OTA Summary – Thursday May 28

May 29, 2009 at 09:43am by Scott   •  2 Comments »

I want to start this summary off by looking at Rick Stroud‘s blog entry about the OTA. I’m detecting a distinct anti-McCown/pro-Leftwich slant from Stroud and I don’t like it, not one bit.

Leftwich threw several touchdown passes during a red-zone period, including one to tight end Jerramy Stevens. He also connected with receiver Dexter Jackson and tight end Kellen Winslow, Jr., for big plays during a period with the offense backed up near its own goal line.

And that’s all he said about Byron Leftwich. Those things happened, but why doesn’t Stroud mention that the Winslow touchdown was thrown after the defensive line rush had stopped because they would have already gotten to him for a sack? Or that Gaines Adams batted a pass back into Leftwich’s face? Or that Will Allen ran Leftwich down from behind for a sack as he was trying to roll out? All those things are a result of either Leftwich’s delivery or his lack of mobility. He’s just not that athletic.

McCown also hit Stevens for a touchdown during the red zone drill, but earlier in practice, he was intercepted by cornerback Aqib Talib.

What, McCown doesn’t get the laundry list of players he hit for touchdowns, too? In addition to Stevens, McCown also got Winslow and Brian Clark in separate beautiful plays in the corner of the endzone.

The fact is that this was an up-and-down day for both quarterbacks, probably like most days are. I really don’t get the irrational love affair with Leftwich in the media. He just doesn’t look that sharp and the fact that most media types have him as the starter baffles me. I guess it’s okay to have your favorites, but if you’re going to be a real reporter and talk about the quarterback competition, you need to give the whole story. As for myself, I’m not a real reporter, so GO LUKE!

The rest of the OTA was relatively uninteresting. I’d like to say Roy Miller is looking good at DT, but without pads or contact it’s pretty hard to evaluate anything on the lines. But he looks like he’s understanding his assignments and looks… big.

There was a lot of rotation at linebacker, with Quincy Black seeing a lot of reps. Angelo Crowell was out, so his reps were distributed around. Jermaine Phillips saw some time at the strongside.

Kyle Arrington is getting some lip service as a potential nickelback, but Elbert Mack is just too good. That fourth corner spot is where the real competition is at between Torrie Cox, E.J. Biggers and Arrington.

Kyle Moore is playing both defensive end and defensive tackle. This has been reported elsewhere, but I hadn’t said it yet. So now it’s official.

Stephen Holder updated his Twitter with this:

Also, Sabby no match for K2 in one on one matchup. Went up and took the ball out of the air.

Sabby was heard shouting “FUCK!” at the top of his lungs after that play and he was obviously pissed about getting beat. But “no match” is a bit rough. Sabby’s coverage was excellent, but Winslow gets paid too, and he just made a great play on the ball. Sabby broke up the exact same play earlier in the practice, also to Winslow.

James Lee and Jeremy Zuttah started in place of Donald Penn and Arron Sears.

That’s about all I heard. The team has two more weeks of OTAs before they’re all used up and then they have a minicamp in the third week of June, so there should be a pretty constant flow of football for the next few weeks.