Chiefs Training Camp Update 8/12 AM

If Herb can steal the starting job from Sackintosh this will be huge. I think Mcsack is useful as a run blocker only. He is too slow to watch Cassel’s right side. If Herb beats him out that is very good for our depth.

keeps looking like an AWESOME pick up every day! Keep it Amani!

Shows how meaningless yesterday’s depth chart was. Herb wsn’t even listed at RT, only backup LT.

also, a good guy.

i think he just needs to be a starter and hell get better and better.

Londen Fryar and Rodney Wright alternated running back 8-10 kick-offs. Fryar looked good. Wright looks just a tad tentative. Fryar caught simulated punts off the machine after practice. He came over to the two kids by me to sign autographs. I asked him if he was going to be taking kicks this Saturday. He gave me a firm, “Yeah!” Could be just confident self-talk, but from what we say in practice, I’d expect to see Wright and Fryar back for kick-offs against the Texans. Things could change, obviously.

Terrance Copper surprisingly got a lot of time with the first team at WR this morning. He looked sharp, for the most part. Thigpen and Bowe were on second shift. People like Copper, Taurus Johnson and Wright look like second teamers when compared to Bradley, Engram, Bowe and Toomer. Part of it is their size. Part of it is their body language as they catch the ball. Bowe is expecting to catch it and keep going. Wright, for example, is focused on catching the ball and the running almost comes to a stop, if that makes sense.

because all i’ve heard from camp is that he is doing really good?

Is there any way he can take over at RT?

It’s true they officially finished “early’” at 10:30, but I’d say 25 players continued to work in different parts of the campus after 10:30. Many with coaches. Gutierrez threw for another 25 minutes. He got very few reps during 7/7 and 11/11. Playbook issues, maybe?

Practice started at 8:45. Defense was getting instruction from Clancy on assignments when the offense goes in motion. LBers would shout out adjustments to one another as other D players simulated the offense putting players in motion. Part of this activity was having the fake offense go into a huddle, break and then have the D move to the correct positions depending on where the O sent the WRs. They probably did about 15-20 of these 30 seconds apart.

A little later, the D was practicing against one another. Vrabel stands there watching the others intently when the starters are not in the action. It’s as if he’s a coach who is going to instruct others as soon as they’re done. He’s definitely a leader as seen by the coaches, and I assume the same is true of the other players. Studebaker was hanging close to him during this time, as if to wait for a nugget of insight to come out of Vrabel’s mouth.

These two seemed to be on the same wavelength during practice, and then spent a good 10 minutes talking with one another after practice. It was as if they were reviewing situations and problem-solving how to do things. Looked good.

DeMaurice Smith, who succeeded Gene Upshaw as the executive director of the NFL Players Association, is on the field watching the Chiefs practice

Mike and Brian were in an informal group of three to four guys in dress slacks for 20 minutes after practice. I don’t know, but I would assume that DeMaurice Smith was among the group. They were having a fun convo. I can’t read lips, but perhaps Waters was asking Smith if he could get Waters a meeting with Pioli. (No! I didn’t go there. Drop it already. Sorry.)

From left to right, the 1st team LBers today were
(LOLB) 50 Vrabel – 56 DJ – 51 Corey Mays – 91 Hali (ROLB)
Didn’t have a great angle for any feedback on how they played.

• Cassel threw a fade while Amani ran a hook in the endzone in practice this morning. Still need time together. Otherwise, Cassel has good, strong passes. Thigpen generally throws a wobbly ball, but it gets there.
• Brodie ended up hanging on to the ball during the 7 on 7 redzone drill. I guess he didn’t want to make a mistake. And perhaps a receiver made a mistake. But Brodie didn’t look good doing it. Is his confidence there?

Okay, that’s about all from my notes. Hope that helped give some of you a feel of what happened at camp this morning. I’ll be at the afternoon session, but then drive home, so won’t do comments until morning, I suspect. Have to get laptop recharged. Go Chiefs!

Two things on this. One, good news on Tamba. Two, this means the depth chart was obviously not right and Haley is just writing names down(maybe a couple intentional to get their attention) and the lineup in Madden is obviously flawed too as they had Vrabel at ROLB and Hali at LOLB also.