Prospect Day/Scrimmage Today

[ojaipony]

SMU Football retweeted
Mark Smith @coachmarksmith · 37m 37 minutes ago
What a amazing crowd of prospects at @SMU_Football Prospect Day today! #standingroomonly #packed

https://twitter.com/SMU_Football

Anyone there who can report?

[blackoutpony]

There was a ton of kids there today. Great to see.

A couple quick observations....

The offense got beat up pretty bad most of practice, until the end.
When the offense goes fast, it's FAST. I was impressed with the pace.
The oline is going to lose us a bunch of games this year. It's pretty brutal.
Not the best day for the QBs, but Davis is going to make a lot of plays with his legs this year.... Because he'll have to, but he's the best athlete on the field.
The defense got pretty fired up after big plays. Loved seeing that.
Punting was terrible..... So bad that I felt I had to note it.

I was really happy to finally get out there. A couple hundred people at least.

[vielsiehorsepower]

[quote="blackoutpony"]There was a ton of kids there today. Great to see.

A couple quick observations....

"When the offense goes fast, it's FAST. I was impressed with the pace."
-So overall the tempo looks good, just not the execution?

"The oline is going to lose us a bunch of games this year. It's pretty brutal."
-If you had to guess, how many?

"Punting was terrible..... So bad that I felt I had to note it."
-Odd considering that this was pathetically one of the bright spots of last season

[GiddyUp]

Pretty nice turnout - food truck out in the front gate area.

Punting - what happened to the skinny kid?

Kicking - I think we have an incoming frosh?

DL looks decent, Gaines is going to be good. yes, OL will get worked all year by our opponents.

[vielsiehorsepower]

Here comes the quick passes, screens and read options.

[StallionsModelT]

I was there. Incredible how many prospects we had on campus. Just so awesome to see the future and where this program is headed.

I echo the sentiments on the OL. They are terrible. Next year is going to be tough to watch but you have to just have faith that this thing is headed in the right direction. June just left it flat out nuked back to the stone age.

[ojaipony]

Hate hearing but not really all that surprised. Hccm saying "well we got a lot of em". (he didn't finish and say 'and they all suck [deleted]'). Ha ha. Feel sorry for Fry but he's a young coach starting out and can't expect a bunch of Outland trophy winners quite yet. I want to know what the hell happened to lasecki and weeks. Hopefully Hyder and brown are improvements.

Thanks for sharing!

[fifty]

Wait, what happend to Lasceki and Weeks??? Out/injured?

[blackoutpony]

Wait, what happend to Lasceki and Weeks??? Out/injured?

Laseki looks terrible. He's just been overhyped the past few years.

Amd weeks looks so out of shape, that he makes Jamarcus Russell look like a hard worker.

[Donnell88]

The offensive line is the unit that takes the longest to jell; they need to learn how to make pre-snap-adjustments and learn how to trust each other. I thought they were the group that showed the most improvement over the course of last season; they had a pretty good game against UConn.
And everybody knew that we were going to throw on almost every down.

Here's hoping hard work and an improved running game will pay off.

[smusic 00]

Loved the quick pace. Offense completed a 50 yard play to the 8 yd line and instead of jogging down and huddling it was a flat out sprint to the ball and a play was run in about 15 seconds. Lots of yelling and signal calling. Really fun to watch, but the guys just aren't there yet in the O side. D line looked very promising.

[JasonB]

Honestly, the offensive line played a lot better today than they did two weeks ago. The d-line manhandled them two weeks ago. It wasn't nearly the jailbreak today as it was then.

Play calling was significantly different. Two weeks ago was like watching a June practice the percentage of time we threw the ball. Today was the opposite - a lot of running, and a lot of power looks. Gresham played a lot.

Lasecki played guard today with Barns at center. Barns did a lot better this week than last.

Offense had success early with long passes - deep to Gaines for a TD and two long PI calls. They went away from that and really didn't throw the ball to Sutton a whole lot.

Two weeks ago , I thought the defense completely dominated the offense physically other than Sutton. This didn't have that same feel, but the defense still made a lot of plays.

I thought today the offense showed they could have power run at will if they really wanted to, though. Breaking some nice, long runs from their own one happened about zero times the last two years, so that was nice to see. Last practice, the only way they really moved the ball was on a Davis scramble or a big play from Sutton. It was nice to see the running game have some success.

Lots of neat experimentation with players at different positions and different looks.

Practice report should be on its way soon.

[mrydel]

To hear the OL is struggling and the running game is looking good and the DL is looking good gives me much less confidence in the DL.

[smusic 00]

We ran the ball 90% of the plays and broke a few big ones, one from our own one yd line; it wasn't like our running game dominated the d line.

The 'option' tosses are cool plays where you can see lots of opportunities to throw off the defense on misdirection or by passing. I think that's the hardest part for the oline. It's a completely different concept from the pass only scheme from before.

[JasonB]

To hear the OL is struggling and the running game is looking good and the DL is looking good gives me much less confidence in the DL.

I do think we have to take some of the improvement of the OL with a grain of salt considering Wood and Minor didn't practice. Lawler played well, and I don't think there is a big drop from him to Wood. But Conley is a pretty good drop from Minor on the first team.

That said, last practice the entire right side and center of the line folded regularly. That side definitely improved their play, and Barns played better. McCarty also played better as well. I'm not saying they were world beaters, I am just saying it wasn't a disaster. You can tell from Morris's interview, though, that he wants a lineman to grab a job. Outside of 71, I don't think anyone has done that.

I thought the passing game struggled a lot more than the running game did today. Which is kind of surprising with all of the experimentation that was going on in the secondary.

One thing I really liked from the offensive line is that they ran a drill where the offense had 3 minutes on the clock, the defense had a timeout or two, and the offense was trying to run out the clock. Both the first and second team offense was able to run the ball for a couple of first downs and run the clock out (and yes, they practiced the victory formation).

The most glaring hole on the defense with Shaq out is the Star position. We have guys who can play the Mike and Will. Star is a void. IMHO, the defensive roster is being set up in a way that frosh will come in and compete for spots in the 2 deep at Star and S.