I’ll be posting notes from yesterday over the next couple of days. Here’s the start:
Some position corrections from what I have been posting here in the past:
Jacquez Williams is a LB. I thought he would be a Rover.
Malik Grate could be either an inside or outside receiver. I thought he was exclusively a slot receiver. That gives the staff some nice flexibility.
LaRonde Liverpool is basically a JUMBO ATH. After his workout the assistant coaches approved offers as a TE, DE and LB. When the staff asked LaRonde what position he wanted he said he wanted to play wherever would help the team the most. LOVE THAT. They will start him at TE, but he will ultimately see the field at whatever position he will have the most impact at.
They stressed Taleni Suhren’s versatility. Tough and nasty enough for guard. Has the feet to play tackle.
Arkeem Byrd and Cade Carney will compete for playing time this year. Redshirt decisions will be made at the end of camp. Clawson doesn’t seem to have the same bias re: redshirting RBs like other positions. That makes total sense to me. The camp competition at RB will be really interesting with Reid, Bell, Byrd, Carney, Robinson and Colburn. He continues to be very high on Reid but emphasized that “we have not seen Reid healthy yet”. Clawson says he views Reid as a “wear the other team down” between the tackles runner and Byrd as a guy that can attack the edges. Note that Byrd is NOT a small back though. He has an every down frame, just needs to add the weight to add a power element to his game. Clawson said his philosophy is that you can’t have enough RBs and DLs.
Clawson said he may not be able to redshirt all 3 DEs. The need for an effective pass rusher opposite Duke Ejiofor is just too great. If either Zander Zimmer, Boogie Basham or Emmanuel Walker prove that they can effectively rush the passer as true freshmen, then one or more of them may have to play. I’m a little disappointed at that because you can only expect so much production from a true freshman DE, but I get the dilemma. I’d prefer that Chris Calhoun take the big step that I expect him to take from Year 1 to Year 2.
The coaches don’t think there is as much projection with Tyler Watson as I wrote yesterday. Weight was a solid 275 during his official visit. He’s really come along in his first full year playing O-line. He may not be as far away from contributing as I thought.
More confirmation that Brandon Chapman’s skill set is one that has been sorely lacking. He’ll allow them to expand the playbook once he’s ready to go.
Two guys who the coaches really sold me on during their presentations to the larger group: Essang Bassey and De’Andre Delaney. On Delaney they said that they weren’t looking for another safety in this class, but with his height/weight/speed numbers they felt like they had to make room for him. They said it was a “rare” opportunity to get those measurables at the safety position.
Clawson answered a question about the redshirt freshmen and said that Jessie Bates, Steven Claude and Scotty Washington all would have seen PT late in the season if they didn’t have redshirts to protect. That’s not necessarily new info on Washington and Claude, but still something I love to hear. Both were raw this summer and have clearly made significant strides. It continues to look like both outside receiver positions will be rotations this fall with Washington and Claude probably getting the smaller share. Clawson said again that Claude is the fastest player on the team right now.
I’ll post some more notes later on…