Our very own AceOfSpades gives us a review of yesterday's afternoon practice:
- at the start of practice there McAfee and Masthay were punting and it is clear that McAfee has a stronger leg, kicks the ball much higher and is much more consistent. they later had to punt against a "rush" of about 5 guys but it was pretty casual and mostly uneventful
- Foster continued to work with the offense on goal line formations and did well as a lead blocker for Addai on a couple plays
- Muir looked really good out there and he and Ed Johnson took most plays on the first team DL along with Dawson and Brock
- some O line vs. D front 7 drills which seemed to mostly go the the way of the offense. these were running plays and I think Coyer was getting a little aggravated because the defense (both 1st and 2nd group) was having issues with maintaining gaps correctly. There was some over pursuing which led to open backside holes. In some cases there was no one to help seal the backside and the RB had an open side of the field.
- my zest for Terrance Taylor has diminished slightly. I didn’t see much out of him today other than just being there. Of course I was watching from the sidelines so I probably missed a bit of the action
- during scrimmage action later in practice, the D seemed very similar to last year in that there was not as much movement or any blitzing that I thought I would see. It was probably just part of the drill that they wanted to line up and play with no extra action, but just an observation.
- First time seeing Mort in person. He is a genuine nerd and I wish I had his job. He just stood there talking to Chappell for a while and then some of the coaches. I wanted to jump over the line and give him a noogie for some reason….
- Vinatieri was helping McAfee with holding drills, throwing the ball underhand with spin to simulate a snap. McAfee seemed to do fine.
- McAfee was bombing some long FGs too. I know it’s just practice, but he was making it from 50+ with ease.
- Donald Brown sat out afternoon practice which was a bummer because I wanted to see him vs. Addai. Addai looked good though.
Big thanks to AceOfSpades for this write-up. A summary of Eric Hartz's Tweets are after the jump. Also, we have Coltsfanawalt's observations from camp, which were posted on 18to88.
Summary of Eric's Tweets:
- For Eric, the Friday practices were some of the best so far.
- Jim Sorgi was injured in a drills and carried off the field.
- Tyjuan Hagler made a nice INT of rookie QB Curtis Painter.
- Painter threw a nice pass to Jacob Tamme.
- Dwight Freeney and Eric Foster were able to pressure the QB in drills.
- Jerraud Powers, covering Reggie Wayne, did a great job breaking up a pass from Manning.
- Wayne got his revenge later, catching a TD pass while Powers was covering him.
- Some scrimmages involved first team o-line and second team receivers.
- Austin Collie continues to get many snaps at slot receiver, but Roy Hall saw some action at slot as well.
- Colin Cloherty (who?) made a nice catch.
- The team has begun to work on kickoffs. Some starters are playing on kickoff coverage such as Antoine Bethea and Clint Session.
- Adrian Grady stood out as he knifed through the line and hit Lance Ball for a loss.
- Mike Hart is clearly the #3 running back right now.
- Tony Ugoh, Donald Brown, and Mike Hart sat out practice.
Hope you enjoy these little summaries. Be sure to read all the Tweets on ColtPower's Twitter page. There's some really great stuff there.
We also have a quick bite from Coltsfanawalt's post at 18to88:
The defense was more complex than I have seen from the Colts. They ran a lot of plays with five linemen. They also kept mixing the personnel, so it was hard to get a good bead on everything. The DT that seemed to play the most was Ed Johnson. I saw a good amount of the other DTs, but Ed was nearly always in there. We were also treated to heavy doses of Adrian Grady. And plenty of Foster. By the way, Foster played a good amount of fullback. He even had two TD catches in goal line drills. He played nearly as much FB as he did DT today.
Curtis Johnson put in the most time at DE. Didn't notice much of Freeney until the last half of the afternoon practice. Brock and Mathis interchanged a lot. Dawson played DE. Saw a little Marcus Howard, but Curtis Johnson always seemed to be playing, like Ed Johnson did in the interior. The DEs lined further than usual off the DTs it seemed, especially on the left side. At one time it looked like Moala was playing LE for several plays, but after a while I realized that they were using Mathis as a fifth linemen and he was spaced a bit further than usual from the rest. This defense under Coyer has shown some intriguing looks so far.