Intense is the New Tremendous

by voteprime on Apr 2, 2010 3:17 PM EDT

On Wednesday, coaches worked with the football team on third down offense and defense. And though there was no blood, by all accounts, practice was still "intense."

There was no full-contact scrimmaging, but coaches at times were intensely verbal.

"We keep putting the pressure on players," head coach Doug Marrone said after the session. "We just had a level of intensity about ourselves that (said) today is an important day."

Eventually the novelty will wear off, but one season in to the HCDM tenure and I still get giddy hearing a coach talk like a coach should and pushing players to improve in specific areas.

Doug Hogue, who led the team with 9.5 sacks last season, continues to show improvement after his switch to the other side of the ball. HCDM is quite happy though showed his age with a rare lapse in memory:

I don't even remember him being a running back, which is a compliment to him.

Hogue showed off his new-found confidence by picking off RGLCL late in practice.

Which brings us to the quarterback position. Things continued as they have been for most practices: the numbers looking fairly even between Ridiculously Good Looking and Nassib, but those that watch the practice saying Nassib is leading the way. The DO has a great breakdown of the QB stats on the day but had this to say:

Take those numbers, however, with a major grain of salt. Nassib was working the ball all over the field, especially deep, whereas Loeb threw the ball more than five yards off of the line of scrimmage maybe twice throughout this entire session. And when he did, he struggled, yielding those two interceptions.

It looks like Nassib's limited game experience is still enough to give him the edge, allowing him to make his reads faster, and making smarter decisions. Still, we ain't talkin' about a game, just practice, so who knows if things will change as spring progresses.

The team has already finished their Friday practice, and since there's no way I'm going to take the time to write about that during this beautiful weekend, I'll let The DO take it from here:

The only thing we're missing, really, is how is RGLCL's hair doing? I haven't seen one photo all Spring!

Tweet Comment 4 comments | 0 recs |

Do you like this story?

Comments

in all honesty

if it was anyone other than greg paulus playing with that performance over the first 2/3 of the season i feel like marrone would have given nassib the last 2/3 starts of the season. every time nassib came in for a play or two and threw the ball deep u knew the kid had a much much better arm. i expect him to be the starter barring any miracles.

by orngfan on Apr 2, 2010 4:32 PM EDT reply actions

I'm fired up for this season

I don’t know if we can expect a bowl quite yet – but I do expect to see continued steps in the right direction. In HCDM we trust.

"(BARF)" - Donovan McNabb, during his game winning drive against Virginia Tech in 1998

by kotite4ever on Apr 3, 2010 10:51 AM EDT reply actions

I agree

Once GP2 got his chance to “leave his DNA all over the program” (as Coach K put it), I think we’ll see a tremendous upswing in multiple areas of the game. So, from a tradition standpoint, I think they established a decent baseline last year on which they can build, in terms of how to prepare, how keep an even head, how to train, how to play, etc.

by TheRenegadePumpkin on Apr 3, 2010 5:04 PM EDT up reply actions