By Rob Patrick
These aren't your daddy's two-a-days.
"People usually dread two-a-days," said Bryant Hornets head football coach Paul Calley after his team's second workout of the fall on Tuesday. "But the way we practice now, we don't really have to do the old dreaded two-a-day practice. We're just repping what we did in the spring, really. Conditioning is really the purpose for us going as long as we are."[more]
The Hornets have started at 8:20 and practiced until 11:20 the first two days. They were set on that schedule again on Wednesday before donning pads for the first day of contact on Thursday.
"There's a lot of desire," Calley said of his team. "The guys are happy to be back. I've been pleased with the effort, I've been pleased with the retention that we've had with the stuff we've done on offense. Defensively, we're not really changing much. We're working a lot on alignment and really preparing for everything we might see during the course of the year, rather than just working on Benton. We're working on everything."
The Hornets open the season with their annual Salt Bowl rivalry with Benton at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock on Sept. 4. They'll scrimmage Pine Bluff on Monday, Aug. 24.
"We've got a good group of kids," Calley noted. "I think we're down to 95 from 126. That's about normal. Until we get a separate sophomore program, we're always going to be at about that number, I think."
A practice field that's been holding the water from recent rains has slowed the Hornets a bit, the coach mentioned.
"We cut practice short (Monday) but we got to slow down and cover some things on the board and do some things that we don't normally get to do," he said. "You still want to be able to get out there and go full tilt."
That will be a priority on Thursday when the team gets in pads. "We'll be moving a lot quicker," Calley said. "We're walking through a lot of stuff right now and re-teaching and trying to keep it slow so nobody's overwhelmed. But we went a little no huddle today.
"We're going to have several different speeds of offense," he elaborated. "We're going to certain packages where we can go really fast. We'll have 'check-with-me' (no-huddle) packages. We're going to have packages where we can slow it down and I think we're going to be pretty good at all three. In our traditional spread, 'check-with-me' stuff, we'll be going at our own pace, trying to take advantage of what the defense gives us. But, with the running game that we have, the play-action passing game now, we should be hard to defend. We didn't really do that stuff last year until midway through but we worked on it all through spring and we've got guys that we feel can catch it out of the backfield.
"I'm excited about the offense. If the offensive line will come through and we can be consistent, I think we've got a chance to be really good," the coach concluded.
Regarding the defense, coordinator Steve Griffith said, "We've been doing a lot of formation recognition. We like to take the time in the spring and the summer to throw up every formation that we think we're going to see during the year to make sure we're all on the same page, a baseline from which we can go forward. That way, on a week-to-week basis, we've got some learning to pull from. We're not just whipping into a new formation without any knowledge base.
"The kids have done a real good job," he noted. "They've been through a lot of this in the spring and they're picking back up on it real well. We've had a few guys change positions and they're picking up on what they're supposed to do. These days in shorts, we're just doing a lot of learning and, hopefully, on Thursday we'll start finding out whether, once we get lined up, we can play some football."
Griffith noted that middle linebacker Trey Sowell has been moved to the outside to take advantage of his good work during 7-on-7 during the summer. Hunter Mayall will move into the middle. In the secondary, Samille Watson has traded spots with Logan Garland. Watson will work a corner opposite Tanner Tolbert with Garland at safety.
"Our d-backs, to me, athletically are as good as we've been since '04," Calley mentioned. "We had a pretty good secondary in '07, but I think we have a chance to be better athletically than that group. At linebacker, we may not be as good as we were in '07 but, on the d-line, we're going to be bigger. We may not be as quick but we'll be bigger, and we should be able to stand up a little bit better against the teams that like to pound us."
The Hornets will continue to practice in the mornings this week then switch to the afternoons next week as inservice meetings begin for the coaches and teachers at the school. Photo day will be Saturday, Aug. 15. School starts Wednesday, Aug. 19.
