cashman34
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Good afternoon gents and gals....I was present at the Dolphins facility for the opening day of the 2007 training Camp. I was so excited that I couldn't sleep last night, which almost caused me to miss the 8:30 am kickoff of practice. But don't worry out-of-towners....I made it and here are "my" observations and opinions on how it went.
First off it was HOT!!! Believe me when I tell you. The entire practice seemed to be on a very ;ow-key methodical pace....Players were in shorts and jerseys with the protective shoulder shocker pads. The players were working very hard in the drills, but were allowed to walk from drill to drill....something that surprised me since most coaches would run you until you vomited for committing such blasphemy.
I'll breakdown my observation as best I can...the defense was on the field farthest from me so it was a little more difficult to see their progress from where I was sitting. The Dolphin faithful are more concerned with the "offense" at this point anyway...we know our defense shows up to play every week for the most part...it's been the offense that has recently been failing us.
***RUNNING BACKS***
I saw everybody in the drills and Ronnie looked a little soft, but he was in shape....don't want to knit pick. He showed pretty good quickness and explosion for the first few steps when he'd open it up a little....then he'd trot it down into the endzone, jumping up at one point to finger roll the football over the goal post...he seemed very loose, which was good.
Schlesinger looked like the road grader fullback he is....it's hard for a fullback to show anything without full pads and contact, so he and Mauia will have to wait until Sunday night to separate themselves from the pack. However, Reagan showed surprisingly good pass catching ability coming out of the backfield.
Booker is just flat out quick...which was easy to see even though they really didn't have the backs open it up at all...at least not to full speed. Chatman and the rest of the crew pulled up the rear with solid pass catching performances, but we'll be needing someone to develop out of this bunch to handle the 3rd running back slot.
Over all there wasn't alot to see as far as true preformance under the pressure of being hit and that's how running backs are graded....so my report on Sunday night will be alot more insightful as it pertains to this position. Both Brown and Booker showed great acceleration and vision through the holes.
***OFFENSIVE LINE***
There's been some movement with the line up.....both Mormino and Satele appear to be working with the 1st team O-Line. Mormino is working at the RG position....with Anthony Alabi working at the RT, a surprising move since the buzz was that L.J. Shelton was slated to start there in the earlier mini-camps. Vernon Carey lined up at the LT and held his own against a slew of DE's including Mr. Taylor himself.
Satele looks very comfortable leading the line through drills and he got the snap off very fluently for the most part today...there were a few bobbles but it was hard to determine of it was his fault or the QB's. Alibi looked very comfortable getting back into his drops on pass pro. I will be interested to see how this plays out once they suit up for real tomorrow night.
Liewenski looked a little sluggish but I'm willing to give him a pass until I can really make a solid judgement as to his abaility to move people off of the ball.
As a whole the offensive line looked as if they needed a lot more bonding/film time to gell the way their going to need to if they plan on being successful right out of the gate....But for the first day in camp I felt every player on the O-Line worked as hard as one could expect in the searing morning heat...They all exhibited good hand/footwork in pass pro. It's a longshot for them to be completely ready for the opener....but it looks possible in my opinion.
***WIDE RECEIVERS***
I am not quite sure what was up with Mr. Chambers, but he dropped quite a few balls...one was a pass over the middle where he had the ball in his possession and dropped it when the DB thudded him...This was not very good in my eyes, as it reminded me of his performance last year.
#84 appeared to have a bullseye on his chest as the DB's seemed to be very aggresive in their play with him....he hit the ground twice this morning after he was hit by the DB trying to defend the catch.
Ginn,Jr. was primarily used as a decoy in the "skeleton" pass drill where they used a LT-C-RT O-Line with all the receivers running their normal routes. That's where I saw Carey and JT battle for a few reps today...(Carey held his own by the way).
There were alot of short to medium crossing routes that were run freeing up some of the new guys like David Sutton. Now I would like to go on record as saying this kid will make our squad as the 5th receiver....Didn't see Kerry Reed do too much today, but I wasn't watching him that closely since he lined up alot with both Ginn and Sutton and it was hard to pay attention to all three on opposite sides of the field.
