As the Wyoming Football team nears the halfway point of
fall practice, they were challenged by the head coach Craig Bohl and his
coaching staff on Wednesday to improve their focus in practice. The
Wednesday morning practice was the 11th of 24 fall practices for the
Cowboys.
Bohl was open, when
meeting with media, about the fact that he didn’t think his team did a good job
of maintaining their focus and pushing through their fatigue in Wednesday’s
single practice.
When asked specifically
what he didn’t like, Bohl said, “Attention to detail, jumping offside, wrong
alignments on defense -- those are all classic cases of having a young football
team. The ‘want to’ is there but to really reach down in your gut, to be
able to focus and to execute throughout a practice is hard work. The way
you play in games is going to mirror the way your practice. You get to
the tail end and you’re tired -- it’s not easy to maintain your attention to
detail.
“The eye in the sky
doesn’t lie. We’ll take a look at the tape after today’s practice and
evaluate it. I learned a long time ago as a coach it’s never as bad as
you think or sometimes never as good.
“The only thing we can do
as coaches is press our guys and put them in those situations to get them
through that. It would be easy for me to come in here and paint a picture
that it’s all great, but that’s less than honest. Our fans need to
recognize that we’re going to get there, but today was not one of those days
that I think we took a step forward.”
Bohl was asked if it was
important at times like this to have leaders among the upperclassmen to step up
and help the team improve their practice performance.
“Yes, the answer is yes,
but along with that there is leadership throughout our football team,” said
Bohl. “Like I said earlier, once we look at the tape there will probably
be some good things that occurred out there today. But to really be a
championship level team these are days you don’t have. But we had it
today, and we’ve got to learn from it.”
The head coach was asked
what steps he and his coaching staff could take to help team members improve
their focus in future practices.
“That is why we have
‘Coach’ on our shirt,” said Bohl. “Every young man is different.
You work with every person differently, and that is one of the challenges that
I have as a head football coach is knowing the whole group. I also
recognize that there are young men out there who want to be good, they just
don’t know how to be good yet. We have to be realistic. I need to
be realistic. We are only in the second week of fall camp. To me
the first game is right around the corner. To some of our players it
might seem like an eternity until that first game.”
One area of the Cowboy
defense that Bohl acknowledged has been a positive in fall camp is the
development of an effective pass rush.
“Our pass rush is
improving,” said Bohl. “Carl Granderson is up to 240 pounds, and
he’s got a great first step. I think we are getting a better push
inside. Kevin Prosser is a good edge rusher, as well. We’ve
also been working on some blitz packages.
“This is a positive
because last year we did not generate enough sacks. Sacks create negative
plays (for your opponent), put your opponent in third and long situations and
the chances of your defense getting off the field go way up. Also the
number of takeaways generally go up. We’re more athletic (on the
defensive line) -- there is no doubt about that. We’ve also added more
size.”
Bohl also gave an update
on the Cowboys’ injury situation following Wednesday’s practice, “Some guys
were not able to finish practice today -- Jake Maulhardt and @Drew . I think both of those are soft-tissue issues. We don’t
foresee a long rehab time on those guys. We still don’t have Tanner
(Gentry) back or (Andrew) Wingard but they’re getting close, and Rob
(Priester) is getting real close. Hopefully, the next couple of
practices we’ll have them back.”
Finally, the head coach
was asked if he had begun to plan out the Cowboys’ closed scrimmage on Saturday
in regard to how many plays he hoped to run.
“We would like to run
about 70 plays in our first scrimmage, but that is going to be contingent on
how many players we have available with different position groups,” said
Bohl. “But we feel like it is important to run that many plays to get
ourselves game ready.”
Thursday will see the
Pokes practice twice, at 8:30 a.m. and 3:20 p.m. They will have a single
practice on Friday and their first major scrimmage on Saturday. Practices
are closed to the general public.
Fans interested in
purchasing tickets to 2016 Wyoming Cowboy Football games may: go online at www.GoWyo.com/tickets, email tickets@uwyo.edu, call the UW Athletics
Ticket Office at (307) 766-7220; or stop by the ticket office on the west side
of UW’s Arena-Auditorium.
2016 University
of Wyoming Football Fall Practice Schedule
(Times of
Practices are Tentative)
Thursday, Aug.
18 8:30 a.m. (Practice #12)
3:20 p.m. (Practice #13)
Friday, Aug.
19 9:20 a.m. (Practice #14)
Saturday, Aug.
20 10:30 a.m. (Closed
Scrimmage, Practice #15)
4:45 p.m. (Practice #16)
Monday, Aug.
22 9:00 a.m. (Practice
#17)
Tuesday, Aug. 23
9:30 a.m. (Practice #18)
3:50 p.m. (Practice #19)
Wednesday, Aug. 24 10:00 a.m.
(Practice #20)
Thursday, Aug.
25 9:20 a.m. (Practice #21)
4:00 p.m. (Practice #22)
Friday, Aug.
26 9:30 a.m. (Practice #23)
Saturday, Aug.
27 10:30 a.m. (Closed
Scrimmage, Practice #24)
Monday, Aug.
29 First Weekly Press
Conference at Noon in Rochelle Athletics Center WAR Room
