Jags Complete First Practice In Pads For Spring
Head Coach Joey Jones oversees the Jaguars pre-game warm-ups at N.C. State.
Jags hit the practice field for their fourth practice of the spring and their first in pads. They practiced for about two hours.
They worked on lots of things during practice. The offense worked for about 10 minutes on screens, then another 10 minutes on routes, 10 minutes on down and distance plays, 10 minutes on third-down situations. Some where 11-on-11 some skeleton passing.
During a 45 minute period in the second half of the practice, the offensive and defensive lines worked in one-on-one pass rush drills and later offensive linemen against two defensive linemen. While that was going on, skeleton passing drills were being worked on.
Coach Jones was satisfied with the practice. “It was real lively, I thought the kids got after it a little more than the last practice,” he said. “We have a ways to go offensively, but I thought it was better. The guys have to remember that it is not going to happen overnight, they have to come out every day and work. If they learn to do that, then we are going to be a really good football team. The tempo of our offense is just great. The kids are doing pretty well picking it up even though they have a lot of things to think about. What we have to shore up is technical — who we are blocking and how we are blocking them. But they are getting lined up and understand what they are doing. They have done a good job studying their playbooks.”
Practicing in pads is extremely valuable to the coaches. “It was good because that’s the only way you can evaluate these guys, and one of our goals is to try and fill our one- and two-deep. The only way you can evaluate them is by putting pads on and blocking full speed. That’s valuable for us. They were ready to hit somebody. They’ve been lifting weights and running, so it makes for a more fun practice as well.”
“We’ve only got so many chances in the spring, you’ve really got about eight days that you can tackle,” Coach Jones continued. “Other than that, it’s just skelly and one-on-ones with no tackling. It’s kind of hard to get better on the offensive and defensive line. So we’ve got to take advantage of each chance we have to get better.”
While the Jags are a week into their spring practice, they are far from where Coach Jones wants them to be in learning the spread. But there is no panic, it’s expected by the coaching staff. “We’ve probably gotten better in some areas, but if I’m asked whether it’s anywhere close to being a cohesive unit I would say no. That’s to be expected. I want to look at the end of the spring to see where we are as compared to the first one [practice], because what you want each day is just a little bit of progress. It’s not enough to be great, but if we can do that by the end of the spring we will be decent.”
The next practice will be Saturday at 9am in full pads again. It will not be one of the three scrimmages scheduled by the Jags. “It won’t be a total scrimmage, it will be much like today except with tackling,” he said. “Any time you put them under the lights, so to speak, you can watch and see. They know the film is on them, it’s live and in color, so you can evaluate much better.”