Sutton's stature looks alot like a taller Randy Moss...and this kid can definitely make the tough catch. On one play he was running what apeared to be a skinny inside post right off of the line...Trent Green got off a bad pass that was below Sutton's knees, but he just effortlessly reached down without breaking stride or form and plucked the ball out of the air as if it was thrown to his chest! This guys got some really long arms folks..he's also got a nice set of hands on the end of them as well.
PK Sam lined up in the slot for a couple reps....he had some nice catches in the WR drills this morning as well. Derek Hagan's hands are starting to look alot like they did when he was leading the PAC-10 in receptions....Hagan ran very crisp routes all day and adjusted to the poorly thrown balls very well...making some very tough catches in traffic with some nice runs afterwards.
Marty Booker just continues to defy time and showed excellent quickness and hands all day...he's is not going to relinquish his job very easily, believe that if nothing else my fellow fanatics!
Ginn, Jr. is a WR folks! He ran very smoothly today and was running the same type of skinny posy route that Sutton had success on earlier....he was lined up on the right side of the hashmarks and the QB which I believe was Lemon got the pass off a little high....Ginn jumped up and backhand tipped the ball with his left hand to himself for a wonderful catch....I never saw Ginn drop one pass all day...period.
In fact, when the ball comes into his hands it's as if it just get's absorbed and all you hear is the faint "pop" from the velocity of it hitting his gloves....I like what I saw from him today...he ran hard whether he was getting the ball or not....which opened up alot of the crossing routes that appeared to be the theme of the day...they never threw deep to Ginn, Jr. all morning to all of our dismay....
I was really looking forward to seeing Ginn open it up. He did do a slight takeoff on a deep comeback and got "instant" depth behind the CB that was covering him...It's scary how quickly this guy accelerates and gets vertical...he broke down and ran a nice comeback to the ball but the QB made a bad throw due to interference from JT...Ginn will be a solid receiver in due time, this guy drops nothing!
There will be some very tough battles at this position this training camp and I can see that we will be cutting somebody that is very talented.
***TIGHT ENDS***
The TE's looked ok today....David Martin dropped a couple earlier on in practice, but quickly got into the groove and had a couple nice receptions in traffic with defenders hanging onto him....he shows good athletisism for a big TE....Rader and Peele caught the ball pretty nicely in the drills and Peele had a nice catch with coverage on him as well.
There was really not much running done and I grade them all with an "incomplete" for run blocking at this point...I'll be able to evaluate them better when we get the armor on. But as a whole, they appeared more than serviceable from what I saw today.
***QUARTERBACKS***
This was a large part of my focus this morning....as I want to see if Cleo Lemon really has enough juice to compete with Trent Green head-to-head. His passes seemed to take a count longer to get to it's destination...he was lifting his back leg alot and I felt that had something to do with the "floating" appearance that his throws showed today....Lemon appears to be confident with the offense, but seems to have this small glitch in his motion...he threw high alot this morning.
Trent looked a little rusty but he had nice zip on his throws and appeared to be very accurate. His timing seemed a little off as he appears to still be trying to get his timing down with the veteran WR's. With all that said Trent Green will be ready by the beginning of the season to lead us onto the field come game 1. There will be no controversy in my opinion as to who's going to be best suited to start for the Miami Dolphins this season.
Now one man that could possibly give Trent a run for his money come mid-season is John Beck...This kid is already comfortable with the playbook as there appeared to be no confusion as to his responsibilities on his throws...Now he made a few bad throws, but he seemed to know where it needed to be and was trying to rush his release a couple times which caused the low and inside throws I saw from him today....But believe me when I say this kid gets excellent rotataton on the ball when it comes off of his finger tips...it's almost like a baseball pitcher's movement. His spiral is the tightest of all the QB's and this kid seems to be a natural leader...we will be in good hands in the future with John Beck.
Hamdan was decent, but had more in common with Lemon than Beck on his throws. I really don't see him factoring into the QB race at all.
