The weather turned out to be even nastier than expected yesterday causing some changes to our practice design. We would not have been able to get much basic level teaching and learning done outside, so I chose to take our practice indoors.

We went inside and shared the gym with the pitchers and catchers that baseball coach Brad Woods was working with, at the time.

We did have some obvious limitations on space, but were still able to make it a productive day working on offensive skills.

Yesterday was the first day that I worked full-time with our skill players. We began by trying to run a drill to work on running after the catch, but had a serious problem making catches. Because of this, I stopped the drill and we then worked on various ball drills for the next 25; or so, minutes.

We mainly worked on ball drills that would emphasize the receiver “giving” with the ball while bringing it into his body. What I mean by this is that the receiver should have his hands extended in front of his body with a slight elbow bend. When the ball comes into the receiver’s hands you should be able to see his hands work back into his body, thus “giving” with the movement of the ball as the catch is made. The opposite of this would be extending your hands and locking your elbows in front of you, as where you would have no “give” when the ball hits your hands.

In effect, trying to catch a football in this manner is alot like a ball hitting a brick wall. It may seem very elementary, but is something that has to be drilled extensively with young receivers. And, learning how to catch is something that needs to be done in the off-season. Because, during the season there are many more things that need to be drilled with WR’s (routes, alignments, sight adjustments, various releases, etc.). There is less and less time to work those type of drills beginning in July.

Following our ball drills, we then went on to work some drills to emphasize running after the catch. Needless to say, there was some improvement from the first attempt of these drills, at the start of practice.

We then installed our first intermediate route at the end of the day. Tyler Ray, RJ Lasoya, Parker Anderson, and John Gillespie were the leaders in the drills yesterday. Davon Gill also looked like he improved his catching technique throughout practice.

The offensive linemen spent the better part of the day working on drive blocking drills against first and second level defenders. I spent the entire day working with the skilled players and did not get to see our OL work. However, we had the majority of our linemen there and what I saw good effort on what little that I did see.

We only practiced about an hour and a half yesterday, but were able to get some good work in. Next week we will finish up by going on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Hopefully, we can get some good weather like we had during the first week. I plan on adding some competitions and playing some more 6 on 6 or 7 on 7 games to finish up with some fun stuff. Enjoy the madness this weekend and check back next week to see how our final three days go.