Spring Game Impressions

And by "game" we mean "practice," which was fine by me since it was 69 and sunny. Disjointed bullets:

• A bunch of un-illuminating position drills started things off. The safeties do a weird drill in which seven of them line up as an offensive line, FB, and RB with one guy playing off the lne as a safety. They run a play, and the one guy at safety comes up to make a tackle at the fictional point of attack. Seems inefficient.
• Sears is that fast; Carlos Brown is also. Brown had one of the highlights of the scrimmage when he scored from a long way out on a run up the middle.
• The crowd's biggest reaction came when Alijah Bradley laid out on a wheel route, hauling it in with every inch of his 4'6" body.
• Neither quarterback looked sharp. Henne dumped the ball off so many times during the passing drills that I was convinced that was the point of the drill for a while, but that's probably not right. He also telegraphed a pass to someone in the flat that Leon Hall had jumped and almost intercepted. He did have one excellent throw, a 25 yard bullet right in Breaston's hands, but Breaston was intefered with and could make the catch. Still, after hearing stuff about Henne kicking ass for the second straight spring, I was hoping for more. He looked just like he did last year, alternating awesome with definitely not awesome. As for Forcier... let's just hope Henne stays upright. Didn't look ready at all.
• Forcier did do a couple of good things, and they were usually to LaTerryal Savoy, who reminds me of Avant. He scored a touchdown -- check this reader-provided video (recommend you right click and save as).
• Doug Dutch can't catch. This is bad for a wideout.
  
• That thing about Bass at quarterback? They were serious, and they're still serious. Carlos Brown got an entire series at QB running the zone read, draws, and sweeps. It didn't work -- see this reader-provided video (save as) -- since the defense knew what was coming, but it was interesting.
• Ecker dropped the first pass of the scrimmage, prompting groans. Someone near me yelled "pitch it!"
• Yes, it is endlessly hilarious to see a jersey with the entirety of "B.J. Opong-Owusu" on it.
• Punting went as you might expect. Ryan consistently went about 35-40 yards and had nothing remotely returnable. Mesko had a couple ok punts and then launched one 55 yards, causing a tingle to samba its way down my spine. Inconceivable!
• It's odd seeing McKinney play DT next to Germany at DE; they look like they should be swapped. Germany had a couple of nice plays but I think they say more about the opposition at RT than his ability.
• For all the crap Carr gave the linebackers during the press conference, they shut down the run consistently during the scrimmage.
• This should come with a heavy bias disclaimer: Jamison looked good. I probably focused on him more than any other player. He was tough for the offensive line to handle and performed well against the run.
• Garrett Rivas missed a 22-yard field goal. Yay.
  

One final note: the "we're doing construction" excuse for not letting fans and kids on the field for autographs was exceedingly lame and more bothersome than scrapping the game format. It's Carr's perogative to have his team practice any way they like, but making something dumb up to get out of being nice to some fans is disrespectful. I'm sure if the department really wanted to they could find somewhere in the area where people were not in mortal danger of one of the backhoes being struck by lighting, coming to life, and going on a rampage.