AZ Cardinals Camp

[rhippens]

because of a virus outbreak at nau in flagstaff a couple of weeks ago, cards camp was moved down here to prescott. i finally pulled myself away from work to go this morning to check things out. i'll probably go again next week after the first preseason game and try to do some sort of update. here's a few brief thoughts of what i saw this morning:

 

1. first thing i was looking for was how warner was throwing. i think he's pivotal for all the pieces to come together because i'm pretty sure that mccown and navarre aren't ready or ever will be. anyway, kurt had some nice tosses in 7v7 and 11v11 drills. the flight of the ball was good and he seemed to be fairly accurate. but the one thing i was looking for was strength in his throws because people still question his thumb. maybe it was just because it was camp, but i did not see much pop on the ball. there were a few that were pretty sharp, but no long crisp passes. the longest i think i saw him throw was about 25 yards and it had some loft to it. again, spiral looks good, accuracy seems to be there, but not much power. like i said, i'm not sure if that's a camp thing or a thumb thing.

 

2. fitzgerald caught a lot of nice passes. boldin broke his nose a few weeks ago and i only saw him a few times in light drills. most of the time he had his helmet off. so fitz was catching a lot of balls and i think i saw him drop only 1 and it was not a great toss, pretty low. otherwise a couple of nice endzone and sideline catches from him.

 

3. side note: boldin is much smaller than i expected. really no other comment than that, but he is listed at 6-1 in the roster they were giving out today and i certainly wouldn't put him over that.

 

4. bryant johnson made a great one-handed over the middle catch. it was nice and drew some oohs and ahhs. he was pretty good in general although i saw him drop 2 perfect throws. probably nothing to worry about, but it happened. overall, depending on warner, i think he could be very productive on this team as a #3 from what i saw today.

 

5. arrington. he looked fast which was no surprise and he got outside very quickly. the one thing i was looking for was his pass-catching and i didn't see him drop one. he got hit with a screen pass high on his chest and he brought it in and didn't lose a step. when he was catching, it was all screens, but all of them looked smooth. i would say we saw about 7 or 8 passes to him and he didn't drop any. he is definitely quick out of the box, i think it's the breakaway speed that i am currently unsure of. basically, is he fast enough to beat nfl corners like he beat college corners. the camp experience didn't lend the opportunity to see whether or not he can turn it on.

 

6. rolle was in his second day of camp today, but there wasn't much defensive action while we were there and he is still working with the second team as of today. sorry i can't report much here.

 

7. they were shifting sets a ton. worked with a lot of running backs and tight ends out wide then bringing them in. also worked quite a bit with 3 receivers backed in on one side. fitz got a lot of these catches once they broke out. all the routes looked pretty sharp and the defense certainly lost guys a few times. but overall, i was surprised by how much shifting they were doing. i'm not sure if that will carry into the regular season. ran a couple of plays with running backs lined up outside too, but i can't imagine that they'll do that much with warner back there. although, warner has one nice keeper to get into the endzone. that was funny. seriously, kurt warner running is funny.

 

8. got to see some kick and punt returns. i have no idea who will be returning kicks, but there were a myriad of players doing it today. the guys that seemed to get the most were scobey, redmond, and sheldon, but i think there were about 8 guys that all took their turns.

 

again, sorry for the lack of defense, but there just wasn't much to watch today. overall, i'm not a cardinals homer, so this probably isn't a great report, but i thought i would at least throw it out there and hope it was useful to someone. like i said, i am going to try to go back next week and i'll update things if i do.

 

 

hippy

[spain]

What is the deal with Marcel Shipp? JJ Arrington gets all the carries from day 1 and Shipp is the backup only?

[yo mama]

Nice points, rhippens.

 

Question: did you see how they were using the TE? I assume it mostly single TE sets. Was the TE used primarily for blocking, or was the TE involvedin the passing game?

[rhippens]

What is the deal with Marcel Shipp?  JJ Arrington gets all the carries from day 1 and Shipp is the backup only?

 

921912[/snapback]

 

 

 

 

i only saw shipp take a few snaps although they said he went full-contact on monday. arrington is listed as #1 on the depth chart and he was the one working with the first team for the most part. when i did see shipp go, it didn't seem like he was limping or favoring much. sorry i can't comment more, but i didn't see him too much.

 

 

Nice points, rhippens.

 

Question: did you see how they were using the TE?  I assume it mostly single TE sets.  Was the TE used primarily for blocking, or was the TE involvedin the passing game?

 

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the tight end i saw them using the most was adam bergen and yes, he was primarily blocking. there was not much tight end use in the passing game. although, like i said, they were definitely moving their tight ends around quite a bit. maybe a handful of passes were caught by tight ends. they were using mostly single TE sets in the action that i saw.

[yo mama]

the tight end i saw them using the most was adam bergen and yes, he was primarily blocking.  there was not much tight end use in the passing game.  although, like i said, they were definitely moving their tight ends around quite a bit.  maybe a handful of passes were caught by tight ends.  they were using mostly single TE sets in the action that i saw.

 

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That's what I figured would happen. It's just that Freddie Jones saw about 15% of the Cards' passes last season. But with his departure, I was curious whether the new starting TE would be that invovled. I figured probably not, as Warner needs as much protection as possible. However, that could mean more passes for the WRs and RBs.

[Roo]

Thanks for the report.

 

Is JJ seriously burning people? You seem him running outside, or down the middle?

[rhippens]

Thanks for the report. 

 

Is JJ seriously burning people?  You seem him running outside, or down the middle?

 

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he was taking a lot of plays outside, but also ran his share of off-tackle stuff. didn't see him truly go straight up the middle. as i said in the original post, there weren't many plays where he was running way down field to gauge his speed really well, although his first few steps were very explosive to the outside and when he was going through the line, he got through pretty darn quickly.