Practice Report for April 12

The sun’s out, the weather is warming up and the first teams for both offense and defense are starting to fill out. It’s starting to feel a lot more like spring football.

I started the day glancing at the quarterbacks just to see what they were doing. They were throwing ball amongst each other, nothing too notable. But one thing stood out-- The absence of Justin Fields. Not from practice, but from the quarterbacks.

While his counterparts were warming their arms up for practice, Fields behind them working with the running backs. Fields didn’t get the luxury of an easy warm up. Instead, he was running and taking multiple hits with pads and ending it with a run to help work his, and all the other running backs’ ball security.

Next on my list was the offensive line. Like Dawg2727 said on the board on Tuesday, Ben Cleveland was suited up, but was sitting back and watching most of the drills today. He took some light reps but was definitely taking it easy. It is a good opportunity for people like Netori Johnson to show what he can offer as a second-stringer. I would say it would be a good opportunity for Solomon Kindley to reclaim his old starting right guard gig, except he has been working the first-team role at left guard.

Kendall Baker is still taking reps at the backup left tackle. That isn’t a good sign for D’Marcus Hayes, who continued to struggle today. Hayes wasn’t even getting chewed out at left tackle, though. It was while he was working as a stand-in defensive end in O-line drills. Jim Chaney was furious that he wasn’t doing the drill properly. It’s hard to definitively say who so far is having the roughest spring. Hayes though has to be on the shortlist.

A quick note on the defensive line. I stopped by to check up on Devonte Wyatt, who fit in just fine. He didn’t stand out on either side of the spectrum when working foot-speed and agility drills. Tyler Clark, on the other hand, did. That dude moved was moving his legs way quicker than anyone I saw when stepping in between bags. I really liked what I saw from him last year and am starting to think he could step up big time this upcoming season.

Finally an update on the outside backers. Starting there today was D’Andre Walker and Keyon Brown. I haven’t seen much from Brown that stands out to me, but I the coaches seem to really like him. After not playing a whole lot in his career, it’s starting to seem like he could be used more, if not start some games on defense this year.