Patriots Training Camp Monday Afternoon Observations - New England Patriots Forums

PatsFans.com Article · 08-08-2011, 06:10 PM

Patriots Training Camp Monday Afternoon Observations
By: Steve Balestrieri

A brief introduction as Mike joins us here at Patsfans.com....

CLICK HERE TO READ THIS STORY

The Scrizz · 08-08-2011, 06:53 PM

Couple of quick comments. I haven't been to a camp in a few years but I didn't find it particularly 'spirited'. I actually thought the pace was pretty slow, possibly due to the heat.

Saying the offense struggled is a little misleading as Brady's wideouts during that drill were the aforementioned Jenkins, who didn't look like he was in the right place, and possibly Buddy Farnham(?). And that was against mainly 1st team defenders. So I wasn't expecting a well-oiled machine.

Brady had a couple of beautiful throws during red-zone work, to Jenkins and Tyree Barnes, thrown just off the ground and inside where only the WR could make a play on it and both did nicely.

During the two-minute drills where Brady was working with the 1st team O, they looked much better, especially Hernandez who certainly looks healthy and was catching everything thrown his way.

It's hard to say because of the lack of tackling, but the defense appeared to dominate the run game.

A few other things I noticed were that Price, as people have been saying, looked really good. Caught everything thrown his way.
The TE's as a group are just massive. It looks like we could put out an offensive line of just our TE's.
Jeremey Ross, UDFA WR looked very good and also taller than his listed 5'11. If Chad is listed at 6'1 he has to be at least that.
Best hit of the day was Chung blowing up UDFA RB Richard Medlin in blitz pickup drill.
Mallett looked much more accurate than I was expecting but I didn't really get to see him show off the gun.
All of the OL vs DL/LB drills were on far field, opposite end, so I got to see basically nothing which kind of sucked.

I can't wait for Thursday because trying to really tell anything based on touch-football practices is near useless. For example, either or kick return game will be incredible or our coverage is terrible. Or neither because it was touch football. Either way, I didn't find any of it particularly intense or spirited.

One other thing... Gostkowski is completely healthy. He was booming them into the endzone even though they had him kicking off from the 25, I think just to give the returners a chance at bringing it out.

Mogamedogz · 08-09-2011, 07:35 AM

I don't know which Price you were watching, but I saw him drop 3 or 4 EASILY catchable passes, to which the entire bleachers groaned "ahh comeon Price".