Spring Practice Notes

Man I miss Berkeley. Ok, well not everyday, but it was awesome to spend the day back at Cal on a beautiful, albeit, burning hot day. There’s just something about the campus, and the richness to life there. Anyway, I digress.

I had an opportunity to attend Cal’s Spring “Scrimmage.” While other schools have full spring games that are featured on ESPN (like the Florida Gators), or filling the stadium with 80,000 fans like the Sooners, Tedford and Co. is more than content with opening just one practice to the public to appease the rabid Cal fans.

All in all, there really wasn’t anything too dramatic. The team played it fairly safe and didn’t reveal too much or try anything too fancy. Anyone’s who has kept up with the spring practice reports for the past few weeks, probably didn’t see anything too new or revealing.

That said, it was still pretty neat to see the team in pads and in person for the first time in a while. I took pretty extensive notes, and decided to just post some of the highlights to the team by each unit.

Quarterbacks

• As expected, Longshore didn’t participate in any drills because of his injury, as he’ll most likely be out for the rest of Spring ball. Riley got the majority of snaps, but a lot of the reps were split fairly evenly with Brock Mansion and Cory Smits.

• Riley looked pretty sharp during one-on-one drills, throwing accurately and with velocity. He didn't do too much during team drills, and only threw a handful of times. He did make a nice throw to Michael Calvin in the back of the endzone from about 15 yards out, for the only passing score for the day. He also appears to be a pretty strong fan favorite (as expected), as he got a pretty good pop from the crowd when it was announced he was taking first team snaps. You got to wonder what kind of reception Longshore would have gotten...

(Whoa, easy there...)

• Many have reported this, and I found it's pretty accurate, Mansion is struggling in Spring Ball. While it's definitely too early to know for sure, I would say it's pretty safe to say that the slight possibility that he might push either Riley or Longshore for the starting spot has been pretty much extinguished. You could tell he's physically gifted in terms of his mobility and arm strength, but he overthrew most of his receivers, throwing 4 straight incompletions at one point. The kid's probably going to be alright in the long run, but he's given no indication that he's near Riley or Longshore's level right now.

• Cory Smits got sacked...a lot. And by sack, I mean being tagged by a defender, because the QBs were obviously not going to get touched yesterday, but I remember him not having much time to throw and/or not making his reads quickly enough. It could have been his line, but no way of knowing for sure.

Running Backs

• I think we may have found our bruiser in Slocum. He just may be the thunder to complimenting the lightning in Best/Vereen that we've been waiting for. He had a pretty good running day, gaining solid yardage on every run, and finished with two straight TD runs from about ten yards out. He's certainly taking advantage of his time with both Best and Vereen out.

(Covaughn stopped in the backfield)

• Covaughn Deboskie had his flashes, but is still showing his youth. He was taken down pretty hard a few times in the backfield, but did notice that he ran hard, attempting to spin off of initial contact. Not the greatest day though, as he did fumble once, never really broke out for any big gains. Depending on the health of our RB stable, I wouldn't be surprised to see Deboskie blue shirt this year.

• Brian Holley took a lot of third team reps as a RB, and was consistently gaining 2-3 yards each run. Unfortunately, he went down on the last play of the game on a goal yard offensive scheme, and lied still for a few moments, before eventually being helped off the field by trainers. He wasn't putting any weight on one of his legs, and here's hoping that he's alright.

Wide Receivers

• A lot of drops on the day. Some of them were on the QBs, but a number of the passes should have been caught. Calvin in particular had a few, which from what I read during practices, is a bit unusual.
  
• Jeremy Ross had a nice catch and run for about 15-20 yards, off of one of Mansions few completions for the day.
• I actually walked away most impressed LaReylle Cunningham. He made a few nice grabs, particularly one where he simply snatched the ball right over the defender. I'm not sure he'll be a starter, but I do expect him to contribute a little bit next season.

Offensive Line

• It was a bit difficult to gauge from where I was sitting, but they appeared to do fairly well. Mansion and Smits did take a number of sacks though, so again it's hard to put that on the QB, the O-line, or perhaps the strength of our D-Line.

(Tedford doing his thing)

Defense

• Felder, Squid, Williams,Owusu, and Costanzo were probably the names that were called out the most on the defensive stops. I did hear Young, Felder, Conte mentioned a few times as well. Also, it was good to hear Payne's name attribute to a tackle-for-loss towards the end of practice.
• Chris Conte lined up on the other end of field opposite Syd'Quan taking the Team A snaps as defensive back. Hagan did get his fair share of reps as well which was good to see. There weren't too many pass breakups or any interceptions, but then again, there weren't many passes being thrown.
• Overall, I noticed a lot more pressure on the quarterback, although our run defense was still a bit lacking whenever Slocum was in the game. We shut down the rest of the RBs pretty well.
  
• The offense struggled to really move the ball all day, and I never really counted any prolonged drives. The only time they scored was when they started out from the 25 or 10 yard line to practice red zone offense. Again, not sure to be excited about the defense's improvement, or the offense's lack of flow at this point.
  

Special Teams

• Jordan Kay was pretty solid on the day, making all of PAT attempts, and knocking a few from about 45 yards out towards the end of practice. The biggest issue for him again be consistency, as the kicking game is going to be an that will NEED to improve, if we hope to be more successful than last year.

(MVP! MVP!)

• Most people have been slowly raving about it already, but Bryan Anger is a BEAST. If there was ever such a thing for a punter, but this guy kicks like he's HGH pumping through his thighs. During his second punt, he punted it so high and far back, that Syd'Quan had to scuffle back to locate it, and ended up muffing the punt. This drew the largest reaction of the entire day.

• Speaking of punt returns, it was a fairly quiet afternoon, with Boateng and Syd'Quan splitting reps. Syd'Quan did return one for a TD, but there was a flag on the field which one should probably assume would have negated it. Other than that, I'm not sure we're going to see anything as exciting as what DJ was able to pump out the last few years. At least they might actually start kicking to us again.
  

That about wraps it up. Props to my girlfriend for being my photographer for the day, uploading the photos, and toasting out in the sun with me.

Please feel free to leave any questions or comments, and I'll try and respond to them when I get the chance. 'Twas a good time in the sun, watching our Bears run around, and Fall can't come soon enough.