Spring Football 2020: Practice Notebook #2
Cold morning in Memorial Stadium
After a day off, the Bears got back on to the field for Spring Football. It was a light day for the Bears with no pads. The day was mostly centered around installing the new offense and executing plays. The defense, on the other hand, looked to focus a bit more on their reads of the offense and their ability to react at the second level. With that let’s dive in.
General Notes
Coach Wilcox talked about the new STAR position, and he had some coaching time during individuals, working with the guys that could potentially play the position.
Absolutely cold overcast day at Memorial Stadium. Blegh. Days like this I don’t have fun at practice. Just a little rant of mine.
Main Takeaways
First two interceptions of Spring Football came today. The first, by way of Cam Bynum who jumped the route on a throw by Jaden Casey. The second by Craig Woodson, a player who we should be watching out for according to Ashtyn Davis. Woodson’s INT was impressive, he tracked the ball perfectly and caught it in traffic along the sideline.
There are some really interesting concepts developing from a variety of different personnel looks. I’m still learning quite a bit of the concept in some research and study I’m doing, that coupled with a lot of things we’re not allowed to report on. What I will say, is that if you have a chance to make it out to practice or the Spring Game, come out and watch and let me know what you think.
Chase Garbers looked comfortable out there again today. He doesn’t seem to have any issues with snapping under center with the different step dropbacks. The only issue I’ve seen is that he isn’t sure of his throw power with the varied drop backs yet. He underthrew quite a bit of passes today, but on Wednesday he was throwing guys a bit high. I wouldn’t worry too much as its probably that he’s focusing on the footwork and the development of the play, but its something to keep an eye on.
The DBs won the majority of the 1-on-1 battles today. They were very good at denying the pass and broke up a significant amount. The PBUs were varied too. Outside, inside, over the middle, deep routes, short passes. I could count at least 1 PBU in each of those categories and then some.
A big emphasis today was on the run game and blocking schemes/timing. There’s a lot of movement on the line with guys doing things they weren’t asked to do previously, like asking Mike Saffell to be a pulling center (SAY WHAT?). There’s a lot of interesting stuff here. If Wednesday had a focus on run plays up the middle, today was more about the outside runs and play action. I’d put my money on it changing like this for a few practices on rotation for the rest of the spring just to get all the guys comfortable with any play call.
The new STAR position is quite interesting. Being a hybrid SS/OLB role, it confuses the offense into figuring out if he’s playing as a nickel or as a linebacker. This could lead to some interesting trickeration and matchups.
In addition to the new STAR position, a player that stands out to me now is Trey Paster. The dude is built like he’s ready to play now, and I did not have a good grasp on how big he was until he was lining up on defense in different positions all over the backfield. He also had some time at the STAR role, which is perfect for him considering his size.
That’s it for me today. Make sure to take a watch of the post-practice presser below for an awesome chat with RB Coach Aristotle Thompson. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to our youtube channel and our Facebook page!
Just a heads up. There is practice today. But I won’t be there due to personal reasons. So we’re going I have to skip one practice report. Sorry y’all! I’ll work twice as hard to get you the goods the rest of Spring Football!
The "Star" position is really interesting to me. That terminology is straight-up Belichik/Saban, so it seems that our defensive coaches have been meeting with somebody this off-season (it could be anyone from the Saban/Belichik tree, though, not necessarily the founders themselves).
Basically, in the Saban/Belichik terminology, the Star is your strongside OLB. If you're playing against an I-formation, then that guy will line up to the TE side (the strongside), and he'll be playing on the line of scrimmage as an edge defender outside of the TE. If the offense replaces that TE with a Slot WR to go spread, though, then the Star will walk out of the box toward that second receiver. So far, these are just alignment adjustments based on the offense's formation.
The whole point behind calling that guy the "Star" instead of just calling him a strongside OLB, is that the defense might want a different guy at that spot depending on the personnel that the offense has on the field. So, you might want a big OLB at Star if they have a TE in the game, but you might want more of a DB at Star if they're in the spread. Either way, it's the same position with the same assignments, and so you teach all of those guys the same stuff. This means that the Star position is really a group of guys who might have very different body types, but who do the same thing functionally within the structure of the defense. It's basically a way to maintain a base 3-4 while acknowledging that you might want different people in the game against different offensive personnel groupings. This contrasts with a true nickel package, where you might run completely different stuff in substituted personnel. In a more traditional Nickel system, your NB would be a unique position that does entirely different things from your SLB, and so you wouldn't really train them together or think of them as fulfilling the same kind of role.