One thing that I forgot to say about the weekend of practices that might surprise some people: most of the players don't know that there will be new game jerseys this year. I asked several players about them, and most of them had no idea they existed. JAMES DOCKERY said that he had seen them, and he was kind of excited about them. HOWARD CROOM was oblivious to their existence. I also asked Howard if any opposing teams threw down any jogbra/manziere/'nice bikini' trash talk to the team last season, and his answer was, "No, definitely not. None at all. Not a single team." That surprised me a little bit, but I also think that the 2007 uniforms looked a lot different up close--for whatever that's worth. BtD is just glad that they're gone forever.
2009 quarterback commit, CODY VAZ was in attendance on Saturday. He spent most of the time on the field with the quarterbacks (obviously). I would have talked to him, but it seems like that could have been an NCAA violation, prior to him signing his LOI next February. A rare opportunity to demur.
Okay, so word out of Prothro is that SEAN CANFIELD didn't practice today due to some muscle soreness in his throwing arm from throwing too much(unless he was sore from filling in for his evil twin, Johnny Knoxville from Jackass). That's not much of a surprise to me, given the circumstances. According to everything that we know, Friday and Saturday was the first time that he's thrown on consecutive days since the week of the Maryland game. So, it's been a while. He needs to work his arm back into shape. That was obvious on Saturday, but even more obvious on Friday. Coach Riley has been quoted in Paul Buker's blog as saying that Sean was, "doing a good job of holding back his velocity." That's a nice way of putting it. Amateur Observation Alert: Sean's velocity appeared to be 3rd or 4th best out of the quarterbacks, and he was probably 2nd or 3rd in accuracy from what I saw.
RYAN KATZ, the Santa Monica Slinger, still has the same cannon arm we admired this Spring. He really chucks the ball hard like Johnathan Smith used to. He has the best velocity and best homerun pass on the team, but we sure hope that he doesn't need to play this year...or next, as far as that goes.
The new and improved LYLE MOEVAO is throwing better than I've seen him in the past; better than last Spring. He really looks like a guy who spent a lot of time throwing to his receivers this summer. The only thing that worries me is that he seems to be throwing to SAMMIE STROUGHTER almost too much, but that goes against BtD's core values: there is no such thing as too much Sammie.