***DEFENSE***
The defense worked on the far field all day today so it was very hard for me to determine whom was doing what. But I did notice that Travis Daniels and Will Allen worked with the 1st team defense....as Goodman did shoulder rehab exercises in the background on the field.
When we went to "nickel" I saw Will move down to cover the slot with him and Travis teamed up on the same side. Shirdonya Mitchell got the work at LCB today and actually showed some very nice coverage...Zach and Joey P. manned the LB positions for the "nickel"....Yeremiah Bell held down one of the Safety positions, I couldn't really see the SS, but it appeared to be Renaldo Hill though.
The secondary as a whole was very aggressive in breaking on the thrown ball and was always in the "immediate" vecinity to either break-up the pass or tackle the WR.
Jason Allen didn't get too many reps though he appeared healthy and was running around just fine....I don't want to read into that too much because I really wasn't paying as much attention to the defense. So maybe someone that was watching the defense a little closer could add in on this.
Kelvin Smith looked very smooth moving about in drills and covered pretty good from the LILB position when put in. Zach, Channing, and Joey were very active and I can't imagine many offenses having any kind of offensive consistency with these three and Mr. Taylor lurking around.
JT and boys were the furthest away from me as they were all the way in the back left corner of the field....even with this being the case, Paul Soliai was still huge....and he was well over 100 yards away. Rodrique Wright was in very high spirits as he was put through the pass rush drill on the tall bags...Roth was his same old "motoring" self, just being relentless in the pursuit of whomever had the ball or was his assignment all morning....Roth's tenacity will be a major surprise for the O-Lineman he will face as the "new" starter....he appears to be more than ready for the challenge of pounding the opposition's RT.
***SPECIAL TEAMS***
Ted Ginn, Jr. will be electric for us at the PR/KR positions no doubt in my mind....This kid catches the ball moving forwards, backwards, or laterally in either direction. You're hard pressed to even hear the ball when it hits his hands...his initial burst up field is outstanding....and if the coverage team makes the slightest mistake it is o-v-e-r guaranteed!
If we ever have to count on Lorenzo Booker to return punts we're in real trouble. He bobbled and dropped more than two kicks and does not appear half as comfortable catching the ball as Ginn, Jr.
Brandon Fields punted the ball very well as he was standing on the 20 yd. line and was consistently booting it down to the other 25-20 yd. line....with one punt landing at about the 15 yd. line.
***FINAL THOUGHTS***
This "opening day" felt more like a regular game week practice...There was no hoopla, glitz, or glamour shown at all. The team took the field and worked both team and individual drills very diligently with precision of the movement being the focal point instead of the number of reps. I previously mentioned that the players were allowed to mozy around if not involved in a drill and the veterans seemed to really enjoy the more focused relaxed atmosphere that Coach Cameron provides.
Cameron moved around from drill to drill, position to position all day....never really becoming a fixture at any one particular station. You can sense a calmness and focus to his supervision and the players appear to have accepted his leadership as they were all working very hard at whatever the coaching staff asked them to do. Not one coach raised his voice all morning other than for volume purposes....There was no public humiliation for mistakes made whatsoever, as the position assistants would just pull the player aside for a little one-on-one while keeping the drill moving.
Practice lasted for approximately 2 hours and I was really ready to go due to the sun anyway...I was still hoping to see Ginn open it up deep, but I think Coach Cameron kept things low key as not to start too much of a "hype buzz" for the kid....After all, we know the kid can go deep, it's the other routes we should be concerned about. But Ginn is a very hard worker and I am positive that he will be a huge playmaker for us this season without doubt...I would still like to see him take a solid hit just so I can see how he will react.
Well...that's all I've got guys....I hope it's enough. This thread is dedicated to all of the Phin fans that can't be here in the flesh....Hopefully my visions made you all feel as if you were right next to me on the bleachers melting in the blazing South Florida sun. I won't be going back until tomorrow night's practice as that's the first full pads practice for the camp.
