First one out was Kelly. He made plenty of mistakes but he wants to be there and he has a good attitude. He was the first to each drill and really hustled.
Will Parks is a goof ball, I saw him dancing and laughing with teammates every chance he got. He’s also getting the first team reps over Cravens right now. Also saw Chubb dancing during warm ups. Shane Ray does not take warm ups seriously, he spent more time adjusting his helmet than the dynamic stretching. Josey Jewell worked harder and that bothered me.
Crowd loves Von. He’s the face of Denver sports.
VJ is a lot more hands on this Training camp. He was a lot more vocal than last year and really got in it, he seems like this is a different coach, hopefully it translates to Sunday’s. I mentioned earlier, he blew up at Booker when he didn’t hit a hole on a stretch play. Wouldn’t be surprised to see Booker in the doghouse before long.
Chubb is huge and I saw him playing a lot with his hand in the dirt and Ray next to him. They spent a lot of time in their Nascar package with Gotsis, Harris, and Chubb on the line with Von and Ray on the outside. Brady and other QB’s won’t like seeing that lineup.
Primary focus on the beginning of the practice was winning the turnover battle. Defense circled through turnover drills, including punching the ball out than scooping it up, and tip drill. Offense worked on ball security, all of them from lineman to QB.
I was surprised to see as many zone scheme runs in drills and scrimmages. A lot of stretch plays and it did not look pretty. Booker was not good in these but I liked Freeman, Williams, and Lindsay. They also worked through zone reads quite a bit. Look for Keenum to do a little running and some RPO’s.
Lindsay had a fumble on a kickoff and had to do push-ups. McKenzie was fantastic in this drill, he is so fast and explosive. They also worked him into some offensive plays. Lindsay was great as a runner, he’s so shifty and goes inside-out better than any of the other backs. Hamilton and Langley also got some chances.
My biggest takeaway from today is I really hope we sign another TE. Outside of Butt, the others looked bad. They ran bad routes, were slow, and could not get open. Keenum loves throwing there and was trying to get them the ball he would have had to force it. Traylor in particular looked bad. There were a few plays where Keenum threw a different route or the TE did not get proper depth. I didn’t get a good vantage point on their blocking but I was disappointed with the pass game aspect of this group.
Oline really struggled in pass pro, I saw Chubb, Von, Ray, Gotsis, and Harris just dominate. They got to the QB so fast. Could be just a dominate pass rush, hard to say. I will say I liked watching Bolles today. He looks much improved, had some very nice blocks against Von and Chubb.
Watch out for the Keenum-Sanders connection. They are going to have some pretty big fireworks this year! Harris got beat a couple of times and he was in perfect coverage. I’m thinking of targeting Sanders in Fantasy over DT.
DT looked just as big and strong, Sutton was fun to watch but definitely raw. I like how he uses his body to box out the defender on contested throws. Hamilton seemed slow but he always seemed to get open and made some nice catches. f I was surprised how much Tim Patrick got with the first team but he looked the part. Also saw McKenzie catch a pass on an out pattern and get a hand off jet sweep play. That WR battle is going to be a good one.
I saw King throw more passes than punt. This has to be the first time I’ve ever left camp disappointed I didn’t get to see the punter punt!
Wolfe came back pretty quickly after he was reported in the locker room.
Lynch is still Lynch, I didn’t see much improvement from last year, I hope Kelly at least gets a chance with the second team.
Finally, because I could keep going, the practice was so crisp and well put together. There was not a lot of downtime and it was a marked improvement over the practices from last year. All VJ talked about last year during that losing streak was how great the practices are, so expect to hear that said throughout this year!
Winners of the day: Freeman, Sanders, and all the pass rushers
Losers of the day: Lynch, Booker, and all the TE’s except Butt