Spring Scrimmage 2 report (didn't stay till end... COLD)

[Darth Snow]

Some thoughts of mine are going in Barzil for various reasons... but here's most of what i noticed:

Simmons sighting. The guy was involved all day, made some damn good plays. Didn't get a chance deep, but worked against Jimmy and drew a 3d down pass interference flag after Jimmy had to hold him or give up the TD on a slant.

Clemons was legit. Looked pretty good on every play. Was nearly 3 for 3 for TD's on the goal line drill.

Quick Hildreth is one hell of a runner and did pretty well. Good vision and great cuts. Seems to have a higher top gear then speedy. Might not be as strong tho. The bad with Quick is most definitely his hands. He dropped everything that came near him.
sidenote: we only had 2 TB's all scrimmage. Lock was out.

Parker Orms: Start thinking up nick names for him. He is gonna be a great player for us. The guy is just a missile. Fight' through blocks, has a nose for the ball, and just seems dangerous.

Clark Evans had some nice catches, including a busted fieldgoal that cody threw up for him.

QB battle update: Bothy TH and Cody had on the yellow jersey. TH got first crack with the 1's to start and in the goal line work, but Cody got 1st crack with the hurry up O. Better QB on the day was TH imho. Cody had more bad balls (including like 3 or 4 tipped), but TH did have a pick off a leaping deflection and one that Major should have gotten.

Hirschmann had a real rough day early on, but was doing better as I left. He has a LONG delivery, but damn it gets there quick. He was leaving receivers out to dry (nearly got superman killed). Unless things change, looks like a RS to me. Then again, it is just spring ball.

Deji had a nice pick.

Kasa had a nice QB pressure early but didnt' see him much after that.

Oline has been eating. Look much wider and stouter. Especially givens. Richter is a beast. Solder seemed to have a guy on the ground pretty regularly. They did a lot better in the ground game, but were constantly giving up open looks to blitzers in the pass.

Dline... Nothing spectacular to report.

Perkins looks much thicker. Almost LBish. Polk and him didn't really do anything to stand out.

Starting WR's (with willjef and simas out) were.... Cefalo, Espy, and Clemons. Espy caught quite a few balls early. Made some dudes miss.....

Derrick Webb was our short yardage FB.

Thornton only got one ball thrown his way, overthrown by Cody (just barely).

Deehan looked solid. Starter solid.

And now the really bad...

Kicking game was awful.

FG: Grossnickle was the clear #1. First attempt was a bad snap (or badly handled by cody, couldn't tell), and the next 5 or so were awful. Grossnickle kicked one into the line, shanked one that went more sideways then forward, and missed a few. As I walked out he had one go short.

Other guy was badly hooking or pushing them just to the left. yikes.

Punting was bad. GN had a bad day all around. Longest was a fair catch 41 yarder by my count. Just realllly bad. Hang time sometimes, but more ducks than eagles.

Punt returner #1 was Clemons. #2 Simmons woot. Neither got to show much since the punts were so short. Quick was int here as well for 1 punt that he managed to get a few yards on. Clemons bobbled a few.

Darden was just working in when I left, got nothing thrown his way.

thats all i got for the moment. I was getting excited watching them warm up, but I left with a bad taste in my mouth.

 

[LongHaulBuff]

Thanks for the report. rep

 

[Darth Snow]

Addtional: Very few running plays. Lots of screens early on. Every time they tried a RB screen the Dline was all over it. Bandison must have been working on that. The RB would just be covered.

Oh, and my fav walk on (Lobato) looks like a Big 12 QB now. Taller and bigger then Hirschman, and his throwing motion is fixed. Still has them dive on him sometimes tho. Night and day from last year. If Hirsch doesn't push for starting time (which seems likely), Lobato will amost certainly be our #3 so he can RS, and I wouldn't call him a bad #3.

 

[ScottyBuff]

Parker Orms: Start thinking up nick names for him. He is gonna be a great player for us. The guy is just a missile. Fight' through blocks, has a nose for the ball, and just seems dangerous.

Sounds like you just did! Orms Missile

thanks for the great practice report!

 

[Buffnik]

Thanks, Snow.

 

[Hugegroove]

Nice Job Snowbuff!

I'm surprised Gnickel was that bad. Maybe he just had the jitters/butterflies. I'm going to assume Goodman stood on the sidline?

 

[Darth Snow]

Nice Job Snowbuff!

I'm surprised Gnickel was that bad. Maybe he just had the jitters/butterflies. I'm going to assume Goodman stood on the sidline?

