(Written by kencraw)

I was able to make it to the open practice last Sunday.  Here are my various thoughts:

• The Bears appear to be making use of Maxwell field these days during practice.  It used to be EVERYTHING happened inside Memorial Stadium.  While I don’t know what they were doing over at Maxwell, the fact that the defense was missing for the 1st 45 minutes or so and then the kickers were missing for most of the rest of practice (despite having been in the stadium for the 1st hour) suggests they were over there when absent.
• Much has been made of Malik McMorris as a former DE who, in part because he is short, is being tried out as a 310 lbs. fullback.  Perhaps I just didn’t catch him on a good day, but what I saw was unimpressive.  He was very easily winded, constantly with his hands on his hips.  He didn’t run very crisp routes when going into formation.  He dropped a very easy catch.  In fairness, he seemed to do well blocking during running plays.  In other words, he looked exactly what I’d expect a converted DE to look like.
• In man-on-man drills, the D-line was making the O-line look pretty bad.  It was hard to tell if it was because the defense has gotten better or if it’s a sign of weak O-line play, but whatever it was, it was a pretty uneven matchup.
• However, when the O-Line was playing as a unit they appeared a lot better.  I would call it a stalemate, which was plenty for the passing game of Cal which gets the ball out pretty quick.
• As reported elsewhere, the coronation of Rigsbee as the center seems to have been premature.  Granado had the 1st string center spot for nearly the whole practice and Rigsbee was back at right guard.
• On the defensive side of the ball I was very gladdened to see much, much, much more press coverage out of the DB’s.  It’s clear the defensive staff has a lot more confidence in their backs than last year.  Now, as to how they performed… well… it wasn’t horrible.  Nevertheless, expect some long plays on broken coverage this year.  I’ll still take that over what we had last year.
• True freshman safety Billy McCrary impressed me with his speed and his aggressiveness.  He’ll have to learn how to be more subtle as his current technique will flagged for pass interference too often, but I see a big future for him.
• In other defensive back news, can someone tell Darius White to shut his yap and just play football?  I forgot how much that guy likes to mouth off.  Maybe I shouldn’t be too harsh as it seemed to fire up his teammates and be a positive influence.  I’ve just never been a big fan of that sort of yapping.
• For the quarterbacks, it is quite obviously Goff 1st and then Forrest 2nd.  Forrest impressed me.  I think he’ll do well when he comes in for relief of Goff.  He had good touch and his decisions suggest he has command of the playbook.
• There are two freshman QB’s, Ross Bowers and David Maaghul.  Bowers was clearly the better thought of by the staff and got the 3rd string reps.  The game hasn’t “slowed down” for him yet and he was having timing issues with the WRs.  I do like his delivery and seems to throw a good ball.
• Lasco is looking better than ever.  He looked REALLY fast to me.  He’s way too fast to be called a “power back” at this point, which is what he was perceived as in the past (with Muhammad at the “speed back”).
• Finally, the kickers.  Both of the place kickers, Matt Anderson and Noah Beito have the leg to kick 50+ yard field goals, but both left something to be desired in their accuracy even with 35 yard field goals (BTW, everything inside the redzone is 37 yards or less).  Their accuracy did seem to go up once it was inside 30 yards.

Overall what I saw was a team that seems to have a lot of potential but also has enough holes that we shouldn’t expect miracles.  One thing I will say is the quality of play out of the 2nd and 3rd strings was a lot higher than in years past.  It should mean that we shouldn’t need to hold our breath for the rest of the season once a couple of guys get injured.  This team is a LOT deeper than in the past.

GO BEARS!