Monday Practice Notes

First, some positive news: left tackle Koda Martin was on the field watching today, looking no worse for the wear after suffering heatstroke and organ failure just a week ago. He's lucky and the Aggies are lucky he'll be able to play again. Guard Connor Lanfear was back on the field for the first time as well, but not with the first team.

So much for the idea of the quarterbacks flip-flopping with the first team and each getting a week. Nick Starkel remained with the 1s today, with Tray Williams in the backfield next to him. Kendrick Rogers has moved back to the first team with Camron Buckley in the slot and Jhamon Ausbon at the other receiver position. As time has gone on, we have seen more 3-receiver sets and nearly no 2 receivers/1 TE/1 FB. The fullback has essentially vanished, but Jace Sternberger is out there with the 1s each time. The starting lineup up front was Dan Moore/Keaton Sutherland/Erick McCoy/Colton Prater and Carson Green, even though I did see McCoy and Prater swap for a few plays.

Kellen Mond had the 2s again with Kendall Bussey in the backfield and Clyde Chriss, Roshauud Paul and (I think) Hezekiah Jones. Lanfear wasn't with the 2s; he was with the 3s, which Connor Blumrick led with Kwame Etwi next to him.

Derrick Tucker and Donovan Wilson were both back on defense, but it looked like they were both kind of taking it easy as Deshawn Capers-Smith and Kendrick Rogers operated with the 1s today (Larry Pryor was out). The most notable absence was at linebacker, with Otaro Alaka not making an appearance. The change to the lineup in his absence was quite interesting: instead of inserting Anthony Hines, Mike Elko moved Tyrel Dodson to WILL and put Santino Marchiol at MIKE. That says good things about the redshirt freshman, I guess. Charles Oliver remained at his corner spot and Travon Fuller was across from him, which means he's the first guy to last more than 3 practices at the other corner. Clifford Chattman and Debione Renfro were both out, so that may have had something to do with it.

We got to watch some of the quarterbacks working on some new things like they were operating under center, which included play action fakes and rollouts. The throws off of play action gave us a pretty good gauge of the arms of Starkel, Mond and Blumrick and, on this day at least, Starkel definitely had the best arm. He hit Rogers in stride twice on deep (40-yard plus passes with 5-step drops) passes and overthrew one; Mond was short on one, threw one on the money and had Clyde Chriss slow up for a third. Blumrick was short with one and was pretty much on the money with another. Really, his issues have been more with the short passing game, where he tends to aim and overthrow passes.

One example of the lack of tolerance for error: on the play action passes, the wideouts were running a double move. Kendrick Rogers ran a route that wasn't very sharp -- he rounded off his cut up the field -- and both Dameyune Craig and Fisher immediately yelled for him to come back and do it again. He trotted back, got one play off while Craig pointed out what he wanted and got to sprint 50 yards again. That time, he got it right.

A few small notes:

Trayveon Williams looked really explosive taking both handoffs and kickoffs today. Maybe the fastest I've seen him.

I was right on my Rover hunch. I heard a call today for the Rovers to do a drill and Buddy Johnson and Ikenna Okeke led the pack.

Today was almost all about tackling early on. The linebackers, linemen and safeties were all working on it.

The defensive tackles that weren't involved in special teams got a treat: They got to run across the width of the field multiple times until special teams drills were done. TD Moton easily outran the rest of the pack.