Wednesday (4/16) Spring Practice Notes

Seeing as I'm not part of the media, and don't have their exclusive rights to go check out the regular closed Cal practices, I have to count on Jonathan Okanes for my Spring football practice notes.

But I think the bloody guy had a kid (Congratulations!), so I was expecting to be deprived of any Spring Updates until I stumbled upon the story on the Scout front page. You can check out the full article here, but I thought I'd share some of the more interesting tidbits:

Trends:

"Now at the halfway mark through the spring practices of 2008, several trends have emerged:

1. The defense is ahead of the offense,
   
   
2. Riley continues to mix the occasional poorly thrown pass in with many good
   tosses,
   
   
3. The O-line is a work in progress and Coach Michalczik has his work cut out for him,
   
   
4. Tad Smith and LaReylle Cunningham catch almost everything thrown in their direction, and
   
   
5. Bryan Anger sure can crank out the boomers - but the occasional shanks continue.

6. Brock Mansion enjoyed his best practice to date. He benefited from extended reps as he took snaps for both second and third team offensive plays.

   Mansion's throws were crisp, and he displayed good escapability skills, several times turning broken plays into positive yardage.

7. Rulon Davis played several downs in the middle as a defensive tackle, at least once stunting to penetrate a gap."

My thoughts:

• Good to hear about Mansion. Even though he's struggled mightily so far in the Spring, I've still got a lot of hope in the kid, and the sooner he can grasp the offense, the better.

• Davis playing at DT is a surprise, considering how much he can provide at the DE position if he stays healthy. I also thought he was better served to be force off the edge and guarding lateral runs as opposed to stuffing the middle, but who knows?

• Anger shanks punts? I guess I never noticed while he was booting balls into Tilden Park.

• Not surprised to hear about Cunningham's performance. The guy's got hands. His lack of blazing speed and solid catching abilities seem to be pointing to him to the slot receiver position...

• Thanks goodness we're finally getting some defensive pressure on the line. It always leads back to the question though of whether our defense is playing really well, or if our offensive unit is struggling. I guess we won't REALLY know until the Fall...