Football is a very physical and violent game and it is literally impossible to get a true assessment of any givin players ability without seeing them work in full gear. So I'll be back with another post for you PhinPsychos tomorrow night....stay tuned.
Go Phins!
First off it was HOT!!! Believe me when I tell you. The entire practice seemed to be on a very ;ow-key methodical pace....Players were in shorts and jerseys with the protective shoulder shocker pads. The players were working very hard in the drills, but were allowed to walk from drill to drill....something that surprised me since most coaches would run you until you vomited for committing such blasphemy.
I'll breakdown my observation as best I can...the defense was on the field farthest from me so it was a little more difficult to see their progress from where I was sitting. The Dolphin faithful are more concerned with the "offense" at this point anyway...we know our defense shows up to play every week for the most part...it's been the offense that has recently been failing us.
***RUNNING BACKS***
I saw everybody in the drills and Ronnie looked a little soft, but he was in shape....don't want to knit pick. He showed pretty good quickness and explosion for the first few steps when he'd open it up a little....then he'd trot it down into the endzone, jumping up at one point to finger roll the football over the goal post...he seemed very loose, which was good.
Schlesinger looked like the road grader fullback he is....it's hard for a fullback to show anything without full pads and contact, so he and Mauia will have to wait until Sunday night to separate themselves from the pack. However, Reagan showed surprisingly good pass catching ability coming out of the backfield.
Booker is just flat out quick...which was easy to see even though they really didn't have the backs open it up at all...at least not to full speed. Chatman and the rest of the crew pulled up the rear with solid pass catching performances, but we'll be needing someone to develop out of this bunch to handle the 3rd running back slot.
Over all there wasn't alot to see as far as true preformance under the pressure of being hit and that's how running backs are graded....so my report on Sunday night will be alot more insightful as it pertains to this position. Both Brown and Booker showed great acceleration and vision through the holes.
***OFFENSIVE LINE***
There's been some movement with the line up.....both Mormino and Satele appear to be working with the 1st team O-Line. Mormino is working at the RG position....with Anthony Alabi working at the RT, a surprising move since the buzz was that L.J. Shelton was slated to start there in the earlier mini-camps. Vernon Carey lined up at the LT and held his own against a slew of DE's including Mr. Taylor himself.
Satele looks very comfortable leading the line through drills and he got the snap off very fluently for the most part today...there were a few bobbles but it was hard to determine of it was his fault or the QB's. Alibi looked very comfortable getting back into his drops on pass pro. I will be interested to see how this plays out once they suit up for real tomorrow night.
Liewenski looked a little sluggish but I'm willing to give him a pass until I can really make a solid judgement as to his abaility to move people off of the ball.
As a whole the offensive line looked as if they needed a lot more bonding/film time to gell the way their going to need to if they plan on being successful right out of the gate....But for the first day in camp I felt every player on the O-Line worked as hard as one could expect in the searing morning heat...They all exhibited good hand/footwork in pass pro. It's a longshot for them to be completely ready for the opener....but it looks possible in my opinion.
***WIDE RECEIVERS***
I am not quite sure what was up with Mr. Chambers, but he dropped quite a few balls...one was a pass over the middle where he had the ball in his possession and dropped it when the DB thudded him...This was not very good in my eyes, as it reminded me of his performance last year.
#84 appeared to have a bullseye on his chest as the DB's seemed to be very aggresive in their play with him....he hit the ground twice this morning after he was hit by the DB trying to defend the catch.
Ginn,Jr. was primarily used as a decoy in the "skeleton" pass drill where they used a LT-C-RT O-Line with all the receivers running their normal routes. That's where I saw Carey and JT battle for a few reps today...(Carey held his own by the way).
There were alot of short to medium crossing routes that were run freeing up some of the new guys like David Sutton. Now I would like to go on record as saying this kid will make our squad as the 5th receiver....Didn't see Kerry Reed do too much today, but I wasn't watching him that closely since he lined up alot with both Ginn and Sutton and it was hard to pay attention to all three on opposite sides of the field.
