By Brian Clark a.k.a Lawngnome o-line
Practice today had a bit more of a buzz among the fans since it was the first practice for Vernon Gholston. He looked fit, and played a majority of the snaps on the second squad.
Todays camp included drills such as:
11 v 11 full contact drills
1 v 1 tackling drills (defender tackling an onrushing player)
Front 7 vs. Front 7
Kickoff/Return drills
2 minute drills
In the 1 v 1 tackling drills, many of the ball handlers ran right passed or juked out the defender. On Gholston’s first, Brad Smith basically blew by him, but that was the norm for many of the players. Bryan Thomas held up well to Cotchery, Drew Coleman shoestring tackled Stuckey, David Barrett tackled Paul Raymond, and in the scariest (and last one) Eric Smith horse collar tackled Wallace Wright and Wright stayed down for a minute. He got up and limped around, with an obvious ankle injury. After taking a few minutes off he jumped back in on the drills.
Pennington made a few nice plays on underneath routes for td’s on 11 v 11 drills. Clemens also completed a TD pass to Keller on a seam route. He also connected with Keller twice in another 11 v 11 session. Ratliff made nice passes to both Coles and Cothchery when he was running with the first team, but lost accuracy when on the move.
When conducting 1 v1 o line vs dline drills some players that stood out were Jacob Bender on Kareem Brown, Robert Turner on Sione Pouha, and Brick on Bryan Thomas. Brick has looked pretty good so far, and has not gotten beat on any of the rushes I’ve seen.
In a sad news situation, during the 11 v 11 drills danny woodhead received a handoff, hit the pile and then as the dust cleared, he remained down with what appeared to either be a knee or ankle injury. He was slow to get off of his back, and was carried off the field by two players, without being able to put any weight on the injured leg. Sad considering the noticeable amount of heart he has shown on the practice field.
To end the camp both Pennington and Clemens led 2 minute drills. Pennington decently well converting on a 4th down situation. He got the offense down and set up a 47 yard field goal which was missed wide left by Nugent.
On Clemens drive he converted on a short 4th down situation as well. Drew Coleman made a nice play to knock down a first down pass attempt. On the next play, He pumped, stepped up in the pocket and hit a 55 yard deep pass to Clowney which went 40-45 in the air. With the ball placed on the one, he missed a fade to Marcus Henry and an inside slant route to him as well, where it seemed Henry ran the wrong route. Nugent knocked down the short field goal from 23 yards away to end the drill and the practice.
In other notes, Musa Smith practiced for the first day today.
Rumors of Favre coming to the Jets was floating around, and it created a bit of a buzz amongst the fans.
If anyone has any specific questions of how certain players are looking, just respond to the jetnation forums, and I’ll answer as best as I can.