North Carolina State University Athletics
Annabelle's Preseason Diary
8/12/2003 12:00:00 AM | Football
Aug. 12, 2003
Practices are getting a little more intense as the team is doing more and more contact work. Even though today was a one-workout day, it was a feisty one, with the team going through special teams work and then practicing for a couple of hours this afternoon. After practice, they finished with conditioning runs, but were actually off the field by 6:30.
One of the advantages to the new practice fields is the ability to run the fields in either direction. On Monday morning, the fields ran from north to south. By Monday afternoon's workout, Ray Brincefield and his staff had repainted the entire practice field, and now there are two fields running east to west. This keeps certain areas of the field from getting too scuffed up by overuse. I think the facilities guys plan to switch them about every week.
Coach Chris Demarest's daughter Junelle is at camp this year, as she always is. She knows all of the players by name and is the only bystander allowed to cheer during practice. It's become a Wolfpack tradition to have Junelle in preseason camp.
Last night, I watched the defensive linemen do a pretty cool pursuit drill. They put two wide rubber rings down on the ground, almost in a figure eight (the rings don't touch). When the whistle blows, one lineman chases the other around the figure eight. It's pretty hilarious to watch these big guys, looking like they're playing ring-around-the-rosie. I never actually saw the guy in the back catch the guy in the front, but those guys were flat-out moving.
Today, the team wore full pads. The practices alternate between run-oriented and pass-oriented and when the emphasis is on the run, they wear full gear. After individual drills, the team did boards. One particularly interesting battle was between Kalani Heppe and Maurice Charles - they might be freshmen, but have learned quickly to be ferocious on the boards. Tank Tyler also looked like he was having his way a couple of times out there on the boards.
After boards, the team did inside drill, which pits the quarterbacks, running backs, tight ends and linemen against the defensive line, linebackers and safeties. The idea is to keep it inside. T.A. McLendon, Josh Brown and Cotra Jackson all had some strong runs on inside drill today.
Pass skeleton, or "skelly" was next. This is when the QBs, WRs, RBs and TEs go against the LBs, CBs and safeties. The defense looked pretty good in some of the skelly drills. Manny Lawson picked off a pass, Freddie Aughtry-Lindsay swatted down a pass and Troy Graham made a leveling hit on a wide reciever. The offense made some big plays too - Philip Rivers threaded a couple of defensive backs to hit Andy Bertrand on one beautiful pass.
Renaldo Moses looked tough on back-to-back plays in 11-on-11 today. On one play, he tackled Josh Brown in the backfield for a tackle for loss and on the next play, he broke through and actually stripped the ball from the back's hands.
Practice ended with goalline drills, the first time the team has gone completely "live" this season. The offense and defense split goalline drills today, but the highlights were Andre Maddox making a big hit in the backfield, Jay Davis lofting one into the endzone to John Ritcher and Cotra Jackson and T.A. McLendon diving over the pile for TDs. In almost every drill today, Maddox seemed to be making jaw-jarring hits.
Coach Amato told the team after practice that "goalline is an attitude." I guess it's good that both the offense and the defense seem to share that same attitude.
