Saturday's scrimmage on a sunny but cool spring day in NWA was pretty much a blow-out by the defense. I'm sure they'd heard enough all week about how the offense got the best of them last week to provide ample motivation. It seemed most of this scrimmage they were in the offense's backfield.
I sat over on the defensive side. Herring is
hugely entertaining to listen to and he was pretty happy today. I got the sense the defense had a mission.
To be fair, we saw little of the offense we saw
last week. Almost no McFadden, just a bit of Felix Jones, little of the more interesting pass plays, little of most of the receivers and
very little of pass protection. I did see more fumbles and interceptions this time. John Aaron Rees is apparently a member of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th teams as he seems to be on the field two out of every three plays.
Robert Johnson made the throw of the day
to Hillis on a sprint down the left sidelines. Felix Jones had a
nice run of 30+ yards off the motion handoff. Mortensen hit a few short passes.
The defense made more nice plays than I could count. The defensive line was outstanding. Cornerbacks played tough, making it difficult for the receivers to even get off the line. Olajubutu flattened Casey Dick early in the action on a blitz, although Casey made a nice completion on the play while totally giving up his body. Casey played more later, but it was obvious he was
playing through a bit of pain.
Much more running in this scrimmage, including some
too familiar plays out of too familiar sets, and some familiar plays out of more interesting and unexpected sets. I got the sense the offense was experimenting a bit while reinforcing their studies from this week, with most of the previous week's learning kept in the pantry for later.
Redshirt freshman Hezekiah Smith had a nice outing again, getting a number of carries and making some nice runs. He had a pretty
touchdown run of about 15 yards. Ran right over the linebacker. Ricky Don Simpson ran a number of plays and made some nice cuts. With McFadden, Felix Jones, Hillis, Michael Smith, Hezekiah Smith, and Ricky Don we appear to have a stable of running backs. Definitely we have all shapes and sizes covered.
I thought the kickers all looked pretty good. Made a bunch of 41 yard field goals, many with the ball passing through halfway up the uprights. Hopefully we'll have a kicker this year.
Tipster's
pictures hopefully give a flavor of different offensive sets. Our goal is to help answer some of the questions we've seen about this on various message boards.
For the spring game next week we are going to experiment with some video and see if we can add it into the mix of the blog. It's interesting that other (paid) sites have started including many more pictures in their practice reports since we've increased the number of pictures here. ;) By the number of hits we've received, there's obviously a huge interest from fans to see what's happening.
A nice
recap of the scrimmage is now available over on Hogwired.com.
Comments and other viewpoints/opinions on the scrimmage are welcome.
Updated 4/8/06 6:00 p.m. - Added photos and additional links.
