8/6 Practice (and Fan Fest)

[chknwing]

screw u jtgreensboro. just because u dont agree, doesnt mean I am trolling.

[bigdog10]

My Observations from fan fest today:

-I was impressed with Cam Newton. He has a great arm (you can definitely see the difference in velocity when he is throwing versus when Jimmy is throwing it). I also loved the fact that he is able to move his feet in the pocket. On the play to Pilares, in which he completed about a 25 yard strike, he kept his head up the entire time, two stepped to the left, and fired a strike to Pilares who had found a hole in the zone (that was a great NFL throw). Granted he is doing it against players who likely won't make the team, however he definitely has the skill set. I can't see anyway he is not ahead of Jimmy on the depth chart come 9/11.

-As for Jimmy, I really didn't think he was all that bad. I didn't think he deserved the boos as some of his throws were decent. Jimmy just doesn't have any pocket presence. Not once in the 2 minute offense did he attempt to go down the field (in comparison, Cam looked down the field on the first three plays). Jimmy would scan the receivers and then dump it off to the back and let the back gain 10+ yards (useful play, only the defense was giving up anything they wanted underneath. I don't see Jimmy being anything more than a backup QB on this team and I honestly wouldn't be suprised if he found himself below Derrick Anderson.

-Not much of note from the other two QB's.

-RB's: We have so much talent at this position it isn't even funny. One thing that caught my eye was D-Will's quickness seems to be back. He was bouncing in and out of holes and his cuts were strong. Stewart looked good, nothing great. Goody still has the speed, and T. Sutton maybe the toughest of them all (in a drill where they were working on red zone offense vs red zone defense they were primarilly running the ball. Most players were just two hand tagging or wrapping up the rb's and letting them go into the endzone. Dwill, Stew, and Goody were juking the defenders. Sutton was attempting to run them over and pop thier pads....good stuff).

-Smitty and Olsen form a pretty nice 1-2 punch. Really nice to know we have a tight end on the field that can make a play. Olsen is going to do big things for us. May not be this year with our QB's growth, but he is going to be a huge pickup.

-Defense was pretty weak, but we are missing so many starters that it was really hard to tell. Charles Johnson is huge and E. Brown continues to spin himself into the ground on nearly every play.

-Armanti looked good fielding punts. I didn't see him drop any.

-Gettis and Lafell did not practice. Nanaee was in there and he looks like he could be pretty decent. I think he is going to help us in the running game as well.

-From what I could tell either Jeff Otah or Duke Robinson left practice early with the trainers. I could not see the second number. All i know was it was a big black dude with dreadlocks that wore a number in the 70's.

All in all a pretty good day. It is definitely weird not seeing number 4 out there though.

[lightsout]

He's not gonna play 5-technique when switching to 3-4

Thank god. Hopefully, we don't even play true 5-technique all the time in the 3-4. I'd like to see a lot of 6-techniques cocked to 5's. Have them fighting across the face of the tackle, force the play to bounce into the waiting arms of our LBs.

Sounds like practice was good today though.

[jtnc]

screw u jtgreensboro. just because u dont agree, doesnt mean I am trolling.

I will screw myself thank you, we have a SOLID team, and you should be proud that our coach actually has standard's for his team. Instead of "it is what it is".

[GRWatcher]

My Observations from fan fest today:

All in all a pretty good day. It is definitely weird not seeing number 4 out there though.

Thank you! :)

[rayzor]

Well, I can tell you this - the offense moved the ball much better this year at Fan Fest then they did last year.

Beautiful deep pass from Cam to Clowney towards the end of practice, in general Cam seems to be much more willing an able to push the ball downfield then Clausen does. Cam also made a nice pass to Barnidge which Barnidge took to the house.

Defense is CLEARLY more aggressive, there were several times when they had 3 blitzing.

