The closest position battles leading up to Tulane's opener against UMASS are at right guard, where Kanan Ray is trying to hold off Trey Tuggle, cornerback, where Lance Robinson and Jarius Monroe are competing, and kicker, where Willie Fritz said he would wait until after Wednesday's practice to make an announcement. The third wide receiver is up for grabs alongside Shae Wyatt and Duece Watts, but as I've written before, that decision is irrelevant because it will last only one or two plays. I consider Lawrence Keys the third starter regardless of who goes out on the field first.
This morning, Darius Hodges was back with the first team at joker after practicing with the third unit for most of last week. No surprise there. It may have been some type of internal discipline. Tuggle was working with the first-team offensive line against the first-team defense (which won that segment comfortably) when I got there, but later Ray went with the first team against the scout team defense and I'd be very surprised if Ray did not start Saturday. I expect Robinson to start at the second cornerback spot instead of Monroe, but I'm less certain there and clearly both of them are slated to play considerably. At linebacker, Jesus Machado rotates in with the first unit when Nick Anderson or Dorian Williams needs a rest, and he likely will get almost all of the action when they need a reserve against UMass rather than the other second-team linebacker, Corey Platt.
I expect the kicking situation to come down to Kriston Esnard and Graham Dable because Valentino Ambrosio did not practice again today. Leg injures tend to linger with kickers, as I wrote the second he was out. It will be a very scary situation if Esnard or Dable has to make a pressure kick. Neither performed well today after Esnard had been sharp the previous two weeks.
There were four scholarship players on the scout-team defense--cornerback T..J. Huggins and linemen Parker Peterson, Gerrod Henderson and Maxie Baudoin.
There were four scholarship players on the scout-team offense--linemen Jackson Fort, Keanon McNally, Joseph Solomon and Nik Hogan. Fort, who worked with the second team for a lot of preseason camp, has fallen down the depth chart. He and McNally actually got into a fight at one point and were still simmering after teammates separated them.
Shadre Hurst appears to be the backup center if Tulane needs one against UMass. I doubt Caleb Thomas will be available.
Fritz said Keys would be the primary kickoff returner and Jha'Quan Jackson would return punts.
This was the hottest practice of the preseason. I started sweating while sitting in the stands, which, for the first time ever, had not happened once in the first three weeks.
Fritz, Michael Pratt, Shae Wyatt and Jim Svoboda spoke at the press conference:
FRITZ
"We had a nice cool day to work out in (joking). It was a little NOLA weather. I hope it's like this on Saturday. We're excited about it. We took the weekend off. The NCAA is allowing you to have footballs in practice now, so we've really been training for about two months. We've got everything in and are raring to go for Saturday night. We had a pretty mild camp. It's been pretty decent weather. A bunch of rain showers. We had to stop practice only twice because of rain, but it almost looked like it was going to rain every day, so we were very fortunate to get our practices in."
On health and depth;
"We're pretty healthy. I feel like that's one of the strengths of our team. We have some depth. A couple of positions we are going to have to develop depth with some young guys being forced to play, but right now we're a little deeper than we've been in the past."
On Svoboda:
"He's been game planning for a long time. He's been a head coach at Nebraska Wesleyan and did a heck of a job there and at Central Missouri, my old school, UCLA, Montana State, so he's got a lot of experience putting the game plan together. There isn't really much he hasn't seen before."
On Svoboda's offense:
"There are a lot of similarities to last year and the year before and the year before that. But how we do things, there's a big difference in play calling. We have three different ways we can call plays, and it's really pretty simple for the guys. it would be hard for someone to pick it up and know what we're doing, so that's something that's kind of Jim's own deal that he brought here."
On kicker:
"We are probably going to name our kicker tomorrow. We've got one more day of competition. so that will happen. We are going to have one more day of competition. It's pretty close."
On Chris Hampton:
"He's added a few things, but a lot of it we've done before. We played really good defense the last five weeks of the season. We want to start off that way on Saturday. The last five weeks we played about as good defense as anybody in the conference. We've got a lot of returning guys. We'll probably roll about eight to 10 defensive linemen. We'll play our two inside linebackers most of the time. We may also have a couple of backups play there. The secondary is the area we are going to have to develop a little bit of depth, get a couple of these freshmen playing for us."
On flashbacks to Ida:
"We've just got to get through the week and everything will be OK. I met somebody the other day from Birmingham, and he said have you ever been there before? I said, yeah, I was there for a month. I know a lot of people there. No, we just want to have a regular season. It's been two years for us, so we want to have a regular season. Two years was difficult for everyone, but the last two years have been difficult for us and Nicholls and Southeastern. It was a different year."
On Shae Wyatt:
"He's very valuable. Great hands. He's an excellent route runner. He has better speed than you think and is just a smart and savvy player."
