All Things Spring Practice 2018 Thread

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Pete smith said:
Thanks guys for the info. Having a threat at tight end will just make our running game be more effective. Sounds good. Thanks again.
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Jake Paulson and Ko Kieft also played quite a bit. I think we will see all 3 this year.
 

John Galt said:
I was at practice and agree with all of Gildy's and Go Gophers comments. A few more tidbits:

1. Mo Ibrahim looks good at RB. Shifty and quick, powerful, he's the second best RB on the team after what I saw today.
2. The Chris Bell hype is real. He will make plays for us this fall...
3. Faalele and Dunlap are the type of O-linemen we aren't used to having. Physically, those guys are as strong as any of the other linemen on the team. They don't need strength training, just some conditioning work. They are both firmly in the 2-deeps right now. It will be hard to keep them off the field this fall.
4. Esezi Otomewo looks the part at DE. He held the edge well on a few running plays and appears to have some pash-rush ability.
5. Durr is back and healthy.
6. Thomas Rush is huge - all of 6'3" and pretty solid for a freshmen. I see why Fleck likes him.
7. Fleck mentioned to me that although Royal Silver was going to play last year, it worked out well to redshirt him and he will be glad to have him in the rotation for the next 2 seasons.
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Thanks for the info - and the laugh JG.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Excellent recaps guys! Very much appreciated. Sounds very positive.
 

Really appreciate the tidbits from 250 miles away. It whets the appetite.

And count me with Spoofin as someone confused about Morgan's height. Last year he looked shrimpy. Has he gotten taller? I know David Robinson famously grew 5-6 inches after he entered the Naval Academy.
 

Cap'n Morgan is just turning nineteen on April 17. An inch growth spurt over last year is entirely possible. If they feed him well, maybe he is not done sprouting.

Cap'n Morgan, Vicious Vic, and Zak Attack - we've got something here.
 




I saw mostly the same things as the other guys...to me...Vic and Tanner are the same height. Zack is maybe two inches taller and Seth is then truly 6'4 or 5.
Definitely tallest QB. My sideline media insider info... (although I thought Seth looked the part) he's going to be a tight end. QB's do not usually take reps on punt coverage teams. Seth is taller, maybe as quick or second in quickness to Vic. Zack would be next and Tanner is definitely the slowest but then in the scrimmage he appeared to move quicker...hard to tell from such limited looks but I do think he is the slowest of the group.

Tanner, today, I agree was the most consistent passer. Vic looks good throwing but his accuracy was not a match for Tanner. Vic completed passes receivers caught but had to adjust to. Zack got third team reps. Seth got no reps I saw in team drills. He did in individual rotations.

Sassack is another huge guy on the offensive line. But ya, Faalele is very broad and big but not dumpy.
Mo, I agree looked impressive at RB. Bush is a big athletic looking guy at LB...not sure on the quickness.
Bell and Tyler flashed as receivers but both also dropped passes.

Not much room on the sidelines for fans and then the players not participating stand in front of the fans. Fans limited to one side. If one person takes up 3 feet and we have 100 yards...I'd say 200 people max. Mighta been two deep nearer the entrance. I enjoyed the opportunity but the old facility was much more fan friendly. Nearly impossible to move with the action unlike the much wider old setup...plus the players were on the other side in years past.

Unfortunately, I didn't leave today thinking we will surprise teams with our improvement come this fall. We do seem to have more athletes. It's way early.
 




Really appreciate the practice reports. Thanks to those who shared what they saw today.
 

One thing to note:
We've only seen the six early enrollees for 2018 Recruiting Class- Daniel Faalele, Curtis Dunlop, Alex Riegelsperger, Vic Viramontes, Thomas Rush, Zak Annexstad, and Natahn Boe.

Wait until we see Rashod Bateman and the other eighteen come Fall. A couple more recruiting classes like this and the Gophers definitely will have talent level we've always craved for. Bottom line, the Gophers must consistently recruit the talent level necessary to be at least competitive in the B1G West. They must surpass a team or two to come close to winning championships.

Overall Observation:
The Average Roster Talent Level (ARTL, data from 2015-2017) of the Gophers must rise or surpass the teams ahead of them in the B1G West - Wisconsin, Iowa, Northwestern, and Nebraska.

The leaders of the B1G East - Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, and Michigan State in terms of ARTL are shades above the rest of the B1G. Nebraska is just about the same level as Michigan State, but underperforms. Not for long under new task master Scott Frost.

