Some Training Camp Notes 8/3

[KendrickPanther]

Today was a great day to be at camp! It was a very hot practice at 3:30pm but that drove away some fans. Combine that with practice being held at Gibbs Stadium and you could sit in the first row without punching babies to get there.

-No pads today. The mood was light and fun but the guys did pick it up for team drills

-Shortest practice I have been to. Just under 2hrs and 30 minutes

-half of practice was walkthroughs and special teams

-with such a small crowd there was very little ambient noise. You could hear the players joking on the field

-The guys were joking about a cocktail and Cam wanted to know if it came in a Red Solo Cup

-Gamble was talking to the DBs about some cute chicks in the crowd

Linebacker Drills:

-Probably the highlight of this practice for me was watching Beason, Davis, and Kuechly playing catch with their left hands. They looked like total spazzes

-Other than that they just did a few light agility and backpedal drills

QB/WR Warmup drills:

-In warmups Cam was on target about 90% of the time, maybe 95%

-Joe Adams had a pretty embarrassing drop. The ball would have hit him between the eyes had his hands not touched it. Those can actually be hard to catch because your instinct is to move out of the way but this guy is in the pros.

-Armanti and Joe Adams had a couple of drops on poorly thrown balls. Hit their hands but tough grabs. Grabs starting Wide Receivers need to make.

DB vs. WR Drills:

-#40 Nate Ness picked off Derek Anderson I think. Nice job jumping a route.

-On his next rep Nate Ness was burned pretty bad for a TD.....

-Captain Munnerlyn beat Armanti Edwards to a ball for the pick

-Brenton Bersin burned #27 Darius Butler for a 40 yard TD right down the middle. Pretty sad for Darius.

-#83 Louis Murphy beat someone down the center of the field for a TD. Don't remember the DB but it may have been that previously mentioned Nate Ness burn.

-Lafell and Greg Olsen had a couple nice grabs in these drills but they didn't run deep routes

Team Drills:

-The majority of team drills focused on starting drives from the offenses 20-30 yard line

-There was some hurry up offense as well but they never spotted the ball in the red zone

-Lot's of mixed personnel in terms of 1st/2nd/3rd team.

-The first thing that jumped out was formations. Lot's of personnel changes, motion, and just general confusion to watch

-In one formation they lined up Cam and Deangelo in a Pistol but with Tolbert and Stewart as wing backs like a wish bone or something. They had Tolbert lead block to the left, Stewart got a fake hand off and followed Tolbert, then Deangelo got the actual hand off on a counter to the right.

-On another Similar play they faked the handoff to Stewart going left then ran an option run to the right. Deangelo flanked Cam for the pitch but he never needed it, they were running free.

-On yet another play they faked Double Trouble and the offensive line to the right and Tolbert caught a screen to the left. The only people in his zip code were tiny DBs

-They ran a three receiver set where Greg Olsen lined up in the slot and Brandon Lafell lined up like a Tight End

-In 4 practices I have seen Greg Olsen line up on the outside several times. They would send in 12 personnel and have formidable pass formation with Greg on the outside and two WR on the other side

-Hell they would run 22 personnel and pass out of it.

-I'm going to stop talking about formations now because the playbook is 700 pages, the point is they can do some scary things

-It looked like Steve warmed up, ran a route or two and took the practice off. I hope there wasn't an injury but I'm assuming it was age related

-The Panthers ran screens of all types today. All of them worked great except when Greg Hardy jumped a route for a pass break up. Overall the screen game is diverse and effective

-Lafell had his best practice of camp so far. He connected with Cam maybe 6 or 7 times. All of them down field on crossing, comeback, slant, etc....He doesn't blow by many guys but he can find space in the middle.

-Louis Murphy had the worst drop of the day, 40 yard bomb from Cam hit him right in the 6 pack and he dropped it.

-Kuechly really knows how to frustrate the TEs. He's costing those guys a chance at the team with all his breakups.

-Cam did have a bad pick. Might have been miscommunication because he basically threw it right at Haruki Nakamura. No receiver in the area.

-Cam also sailed a pass long that was picked by I think #37 Johnathan Nelson. Just to much mustard on it

- I think it was #7 that overthrew Armanti Edwards for yet another pick. Bad route and bad throw.

-Greg Olsen looked great catching the ball today, he and Lafell had the best days

-The defense got burned a bunch today. The DB coach would get on guys for what they called out. He was very concerned with how the DBs worked as a team and communicated. Not so worried about individual matchups

-Frank Alexander got to Derek Anderson on one play. He beat Bruce Cambell to get there but the guys on the line took it easy today

-Amini Silatolu got flagged for a false start on a hard count. The stadium was silent which raises something interesting.....what is the loudest crowd he's played in front of?

