8/12/11 MOBILE, Ala. – In anticipation of the University of South Alabama football team’s first scrimmage of preseason camp, head coach Joey Jones made the decision not only to practice in just shells Friday at the fields on campus but to end the workout early.
“We cut 30 minutes out of the practice. I thought that would help us in anticipation of the scrimmage,” he explained. “We’re not real beat down with our legs. I think they are tired, but they’re not to the breaking point yet. I think we’ve monitored that pretty well throughout the last nine days, we feel good going into the scrimmage.”
USA’s “Fan Day” — which will be held in conjunction with the first scrimmage of the fall — will wrap up the second week of preseason camp, taking place Saturday at Ladd-Peebles Stadium Saturday from 10 a.m.-noon. Following the second half of the scrimmage fans and supporters of the program will get to meet and take pictures with the Jaguars, have an opportunity to select their seats for the 2011 season, and purchase JagWear and tailgating merchandise from the USA Bookstore.
“Fan Day,” as well as parking for the event, is free and open to the public.
According to Jones, Saturday’s two-hour scrimmage will present individuals who are not yet on the coaching staff’s depth chart an opportunity to earn repetitions in practice and playing time going forward. “I told them the biggest thing is we’re going to be looking at a lot of them,” he stated. “We’re not going to be able to spend much time with those three and four deep in practice as we have these first couple of weeks. We have to start getting ready for games and start shuffling down about two-deep where we can work with just a few threes.
“So if they want to shine, they need to shine tomorrow.”
While Jones and the staff are pleased with what they have seen through 10 workouts thus far this month, he is looking for the Jaguars to take that performance into situations similar to what will be seen in games beginning Thursday, Sept. 1, when USA meets West Alabama in Mobile to open the campaign.
“You have guys who are good practice players, and we just hope they’re good game players. Some guys are average practice players and great game players,” commented Jones. “The past nine days, we’ve felt like we have had a bunch of good practice players. We’re going to see which ones carry that out to the game — see guys who can stay calm, take what they’ve learned and put it out on the field and relax and play. We’re looking to watch all these guys on film and grade them and see where we are.”
Friday’s practice, which lasted an hour and 45 minutes, had the Jags following individual drills by working on screen passes during 20 minutes of group action. The offense then worked with half the line against the scout team during inside drills as well as on play-action passing for 10 minutes.
After 15 minutes of 7-on-7 skeleton passing drills, USA ran third-and-long plays from inside the offense’s 30-yard line. The last segment of the team period set up the offense in the red zone needing a touchdown on the last play of the game to win. The first team was unable to score on plays from the 20-, 15- and 10-yard lines, with Damond Smith breaking up passes intended for Bryant Lavender and Corey Besteda. Logan Bennett eventually tracked down a scrambling Myles Gibbon on the second-team unit’s first snap, with the defense then forcing back-to-back incompletions to keep the offense out of the end zone during the drill.
Looking back at a week of practice that saw the Jags in pads three times, Jones stated that he was pleased with what USA accomplished. At the same time, he acknowledged that there is still work to be done prior to the season opener.
“It was a very good week,” Jones observed. “The offense still has to execute, but that’s what offense is— execution. It takes a little while to get everybody together, and if we do that then we’re going to be pretty good. We just have to make sure we execute. But we’re probably putting too much on them, their minds are spinning right now.”
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