WINTERVILLE — Playing in its second seven-on-seven game of the summer the Pam Pack showed progress and revealed areas that it needs to improve Thursday against South Central.
This time of year it’s all about learning and overall Washington coach Sport Sawyer was pleased with his team’s effort.
“It’s a good experience for our guys to go against other teams this time of year and it helps them learn the game of football,” Sawyer said. “I think today we improved in some aspects as far as route running and quarterback reads. It was a good day for us.”
Summer workouts are a great way to work on individual skills but Sawyer said that seven-on-sevens provide a better opportunity to evaluate his players.
“We’re analyzing players. When you go against your own team all the time you kind of lose focus of some things but when you go against another team you can better analyze the strengths and weakness of your players,” Sawyer said.
The exhibition also gives both the offense and defense a chance to compete against schemes they might not normally see in practice.
“It’s all about learning. We’ve been playing against a lot of man defense but today we went against some cover four and today told me that we need to get with the offense and show them some more cover four stuff,” Sawyer said.
Brodie West took a majority of the snaps at quarterback on Thursday and showed good mobility and signs of potential.
“He’s worked very hard this offseason and him and Patrick Thompson are going to fight for the starting quarterback position,” Sawyer said. “There were some things he did well but we have to get him to pull the trigger faster on some things but he’s working hard. … I liked the rollouts and he’s been working on that. I think his slants had good timing but I want him to work on throwing the deep ball a little bit faster.”
Defensively, the Pam Pack looked sharp for a better part of the exhibition and overall defensive coordinator Jon Blank liked what he saw.
“(Defensive back) Karim Topping and I were talking when we were coming off the field and he asked me what I would grade it so I asked him what he would grade it and he said a B minus and I would agree with that,” Blank said. “I think we were definitely better than C but definitely not an A. (South Central) beat us on some things that they shouldn’t have today but really overall we played well.”
Blank said the most important aspect of the exhibition is to make sure his players understand the defensive concepts.
“I’m looking at the mental part of the game right now,” Blank said. “I know some of the physical stuff is going to take throughout the summer to get there but I want to make sure that we’re lined up right and when we see certain alignments and combination routes that we play those things the right way.”