It’s sunny, and a blissful 71 at St. John Fisher University. David Edwards is first player out and Christian Benford is at the JUGS machine, then Benford shakes hands with some football players along the fence, who are dressed in red jerseys. Benford gets a cheer when he comes onto the field.
From Ghent NY, Emily is up here at the top of the bleachers with an “It’s My Birthday” sign. It was her birthday wish to come to Bills camp, and her Mom obliged. Emily wants to have somebody recognize the sign later when she’s at the fence after practice. She’s 15 today, the same age as my Boise granddaughter.
More action at the JUGS machine now including Zach Davidson, Xavier Johnson, and Lawrence Keys III. Mack Hollins kneels on one knee on the sideline before heading across the practice field. He’s wearing the red-strip shirt today and he heads across the field, pumping his arm in the crowd. Cheers from the bleachers. Reid Ferguson’s throwing 25-yard passes to a trainer. Nice touch on those passes.
Khalil Shakir runs through the tunnel and straight across the field, waving.
There are already eight offensive linemen warming up. Shane Buechele heads out with his third-string Center, Will Clapp.
Trubisky joins them, but the biggest cheer comes for Hoodie Josh, who runs over and joins the other quarterbacks. He’s deliberately emphasizing bending his back leg as he throws to one of the assistants.
Martin is kicking from his 30 to the far end zone line, sometimes the five. That’s 65- to 70-yard punts in the air.
Matt Milano gets a healthy cheer, as does Kincaid. They trot over to their respective places, Dalton to the tight end spot. Dion Dawkins heads out to the center of the field, where the ones are beginning to gather.
While Matt Milano is still wearing a black sleeve on his right leg, it’s more of a compression sleeve more than protection.
The defense assembles on the edge of the field, then trot out their ones, DaQuan Jones in the middle Epenesa at right DE with Rousseau on the left end. Quick throws over the middle to Cook and Kincaid with loud and gestural calls being made by Center David Edwards. Usually, they only do two plays before calisthenics; this time they did four.
Calisthenics All-Stars include Ja’Marcus Ingram, Zach Davidson, DeShawn Williams, Deion Jones… fewer of them were noticeably giving 100% effort today, to be honest. Doing the deepest stretches was Tyrell Shavers.
They break into positionals.
The offensive line is getting plenty of instruction on hand placement from Kromer.
All three exercise bikes are being used. Right now, Justin Shorter, Cole Bishop, Travis Clayton have the pedals turning. Ty Johnson is stretching alongside the bikes.
Sam Martin’s receiving the hike from long snapper Reid Ferguson, and just booming those 70-yarders in a cross breeze. Consistent, deep, and some with some English on the ball.
Gunners and two up-backs are working in front of us. Just an educated guess, but the goal of the two up-backs must be to move the gunner off his line.
Special Teams move into rushing the punter, 11 on 11. Looks like Martin is pushing the kick over toward the sideline and forcing the kick returner’s momentum to carry him out of bounds.
Hardy did a lot of the returning, but I thought I saw Elam was back there and Dee Delaney. Most of the players have the bottoms of their jerseys pulled up over their numbers today, making identifying them a crapshoot.
Kromer has each offensive lineman use one arm to block his opponent as they move. These drills foreshadow lots of pulls by the line this year. Watch for guards or tackles pulling, even some counter trey.
After kicking work, it’s some practice with screens and swing passes with just the offense, 11 on zero. Each group gets their turn at this, first the ones, then the twos, then the threes. Gilliam was worked in with the ones.
I love the exercise where the QB hands off one ball to the running back, gets a second ball from an assistant, and throws out to the flat. This makes a ball fake even more realistic, saves time, and occupies one more player on each drill. Efficiency is a Joe Brady watchword.
Tight ends are now being worked in with the running backs, with Allen and Buechele throwing passes in tandem, with Trubisky following suit by himself.
In one of these throwing drills, it look like Quintin Morris slipped. I’m watching him and not picking up that he hurt anything, except perhaps his pride. Zach Davidson does everything just a little faster or more crisply than the others.… Except Kincaid. I looked up Zach’s playerprofiler page, and he’s considerably better on paper than Quintin Morris’s player profiler page. Just sayin’.
Now the receivers are working off of press-man at the line (an assistant), catching the ball, and running it down to the end zone. Mack Hollins and Keon Coleman’s deceleration on a dig route was comparatively quick. Josh is throwing to a group of four: Keon Coleman K.J. Hamler, Mack Hollins, and Marquez Valdes-Scantling. Nice, because they are mixing up the quarterbacks with the wide receivers. Xavier Johnson makes a nifty one-handed catch on a long bomb. I’d give it “Catch of the Day Against Air”.
Now they are adding some defenders into the mix. Milano’s in the middle, Rasul Douglas on the far side Christian Benford up close, with Hamlin and Taylor Rapp the safeties. Josh hands off to Cook for four yards, then layers a perfect outside-shoulder throw to Mack Hollins that garnered some applause, especially from those with a vantage point along the metal fence at the far side. I wish I could say this was Marquez Valdes-Scantling’s day, but MV-S looks like he was trying to catch a pass one-handed while dealing with Benford, but we’re gonna mark it down as a another drop-slash-PBU. The speed at which the ball leaves Josh’s hand is elite; it allows the receiver to have to separate from his defender for less of an interval. That time it was Keon on the receiving end of a beautifully thrown ball, and then Shakir on the other side making an impressive catch.
The defense has wandered over from the other side so it ‘s time for 11-on-11. That’s confirmed by the down and distance markers and zebras..
Milano looks true to peak form, minimizing Cook’s gain on a wheel route to only 4 yards. The next play is Cook right up the middle for a first down, then a 12-personnel throw to Dawson Knox up the seam. Call it the Catch of the Day.
Allen changes the play at the line, again well-communicated by McGovern, and throws it out to Coleman in the left flat. First down. The next play has guards pulling left and James Cook squirting out right, and Josh Freakin’ Allen bolts down to the end zone to be the first to congratulate him. This got a chuckle from the crowd, who appreciate the 11-year-old in Josh. Christian Benford gets the better of Curtis Samuel on an admittedly slightly-overthrown pass to our side. Ray Davis takes off like a bullet up our side and I thought they were cheering for Davis, but they’re throwing shirts up in the stands.
After the twos and threes do their thing, the defense returns to the third field, while the Bills offensive unit works on some first-and-goal from the five.
This is my last AstroNotes blog entry for the year. Going into the training camp season ticketless was disappointing, as we bloggers are not credentialed media. It was the kindness of others that got my buddy Joe Reagan and I into several camp dates. I want to thank Mike D., Barb R., Erik T., Sabesfan, Joanie, Corey B., Lisa B., and others involved in getting us to camp. Thanks to all of the hospitality staff, which was the best this year, especially parking lot attendants extraordinaire, Bernard and Dontrell for their daily kindness, friendliness, and fun banter. Mrs. Astro and I gave them both a Bills Camp certificate, cookies, and a small token of our appreciation. Finally, than you to my extremely tolerant and always caring wife, Pam, who would take time out of her day to drop me off and pick me up at the bus loop.
Astro out.
Xwitter: @TCBILLS_Astro
Editor’s babble: And we are thankful to Dean and Joe for their training camp coverage. You can also find Joe on Xwitter @joer869.
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Ranks Rastro!