Hey everyone, the name is Brett. Talking to Jeff the last couple of weeks we thought it might be nice to have someone in Pullman covering the football practices for CC. Well, for now that guy is going to be me. Since I'm not a writer for the site I can't talk to players or coaches, but I am allowed to watch practice and tell you guys what I see out there.

I've been playing and/or watching football my entire life, but just started writing about it about a year or more ago, so bear with me while I try and figure out how to run with these posts.

The first practice I'm going to cover was yesterdays run-through, pretty basic stuff so it should be short, sweet and to the point. Anyways, on to the stuff you want to hear!

 

• These final practice's of the week are pretty vanilla stuff, what with the players only wearing shells (helmet and shoulder pads). They are basically just doing some last minute work with the gameplan.
• That being said, you can generally get a good gauge on what you can expect to see out of the offense and defense on game day. Since I don't want to give anything away to people possibly reading this blog that can use the info in ways we'd prefer they don't I'll try and stay away from revealing too much.
• Defense: We're not going to see a whole lot of changes, you'd think with an apparent offensive overhaul maybe the coaches would do the same with an equally struggling defense, but no.
• Offense: For those fans of the spread we saw last week against USC (I'm assuming that's everyone) you're going to be happy to hear the team appears to be sticking with it. The offensive unit ran about 40-50 plays during they're session, only one of which was from a non-spread formation. That one play was a QB sneak from the 1 yard-line, so it makes sense. Most of what I saw was spread, mixing it between two back and one back in that base spread style.
• Special Teams: Some frustration from ST coach Dave Ungerer came out when the punt return team wasn't able to tell him what the protection was on the next play. However, from that point on, Ungerer had nothing but good things to say to the squad's protection on punt returns or kick returns. 
• Tuel seems to be developing quite the QB-WR relationship with Marquess Wilson, everyone's favorite young WR. Wilson saw quite a few targets from Tuel, making the catch a whole lot more often than not.
• About 10 plays into the session, Daniel Blackledge had one spectacular catch on the sideline. Going up to get the ball thrown a tad high from Tuel, and somehow managing to get a foot down in the process. It's hard to ignore the talent we have at the WR position this year.
• Now I played on a fairly unsuccessful team in high school, so I can attest to how tough it is to keep an upbeat tone to practice when you go out nearly every week and get beat. This doesn't appear to be a problem with our guys though, which is impressive. All week, including yesterday, there was talk from the players along the lines of "let's go win a ball game." So, while a good amount of the fan base may have lost hope in them, they have not got down on themselves, which is huge.

I hope this was at least somewhat interesting for you guys to read. Let me know what you think, and possibly what you'd like me to look for in following weeks. I'll be at practice every day the rest of the season (barring my sickness) so anything you want info on, write in the comments.
Until Monday fellow Cougs. Now let's go win a ball game, boys.
GO COUGS!