Sutton's stature looks alot like a taller Randy Moss...and this kid can definitely make the tough catch. On one play he was running what apeared to be a skinny inside post right off of the line...Trent Green got off a bad pass that was below Sutton's knees, but he just effortlessly reached down without breaking stride or form and plucked the ball out of the air as if it was thrown to his chest! This guys got some really long arms folks..he's also got a nice set of hands on the end of them as well.
PK Sam lined up in the slot for a couple reps....he had some nice catches in the WR drills this morning as well. Derek Hagan's hands are starting to look alot like they did when he was leading the PAC-10 in receptions....Hagan ran very crisp routes all day and adjusted to the poorly thrown balls very well...making some very tough catches in traffic with some nice runs afterwards.
Marty Booker just continues to defy time and showed excellent quickness and hands all day...he's is not going to relinquish his job very easily, believe that if nothing else my fellow fanatics!
Ginn, Jr. is a WR folks! He ran very smoothly today and was running the same type of skinny posy route that Sutton had success on earlier....he was lined up on the right side of the hashmarks and the QB which I believe was Lemon got the pass off a little high....Ginn jumped up and backhand tipped the ball with his left hand to himself for a wonderful catch....I never saw Ginn drop one pass all day...period.
In fact, when the ball comes into his hands it's as if it just get's absorbed and all you hear is the faint "pop" from the velocity of it hitting his gloves....I like what I saw from him today...he ran hard whether he was getting the ball or not....which opened up alot of the crossing routes that appeared to be the theme of the day...they never threw deep to Ginn, Jr. all morning to all of our dismay....
I was really looking forward to seeing Ginn open it up. He did do a slight takeoff on a deep comeback and got "instant" depth behind the CB that was covering him...It's scary how quickly this guy accelerates and gets vertical...he broke down and ran a nice comeback to the ball but the QB made a bad throw due to interference from JT...Ginn will be a solid receiver in due time, this guy drops nothing!
There will be some very tough battles at this position this training camp and I can see that we will be cutting somebody that is very talented.
***TIGHT ENDS***
The TE's looked ok today....David Martin dropped a couple earlier on in practice, but quickly got into the groove and had a couple nice receptions in traffic with defenders hanging onto him....he shows good athletisism for a big TE....Rader and Peele caught the ball pretty nicely in the drills and Peele had a nice catch with coverage on him as well.
There was really not much running done and I grade them all with an "incomplete" for run blocking at this point...I'll be able to evaluate them better when we get the armor on. But as a whole, they appeared more than serviceable from what I saw today.
***QUARTERBACKS***
This was a large part of my focus this morning....as I want to see if Cleo Lemon really has enough juice to compete with Trent Green head-to-head. His passes seemed to take a count longer to get to it's destination...he was lifting his back leg alot and I felt that had something to do with the "floating" appearance that his throws showed today....Lemon appears to be confident with the offense, but seems to have this small glitch in his motion...he threw high alot this morning.
Trent looked a little rusty but he had nice zip on his throws and appeared to be very accurate. His timing seemed a little off as he appears to still be trying to get his timing down with the veteran WR's. With all that said Trent Green will be ready by the beginning of the season to lead us onto the field come game 1. There will be no controversy in my opinion as to who's going to be best suited to start for the Miami Dolphins this season.
Now one man that could possibly give Trent a run for his money come mid-season is John Beck...This kid is already comfortable with the playbook as there appeared to be no confusion as to his responsibilities on his throws...Now he made a few bad throws, but he seemed to know where it needed to be and was trying to rush his release a couple times which caused the low and inside throws I saw from him today....But believe me when I say this kid gets excellent rotataton on the ball when it comes off of his finger tips...it's almost like a baseball pitcher's movement. His spiral is the tightest of all the QB's and this kid seems to be a natural leader...we will be in good hands in the future with John Beck.
Hamdan was decent, but had more in common with Lemon than Beck on his throws. I really don't see him factoring into the QB race at all.
***DEFENSE***
The defense worked on the far field all day today so it was very hard for me to determine whom was doing what. But I did notice that Travis Daniels and Will Allen worked with the 1st team defense....as Goodman did shoulder rehab exercises in the background on the field.