Wanna know about Cam's athleticism? At one point he rolled out of the pocket and CJ was chasing him, Cam stopped for a sec to see if he could juke CJ, CJ didn't bite so Cam started running again. This illustrates Cam's ability to extend plays like no other QB on our roster.

The amount of motion on offense was impressive, at times we were moving 2 or 3 guys on one play.

I'm amped for this season after watching Fan Fest.

i like seeing this. how can you not be pumped after reading these kind of things and seeing how much the payers love what the coaching staff is doing?

[prowler2k8]

Because Fox was a horrible, unimaginative OC.

:iagree:

Would've thought Fox was smart enough to figure out what his background was defense - he knew very little about offense and never allowed Henning or Davidson to be creative or innovative. So glad that's changing now.

[lightsout]

I'd rather him watch film on defenses

Kind of goes hand-in-hand, assuming he is doing it right. Watch what Rivers does mechanically while also looking at the read progression and trying to see what Rivers sees from the coverage.

[mav1234]

there were times, much earlier in his time at Carolina, where our offense wasn't nearly so stale as it was the last couple years...

fox repeatedly said last year that they were having to keep things simple because they were having trouble with anything more complicated with who they had. I think that this comes back to the teaching angle - Rivera and his staff are very focused on teaching, so instructing the younger guys is easier for them than it was for Fox who I think had relied VERY heavily on veteran leadership to do most of the teaching. So when that veteran leadership was purged and we were left with little of it, our offense especially struggled mightily without much guidance because fox/his staff were unwilling/unable to do it, and they didn't have any vets to fall back on it.

[bigdog10]

Forgot to add this to my above post, but someone mentioned that practices seemed to be a little more laid back this year than prior.

This was evident today. One thing I noticed was players walking or semi-jogging to thier next drill or area. I also noticed during some punting and coverage drills, the players were doing those drills with thier helmets off.

This may have more to do with the new CBA rules and player safety than anything else, but I am concerned that this may have negative impacts when it comes to player safety in the regular season.

Just a thought

[Jackofalltrades]

:iagree:

Would've thought Fox was smart enough to figure out what his background was defense - he knew very little about offense and never allowed Henning or Davidson to be creative or innovative. So glad that's changing now.

This is one thing that really makes me appreciate Rivera, he knows where his expertise lies.

[lightsout]

Forgot to add this to my above post, but someone mentioned that practices seemed to be a little more laid back this year than prior.

This was evident today. One thing I noticed was players walking or semi-jogging to thier next drill or area. I also noticed during some punting and coverage drills, the players were doing those drills with thier helmets off.

This may have more to do with the new CBA rules and player safety than anything else, but I am concerned that this may have negative impacts when it comes to player safety in the regular season.

Just a thought

When you say punting drills, you mean when they were going half-speed on coverage and return teams? Helmets off then seems OK, keeps guys from going too hard and wanting to hit. Don't want guys going balls-to-the wall this early for an entire practice. I know a lot of high school coaches who do that, just to focus on them staying in their coverage lanes and for the coverage team to focus on picking up their man. And, as you said, could have something to do with CBA rules. Long as they perform on game days, I won't complain about what they do in practice.

That is an interesting observation though. We'll see.

[bigdog10]

When you say punting drills, you mean when they were going half-speed on coverage and return teams? Helmets off then seems OK, keeps guys from going too hard and wanting to hit. Don't want guys going balls-to-the wall this early for an entire practice. I know a lot of high school coaches who do that, just to focus on them staying in their coverage lanes and for the coverage team to focus on picking up their man. And, as you said, could have something to do with CBA rules. Long as they perform on game days, I won't complain about what they do in practice.

That is an interesting observation though. We'll see.

Very well may have been. I just don't remember the helmets being off of the players at any point in the past, but you could be right.

Nothing to get up in arms about, but we will see if it has any affect when these guys start taking shots for real in games.

[Swedish Butt-Whistle]

Why is T-Sutton so emotional and concerned with fans opinions. Dude has some thin skin lol