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University of Minnesota Athletics
Camp Blog: Pads Begin Popping
8/13/2009 12:00:00 AM | Football
GopherSports.com is providing a daily blog from the beginning of fall camp until the week of the season-opener at Syracuse, set for Sept. 5. Check back here often for updates from throughout preseason camp. Associate Athletic Communications Director Andy Seeley will be penning most of these blogs. If you would like to ask a question about preseason camp, have a request for something you'd like to see in the blog or just a comment on the blog, feel free to send Andy an e-mail at aseeley@umn.edu.
You can follow us on Twitter, as well @GoldenGopherFB. We'll also be uploading video content to our YouTube Channel.
Mother Nature greeted the Golden Gophers with one of the warmest days of the summer Wednesday. It just also happened to be the first time the Minnesota football team was allowed to practice with shoulder pads, making things just a little extra warm. But it was nice to finally hear pads popping around the Gibson-Nagurski Complex.
Gopher head coach Tim Brewster said he thought his team slowed down a bit after a brisk first two days. But he was also happy with the way they battled through the heat and the grind of practice Wednesday. Overall, Brewster has been happy with the effort of his squad for the first three days.
"It's been a good week," Brewster said. "All the guys are competing extremely well." Even more of Coach Brewster's comments can be seen in the video below, which also includes some action from today's workout.
Rather than going with notes/highlights today, I'm going to empty out the mailbag a little bit:
Our first question actually came from two different people. Darren from Ham Lake, Minn. and Adam from LeSeur, Minn. both want to know how freshman defensive back Michael Carter is looking thorugh the first few days of camp. For that answer, we went straight to co-defensive coordinator/secondary coach Ronnie Lee. Coach Lee has been impressed with Carter and all his young defensive backs.
"Michael is having a very good camp," Lee said. "He's a smart, instinctive player and he's very willing to compete. I'm really satisfied with all our young defensive backs. It's an intelligent group. They're very conscientious. They've picked up the defense and the coverages very well."
While we had a chance to corner Coach Lee, we asked him about the secondary in general. He says he's happy with the addition of depth in the Gopher secondary.
"We've added depth and competition," he said. "That's what you're looking for. Depth and competition are good things."
To wrap up today's blog, we'll take a question from Ken in State College, Pa. Ken wants to know about the installation of the offense, the impact of offensive coordinator Jedd Fisch on the offensive schemes. Junior quarterback Adam Weber agreed to answer those questions for you, Ken. See the video below for the Gopher signal-caller's take on the state of the offense.
That's it for today. Practice #4 is slated for Thursday at the Gibson-Nagurski Complex. Thursday's session will be another helmet/shoulder pads practice, leading up to a full-pad practice Friday afternoon.
-Andy Seeley
