I'm back home in Kansas City after making the beautiful drive south on I-29 from Kansas City Chiefs training camp in St. Joe. If you missed it, here's part one of today's practice recap. I'll have a few more stories coming with what a few players had to say but now we turn to part two of our practice notes.
We'll start with the quote of the day from G Ryan Lilja talking about C Casey Wiegmann: "He was an old-timer when I was a rookie. He's one of the wonders of the world."
Now for your practice report...
-Still no LB Justin Houston. Not sure what's up and it doesn't sound like anyone else does either.
-Your first-team linebackers: Andy Studebaker, Jovan Belcher, Derrick Johnson, Pierre Walters. That last spot, which belongs to Walters right now, is also known as LB Tamba Hali's position. He's not in camp yet but we know that'll be his spot.
-The secondary almost looked the same as last year with safeties Kendrick Lewis and Eric Berry as well as CB Brandon Flowers. CB Brandon Carr isn't in camp yet so CB Javier Arenas was running on his side.
-Good to see LB Cam Sheffield out on the field. He suffered a scary-looking season-ending neck injury last year in preseason but he was out there today.
-Jim Zorn is very vocal, at least from what I could tell. Zorn and the quarterbacks were working on our side of the field for a while and you could hear him barking things out. It was Zorn, QB Matt Cassel, QB Tyler Palko and QB Ricky Stanzi.
-Rookie DE Allen Bailey is bigger than I realized. The Chiefs have him listed at 288 pounds and he looks every bit of it. I didn't realize he was that big.
-Ricky Stanzi is also playing safety...just kidding. He was sitting at safety in some walk-throughs though. Probably helps him have a better understanding of the field. That, or there weren't enough guys.
-WR Jonathan Baldwin ran a quick slant and Cassel hit him quickly right in the chest -- it dropped to the ground. It's just one play.
-NT Jerrell Powe had a nice tipped pass. Cassel was trying to throw over the middle but Powe leaped and disrupted the pass. Nice move to learn early in your career.
-Your second team defense has DE Brandon Bair, NT Jerrell Powe and DE Dion Gales along the defensive line. At linebacker it's Eric Bakhtiari, Demorrio Williams, Justin Cole and Cam Sheffield. In the secondary it's CB Jalil Brown, CB Quinten Lawrence, S Ricky Price and S Donald Washington.
-After two years, the Chiefs have finally updated Gales' weight at 310 pounds. He was listed much lighter before -- like 270 I believe.
-It looked like Washington was having a little trouble conditioning-wise leaning over and trying to catch his breath. Head coach Todd Haley yelled, 'C'mon Donald. You've had the whole offseason to get in shape with no coaches around.'
-Flowers said after practice that he could tell rookie CB Jalil Brown had a good coach at Colorado because he understood the fundamentals. Good sign there.
-Flowers made another good point -- the Chiefs finally have continuity at defensive coordinator with Romeo Crennel coming back.