however, outside of practice, no one had really seen what carlson could do last year before the gtech game.
    7. i just do not think that anyone is going to see very much at the practices that are open to the public, any more than the spring game really showed anything serious.
    8. misdirection is the right way to go right now, with no one seeing anything that would conflict with the preseason rankings by the”experts”.
    9. i really like what charlie, corwin, and the staff and players are doing.
    10. stewart may look like he has switched back to ol. however, he can play both, as his agility demonstrates.

    thank you and keep up the great work,
    bob gilleran

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