BIG TEN AVG ROSTER TALENT LEVEL VS STANDINGS.jpg

B1G ROSTER TALENT SUMMARY BY YEAR-1.jpg

Can PJ Fleck sustain the level of recruiting necessary to stay competitive at a much higher level? So far the 2018 Class shows promise. What little data I have garnered crudely show that recruiting level correlates overall with winning. Coaching will take you so far, but having the horses and coaching will take you further.
 

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One thing to keep in mind is that Morgan is going to look better than Viramontes in practice situations because he's a better pure passer and QB running is limited. That's a HUGE part of Viramontes' game.
 

hungan1 said:
One thing to note:
We've only seen the six early enrollees for 2018 Recruiting Class- Daniel Faalele, Curtis Dunlop, Alex Riegelsperger, Vic Viramontes, Thomas Rush, Zak Annexstad, and Natahn Boe.

Wait until we see Rashod Bateman and the other eighteen come Fall. A couple more recruiting classes like this and the Gophers definitely will have talent level we've always craved for. Bottom line, the Gophers must consistently recruit the talent level necessary to be at least competitive in the B1G West. They must surpass a team or two to come close to winning championships.

Overall Observation:
The Average Roster Talent Level (ARTL, data from 2015-2017) of the Gophers must rise or surpass the teams ahead of them in the B1G West - Wisconsin, Iowa, Northwestern, and Nebraska.

The leaders of the B1G East - Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, and Michigan State in terms of ARTL are shades above the rest of the B1G. Nebraska is just about the same level as Michigan State, but underperforms. Not for long under new task master Scott Frost.

View attachment 5440

View attachment 5441

Can PJ Fleck sustain the level of recruiting necessary to stay competitive at a much higher level? So far the 2018 Class shows promise. What little data I have garnered crudely show that recruiting level correlates overall with winning. Coaching will take you so far, but having the horses and coaching will take you further.
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4-5 of us have been saying this since the end of last season. The window for him to recruit higher level talent based on his personality and current high profile is a very small window if there is not success (wins) on the field as well.
 



MODS!!!! STOP THE RECRUITING RANKINGS DISCUSSION NOW!!!!

What does that have to do with spring practice? Who cares.
 







You are forgetting Croft and Rhoda played QB last year.
 



I also attended yesterday.

My thoughts:

Indoor practice facility is nice but not very fan friendly for watching as others have mentioned, very narrow, where I was standing it was even narrower because they had some pads and blocking equipment that kept falling off a pile clogging the narrow lane, they should let fans watch from both sidelines. Also very echoey and hard to tell what Fleck was saying.

Agree with others that Bell and Ibrahim looked very good, they just looks like better athletes with some twitch.

One of the TE's was tough, limping out there and doing all the drills but no injury jersey, may have been Paulson. Guy I'm looking forward to seeing play more is Keft, reminded me in demeanor of the best guy on my HS team, intense and just looks the part.

If we have a running centric QB offense, Green would start, looks more explosive and athletic than the other QB's. Threw better than I expected except did not do so well on the corner end zone throws and did not lead the WR's enough and they had to slow down for the ball, the other QB's did better there. Viramontes looks smaller than I expected as others have pointed out. Annexstad actually has me a little excited, looks the part....all in all I feel confident one of these guys will emerge as they all seem pretty good.

Huff had a great practice at LB.
 



PMWinSTP said:
Might want to adjust you sarcasm detector...
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bottlebass said:
You probably need to work on inferring sarcasm if your post was meant as sarcasm. Even going back and reading it now, not sarcasm.
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If only there was a way we could indicate inflection on this board. Something like italics or bold or underline or some series of characters like "/s"

I guess we'll never solve this problem.
 


bottlebass said:
You probably need to work on inferring sarcasm if your post was meant as sarcasm. Even going back and reading it now, not sarcasm.
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Was winasota gopher inferring that with the ALL CAPS? Give me some pointers, wise one.

Able to infer where it is in this post?
 

I am not in town, but below is a summary of info that a buddy of mine told me who went to the practice (fwiw, he is a lower level college football coach who knows a bit about football):

None of it is really new.

Ibrahim looks really good. Thinks he would have played regardless of Brooks injury.
Bell is really impressive.
The entire offensive line looked big - more like a Big 10 OL.
Seth Green looks good. Too good of an athlete not to play somewhere.

He follows college football and recruiting, but probably not as closely as people here. Generally, he said that they must have RS'd a lot of players who are going to play a lot (mentioned a LB, probably Rush from other people's comments, mentioned DBs (plural), mentioned OL. He said they actually looked like a Big 10 football team in terms of size.

I know it isn't much, but I thought I'd share.
 

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