Dallas Cowboys training camp: Practice #1

Sorry for the delay, we had unexpected traffic issues but have figured a way around it from now on.

At the first practice of 2008 for the Dallas Cowboys, the team were in shorts and helmets. They also spent a good part of the time broken up into groups working on techniques and the like. It wasn’t the most exciting practice in terms of watching football, but it was good just to see them working again.

At the beginning, a bunch of players were catching punts including Terence Newman, Patrick Crayton, all the usual suspects and Adam Jones. AJ dropped a punt and the crowd immediately started razzing him in a light-hearted way. He then started laughing; he probably never had so many people at a training camp practice watching his every move. Welcome to the Cowboys AJ.

During the QB/RB warm-ups MB3 and Deon Anderson ran the first team, Ronnie Cruz and Tashard Choice were 2^nd, Julius Crosllin and Alonzo Coleman were 3^rd and Crosslin teamed up with Keon Lattimore on the fourth string. By the way, there was a left-handed QB wearing #10 out there, no one knew who he was, perhaps someone could enlighten me.

In the group sessions the first string offensive line was the normal one, the 2^nd string was from left to right Doug Free, James Marten, Cory Procter, Joe Berger, and Pat McQuistan. The 3^rd string was Doug Free, Adam Stenavich, Ryan Gibbons, Joe Berger and Cory Lekkerkerker.

LB coach Reggie Herring is intense, he gets into it kind of like Paul Pasqualoni used to. During some passes drills T.O. caught a long bomb that got the crowd hyped.

When they went to some team drills the starting defense was as you’d expect. Anthony Henry was taking the starting reps. Seeing Roy Williams in his #38 jersey threw me off for a little bit, it took getting used to. When the defense went to the second string, Hatcher, Bowen and Tank were across the front, Spencer and Tearrius George were your outside LB’s and in the middle was Burnett and Justin Rogers. Yes, you read that right, Rogers and not Bobby Carpenter. The secondary was Alan Ball, Adam Jones, Pat Watkins and Courtney Brown.  The 3^rd string along the front was a combination of Junior Siavii, Remi Ayodele, Marcus Dixon and Marcus Smith. The linebackers were Bobby Carpenter and Tyson Smith in the middle with Erik Walden and Darrell Robertson on the outside. The secondary was Orlando Scandrick, Evan Oglesby/Quincy Butler, Dowayne Davis and Tyler Everett.

After a lot of technique drills and some FG work, they finally did some 7-on-7. Romo started with a pass to Crayton beating T-New, Bradie broke up a pass over the middle intended for Witten, Witten then split Ellis and Bradie for a catch. Tony Curtis beat Roy Williams for a catch causing Roy to hit the turf and then Witten beat Roy for another catch. Romo finished up with a pass to Mike Jefferson who beat Henry.

Brad Johnson hit Crayton for a catch beating Alan Ball, Bennett caught a check-down in front of Burnett, Austin beat Ball on an out pattern and Hurd beat AJ on an out pattern. Bartel connected with Amendola for a leaping catching that had the crowd whooping it up. A very nice catch. Keon Lattimore then dropped a swing pass.

Romo back on and he hit Witten underneath, T.O. beat Scandrick and Tyler Everett on a bomb but Romo overthrew the pass. MB3 caught a checkdown, then Romo threw a bad pass to Austin. He finished with a couple of checkdowns to Choice.

Brad threw a short pass to Curtis, then tried to hit Crayton deep but underthrew it and Henry picked it off. He came back to hit Austin on a short pass and then Ball and Stanback got tied up and fell for an incompletion. #10 threw an INT directly to Courtney Brown then badly overthrew a ball out-of-bounds.

After that they did some FG’s and Folk actually missed a few. Brad Johnson threw a fake FG pass to Colombo and they also threw one to Bowen. Both guys caught them.

They finished practice with 11-on-11 drills. Romo threw one to T.O., then one to Witten on a reverse roll-out, then hit Hurd on a hitch who put a nice fake on T-New. He threw a short one to Cricket Anderson then hit T.O. on a deep crossing pattern. Witten then caught a pass in front of Roy.

Brad had a terrible pass intended for Bennett, then ran a draw to Choice, followed by a fumbled snap. He finished with a swing pass to Lattimore who juked Justin Rogers. Bartel threw a pass to Rodney Hannah, Courtney Brown caught it with Hannah, but Hannah won the wrestling match for the ball. Spencer batted down the next pass at the line and then MB3 caught a screen Pass.

Romo was back on and ran a draw to MB3, then had T.O. wide-open deep but threw a wounded duck pass that looked awful. He hit Austin on slant beating Quincy Butler, the Butler took the ball out of T.O.’s hands on an out for an INT. Sam Hurd cooked Butler for a long bomb that Romo had no problems completing for a TD.

Brad ran a draw play then ate the ball on a pass play were no one was open. Coleman dropped a swing pass and then Ronnie Cruz caught a short pass. Bartel had his ball batted down at the line by Siavii, then AJ broke up a pass intended for Amendola.

Romo came back on and threw one away, then hit Witten who beat Tyson Smith followed by a T.O. catch in front of Oglesby. Brad then threw a bad pass, hit Coleman short, and finished with a swing pass to Cruz.

Then practice was over. That’s one in the books.

Forgive any spelling errors and the like in the post, I wrote it very fast because I was so late in getting it up.