Afternoon Practice – Coach Fred Smoot?
Posted by Matt Terl on August 3, 2009 – 5:50 pm
Things finally seemed to come together for the offense a little bit during this afternoon’s practice. Jason Campbell was getting rid of the ball quicker, the receivers were mostly doing a great job hauling it in, and everything just looked a little crisper on the offensive side of things.
Of course that means that the defense was — by definition — looking less effective. (Or, as someone observed to me yesterday, “When DeAngelo Hall intercepts the ball in practice and the crowd goes nuts, does that mean that they’re excited Jason Campbell threw a pick?”) But there’s a lot more leeway for the defense to look a little less effective — and, of course, Albert Haynesworth was held out of today’s practice.
The question of this training camp thus far has been “Is the defense that good, or is the offense struggling?” It’s starting to look more and more like the defense might just be that good.
Also out again were Anthony Montgomery (sore knee), Carlos Rogers (calf), and Roydell Williams, who had surgery on his fractured pinkie.
Like yesterday, Campbell’s best pass of the day was a 50-plus yard bomb that hit his receiver in the hands. Like yesterday, his receiver — Antwaan Randle El this time — dropped it.
But the most interesting thing I saw in practice today was Fred Smoot, still acting as a sort of de facto cornerbacks coach on the sideline. Five days into training camp and we’ve hardly heard from Smoot at all, which has to be some kind of a record.
I caught up with Smoot to get his thoughts on the defensive backfield and his new role, but I had to start by asking why he’d been so quiet.
“Little flu symptoms,” he said, “but I’m all right. We’re still out here havin’ fun, gettin’ a lot work done. I think we’re just getting a lot of work done.”
You seem to be taking a leadership role out there. Is that deliberate? “I have to, man, I’m the elder. That’s the way it goes, man. The older you are, you gotta lead the young ones.”
And Smoot is very serious about this role — so serious that he even refers to the cornerback with the possessive. “I got a great young group of guys. Lotta talented guys, and the good part about it is, we’re very, very deep. So [defensive backs coach Jerry Gray] doesn’t have to worry about if one person gets hurt, moving everybody in, because we’ve got a real deep group of young talented guys.”
I asked Smoot to go over some of those young guys, one at a time:
Justin Tryon: “Tryon looks good. He’s maturing. That’s the thing about a corner, you always want to look at him mature, and I know Coach and them can’t wait to see him in game action.”
Kevin Barnes: “He’s been getting better each and every day since we brought him in. When you come from college, you’re probably pretty much raw from the dough.” (This is fuzzy on my recording, but I remember it being something along those lines.) “But he’s soaking up the technique real good and he can help us this year. I’ve seen the You Tube videos, and I told him, ‘See, the other point now is we fixin’ to do this to grown men, where this is how they feed their kids.’ I said, ‘Can you knock one of them out, make him throw up?’”
Doug Dutch: “I like Dutch. I think Dutch is good, man. I think he slipped through the cracks on a lot of people.” And the name? “That’s why I think I’m drawn to him, ’cause he’s Dutch and I’m Dutch.”
And DeAngelo Hall? “He’s got a chip on his shoulder. That’s what I’ll say about our defensive backfield: lot of us got a chip on our shoulder, so you can look for us to play good all year.”
Tags: Fred Smoot, FredSmoot, on the field at practice, OnTheFieldAtPractice, Training Camp, TrainingCamp
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