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Catman's 7/30 training camp practice observations

CatMan72

By CatMan72,
in Carolina Panthers

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CatMan72

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Just got home from the practice, here are my impressions:

- Pretty good turnout, practice was held in Wofford's stadium instead of the normal practice fields.

- Cam made a few nice throws and a few bad throws. His throws clearly have another level of velocity compared to Clausen and Pike. He look very comfortable and smooth in his drops, no noticeable hitch in his motion. In particular, he made a really nice throw on an out route to Smitty... same throw he was sailing over receivers @ the combine, he also made several nice throws over the middle. I will say that his deep ball looked a little off, he under-threw it a few times and on one occasion overthrew it a bit, but the receiver made a nice catch on it (will get to that in a moment). In the 11 on 11 drills, he made a bad throw on a roll out (to escape pressure - not designed) that hit the ground about 10 ft in front of the receiver. Overall, I think he looked pretty darn good for a rookie QB in his first NFL practice. I think you could chalk his issues with deep throws up to timing and the pass the receiver made a nice catch on was thrown right to the pylon in a place where only the receiver could have made a play on it.

- Getting back to the nice catch on a deep route that I mentioned, the guy that made that catch was Armanti... it was a twisting and diving over the shoulder catch that he managed to make while dragging his toes in bounds. He made a few more nice catches, didn't see him drop the ball once. He also seemed to field punts very smoothly... if I had to name an "MVP" in this practice it would be Armanti, he seems to have come a LONG way.

- Right away you can tell we're going to run a different defense. Quite a bit of time was spent with the defensive line, linebackers and safeties working on a drill that was all about defensive line adjustments and blitzes with Godfrey dropping down in the box. McDermott stood at center and coached the defensive line on how to shift gaps so the linebackers could follow them into the hole. During the 11 on 11 drills, there was a LB blitz on almost every down.

- Willaims, Beason, TD and Gregg Olsen did not participate. They were dressed to practice and seemed to be fine - just didn't participate in any of the actual drills. Was impressive watching Olsen catch balls one-handed from the jugs machine standing only about 10 yards away.

- Noticed Shockey giving a lot of coaching to both QB's on where balls should be thrown to him.

- At one point they had the QB's do a drill where they had to throw the ball over a obstacle that was about 15 ft tall (it was the net thing they use with the pockets for QB accuracy drills). The only QB to clang one off the obstacle was Clausen.

- The is probably going to come out sounding like Clausen bashing but it really isn't intended that way... I was not impressed. He seemed to struggle with accuracy and in general looked very tight to me. Pike didn't look very good either, had a ball picked on an out route because he didn't put enough mustard on it, noticed Pike getting a lot of coaching from Shula... Shula had a comment for him on just about every play he made.

- Ended the day with a Cowboys fan in all his gear coming up to me and asking what # Cam was wearing (like it wasn't obvious which guy in the red shirt was Cam). Then he said "I would be watching my team but it's too far to travel so I'm stuck watching this" so I told him he wasn't stuck watching anything and he could go home... (I know, cool story bro). Just wanted to share this because it was such a stereotypical Cowboys fan story.

That's about all I can think of for now.

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CatMan72

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...didn't want to spend much time discussing my time with the obnoxious cowboys fan (who seem to be there mostly to try and piss people off) but a guy behind us yelled down at him to take his jersey off and he got into some banter with the guy. At one point, the idiot cowboys fan said he was also a Michigan fan - so I interrupted and told him he should get Armanti's autograph while he was there - LOL

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CatMan72

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Thanks guys, more will come to me as I sit here and think about it...

I should also mention Cam came out to a nice round of cheers from the crowd and it definitely fired him up, he pointed to the crowd several times in appreciation. He was getting cheered on just about every pass he completed.

One of the biggest cheers he got was in a drill where the QB's were handing off to the HB's while the o-line blocked the d-line and linebackers. Both Clausen and Pike handed off each time... Cam came up for his first snap, faked the hand-off and took off running.

Smitty made a nice catch while being covered by # 35 which I believe is RJ Stanford? They were battling pretty aggressively off the line but Smitty got around him and made the catch on the sideline, then spun the ball and pounded his chest... it was a classic 89 moment.

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