Eagles continue prep for Stanford - Wednesday practice report
BC was back outside Fish Field House on Wednesday morning getting ready for Stanford.
Energy was good again, maybe a notch or two down from Tuesday’s session, but still good nonetheless. Here’s what stood out in the hour and a half-ish they were out there:
Tackling a point of emphasis again
Once again, DBs and LBs worked on tackling during one of the early indy periods. LBs dragged a bag/dummy behind and the ‘next guy up’ made the tackle to mimic chasing down a ball carrier. The DBs worked on breaking to the ball and then tackled the dummy/bag. That’s now back-to-back days of the staff making sure getting guys down in the open field is stressed after the Michigan State performance. I’d expect to see a much better showing in the tackling department out in California.
Defense
I realized on the way to practice that we never really watch the defense during team periods because we’re all so locked in on the offense (for obvious reasons). So, early on I decided to watch an early period of scout team D. I saw a nice run stuff for Edwin Kolenge, a good chase-down tackle for Carter Davis on an end around, Charlie Comella stopped a screen and Micah Amedee had a would-be ‘sack’ during one rep.
Also found it interesting that Bill O’Brien spent 90-95% of practice down with the defense while the offense did its thing in 7-on-7’s and scout team periods.
Offense
Looked fine. Not as crisp as Tuesday – particularly deep balls that hit the turf a lot – but overall their short and intermediate game is as good as we’ve seen in a long time right now. Bo MacCormack also ran extremely hard throughout the morning.
Special teams
It’s so fun to watch Shamus or Andy punt. Most importantly, there was some real juice and energy during kickoff return/coverage work. At one point, Cedric Lott got physical and had the entire near sideline whooping it up. No live field goals again (those guys are usually in the field house or stadium), but I now have full confidence in Luca Lombardo every time he steps up to boot a kick.
One more day of work
BC has one more practice on Thursday morning before heading out to California on Friday. Fans should be encouraged not only by what they saw last Saturday, but with how the team has worked so far this week. With a bye looming, this will be an all-hands-on-deck, gotta have it type of week against a team they’re currently favored by double digits against.
