re: 2015 Spring Practice Thread

got to give a shout out to a former player of mine John Tyson. Had a catch and a decent gain out of the backfield. He's a walk-on fullback. Great kid and a hard worker. Tough as nails. He's excited to be a Hog!

RS Fr. from Parkers Chapel HS in El Dorado. He's actually a semester transfer from SAU.

Yeah that's a different group of Tyson's I think.

I posted this to woopig, but these were my initial takeaways on Saturday.

I thought that was a pretty great showing all around today. Froholdt is long and strong and has a motor. He's going to play a lot this season. He pushed Skipper 2 yards back like it was nothing on one play.

Denver Kirkland looked pretty strong at LT from what I could tell.

Ragnow is going to be All-American good in my uninformed opinion...someday.

Brian Wallace also caught my eye a few times with the 2's. We are going to be good on the OL forever as long as Pittman keeps bringing in guys like that. Josh Allen turned someone out pretty easily as a pulling G that was impressive.

Bihjon Jackson does look a little more explosive than last season (lost some weight).

Ledbetter would have murdered someone today had they not been wearing a green jersey.

Santos Ramirez seems to be a bit of an embarrassment of riches. Our secondary was already as good as I can remember, but Santos makes it even better. I think all of this competition in the secondary is breeding a bit of an animal that SEC offenses aren't going to want to deal with. Giggity.

Kody Walker really impressed me with his vision. He made some pretty impressive cuts that make me feel very comfortable with our backup RB outlook.

There are a LOT of walk-ons in our program that look like competent football players. It looks like we have at least 2 good FB's from the walk-on ranks. We've got 1 or 2 DE's that have been providing snaps even in critical games. Anthony Antwine just LOOKS like he's going to be something before he leaves. Anyway, just something I noticed.

And not to sound like a broken record, but our team looks so much bigger than at any point I can remember. Jeremy Sprinkle was a marginally built WR 4 years ago. Now he looks like he has a chance to be a dynamic, athletic TE...the kind the NFL is drooling for at 250 lbs. And it looks like his frame could probably even handle another 10 lbs easily.

Brandon Allen looked just about, well, perfect. His throws were on the money. He may have made some bad reads, but he still put his passes on point for the reads he did make. If he keeps playing like this the SEC is straight fricked.

I liked what I saw from Dan Enos. He definitely had an unpredictable nature to his playcalling, which was a nice change of pace. He put his QBs in a position to succeed. Wish we could have seen a screen pass, knowing they've been working on it.

I feel pretty confident heading into this season. If Brandon Allen has a good season (60% completion would be a nice start) and continues to protect the ball, which he is perfectly capable of, we may even compete at the top of the SEC.

Pat Dye is high on the hogs after our spring practice

quote:

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Brandon Allen (above) was impressive at quarterback in the Arkansas spring game.

After watching the Arkansas spring game over the weekend it looks like the Razorbacks are going to be an improved football team. Auburn’s road trip to Fayetteville in late October looks like it is going to be a real challenging one.
Of course, the competition is always going to affect the way you look and Arkansas set up its spring game so it was the first teams on offense and defense playing against the backups. However, from what I saw the Razorbacks are going to field a very physical team that should be a factor in the SEC West race.
One of the reasons I believe Arkansas is going to be improved is that it looks like quarterback Brandon Allen has taken a major step forward. He threw three touchdown passes while playing just a half on Saturday and looked very sharp doing it. To me he has looked the closest to Auburn’s Jeremy Johnson of any of the SEC quarterbacks I have watched in spring games.
Arkansas did not play its top two running backs, Alex Collins and Jonathan Williams, but one of the players who stood out was another running back, Kody Walker. He is a load at around 250 pounds and rushed for 174 yards and three touchdowns in the spring game.
It looks to me like the team is three-deep at the running back position. The Razorbacks also have two big, good-looking tight ends and a couple of wideouts who can make plays.
I was also impressed with the way the defense moved around and did things in a hard-nosed, physical scrimmage. It wasn’t one of those scrimmages where people were reaching and grabbing or laying around.
With its play-action passing game this year’s Arkansas team is going to be a handful offensively and if the team comes back as good on defense as it was late in the season last year, Arkansas is going to give some folks some problems. Don’t be surprised if the Razorbacks are there in the SEC race at the end of the season. That is a tough-looking bunch of kids and there is no doubt the head coach’s personality is all over that football team.

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Here is the pregame video from the spring game for those who weren't able to go

LINK