So was I after all the positive stuff I heard. ya, money was no where to be seen.

 

[Duff Man]

Nice stuff Snow.

I am shocked we are still having special teams issues. Shocked!

EDIT: Snow, are you sure you saw Givens? Adam from Rivals said he was absent. Seems like he has been missing a few practices now.

 

[Darth Snow]

Nice stuff Snow.

I am shocked we are still having special teams issues. Shocked!

EDIT: Snow, are you sure you saw Givens? Adam from Rivals said he was absent. Seems like he has been missing a few practices now.

Oops. Thanks for letting me know. I saw #75, which I assumed was givens since he spent some time with the 1s as RT. That was Jack Harriss. Harris looks THICK. Some issues with false starts, but he looks the part of a Big 12 tackle thats for damn sure. Much bigger looking then Givens.

 

[Duff Man]

Oops. Thanks for letting me know. I saw #75, which I assumed was givens since he spent some time with the 1s as RT. That was Jack Harriss. Harris looks THICK. Some issues with false starts, but he looks the part of a Big 12 tackle thats for damn sure. Much bigger looking then Givens.

Nice. There has been a lot of good buzz around Harris. I think buffaholic mentioned earlier this spring that he looked the part of a Big 12 tackle too.

 

[buffaholic]

missing a practice or two for class conflicts is one thing. Bryce has been awol since spring break I think.......

Harris is much bigger than Givens at this point. I was going to write after yesterday's observations that I wonder if Givens can hold off Harris this year..... Hard to tell how effective he is, but he certainly passes the eyeball test.

 

[SINKRATZ]

Espy and Cefalo starting WRs...eeee-gad. I know some guys are dinged up, but damn.

 

[Darian3Hagan]

Sounds like you just did! Orms Missile

thanks for the great practice report!

Thunder Orms?

Lightning Orms?

Ok I will quit now.

 

[Buffnik]

P.O.

 

[wsp4820]

Some stream of consciousness thoughts to add to SB's thoughts.

Special teams are as bad as he says. Rough. Goodman was on the sideline but not wearing pads, not sure if he was hurt or demoted.

Our LBs look pretty good. Sipili is playing well and should have had a pick if he didn't drop it. Major looked good, Webb looked good.

Our lines both look bigger and stronger than I can remember for quite a while.

Clemons was the only weapon we had on the field today (at least while I was there). At various points our WRs were some combination of Espy, Cefalo, Ebner, Celestine, and Conte. Yikes!

Our QBs all looked pretty bad, in my opinion. If they could have been hit, both would have been sacked a few times, Cody more than TH. They were not getting the ball out quickly, the passes weren't crisp, I didn't see a completed pass longer than about 8 yards in the air. Things just didn't go well. This is not good considering I only saw three running plays in the 25-30 minutes I was there.

 

[White_Rabbit]

Sounds like keeping Riddle around was another in a long line of great non moves by Hawk.

 

[Duff Man]

Sounds like the offense and special teams still have a ways to go. Same story, different year.

 

[Darth Snow]

Addendum: Wsp reminded me of Celestine. He had some good catch and runs, but had a bad fumble after a long gainer. He looks much thicker then he used too. Should be interesting to see where he ends up on the depth chart.

 

[DBT]

Sounds like the offense and special teams still have a ways to go. Same story, different year.

Yeah, even I, Mr. Positive, am a bit discouraged after reading the Denver Post story. (Speedy, Lockridge, and Goodman were injured, BTW). I sure as hell hope things tighten up on offense. I was also discouraged with penalty count. Sounds like the offense commited a lot of penalties.

Webb was playing FB? That is craziness. Is he going to play both sides of the ball this year? It sounds like he was knocking people on their asses.

 

[BuffLuke80]

How the hell can we have the same problems year in and year out? Special teams, bad offense, penalties etc.. I know its spring but my goodness, how long before they start addressing these things instead of Hawk giving some zen soundbyte about it?

 

[Darth Snow]

How the hell can we have the same problems year in and year out? Special teams, bad offense, penalties etc.. I know its spring but my goodness, how long before they start addressing these things instead of Hawk giving some zen soundbyte about it?

How can we have the same problems year in year out? Have the same coaches.

 

[MtnBuff]

How can we have the same problems year in year out? Have the same coaches.

As I have posted here before, a lot of our problems are things that most coaches take care of in their first spring. We don't have an identity. What exactly does CU football do well, what can we count on to work or at least to make the opponent have to stop to beat us? Who are our go to guys on the field? On the coaching staff?

