Practice Music:
‘Sweet Child of Mine’
‘Welcome to the Jungle’ Guns N’ Roses
‘Intergalactic’ beastie boys
‘The Next Episode’ Dr. Dre
‘When worlds collide’ power man 5000
‘Down Under’ Men at Work
Lights, camera, action’ Mr. cheeks
‘Great Balls of Fire’ Jerry Lee Lewis
‘Dzek I Dioni’. Connect and Coby
‘Under pressure’ Queen
‘No Limit’ by money man and Key Glock
The players were just in helmets and shoulder pads today. No lower body pads. Just shorts. Today there was a heavy focus on fundamentals. There wasn’t nearly as much scrimmaging as you see at a normal practice. But they are still in just helmets and pads so that makes sense.
This was also the most buttoned down, ‘don’t show anything’ practice I’ve seen in the entire PJ Fleck era. The practice seemed designed to hide both scheme and personnel, if that makes sense. The Gophers were extremely vanilla schematically, but they also didn’t show much personnel wise. For example, there were zero WR/DB one on ones this practice, etc.
Instead, there was a heavy emphasis on fundamentals, which makes sense this early in spring ball.
That’s a roundabout it way of saying I don’t have as many observations as I normally have due to the nature of the practice. For all these reasons I kind of just jotted notes throughout. I will share those with you.
Wouldn’t be a Gopher practice without lots of loud, distracting, industrial sounds. They made those noises both during the practice and during the breaks.
Fleck was extremely animated at practice today. Was coaching loudly from
The start saying stuff like:
‘The ball the ball the ball the ball the ball’
‘We gotta communicate’
‘Attention to detail’
Offense Started out running plays against a skeleton D.
DBs and LBs were working on drops into coverage
Martes Lewis started out the day at right tackle with Carroll inside.
Drake Lindsey pitched it to grass instead of an RB. Still learning the offense.
Offense did a drill that was just the ‘first three steps of each play’. WRs kept running their routes so PJ emphasized it’s just those first three steps, or the release for WRs.
Fleck, ‘square up punt returners build your house’
Darius, Redding, Spencer, Hoskins, and several other WRs were returning punts.
Working on WR reverses. Maybe we see more of that action this year?
Darius looks more put together physically than he did last fall.
Spotted Ryan Burns in in depth convo with one of the guys recording practice.
Fleck encouraging guys during stretching
There was a cool TE drill where players start crouched, touching face mask to face mask. On the whistle they both try to block each other.
‘Defense row the boat swarm’ —Fleck
It’s early in practice but Brosmer seems to have a real command of the offense and already knows all the checks and signals to make. I was really impressed with his command of the offense and they were doing everything full speed. It really seems like Brosmer already knows the offense inside out.
Defense then split into tackling and leverage drill groups with dummies.
QBs were working on handoffs and fakes, often on the same rep which was clever. They would hand the ball off, and then execute the fake as if they still had the ball. An assistant would toss them the second ball after the handoff so they could finish the rep. Fleck knows how to maximize his time on the practice field.
OLineman doing combo blocking drills against teammates with pads.
As I said before, this practice had a heavy focus on drills and fundamentals. It wasn’t until later that we saw competitive O vs. D situations. And even then they were extremely limited.
Ersery is really impressive in person. Wow. Dude is a load and he’s got good feet.
Martes Lewis sweat out his whole jersey within half an hour of the start of practice. Dude is going hard.
Lotta Gopher players wearing the safety outer helmet shells. The linemen were all wearing them and many of the skill players as well.
Still: WRs and QBs vs DBs
Elijah Spencer with a drop on a nice pass from Brosmer. Gotta pull that in.
Drake Lindsey effortlessly throws a beautiful fade route. Wow does he have an arm!
Lemeke great sideline catch from Brosmer
Seeing WAY more throws to the RBs than I’m used to seeing. They practiced a ton of swing passes. Maybe we see more of that this year?
Spencer makes up for his drop with a beautiful route and catch on a crossing route.
So far Brosmer looks accurate (but there’s no rush yet of course)
Fleck, ‘I just love you, Stolsky. I just love you’
Fleck, ‘accelerate in the middle. Let the other guy get tired’
Hoskins with a nice punt return attempt. Got good momentum coming out of the catch and made a move.
Crawford with several end over end punts which I don’t love to see.
TEAM: 11 on 11
Brosmer throws a pick. It was a helluva break on the ball by McMillan. Impressive stuff.
Brosmer bounced back and made some good throws right after that.
Fleck, ‘Play the game. Make people miss!’
Lindsey missed an easy RB swing pass
Nice route, throw and catch from Brosmer to Lanier on a deep hitch.
Spencer great route on a short catch and run
Sieh Bangura sighting! Spotted catching a swing pass and looking smooth doing it.
Brosmer missed a deep out over the receiver’s head.
Jaydon wright drops a swing pass
Lindsey really smooth throwing the out route.
Spencer with the third drop I’ve seen from
him today. Need him to be more consistent.
Brosmer nice fade pass to Conzemius but it’s broken up by Gerald. Ball was on the money though. Cade has gotta fight more for that ball.
Fleck, ‘Great Job, defense’ after they held coverage for long time.
Broke into individual drills. Fumble recovery
Drills all over the field at all positions.
Team: ones against ones
False start sieh bangura
Brosmer route is well covered and thrown out of bounds. Not sure if that was intentional as he was covered.
Amazing crossing route completed from
Brosmer to Lemeke. Lemeke looked really good today in the absence of Daniel jackson, who was held out of practice today.
Fleck, ‘when we’re playing we stop on the whistle’
Nobody open. Brosmer forces it into a tight window but it’s broken up by Garrison Monroe.
2s:
Lindsey unreal seam route throw for a long gain to TE Nathan Jones.
Offense and Defense split up to go through some plays at half speed.
Fleck, ‘78%. It’s culture!’
WRs work on establishing position on endzone fade routes. Kind of an interesting drill. WR basically boxing out a coach in order to catch the ball. Drill is done half speed.
Players shook hands and then cheered at the end of practice. Couldn’t hear the post practice speech from Fleck as I was too far away. Fleck did a kind of call and response by asking the players questions to which they answered in unison, ‘yes Sir or sir’
Players met for a decent amount of time in a huddle even after Fleck was done speaking. Wonder if that means this is more of a ‘player led team’ than a ‘coach led team’. Fleck always says player led teams are the most successful.
Players then broke up into groups to do individual foam roller work for the post practice stretch.
Quick thoughts:
Brosmer’s command of the offense and leadership skills were on display. He is clearly the leader of this team. He threw some really nice balls today as well. That said, without star WR Daniel Jackson and TE Jameson Geers, the WRs often weren’t getting open. Brosmer is still adjusting to the speed at this level, but that’s to be expected this early in camp.
Spencer also had a few drops which he needs to clean up. But he made a couple nice plays too.
Lemeke looked legit today. Gonna be a battle between Spencer and Lemeke to see who gets the lion’s share of the non-Daniel jackson throws. Lemeke had a better day today, but Spencer shows promise and I think he will be a factor despite his struggles today.
Our DBs looked good. They were making plays. The transfer McMillan made plays. Mike Gerald looked really good on a few plays too. DBs were communicating well. Overall happy with what I saw from the secondary today.
Great to see a healthy Cody Lindenberg out there!
Hard to tell much about the line of scrimmage play when everybody’s in shorts. But I will say guys were hustling and appeared to be working hard to improve. I’ve never seen Lewis so sweaty before so kudos to him for seizing his opportunity to potentially start.
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