Tuesday, Oct. 15
Venue: Kibbie Dome
Format:
Full pads, wrap-up but don’t take down against most of the team. Don’t touch quarterbacks.
Practice rundown:
Position drills, 7-on-7 skeleton drills, first team offense against first team defense, second team offense against second team defense and vise versa at times. Punt/kickoff return drills.
Highlights:
The storyline at practice this week is the two quarterbacks running the show this week. Going onto its bye week, Idaho only has two healthy players at the position — senior Taylor Davis and freshman Matt Linehan. Starter Chad Chalich stood to the side with his throwing shoulder in a sling, back-up quarterback Josh McCain had his non-throwing shoulder in a sling.
Davis played three quarters at Arkansas State after coming in for the injured Chalich. He will be slated to start at Ole Miss on Oct. 26 if Chalich or McCain isn’t ready to go.
Idaho coach Paul Petrino said he didn’t have a timeline for the return of either of those players.
What about Linehan?
The true freshman is currently redshirting, but is also currently the backup quarterback. Petrino said it’s not out of the realm of possibility for Linehan’s redshirt to be pulled, but would only be in a situation if Davis had to come out of an entire game or would miss multiple games. Idaho has no walk-on quarterbacks behind Linehan who could be emergency options. Linebacker Austin DeCoud was a quarterback last season but moved to defense in spring practices this year.
Other observations:
This is a banged up football team. Offensive linemen Dallas Sandberg and Jesse Davis still remain out. Wide receiver Dezmon Epps was banged up, defensive end Quinton Bradley also sat out. Bradley re-aggravated the shoulder injury he sustained against Nothern Illinois last Saturday at Arkansas State. It’s also common to see a coach simply give injured guys a rest during a bye week when normally they may practice if it were a game week. This is as good a time as ever for Idaho to get a bye week.
In the running game, it was James Baker getting most of the reps. He’s coming off a 150-yard day at Arkansas State. Baker is in a four-man running back group that is constantly in competition with each other week in and week out. Some weeks Baker will touch the ball less than five times, and on last Saturday Baker was the lead back getting the ball 23 times.
What they said:
“It’s fun. To definitely play in a game, and come back when we’re down by 14. It was a good time to get back in it and play football again … It’s great, these are my last five games and then I’m done. It’s great to be back out there with all of them, and have those news guys also with me. I can go out and say I played with them and build on that for next year.” — Taylor Davis, quarterback.
“When you’re down 31-7 on the road and you come back and make it 31-24, you show courage, toughness and fight. And you didn’t give up and you kept grinding. We’re getting there, there’s no question we’re getting there. That part of it we’re definitely getting there, we just have to keep getting better.” –Paul Petrino, coach.
“Just try to make progress mentally. If I’m not on the field I just watch guys, when they come on the sideline I just try to tell them what they can do better. What moves they didn’t see that they can go in the game next time and make a cut and just try to make a good play. It’s different being in the sideline versus being in the game, because when you’re in the game you might not see things as good as you would see on the sideline.” — James Baker, running back