When we went to "nickel" I saw Will move down to cover the slot with him and Travis teamed up on the same side. Shirdonya Mitchell got the work at LCB today and actually showed some very nice coverage...Zach and Joey P. manned the LB positions for the "nickel"....Yeremiah Bell held down one of the Safety positions, I couldn't really see the SS, but it appeared to be Renaldo Hill though.
The secondary as a whole was very aggressive in breaking on the thrown ball and was always in the "immediate" vecinity to either break-up the pass or tackle the WR.
Jason Allen didn't get too many reps though he appeared healthy and was running around just fine....I don't want to read into that too much because I really wasn't paying as much attention to the defense. So maybe someone that was watching the defense a little closer could add in on this.
Kelvin Smith looked very smooth moving about in drills and covered pretty good from the LILB position when put in. Zach, Channing, and Joey were very active and I can't imagine many offenses having any kind of offensive consistency with these three and Mr. Taylor lurking around.
JT and boys were the furthest away from me as they were all the way in the back left corner of the field....even with this being the case, Paul Soliai was still huge....and he was well over 100 yards away. Rodrique Wright was in very high spirits as he was put through the pass rush drill on the tall bags...Roth was his same old "motoring" self, just being relentless in the pursuit of whomever had the ball or was his assignment all morning....Roth's tenacity will be a major surprise for the O-Lineman he will face as the "new" starter....he appears to be more than ready for the challenge of pounding the opposition's RT.
***SPECIAL TEAMS***
Ted Ginn, Jr. will be electric for us at the PR/KR positions no doubt in my mind....This kid catches the ball moving forwards, backwards, or laterally in either direction. You're hard pressed to even hear the ball when it hits his hands...his initial burst up field is outstanding....and if the coverage team makes the slightest mistake it is o-v-e-r guaranteed!
If we ever have to count on Lorenzo Booker to return punts we're in real trouble. He bobbled and dropped more than two kicks and does not appear half as comfortable catching the ball as Ginn, Jr.
Brandon Fields punted the ball very well as he was standing on the 20 yd. line and was consistently booting it down to the other 25-20 yd. line....with one punt landing at about the 15 yd. line.
***FINAL THOUGHTS***
This "opening day" felt more like a regular game week practice...There was no hoopla, glitz, or glamour shown at all. The team took the field and worked both team and individual drills very diligently with precision of the movement being the focal point instead of the number of reps. I previously mentioned that the players were allowed to mozy around if not involved in a drill and the veterans seemed to really enjoy the more focused relaxed atmosphere that Coach Cameron provides.
Cameron moved around from drill to drill, position to position all day....never really becoming a fixture at any one particular station. You can sense a calmness and focus to his supervision and the players appear to have accepted his leadership as they were all working very hard at whatever the coaching staff asked them to do. Not one coach raised his voice all morning other than for volume purposes....There was no public humiliation for mistakes made whatsoever, as the position assistants would just pull the player aside for a little one-on-one while keeping the drill moving.
Practice lasted for approximately 2 hours and I was really ready to go due to the sun anyway...I was still hoping to see Ginn open it up deep, but I think Coach Cameron kept things low key as not to start too much of a "hype buzz" for the kid....After all, we know the kid can go deep, it's the other routes we should be concerned about. But Ginn is a very hard worker and I am positive that he will be a huge playmaker for us this season without doubt...I would still like to see him take a solid hit just so I can see how he will react.
Well...that's all I've got guys....I hope it's enough. This thread is dedicated to all of the Phin fans that can't be here in the flesh....Hopefully my visions made you all feel as if you were right next to me on the bleachers melting in the blazing South Florida sun. I won't be going back until tomorrow night's practice as that's the first full pads practice for the camp.
Football is a very physical and violent game and it is literally impossible to get a true assessment of any givin players ability without seeing them work in full gear. So I'll be back with another post for you PhinPsychos tomorrow night....stay tuned.
Go Phins!