-#66 Roger Allen got called for holding and got yelled at a couple times

-Ajiritutu is really really good at going up and catching at the highest point. A good talent to have when your QB is Cam Newton

-The offense wasn't afraid to call a run play in the hurry up period

-1st team offense manhandled the D in hurry up

Big Picture Observations:

-When someone throws the ball on target, Amanti Edwards looks like Jerry Rice. When the ball requires him to make adjustments he just can't do it.

-Chud is really starting to flex his playbook. I have never been so intellectually engaged at a practice. Just trying to figure out what the hell I was looking at.

-Brandon Hogan and Josh Norman showed up for the last 30 minutes of practice, hopefully they were rehabbing

-The guys were in good spirits. The replacement Ref blew a play dead for 12 men on D, problem is there was only 11. Coach Rivera was about to give him an earful and Cam said "COACH, Let the man do his job!"

-Cam throws very pretty balls. But 1 out of 15 is gonna go high, when it does we gotta pray no safety is in its path. It's like Shaq shooting free throws. We may have to take the bad with the good

-You can tell Cam has worked hard on his footwork. Even just throwing on the sidelines he was moving those feet

This was by far my favorite practice just because of the small crowd and fun atmosphere. You could hear the coaching and see it up close. Cam is a very busy man and everyone wants his Autograph. He would sign 1, skip 5. Unfortunately for me he signed for the guy right next to me and moved on. To his credit he got a couple in every part of the stadium and no other players signed for us common folk. A few signed for the VIPs.

[PantherPhann89]

Wow, what an impressive write up, loved it...

[redbuddha]

Great effort out there, now hit the showers!

[Pantherman]

Good write up bro. Offense sounds like it be super dangerous this year with Tolbert in the mix now. Replacement refs!! Smh!! 11 men on the field and called for 12 on the field. WTF!!. Screw these replacement refs. NFL needs to strike a deal with the real refs soon or alot of players will end up getting hurt because of this during the regular season. This makes no sense what so ever.

[GreatPoupon]

very nice

[teeray]

I know it sounds like over the top hyperbole, but if Cam Newton takes care of the football we will be virtually unstoppable on offense. My fear is that it is going to be a lot like Brett Favre these first few years where we are going to have to live with some turnovers but also be full of explosive scoring plays. That isn't the worst thing in the world and in 2 or 3 seasons he will be absolutely ridiculous at QB and in my opinion one of the 5 best in the NFL.

I am just afraid that people are expecting too big a leap from year 1 to year 2 when in reality it may be more of the same as last year (which, by the way, was a Pro-Bowl season so.... I'll take it.)

[KendrickPanther]

I know it sounds like over the top hyperbole, but if Cam Newton takes care of the football we will be virtually unstoppable on offense. My fear is that it is going to be a lot like Brett Favre these first few years where we are going to have to live with some turnovers but also be full of explosive scoring plays. That isn't the worst thing in the world and in 2 or 3 seasons he will be absolutely ridiculous at QB and in my opinion one of the 5 best in the NFL.

I am just afraid that people are expecting too big a leap from year 1 to year 2 when in reality it may be more of the same as last year (which, by the way, was a Pro-Bowl season so.... I'll take it.)

The one thing I can say about that is they had him work on checking down in 7 on 7. The one thing I fear may be uncorrectable is his overthrown passes.

[Marguide]

Thanks Kendrick.

Excellent report!

[Panfan35]

You just don't know how good it is to finally here a good write up like that.For fans that can't be there I for one thank you sir. Btw twitter feed not good

[teeray]

The one thing I can say about that is they had him work on checking down in 7 on 7. The one thing I fear may be uncorrectable is his overthrown passes.

I'm only going on what i saw the first two days of practice and last season, but in my opinion a lot of the overthrown passes are a result of him still not understanding when he need to put some touch on the ball in certain situations. He tries to throw darts 35 yards down field and put too much mustard on it and over shoots the receivers.

He may never be perfect on those throws but he will learn eventually when to take those chances and when not to, and he will also learn when to zip it and when to take a little off and be more accurate.

In the long term it doesn't worry me very much, but in the short term it could lead to another middle to high teen INT season.

But no matter what happens this season he is going to be even more amazing 3 seasons from now.

[CarolinaPanthers8789]

You do raise a very interesting point about Silatolu, he will have to get used to the noise factor very quick.

[The Special One]

You put Joe Person to shame with that excellent camp review.

[CarolinaPanthers8789]

Who's Joe Person?

[Cape Fear Cat]

Nice job, buddy! Give us more when you can. ;)