Fall Camp (week 3)

Back from tonight’s practice at Reser (after a detour to a required family event).

I was focusing mostly on one thing tonight — QB accuracy. I brought a chart and a clipboard, and recorded every throw during drills by Katz, Vaz, Mannion, Lomax, and Harrington. Each throw was marked as good, overthrown, underthrown, ahead, behind, high, or low.

Turns out that Lomax and Harrington had very few throws during drills tonight. Katz threw about 40% of the passes during drills tonight, while Vaz and Mannion each threw about 25%.

Maybe these 3 QBs were just having a good night, but for the first hour+ of practice just about every pass was marked as “good” for Katz, Vaz, and Mannion. The accuracy was impressive.

However, things changed towards the end of practice during the Red Zone Offense/Defense drill (11 on 11). In that drill, Katz threw one interception (dropped by Lance Mitchell), threw another pass that was nowhere near the receiver (Connor Hamlett, who apparently got confused and stopped running his pattern), and a third pass that would have been a difficult catch (but that was dropped by Obum Gwacham). In the Red Zone drills, I thought Vaz and Mannion both performed better than Katz, and looked more poised (although the last play of the day was an interception in the end zone by Ryan Handford that I think was thrown by Vaz — not sure because I got a call on my smartphone right before the play, so I missed some of it…)

Brandon Sprague tweeted that Geno Munoz played well tonight. I can confirm that, and back it up with details. In the middle of practice, Vaz ran a play from his own 1-yard line where he hit Munoz with a 40+ yard pass over the top of the defense. Later, Vaz hit Munoz again, with GM making a tough catch on the right sideline for a score (earning a shout out from players and coaches). Vaz and Munoz later connected on another long pass. And soon after that Mannion hit Munoz on a 50 yard completion. There was another long pass from Vaz caught by Munoz. Munoz finally dropped one during the Red Zone drill, and teammates got on him (only because he had made so many big plays up throughout the whole practice). Overall, GM had a great night.

James Rodgers dropped two very catchable passes. He’s clearly not himself quite yet.

I thought Malcolm Agnew looked good tonight, too. He had one run during the Red Zone drill where he took a handoff, started to run over right guard, and then bounced it outside quickly, and scooted around the right end and down the sideline for the score. It was good to see the quick bounce to the outside, and also the speed to get around the end and down the sideline.

Regarding special teams, there were two impressive kicks. Hekker hit a punt while standing deep in the end zone that was caught on the opposite 41 yard line (about 58 yards from scrimmage). Trevor Romaine hit a field goal from the 37 yard line (in other words, a 47 yard field goal) with leg to spare. I hasten to add, however, that TR also missed several shorter field goals (each one wide to the right, as I recall).

I also want to mention Dylan Wynn. DW is getting more reps, and more positive attention from the coaches, based on his strong play at DE. One of this first reps during the scrimmage, DW powered through the offensive line and pulled up in Katz’s face. This is what led to the interception of Katz in the end zone. If it had been a real game, DW would have flattened Katz. Soon after that, DW executed a bull rush on Michael Phillip that pushed MP deep into the backfield. And then, on one of the next plays, DW stuffed a run at the line of scrimmage.

At several points, the coaches were yelling out encouragement and praise to DW. It seems clear that DW’s talent is starting to be noticed, as it should be.