What a difference a week makes. Last Sunday, I reported that the first practice after the first pre-season game was a laid-back, sloppy, shells and shorts practice. Not so today. Perhaps it was the grey skies and cool temps that invigorated the Green and White today, but more likely it was the opportunity to start fresh with a new week of practice after Friday?s dismal, flat outing. Today?s practice was in full pads, on the grass field, and it was a spirited, high energy session. The injury section was thinned out, too, as Kowaleski, Drew Coleman, and Tutt all practiced. Justin Miller suited up and participated in the team stretching, but then returned to the bike area and pedaled in full uni. He joined TJ and Eric Smith on the bikes. Cotchery was not present, but not injured; perhaps he had a free one day pass that Mangini has issued to players who surpass their fitness goals. The first position player on the field was Ray Ventrone, who joined Nuge and Ben early on. The next player out there was 24, Mr. Revis, who wasted no time taking some practice punts from Graham. He showed sure hands and a lot of poise today. More on that later. +++++ The team game out and broke into groups, as usual, where they did some walk through plays to loosen up. Following the stretching, they ran through some combine drills, and the team had good energy out there today. I was by the DBs, and I heard one of the assistants exhort them that they ?better look sharp today!? Then Westhoff put the punt team through the paces. Leon, Smith, Stuckey and Revis all fielded punts. Harris was back on the LOS as a blocker. Graham practiced some punts into the coffin corners, giving the PRs the chance to make some decisions on whether to catch or let it go. Graham?s first punt to Revis was a tricky one with an unusual sideways end over end fluttering, and Revis gathered it in effortlessly. The practice ran until close to 4:30 and a lot of different things were done, so forgive me if I miss an item or two. Also, my binocs were trained on Revis quite a bit, even when his action was away from the ball, so I didn?t see the entire field for every play. Revis ran with the second team all day, and took a few reps with the third, and one rep against the first team offense. On that play, (which was just the last first team rep before they gave way to the second team offense) Revis was inserted at LCB, and the offense tried to confuse him, putting guys in motion on his side, changing the formation on his side, and attempted to bait him into covering the wrong guy. He got it right though, and was able to corral Leon as soon as Washington caught the ball in the flat, and Revis immediately knocked him out of bounds. Barton and Hobson were elated, and ran over to Revis, high-fiving him and jumping on him. Revis covered different WRs throughout the day, including Wright, Stuckey, a lot of Brad Smith, and was in coverage against the TEs in his zone, too. They played a lot of zone today, and Revis seemed to have no trouble picking up his coverage. He gave up nothing today, and most of the balls were thrown to the other side, where Coleman and Poteat saw coverage at RCB. Barrett and dyson ran with the first team. Ventrone, maybe as a reward for his terrific outing vs. the Vikes, got a ton of PT today. He is a different player on ST than he is at S, but the CS got a good look at him today, and plenty of film of his reps on the field. He seemed to do alright to me. He was back there with Washington for a good part of the day. Bender split the first team reps with kendall at LG. Kendall and Smith split snapping duties on the second team, and Bender got reps at RT with the second team, too. Bender also got the RT snaps with the first team during the final 11 on 11. He also seemed to do okay today. Clarke got all the LG reps with the second team. Turner saw action at RG next to Bender today. Ware and Leon ran well. Banks and Hollings were next tier. I try to keep my personal opinions of players out of TC reports as much as possible, and just talk about them in other posts on the obard. I try to report what I see, and everyone sees things a little differently. But here?s the deal with Pennington from my perspective today. He had very acceptable velocity on the out patterns today. Thinking back, he didn?t even throw the out pattern much at all last year in TC, but he is this year. And his throws to the WRs on these patterns was GOOD. (The actual velocity of his two throws on the interceptions Friday was fine; they were more the result of mental errors and bad field vision, leading to bad decisions to throw those passes. But the velocity was not the problem, imo. It is not so much the speed of the ball that will be a problem for him as much as the DBs creeping up to the LOS on him to jump the pattern. He is going to have to throw the ball deeper to get some respect from them. That is something that has not been shown in tc. They may work on that more when the practices are closed, but for the most part, CP was throwing short and medium balls in tc. And he looked pretty sharp today, spreading around his completions to Coles, Leon, McCairens and Wright, who got some reps with the ones, probably since Cotch didn?t play today. On the last set of 11s, starting at their own 5 with 2 ? minutes on the clock, Chad took the team downfield in a classice CP drive, consisting of a mixture of short passes, screens, sideline outs and a nice crossing pattern to 81. On second and goal, his found Leon in the EZ for the TD. After a defensive TO, they went for two, and converted on a similar play to the TD, to Leon again. The second team was stopped by the defense today. It was good to finally see 24 on the field. He has good size at 205, covers a lot of ground, is physical, and fluid. Like Smith, he?s one of those guys who?s fun to watch play football, and he and Harris look to be VERY nice pickups. I am also optimistic about Bender, though he may be a little bit of a project, just in terms of taking some time to get it together at the next level. But it looks like it has the makings of another successful draft. I'm done.
Jetcane... you have no idea, my man. Thank you from a fellow TGGer who is landlocked away from TC. And kudos for keeping the personal opinions out of it. Looking forward to more, Ohio
excellent report. thanks again. i can't wait to see Revis in live game action. he'll probably play next game, right?
Thanks for all your reports.spirited, high energy session sounds expected after Fri. night. Good job.
Sound like a nice practice after Friday's poor performance. Great report jetcane. Great to hear Revis looked good as well. I hope he can break into the first team in the next few weeks, he sounds like a natural for the position with his reads.
Brillaint report, thanks for that. Nice to hear that revis looked good and wasnt fooled with the motion. Also by the sounds of it looked good on fielding punts. Another thing is that it was nice to see him out early, mayby trying to do some catching up Also very happy that Ventrone got a lot of playing time, after Friday night he deserved it. Didnt Cotchery get a day off earlier in training camp, but decided to practise anyway and save his day off for later, that might be what was happening with him.
Sounds like the sky isn't falling and players are getting their heads back after the debacle on friday. Regroup and refocus. Thanks for the report, good stuff.
Cane! I love these reports. Is there any possible way you could develop rapport with the team to get regular season reports? I know this request is a stretch but I am gonna miss these jewels.
Jetcane I look forward to your reports and appreciate all the insight and hard work you put into it. Living in LA does not give me the opportunity to see TC so your threads are at the top of my list. I am an avid Jet fan and watch every game. Keep up the great work.
It's a good bet the guys on the team have already put that game out of their minds and have moved on.
everyone alwayss complains about most passes being short and medium and not throwing deep much, but isn't that kinda how it has to be? long passes being much harder to complete?
