The first official football practice of the summer has come and gone, and it happened to be on my birthday – coincidence, I think not!  The next year of my life will be the best one yet, and in the best year of my life Georgia Tech wins a championship! 

This apparently is a high priority for Georgia Tech football, one that became obvious as I first entered the practice facility.  The GT equipment warehouse has a big slogan painted on the side that reads, “Prepare Like Champions”.  I also noticed several “Beat Georgia” signs that line the only entrance and exit to the facility.  Additionally, after the defense huddled up, they shouted a resounding, “1, 2, 3, Championship!”, before breaking the huddle.  These are all good signs, indicating that team has their focus in the right spot.  The Jackets are not here to mess around any more, under CPJ we will bring home the trophy.

The practice itself went about how you might expect a first practice to go.  It involved no pads and there was a lot of work with each individual unit.  Full special team drills were worked on for 15 minutes or so at the very beginning of practice.  After that the team was broken up into individual units (defensive line, safeties, cornerbacks, offensive line, running backs, wide receivers, and quarterbacks) where they did specialized drills pertaining to each unit for about an hour.  I happened to be positioned nearest the safeties and cornerback during this time, which gave me the luxury of watching The Predator, Morgan Burnett, in action.  He lived up to his name, gobbling up the ball on every opportunity.  He just makes the game look so easy compared to his peers.  It is pretty apparent that he is simply on another level.

The climax of the practice came after the individual unit work outs, when the defense lined up against the offense for passing drills.  Josh Nesbitt, Jaybo Shaw, Tevin Washington, Jordan Luallen, and David Sims each took snaps one after another and threw passes to the wide receivers and A-backs, who went out in pass patterns against the back 7 (linebackers and secondary).  The quarterback/receiver connection was a little sloppy, especially from both of the freshmen Luallen and Sims, but this is to be expected on the first day of practice (It is worth noting that Luallen and Sims were the last two off the field, taking snaps well after practice was over – I love the dedication!)  The quarterbacks all looked pretty good throwing the short routes, but overall Jaybo looked the best.  One of the highlights of this segment was Jaybo connecting on a nice deep ball to Marcus Wright.  Another was a one-handed catch in traffic made by Freshman, Tyler Jarry.   The quarterbacks were only 14-38 during these drills, but to their credit I did see some dropped balls.  A lot of those drops were by A-backs.  I hope to see some improvements in that area over the course of the next few weeks, because the A-backs get a lot of looks in our passing game.

The last 15 minutes of practice were dedicated to individual drills again.  The entire practice lasted a little over two hours.  This practice was only the tip of the iceberg as things are sure to get feisty over the next several days in the Georgia heat, especially when they first wear pads on Friday.  It felt like 95 degrees out there today and I came home this evening with raccoon eyes, sun burned from wearing shades all day.  Tomorrow I will be prepared with some sun screen.

Depth chart as best I see it solely based on this practice today is as follows (I will continue to update this as best I can):

First Team Defense:

• Derrick Morgan – DE
• Robert Hall – DE
• Jason Peters – DT
• Ben Anderson – DT
• Brad Jefferson – LB
• Sedric Griffin – LB
• Cooper Taylor – Rover
• Rashaad Reid – CB
• Mario Butler – CB
• Dominique Reese – S
• Morgan Burnett – S

Second Team Defense:  This was hard to tell since they rotated with the third team a lot, but I’ll develop this list as I see more practices.  By the way, Redshirt Freshman TJ Barnes looks even bigger than he is listed, which is only a meager 6′-7″  353lbs!

First Team Offense:  This was also tough to tell but the definites are obviously Nesbitt, Dwyer, and Bebe.  Here are players that saw signifigant action also with the first team: 

• Anthony Allen – A back
• Marcus Wright – A back
• Lucas Cox – A back
• Embry Peeples – A back
• Orwin Smith – A back
• Joseph Gilbert – OL
• Sean Bedford – OL
• Brad Sellers – OL
• Cord Howard – OL
• Austin Barrick – OL
• Nick Claytor – OL
• Dan Voss – OL
• Clyde Yandell – OL

The other wide receiver spot looks like Tyler Melton’s position, but worth mentioning is freshman Stephen Hill, who at 6-4 stood out amongst the players.  Hill is still very lean listed at 190 pounds and inexperienced in the offense, but with a little muscle and experience we could have a sick combo of Bebe-Hill

Second Team Offense:  This is also hard to tell considering that I dont even have the first team down yet, but it looks like Jaybo at qb, Preston Lyons at B-back, a combination of two of the A-backs above, and a combination of the three extra lineman above along with two of the following redshirt Freshman:

• Zach Fraysier – OL
• Omoregie Uzzi – OL
• Mike Johnson – OL
• Nick McRae – OL
• Phil Smith – OL