Terez Hall says he has taken a starting lb spot.

Sophomore LB Terez Hall said he is currently the No. 1-SAM, jumping returning starter Donavin Newsom. If you think this is supposed to be a message to Newsom, think again: Hall believes he'll continue to keep that job atop the depth chart.

"Recently, I just got the job and everything like that," Hall said. "But it's still competing. Every day, we're still giving up reps. But I just recently got the job. I plan on keeping it and actually making a big-time presence in the defense and just having more of a physical standpoint."

Newsom was requested by media members after practice but was missed in the shuffle.

-- I spoke with cornerbacks Anthony Hines and John Gibson today, for a story later on about DeMontie Cross' defense. A big thing they both reiterated (which Aarion Penton first said) is that the corners are almost exclusively playing man-to-man now. It will be interesting to see how the entire defense comes together when we can actually watch 11-on-11 football.

-- Corey Fatony said he's trying to help Tucker McCann like Andrew Baggett helped him last year: "Baggett kind of brought me in, kind of showed me the ropes and helped me out. I'm really trying to do that for him, too."

-- I asked Terez Hall about how the offensive line looks so far. Here's his response: "Honestly, man, our offensive line, they ready. Compared to last year, I feel like we're a whole lot better. You know, depth-wise, guys are gonna come back. And they are putting in the work. Fact is, we've got offensive linemen. They're gonna work. I ain't even worried about that."

I followed-up by asking Hall to expand on the "compared to last year" comment:

"More physical. They come to attack you now," Hall said. "One-on-one, like scrimmages and everything like that, they come to attack me instead of waiting on me to attack them the whole time. Yeah, they got a whole lot more aggressive."

-- Finally, I asked Zanders (Lock did not stop for interviews) about how the offense is looking, as sources have said they've looked much improved from last spring.

"We look way better than we did last spring," Zanders said. "Last spring was kind of .... it was scary. I think with the new staff and everything, with the attitude they're bringing in and just the demeanor with how we're playing now, the tempo and how we're going about things differently than last season is helping things tremendously.

"I mean, you can just see it in the scrimmages and the practices in general, from Day 1 to now, we practice and scrimmage a whole lot better than we have in recent times."



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