FanPost

Cram9030's Notes on the First Day of Training Camp Part 3

Ahhhhh the ever growing fan post. I did not realize just how much content I had captured with my incessant scribbling yet here we are on a third fan post to cover it. So lets hop right in.

Seven on Seven

  • One of the plays had Slay covering Ogletree on a short curl (or I have it written as a curl but I seem to remember it being a little different than the standard). Slay was all over it.
  • A interesting tidbit about a line up formation. On one play they had both Grew and Ebron line up as the outside receivers with Durham in the slot. This was especially interesting for a few reasons. Watching this play transpire gave an object lesson in just what Ebron brings to the table compared to Grew. Grew was completely out matched out there covered by a corner where as Ebron was holding his own. From a play call perspective I imagine this distribution is more about causing confusion for the defense and getting them to waste a corner on covering Pettigrew out wide. They can't really send a linebacker out there with out effectively having a sub unit in there any way but a outside corner on Pettigrew would leave Durham in this case covered by the (most likely) weaker slot corner. Interesting wrinkle from Lombardi already and an example of where we could easily see Durham replaced with Big Joe and have three tight ends out on the field at once.
  • Stafford went 7 of 9 in this section according to my count. It was probably his best section of the day.
  • The theme of the day passing wise was short passes though and that continued with Owens coming across the formation and catching a short pass right in front of the imaginary line and having plenty of room to run.
  • The very next pass saw Ross catching the ball in the same location but he came from the slot on what almost looked like a middle screen.
  • Keeping with the short middle pass they ended up with the same catch location but with Pettigrew this time but Whitehead was all over it and it would have been a one yard gain at most. With out knowing what the goal of this was I can say these catches were not the first option and it seemed the D was taking the first option and sometime second away well but I am not sure this middle extremely short pass is going to work that well with a real Dline there.
  • A rare sighting from Tate in the 7 on 7 section was a short 5 yard out route to him that was clearly intended to be able to get some YAC but Mathis was on the seen the moment Tate caught the ball.
  • We did see a safety blitz from Ihedigbo. It is seven on seven so it was hard to tell how well it worked but my feeling was Stafford would have been under a bit of pressure because Ihedigbo put a good swim move on the RB who was trying to ride him outside but it was hard to even guess if he would have been successful. This ended in a CJ reception on a 10 yard curl.
  • A little later they did a fake blitz with Ihedigbo where he bailed back to bracket cover Durham. Durham was clearly Staffords first target but he correctly saw Ihedigbo undercutting the route from the bail and went through his progressions choosing what was ( in my mind at least) the right pass at the right window to Ogletree but delivered a poor ball low and in front of him for an incompletion.

Full D and O Drill

Back now to having both lines going against each other. This time they started actually moving the ball and simulating game time. In one instance they even were acting out having a call go their way and running up and doing a RB dive to get the snap off. There was a ref for this section

  • First thing first, the starting Dline won the day over the starting Oline at least in pass rush situations. On the first play they pretty much collapsed the pocket preventing anything deep from developing and resulting in a check down to Bush. Who took it for at least a gain of 10 so a little good, a little bad from both sides.
  • On the next play the Dline got pressure again which forced a fast throw and Mathis ended up breaking up the pass from Stafford to Tate. I don't remember the route but it was an short to intermediate one again.
  • Stafford was 4 of 5 in this section of practice (by my count) with the final completion coming on a screen that Carey sniffed out by beating the Oline to the spot and dropping the RB. On this play Suh also almost got there and no one gave him a hard time so it seems he has the green light to just go gang busters on screens in Austin's D like he did in the past.
  • Reif was actually called offsides because he got a little spooked when Ihedigbo came up for a blitz. It also seemed like a hard count so its hard to tell what set him off.
  • The next play was probably the deepest completed pass of the day at about 20 yards, from Stafford to Ogletree. Ogletree gained some separation from his corner and ran a post route whose steam was cut off just right to get him a few yards past the linebacker. Stafford fit the ball in nicely but in a real game Ogletree would have been rocked by Quinn.
  • The last Stafford play of the day ended with a completion to Durham who beat Greenwood (I can't remember the route and I did not write it down). On this play Stafford had a lot more time though because he was facing the second team DL.
  • On these two plays I had chosen to watch Greenwood closely and well they just happened to both end with him getting beat. This time on a out route by Edwards who almost dropped the pass then showed some quality concentration to pull it back in.
  • I saw the only explosive play all day in all the drills from Jason Jones when he tipped a screen pass on which Suh might have been able to kill Dano in a real game.
  • Bentley had one of those plays against Peacock where you don't know to condemn him or not. It started by him getting beat on a out route but then he recovered to punch it out of Peacock's hands for a turnover.
  • Final note on this section of practice was that Broyles caught a ball from Dano by finding the soft spot in the zone behind the nickle corner but in the location where the outside corner (Slay) had just vacated to cover the outside receiver.
Final Thoughts
  • I think the prevalence of all the out routes does show that we will be using the Peyton Manning "Levels" concepts to some degree though today it seemed somewhat truncated, probably due to it being the first day of training camp.
  • Tapp was a lot stocker than expected and considering that is the only thing I noticed him for that is not a good sign.
  • I had the golden ticket (ok it was red) that allowed me to get autographs. I had actually just the day before bought a Silver/Gray Tate T-shirt/jersey and Tate was the only sure fire starter signing so I had him sign it.
  • I also had Waddle sign my hate. Let me tell you Waddle is a big man and his hands are the size of frying pans.
  • Fuller was also signing and I told him that there are some people in our community pulling hard for him and he said he appreciated it.
  • I tried to get Mulbach to sign my training camp badge with "The Mulldozer" but he had never heard it before. I told him that he has a cult following online that refer to him as such and he seemed shocked. Isa Adbul-Quddas who was sitting next to him (and has much bigger arms up close and personal than his pictures suggest) got a good laugh from that.
Sorry for day two being over before I finished my day one content. I spent most of the day flying back to California and then driving home from SFO and there was a lot more content in my notes than I thought! Over all I was like a kid in a candy store at training camp and wish I could have the tape from camp. I might post some pictures tomorrow of me and Golden Tate, autograph swag, and maybe some shitty pictures of Bell.

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