Spring Football: Initial Reactions

Oh my God I can't believe how far away more football is. I just got back from the football team's spring game, and I really did my best to just enjoy myself watching the game. I recorded it on TV too, so I'm going to write up a more in depth review once I've watched that. Also, by recording it I'll have something to nurse my sanity with when I'm watching the women's badminton qualifying matches during the summer sports drought. 

Offense:

During the first three quarters, the first team was led by Colt McCoy, and the second team by John Chiles. I was encouraged to see Colt throwing it down field more than what we're used to, but discouraged to see that he wasn't reading the deep routes as well as I would have expected. If Colt gets the majority of snaps this year, Jordan Shipley is going to finish the season with like a hundred billion yards. Spread out over a hundred billion receptions. Colt really seems to favor Shipley, but had some good looks to Quan Cosby as well. I was also expecting a little more out of the offensive line, as our young defensive line had no problem slowing the run and getting a few sacks. John Chiles looked strong, but clearly still has some work to do throwing the ball. I really believe, however, that the best performer on the offense was Sherrod Harris. On the very first snap he took, he threw a 17 yard laser. He followed it up a few plays later with two long runs, and for a touchdown. G.J. Kinne threw the longest pass of the scrimmage, and honestly I thought it was tipped. It wasn't even almost a spiral, but it went for 30+ yars. Also encouraging was the fact that some trick plays were called, but less encouraging was the fact that it was the same reverse. The first time went for a first down and almost a touchdown, and the second time it was picked up by the defense at the line of scrimmage. The running backs did not impress me as much as they did at the spring practices and also clearly have some work to do. I counted three fumbles, but because I was sitting pretty high up they might not have all been legitimate. 

Defense: 

I was expecting a veritable slaughter of the defensive backfield, but what I got instead was a passable performance by some young guys with very real potential. True freshman Blake Gideon actually got saw most of the action at strong safety, and more often than not did a reasonable job covering Jordan Shipley. Considering the huge gap in experience, I was impressed with what Gideon was able to do. Curtis Brown had a major diving pass deflection on Quan Cosby early in the first quarter that got me pretty excited too. The quality of starters at defensive tackle wasn't disparaging, but the lack of depth was apparent. When the starters weren't in, the running backs had a much easier time working it inside.