This is a team that in it's fourth year under the same coaching staff could not even get plays called, line up, and run the play without using our time outs to avoid penalties. I know that other teams sometimes have this problem when they see a weakness that they want to exploit or have an unexpected change in personel, we do it on a first and ten dive play.

Offensively we have no leader on the field. Hawk has been trying to force Cody on the team as their leader but he is busy just trying to keep his head above water (pun intended based on height) and recover from his last interception. With the yo-yo QB situation the players don't even know who is going to be out there much less who to look to for leadership.

The players also have no idea or identity of what we are offensively. One year in spring we are a spread team, the next a pro-set running a no huddle, the next year the HC announces that we will be a smash mouth team and we have our worst year rushing the football in a couple of decades. Whatever we are told and whatever is practiced in spring and in summer doesn't matter because it gets abandonded by the time the league schedule arrives anyways.

Winning teams know who they are, what they are doing, and who is doing it when. This team has lacked all of that since Hawk got here.

 

[BuffLuke80]

I agree with most on here and some good points made. Our talent level has been down for sure the last couple of years. However, Ive seen teams with very average talent that win more than 3,4, or 5 games a year that were well coached. Seeing our special teams, offense, discipline, etc, still this bad after that many years is a joke.

 

[AlferdJasper]

Special teams -- -- back down off the ledge a minute.

FWIW, I was able to speak with someone knowledgeable after the scrimmage about the kickers' rather dismal performance. He does not coach these guys, but does work with kickers elsewhere. (Not anyone who has been named on this board, and not anyone associated with CU AD, so don't jump to conclusions.)

He was not at all surprised by how it went for the kickers Friday and says the outlook isn't as dismal as it appears if you go by the scrimmage stats alone. He said, "give it time."

Hawkins' experiment to insert a spring break in the middle of the practices can wreck havok on kickers and punters - especially because both Kirkwood and Grossnickle are from Colorado and would have been unable to kick over the break due to snow. He said two key things: It takes a while to build up timing after being off for even a week, and they may have kicked too much earlier in the practice week -- with Goodman out injured, Grossnickle is punting too much, and both Kirkwood and Grossnickle could be doing too many repetitions at field goals and kickoffs in a short period of time. In a game, a kicker might have two plays (a field goal and a kickoff) back to back, but then 10 or 20 minutes or more rest. At practice, these guys are kicking repeatedly with no breaks.

There was some additional field goal practice with Kirkwood and Grossnickle (and Cody Hawkins holding) after the scrimmage was over, with Riddle supervising. They didn't kick a lot, but both of them were doing terrible, and Grossnickle's kicks were getting lower and lower. My source said that looks like "dead leg" which is what happens when a kicker overuses his legs. They simply run out of gas and it takes a while to recover. (If they have been overkicking, keeping them after the scrimmage to do more practice was not the best option.)

Baseball pitchers go through a dead-arm phase, when they lose the explosiveness in their fastballs. Kickers can have "dead leg" happen from over-kicking. And if we have a bunch of guys who want to work towards being the punt returner and kick returner, Kirkwood and Grossnickle may have been out there too long Mon, Tues, & Thursday. I heard practice was really good on Thursday in the bubble (I wasn't there), but these guys may need to build up their legs over time, and a week off from kicking puts them back at square one.

Lastly, he said "watch the long snapper" at the Spring Game. He feels that we do not have a great snapper at this point and it is forcing a lot of adaptation to recover from bad snaps, particularly on punts. Didn't know if it was Joe Silipo or Mario Conte, or both, who was struggling with snaps. Not to say that the punting was the fault of the snapper, but it did affect their timing.
Also, he believed the one "fake field goal" that Grossnickle and Cody attempted was not intended as a fake, rather the snap was so bad, Cody made a decision to throw instead of hold the ball for a kick.

Good news (maybe an allbuffs scoop :smile2: All Colorado long snapper Steven Barber (class of 2010) has been seen observing at some Buffs practices --- he could still be in the mix this fall.

 

[wsp4820]

Special teams -- -- back down off the ledge a minute.

FWIW, I was able to speak with someone knowledgeable after the scrimmage about the kickers' rather dismal performance. He does not coach these guys, but does work with kickers elsewhere. (Not anyone who has been named on this board, and not anyone associated with CU AD, so don't jump to conclusions.)

