Friday's Razorback practice report

From an observer at Razorback Stadium:

Some quick notes -- Jim Youngblood worked at fullback and tight end today and did not work at QB. He was wearing receivers gloves and during the handoff and passing drills Nick Petrino and Brandon Mitchell were working with the 3rd team. I only saw 1 pass thrown to Youngblood in the skeleton drills and it was not caught, but it would have been a difficult catch by anyone. This move makes sense to me. Brandon Mitchell, who I still believe will be a redshirt, has a canon for an arm and runs like a fullback. He has got a future a QB. I admire Youngblood and his stick-to-itness and if we had a place for a running QB he would be it, but we don’t. He is willing to try something else to be a Hog, so more power to him. I know Van Horn would love to have him on the baseball team as a pitcher.

London Crawford is practicing again, but he has a very noticeable limp. He probably should be resting it, but it's probably easier to practice than to go through the “walking wounded” drills. However Greg Childs (#85) is really making a push. Mallett overthrew one pass today that only Wilt the Stilt could have caught and Childs was 5’ of the ground to catch it. He made several good catches as did most of the receivers. For those of you who don’t get the Arkansas papers Lucas Miller broke his collarbone.

The newest Razorback is Garry Gray, a running back from Alpharetta, Ga. He is wearing #42. As you know only 105 players can practice early. When school starts walk-ons can come out. With Adrian Moore not eligible it opened up a spot for Gray. The kid is 6’ 233 pounds and looked fairly fast and a pounder. It was kind of funny. We were sitting near Dudley Dawson and we noticed Gray because he was the only one in shorts and shoulder pads. I asked Dudley who the new 42 was and Dudley pointed to a nice-looking couple behind and said, “It’s their son.” I asked for his name and the Mom said, “Garry” with 2 r’s. I guess the lady thought I was with some newspaper and I needed to get it right. I should have told her I was the sports editor for the Arkansas Catholic newspaper.

As I stated earlier there were lots of great catches because most of the time the d-backs were right on top of the receivers.

One last thing. When you come into practice there is typically one big guy, we call him “the cop,” who reminds you that you can’t take pictures or use a cell phone. He has warned me before and others. He walks around as well. There was one guy this morning who had been on his cell for over an hour. He seemed to be giving a blow by blow of each play. Others noticed it and one mentioned it to “the cop” who proceeded to walk his way, veer off, and went down to the field for a drink –- chickens%$t.

Oh by the way parking is horrible in all the lots around the stadium. I had to walk a couple of hundred yards for a space. They need to send some of these students home.