UU's update

Things are shaping up nicely for the Spring game this Saturday. Hope all of you can make it out.

QB: Brandon Allen continues to shine out there. He makes the right reads and is throwing a lot of completions.

Austin had some struggles today. Threw one pick that I saw. He was first in with the second team offense. He does a lot of good things out there though.

Rafe had the guys in the secondary talking about his escapability. Gaines came on a safety blitz and he was laughing about Rafe and his footwork to get away from him.

Today there was a lot of 1st team Offense against 2nd team Defense and vice versa. It is tough on Rafe and Austin playing against that 1st team D.

RB: Alex was not out there today. J. Will of course was getting a lot of work and looks fine. I don't remember if he is going to play in the Spring game or not. Someone might can help me out with that. Kody Walker was in a green shirt today, but D. Evans was out there. We are paper thin at RB this Spring with the injuries.

WR/TE: Duwop Mitchell stopped a play from being snapped because the other WR wasn't lined up correctly. Yelled across to make the adjustment, then they ran the play. He got a lot of high praise from Dan Enos for doing that.

J. Sprinkle kind of struggled today. Had some drops that he usually catches easily. Boy he looks good though. I remember when he was a bean pole. He has put on some good weight and looks like a real TE now.

I know there has been some talk about Sprinkle taking snaps from Henry...but that just isn't going to happen unless Henry gets hurt. I don't talk about HH that much (and I suspect others don't either) because he just goes about his business out there. He is at the point where he just makes everything look easy.

Will Gragg looks better everyday. Chris Gragg was out there watching practice and had a few words for younger brother. When the team broke for a water break, Chris and Will were standing together and Chris was talking to him about footwork and other technique stuff. Will was listening and then trying what Chris was telling him.

Will is a couple of inches taller than Chris and a lot thicker. Everyday Will seems to be quicker and more confident out there. Gone are the days of him not knowing where to line up and it looking like he was running at half speed because he didn't know the route.

Eric Hawkins continues to improve. If he can just improve his hands he could be a threat for us.

JoJo has really improved his route running.

I'm going to talk about the Offensive Line and the Defensive line together here. I watched a couple of periods of them going one on one.

The drill is that the OLine is lined up and there is a cone in the backfield about 7 yards deep. The ball is snapped to a ball boy who runs for his life and the Dlineman tries to get to the cone and the OL tries to keep him from getting there.

Bijhon Jackson...for him it is all about leverage. If he gets under your pads then you are on skates all the way back to the QB. He is probably not going to beat you on a spin move but he will walk you down the field if you don't stay low on him. Our OL actually did a pretty good job on him today though.

Denver Kirkland had a couple of struggles against Wise today. Wise made a nice swim move on him once and a sweet spin move on him the next time. Pittman told Kirkland to be more active with his hands and to punch him. He did the next time and Beanum was the victim. From then on no one did anything against Kirkland. It wasn't like Pittman was just teaching Kirkland (and the other OL) that about the hands, it was just a reminder about proper technique.

Okay...If I told you that our starting front 4 was J. Ledbetter, Froholdt, Bijhon Jackson and D. Wise you would think that is a very impressive SEC defensive line. It would be one of the best in my opinion. Yeah, well, that is our second string.

Winston, Hodge, Johnson and Beanum are the 1s and they are all playmakers for us.

Danehauer and Rogers had some pretty good reps during these drills. Brian Wallace is still learning proper technique but it will take a minute for a defensive player to get around him.

Froholdt reminds me of that old cartoon Baby Huey. He is big and bouncy and acts like he is having the time of his life out there during practice. He has the most energy of any man I have ever seen at his size. I'm pretty sure, if you are that big, that you are suppose to get tired at some point.

LB: We were pretty thin there today. Randy Ramsey is out for the rest of the Spring working on academics and Brooks Ellis was not out there today (No idea why). This allowed Hackett, Williams and Eugene to get a lot of snaps.

Matt Reynolds, Josh Harris and Thomas-Smith were running with the second team. They looked pretty good and held up pretty well against the 1s when they had to go.

Secondary: I think we are deeper there than people realize. Floyd and Sleepy McKinney have been limited this Spring, but you still have solid backups at every position.

DJ Dean and Jared Collins are both very good cover corners with Josh Liddell and Rohan Gaines at the safety position.

Josh Liddell is becoming like Hunter Henry. He is just always doing his job right. He makes it look easy. He always seems to be in the right spot doing the right thing.

Robb Smith is the most animated of our coaches. Man, he is loud for a little guy. I don't remember him being so demanding of perfection last year. I took note of that to say this. Last year I think he had to do a lot of encouraging and picking our players up. We had the saddest, most beaten down group I had ever seen. This year our D knows that they are good. Very good. Robb Smith is now expecting a lot more out of them. This isn't a group that lacks confidence anymore. Don't get me wrong, Robb is not trying to kill their confidence at all. He believes in this D to the point of not accepting when they do something wrong...anything wrong.

Let me just say there isn't any "Awww shucks...you'll get'em next time." There might have been a little bit of that last year. Nope. Not this year.

I am most excited about our QB and our defense this coming season. Brandon has always been an excellent practice QB, but I really do believe we are going to see a vast improvement in him this year. Our defense could be something really special this year.

Used to when someone would say something about "Our defense could be really good..." it would be followed by, "if everyone stays healthy." We actually have enough depth to be very good unless half our defense decides to get on a Malaysian airline.

Talked to one of the S.I.D.s today about the virtual reality stuff. He said it was really cool. They let him put on the goggles today for a little bit and it is wild watching everything happen with that. He said that if you are playing QB you can look all around and see everything. You can see the RBs behind you and where everyone is lined up. He said that the coaches will have on goggles as well and can press pause once the action starts for teaching moments.