On step up from DII:
"That league that he came from, I know a lot about it and Jim Svoboda knows a lot about it. I consider it the top Division II league in the nation. They've had a lot of really good players that have gone on and played in the NFL from that league, so if you're a great player in that league, you can definitely play Division I football."
On UMASS coach Don Brown's defenses belng blitz happy at previous stops:
"He does an excellent job defensively every place he's been. We watched him when he was at Michigan and when he was Arizona, and we watched the tape from their spring game, which was actually on TV. He gets in and out of an odd and even front and does blitz quite a bit. It will be interesting to see how much he's got in right now because it's a whole new system for them."
PRATT
On flashbacks to a year ago:
"Yeah, we were in Birmingham right now. It's good to be home and have a first home game. Last year we didn't get to do that in week 1, so I'm happy to come out to Yulman."
On Svoboda:
"He's awesome. He's a really good coach. He doesn't try to make things too complex, like I've said before. I would hate to say that our offense is simple because it's not, but he does a really good job of not trying to overcoach things. He stays true to our reads. Sometimes defense is just going to play well, but he doesn't go back and forth between what the reads are. He''s very consistent and doesn't try to overcoach things."
On Wyatt:
"He's awesome. His ball skills. He's got great hips. He can get in and out of breaks really well. He's a really good one-on-one matchup. When I see him out there one on one, he's a guy that I'm definitely looking at. It's great to have that confidence in him. He makes a lot of big-time plays and adjusts to the ball really well. He's an exciting player to watch."
On rapport developing quickly last year with Wyatt:
"Just his work ethic, his attention to detail was something that I noticed first, coming in and having a good attitude every day. His performance on the field followed that and that's when we really started that bond and that chemistry together."
On focus this week:
"Just to play ball. The whole offseason is long. It's tedious. Now we have an opportunity to come out here and compete and show everything that we've been putting forth in practice, so it's been a major emphasis to just come out here and execute, do what we've been coached to do and everything will take care of itself from there."
On different way to get plays in:
"We'll have a couple of different ways. We do our wrist band. We'll have a bunch of different tempo stuff and signals and whatnot. He does a good job of mixing that up. It's hard for defenses to start on a fast tempo, be slowed down and then pick it back up. He tries to emphasize that a little bit."
On where his game has improved:
"Picking up blitzes, communication with the offensive line. Every year the game has just slowed down. I've had way more reps that I've had last year and the year before, so you pick up on things--coverages, blitzes, stuff like that so you can kind of cancel off certain reads through your progression and be a little quicker and have some better timing on things."
On what seen from film of UMass:
"It's actually tough because we don't have a lot of film on them. They've got a new defensive coordinator and something like 19 transfers. We know they are going to play a lot of man, a little bit of cover 2. Our biggest thing is when we get our matchups, we've got to win them and I've got to deliver a good ball."
This morning, Darius Hodges was back with the first team at joker after practicing with the third unit for most of last week. No surprise there. It may have been some type of internal discipline. Tuggle was working with the first-team offensive line against the first-team defense (which won that segment comfortably) when I got there, but later Ray went with the first team against the scout team defense and I'd be very surprised if Ray did not start Saturday. I expect Robinson to start at the second cornerback spot instead of Monroe, but I'm less certain there and clearly both of them are slated to play considerably. At linebacker, Jesus Machado rotates in with the first unit when Nick Anderson or Dorian Williams needs a rest, and he likely will get almost all of the action when they need a reserve against UMass rather than the other second-team linebacker, Corey Platt.
I expect the kicking situation to come down to Kriston Esnard and Graham Dable because Valentino Ambrosio did not practice again today. Leg injures tend to linger with kickers, as I wrote the second he was out. It will be a very scary situation if Esnard or Dable has to make a pressure kick. Neither performed well today after Esnard had been sharp the previous two weeks.
There were four scholarship players on the scout-team defense--cornerback T..J. Huggins and linemen Parker Peterson, Gerrod Henderson and Maxie Baudoin.
There were four scholarship players on the scout-team offense--linemen Jackson Fort, Keanon McNally, Joseph Solomon and Nik Hogan. Fort, who worked with the second team for a lot of preseason camp, has fallen down the depth chart. He and McNally actually got into a fight at one point and were still simmering after teammates separated them.
Shadre Hurst appears to be the backup center if Tulane needs one against UMass. I doubt Caleb Thomas will be available.
Fritz said Keys would be the primary kickoff returner and Jha'Quan Jackson would return punts.
This was the hottest practice of the preseason. I started sweating while sitting in the stands, which, for the first time ever, had not happened once in the first three weeks.
Fritz, Michael Pratt, Shae Wyatt and Jim Svoboda spoke at the press conference:
FRITZ
"We had a nice cool day to work out in (joking). It was a little NOLA weather. I hope it's like this on Saturday. We're excited about it. We took the weekend off. The NCAA is allowing you to have footballs in practice now, so we've really been training for about two months. We've got everything in and are raring to go for Saturday night. We had a pretty mild camp. It's been pretty decent weather. A bunch of rain showers. We had to stop practice only twice because of rain, but it almost looked like it was going to rain every day, so we were very fortunate to get our practices in."
