Elon Football Begins Third Week of Spring Practice

ELON, N.C. – With one scrimmage in the books, the Elon University football team started its third week of spring practice today, April 14, on the Hunt and Tucker practice fields.

On Saturday, Elon held its first of three scrimmages this month. Here are some thoughts on the first scrimmage from Elon head coach Rich Skrosky:

On the first spring scrimmage:
“It’s about what I thought it was going to be like. I think normally, especially with a new staff, I think the defense is ahead. But we had three drives that were multiple-play drives—a 12-play drive, an 11-play drive and a nine-play drive—which was good to see and we accumulated some first downs, but there’s no question the defense at this point of the spring is ahead of the offense, to be expected.

“I think offensively, we’re just getting used to the procedure, how we line up at the line, the cadence, changing plays at the line with the hand signals and stuff like that and I’m pretty pleased with that. Now, we do need to see things start to come together. We’re on the back half of spring so things need to start coming together and mixing a little bit. But the enthusiasm was good. It was a pretty clean game. I think we had one holding penalty, one facemask and one movement penalty so for the first time having officials, pretty clean game.”

On whether the team is further along than he hoped to be, behind schedule or right even with expectations:
“We’re right where I thought we would be to be totally honest. We have their attention. The Ball State experience for me was just a short three years ago, that recall of knowing where we got that first spring, I came out of that first spring going, ‘Oh man, I don’t if we’re going to get a first down this year.’ It’s a work in progress and as long as I see them getting better every day, we’re OK. And we see that when we put the tape in everyday. We’re seeing flashes of guys so we’re seeing progress, but that consistency isn’t there. But as long as we keep seeing guys getting better, that’s what we really hope for at this point. The execution is about where I had it and it has to lead into the summer.”

On any standouts in the first scrimmage:
“The typical kids played well, but especially our linebackers. We had four interceptions and each of them came from linebackers in Jonathan Spain, Connor Wade, John Silas and Alexander Dawson. It’s about what I expected. Our linebacking unit has good experience and those guys have played a lot of football and they’re playing like veterans. Our secondary is getting better, but we’re a little nicked up in that area. Then our young offensive linemen are coming along which is good to see. They still have to get stronger and technique has to get better but there weren’t really any shocks from anyone in this first scrimmage.”

On the focus for this Friday’s second scrimmage:
“We don’t need to work on anything that much different than we did the first one. The whole spring was to get the foundations in on offense and defense and that’s been done. Our install has been done, so now it’s more situational stuff. Today, we introduced the two-minute scenario to them and the clock management scenarios. We’re doing some different things in the kicking game so we’ll work on some isolated situations and Friday, we’ll do some tight red zone stuff. But nothing too out of the ordinary this week. Now it’s just exposing the situations and we’ll wrap up next week with the Spring Game.”

All practice sessions are open to the public and the full schedule is listed below. Practice dates, times and locations are subject to change due to weather conditions.

Fans interested in attending practice sessions should contact Jonathan Small, director of football operations, at 336-278-6718.

2014 Elon Phoenix Spring Football Practice Schedule
Wednesday, April 16 – 5 p.m.
Friday, April 18 – 5 p.m.
Wednesday, April 23 – 5 p.m.
Friday, April 25 – 5 p.m.
Saturday, April 26 – 6 p.m. Spring Game (Rhodes Stadium)