Alabama held its second football practice of the day at 7:30 tonight, this time in shells. After a busy morning of changes on the “depth chart” things settled down a bit tonight. Here’s what you need to know:
- Still no significant injuries. AL.com offered up this quote from Coach Saban about injuries
We’ve been fairly fortunate so far, you always knock on wood because sometimes these things happen and you really don’t have much control over them. It’s something that we’ll have to manage on our team at some point throughout the year, but I think the fact that our players worked hard in the offseason are in pretty good condition. We’ve improved the strength level. We had all but two of our freshmen here for the entire summer. All those things seem to contribute in a positive way maybe to being able to stay healthy.
- Brad Smelley continued to be in a black no contact jersey with an undisclosed injury. His injury is not thought to be serious.
- Eryk Anders again worked with the 1st unit at SAM linebacker. The junior from San Antonio, TX is a surprise with the first unit after totalling just 4 tackles in his first 2 years of playing time.
- Julio Jones got work with the 1st unit again. Wide receiver is a position that is heavy on rotation, and I expect that the Tide will rotate 7 or 8 guys at the position, so 1st and 2nd unit at this position doesn’t mean quite the same as it does on the offensive line.
- Speaking of the O-line, the same group, including all 3 true freshmen, worked as the 2nd unit offensive line. I still expect William Vlachos & Evan Cardwell to see action this year, so this could be a matter of giving the young guys more responsibility to see how they handle it.
- Marquis Maze is surprisingly still working on the outside. What makes that more surprising is that in tonight’s practice, Mike McCoy took some reps at the slot position with Maze outside. This could be a matter of the Bama offensive beginning to look for ways to create match-up problems. Maze is arguably the fastest guy on the team, and getting him outside could be the answer to stretching the field vertically.
- Don’ta Hightower appears to have set himself up to seeing playing time already. He and Cory Reamer are splitting time with the 1st at the WILL position, and I expect that to remain unchanged throughout the camp.
- Milton Talbert & Nick Gentry are still working as the 2nd unit defensive ends, ahead of Alfred McCullough & Luther Davis. I expected that to change quickly once the camp got going, and I’m pretty surprised that it hasn’t. Hopefully this is more an indication of improvement from the front 2 guys than any struggles from the back 2. If it is the former it could lead to redshirts for the Tide’s true freshmen DEs.
- Marquis Johnson got more reps with the 1s today after working behind Alonzo Lawrence & Robby Green earlier today. When Johnson is on the field he is occupying a true corner position & Javier Arenas moves to the star position.
Just 1 practice tomorrow, at the normal time of 2:30. We’ll have a report as soon as possible.
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