On health and depth;
"We're pretty healthy. I feel like that's one of the strengths of our team. We have some depth. A couple of positions we are going to have to develop depth with some young guys being forced to play, but right now we're a little deeper than we've been in the past."
On Svoboda:
"He's been game planning for a long time. He's been a head coach at Nebraska Wesleyan and did a heck of a job there and at Central Missouri, my old school, UCLA, Montana State, so he's got a lot of experience putting the game plan together. There isn't really much he hasn't seen before."
On Svoboda's offense:
"There are a lot of similarities to last year and the year before and the year before that. But how we do things, there's a big difference in play calling. We have three different ways we can call plays, and it's really pretty simple for the guys. it would be hard for someone to pick it up and know what we're doing, so that's something that's kind of Jim's own deal that he brought here."
On kicker:
"We are probably going to name our kicker tomorrow. We've got one more day of competition. so that will happen. We are going to have one more day of competition. It's pretty close."
On Chris Hampton:
"He's added a few things, but a lot of it we've done before. We played really good defense the last five weeks of the season. We want to start off that way on Saturday. The last five weeks we played about as good defense as anybody in the conference. We've got a lot of returning guys. We'll probably roll about eight to 10 defensive linemen. We'll play our two inside linebackers most of the time. We may also have a couple of backups play there. The secondary is the area we are going to have to develop a little bit of depth, get a couple of these freshmen playing for us."
On flashbacks to Ida:
"We've just got to get through the week and everything will be OK. I met somebody the other day from Birmingham, and he said have you ever been there before? I said, yeah, I was there for a month. I know a lot of people there. No, we just want to have a regular season. It's been two years for us, so we want to have a regular season. Two years was difficult for everyone, but the last two years have been difficult for us and Nicholls and Southeastern. It was a different year."
On Shae Wyatt:
"He's very valuable. Great hands. He's an excellent route runner. He has better speed than you think and is just a smart and savvy player."
On step up from DII:
"That league that he came from, I know a lot about it and Jim Svoboda knows a lot about it. I consider it the top Division II league in the nation. They've had a lot of really good players that have gone on and played in the NFL from that league, so if you're a great player in that league, you can definitely play Division I football."
On UMASS coach Don Brown's defenses belng blitz happy at previous stops:
"He does an excellent job defensively every place he's been. We watched him when he was at Michigan and when he was Arizona, and we watched the tape from their spring game, which was actually on TV. He gets in and out of an odd and even front and does blitz quite a bit. It will be interesting to see how much he's got in right now because it's a whole new system for them."
PRATT
On flashbacks to a year ago:
"Yeah, we were in Birmingham right now. It's good to be home and have a first home game. Last year we didn't get to do that in week 1, so I'm happy to come out to Yulman."
On Svoboda:
"He's awesome. He's a really good coach. He doesn't try to make things too complex, like I've said before. I would hate to say that our offense is simple because it's not, but he does a really good job of not trying to overcoach things. He stays true to our reads. Sometimes defense is just going to play well, but he doesn't go back and forth between what the reads are. He''s very consistent and doesn't try to overcoach things."
On Wyatt:
"He's awesome. His ball skills. He's got great hips. He can get in and out of breaks really well. He's a really good one-on-one matchup. When I see him out there one on one, he's a guy that I'm definitely looking at. It's great to have that confidence in him. He makes a lot of big-time plays and adjusts to the ball really well. He's an exciting player to watch."
On rapport developing quickly last year with Wyatt:
"Just his work ethic, his attention to detail was something that I noticed first, coming in and having a good attitude every day. His performance on the field followed that and that's when we really started that bond and that chemistry together."
On focus this week:
"Just to play ball. The whole offseason is long. It's tedious. Now we have an opportunity to come out here and compete and show everything that we've been putting forth in practice, so it's been a major emphasis to just come out here and execute, do what we've been coached to do and everything will take care of itself from there."
On different way to get plays in:
"We'll have a couple of different ways. We do our wrist band. We'll have a bunch of different tempo stuff and signals and whatnot. He does a good job of mixing that up. It's hard for defenses to start on a fast tempo, be slowed down and then pick it back up. He tries to emphasize that a little bit."
On where his game has improved:
"Picking up blitzes, communication with the offensive line. Every year the game has just slowed down. I've had way more reps that I've had last year and the year before, so you pick up on things--coverages, blitzes, stuff like that so you can kind of cancel off certain reads through your progression and be a little quicker and have some better timing on things."
On what seen from film of UMass:
"It's actually tough because we don't have a lot of film on them. They've got a new defensive coordinator and something like 19 transfers. We know they are going to play a lot of man, a little bit of cover 2. Our biggest thing is when we get our matchups, we've got to win them and I've got to deliver a good ball."