He was not at all surprised by how it went for the kickers Friday and says the outlook isn't as dismal as it appears if you go by the scrimmage stats alone. He said, "give it time."

Hawkins' experiment to insert a spring break in the middle of the practices can wreck havok on kickers and punters - especially because both Kirkwood and Grossnickle are from Colorado and would have been unable to kick over the break due to snow. He said two key things: It takes a while to build up timing after being off for even a week, and they may have kicked too much earlier in the practice week -- with Goodman out injured, Grossnickle is punting too much, and both Kirkwood and Grossnickle could be doing too many repetitions at field goals and kickoffs in a short period of time. In a game, a kicker might have two plays (a field goal and a kickoff) back to back, but then 10 or 20 minutes or more rest. At practice, these guys are kicking repeatedly with no breaks.

There was some additional field goal practice with Kirkwood and Grossnickle (and Cody Hawkins holding) after the scrimmage was over, with Riddle supervising. They didn't kick a lot, but both of them were doing terrible, and Grossnickle's kicks were getting lower and lower. My source said that looks like "dead leg" which is what happens when a kicker overuses his legs. They simply run out of gas and it takes a while to recover. (If they have been overkicking, keeping them after the scrimmage to do more practice was not the best option.)

Baseball pitchers go through a dead-arm phase, when they lose the explosiveness in their fastballs. Kickers can have "dead leg" happen from over-kicking. And if we have a bunch of guys who want to work towards being the punt returner and kick returner, Kirkwood and Grossnickle may have been out there too long Mon, Tues, & Thursday. I heard practice was really good on Thursday in the bubble (I wasn't there), but these guys may need to build up their legs over time, and a week off from kicking puts them back at square one.

Lastly, he said "watch the long snapper" at the Spring Game. He feels that we do not have a great snapper at this point and it is forcing a lot of adaptation to recover from bad snaps, particularly on punts. Didn't know if it was Joe Silipo or Mario Conte, or both, who was struggling with snaps. Not to say that the punting was the fault of the snapper, but it did affect their timing.
Also, he believed the one "fake field goal" that Grossnickle and Cody attempted was not intended as a fake, rather the snap was so bad, Cody made a decision to throw instead of hold the ball for a kick.

Good news (maybe an allbuffs scoop :smile2: All Colorado long snapper Steven Barber (class of 2010) has been seen observing at some Buffs practices --- he could still be in the mix this fall.

The FG was definitely a bad snap and not a planned fake. Needs to be mentioned that Superman made a really nice catch in the back of the endzone on that one. Didn't count, but it was real nice.

Love it if we could bring in a long snapper.

 

[The Guest]

Special teams -- -- back down off the ledge a minute.

FWIW, I was able to speak with someone knowledgeable after the scrimmage about the kickers' rather dismal performance. He does not coach these guys, but does work with kickers elsewhere. (Not anyone who has been named on this board, and not anyone associated with CU AD, so don't jump to conclusions.)

I think we all know who your "knowledgeable" source is:

 

[SBG]

Do most teams offer a LS or is it usually a PWO that gets the gig?

 

[AlferdJasper]

Do most teams offer a LS or is it usually a PWO that gets the gig?

All over the board - different teams view it differently. Often they take a talented player and try to adapt him to that role. I will try to find out if Silipo or Conte has ever snapped before, or if they are moving into the position out of need. (I know Conte is primarily a WR.)

If you are interested (and I know a couple readers just fell asleep reading this), you can see where some of the top long snappers are going to school here: Chris Sailer Top Long Snappers 2010

WAIT A DARN MINUTE!!!
Look at the #12 on that list. He says he is committed to Colorado.
What the ... ?!?
Ryan Iverson http://www.chrissailerkicking.com/top-recruits/2010/1409/PlayerProfile.html

 

[Buffnik]

All over the board - different teams view it differently. Often they take a talented player and try to adapt him to that role. I will try to find out if Silipo or Conte has ever snapped before, or if they are moving into the position out of need. (I know Conte is primarily a WR.)

If you are interested (and I know a couple readers just fell asleep reading this), you can see where some of the top long snappers are going to school here: Chris Sailer Top Long Snappers 2010

WAIT A DARN MINUTE!!!
Look at the #12 on that list. He says he is committed to Colorado.
What the ... ?!?
Ryan Iverson http://www.chrissailerkicking.com/top-recruits/2010/1409/PlayerProfile.html

Nice find, AJ. I just posted a new thread on Rivals asking Adam to look into it.

 

[Darth Snow]

AB scoop again! well done guys.