Fall Ball Takeaways: Ducks keep things rolling in hot practice No. 2
Football on Saturday afternoons just feels right, doesn’t it? Forget the fact that it was just a practice for the Oregon Ducks, who held their second one of the fall season at the Hatfield Dowlin Complex adjacent Autzen Stadium. The fact that we got to watch players in pads warming up and getting after it on the field, followed by coaches speaking to the media, is always a treat.
The Ducks got down to business in the heat of the Eugene sun on Saturday afternoon, which Lanning said on Friday was partially designed to get the players used to tougher conditions and “make football hard.”
Media members were allowed to watch the first 15-20 minutes of practice once again. Here are my takeaways from the session:
Healthy Players Return
This is really more of a takeaway from the first day of practice on Friday, but we neglected to mention it, so I am going to carry it over to Saturday’s practice.
The health of the team right now is a real benefit (knock on wood). In the spring, we saw a ton of starters — Justin Flowe, Brandon Dorlus, Popo Aumavae, Keyone Ware-Hudson, Dontae Manning — all sidelined with injuries. On Friday, all of those players were back out there on the field and getting work in, which is a huge plus for Oregon.
Here’s what Lanning had to say about that on Friday:
We’re gonna play with the guys that are here and available. We have a lot of those right now which is good. Gives us an opportunity to practice the way we want to practice. Some two spot drills where instead of having 11 on 11 guys going against each other where you’re getting 22 people better. You got two fields going and you can get 44 people better — 88 when you start going ones and twos and threes and fours and young guys. So being healthy is obviously a real big benefit. For us to continue to push and be available.
Fingers crossed that continues as we get closer to the season.
Injured Players
For the most part, there weren’t many major takeaways that we had from Saturday’s practice at Oregon. The two guys who were off to the side on Friday — OL TJ Bass and WR Justius Lowe — were with the team doing stretching and some light-contact positional drills on Saturday. Bass was wearing trainers, while Lowe was sporting cleats.
As media members were leaving the field, Bass could be seen walking to the side of the field while the rest of the team went into competition drills on the far side. It is unclear whether or not he participated, or if he worked on individual rehab.
Special Teams Drills
Special Teams continued to be a major point of emphasis for the Ducks, as they broke into selective drills immediately after the stretching period to start the day. One drill focused on kickoff blocked; another put up-backs in a position to field short pooch kicks. Across the field, several players worked on fielding punts while wearing boxing gloves, with Coach Carlos Locklyn occasionally throwing an exercise ball at them after they fielded the punt.
Ball Security
After special teams, the groups broke into ball security drills where some quarterbacks worked on handoffs up the middle with defenders going after the ball. Other groups worked on short passes over the middle where a defender was there to meet the ball carrier soon after the catch. It’s apparent early on that minimizing mistakes and taking care of the ball will be a major point of emphasis for this team, as you would expect.
