I mentioned in an earlier post that I was offered a chance to sit in on a few practices and the Spring Game by the PITT SID department, so I took advantage of that today. It was pretty eye opening, especially compared to what we had seen from the PITT team in the last few years.
The practice started at 9:30 am and we were allowed to watch just about the whole practice (1st half of the session) and the scrimmage (2nd half). We were asked to move out of the facility at around 11:15 or so. They did things a little differently as the kickers and punters were out before the actual practice session started, which is normal, and then the rest of the players came out and ran through units drills for about 10 minutes… at half speed, which looked damn fast to me anyway. Then they went into their stretching exercises and then onto full speed units drills. I concentrated on watching the offense run through some ‘special plays’, mostly double reverses, and was pretty impressed. They had some miscues but, with no doubt, Cam Saddler is a rocket when he gets the ball in his hands.
After that they ran kickoff coverage and kickoff returns for about 15 minutes and that was very informative. One thing I’ll say – if Buddy Jackson wins the return job we may see good things. He took a kick on the bounce, made one move and out ran the coverage for a 90 yard TD return. He is extremely quick and very fluid when he’s sprinting. Harper’s kicks were done well, high and deep.
