Spring Practice Scrimmage Notes - 4/10

Injury bug is full blown in Athens. There were nearly as many players watching the scrimmage yesterday as were actively participating in it on the field. But many are still expected to be able to go for GDay.


The secondary continues to get hit the hardest; now Boykin is added to the list of players with concussions. And at one point Shawn Williams was joined at safety on the #1 defense with Connor Newman of Duluth. Yep, we're that deep folks.


Couple of notes on the concussions - remember that Ron Courson is one of the nation's leading experts on concussions and has testified in DC on the subject before. So that's one area that we can expect our training staff to be both thorough and diligent. That's a good thing. The other point I would bring up is that it says to me we've got some players gettin' after that ass. We've got players competing hard, hitting hard. And that's a good thing too.


From Weiszer:

The injuries could be a byproduct of an added emphasis in each practice on declaring winners and losers in drills.

"When you compete the way we’ve been competing and hit the way we’ve been hitting, there’s going to be some of that," Richt said. "My goal this spring was to make sure that we’re a physical football team and we’re a team that’s going to get after it every time we put the pads on and snap up our chin-strap. I’ve seen that."

Richt said there’s more competitive drills than in the past. He created a point system for every drill.

"The goal is to win the day," Richt said. "If you win the day, you have half the conditioning after practice."

No surprise that the change is well-received by players.

"Guys love that," King said. "We like competing and that’s what we’re here for."

As for stats from the scrimmage, Page has a full rundown of stats and quotes from Coach Richt as well as some players. He links to a set of pictures as well.


My two initial thoughts are that the depleted secondary got torched while the front seven stuffed the running game pretty darn well. King had a long of 10 yards and Thomas had one for 9. Other than those two everything was kept at or behind the line of scrimmage. Here's what Richt had to say on the subject:

"Not much in the way of running the ball…As we all know, a lot of it has to do with a couple of things; the blocking number one. The vision of the back, and the ability to make people miss and break tackles, number two. Sometimes how the defense decides how to play you that day might dictate how much space you have to run the ball."

There should be a lot more to come as we near the end of spring drills.


Go Dawgs!