Advertisement
football Edit

Camp notebook: August 13

Tuesday morning, the Missouri football team held its 10th practice of fall camp, donning full pads for the first time since Saturday's scrimmage. Here is an assortment of notes and quotes from the practice.

Utsey poised for bounce-back

Advertisement

Most of the time, if a player is not a significant contributor by his third year on a college campus, the writing is on the wall. Redshirt junior defensive tackle Markell Utsey appears to be an exception. A year after he appeared in just three games, Utsey looks to be part of the regular rotation for playing time on the interior of the defensive line.

Utsey redshirted last season partly due to his health — he tore his ACL at the end of his sophomore year, which cost him most of the offseason leading into last year. Still, he said watching from the sidelines was difficult to swallow.

“It was just something I had to just kind of accept,” Utsey said. “I felt like it would better myself and the team since there was a lot of guys in front of me and whatnot. I felt like I didn’t want to waste that year, so I just made the decision and I feel like it was better for me, better for the team.”

Defensive tackle Markell Utsey (90) appears likely to earn a spot in the regular rotation at defensive tackle.
Defensive tackle Markell Utsey (90) appears likely to earn a spot in the regular rotation at defensive tackle. (Cassie Florido)

Utsey, who recorded five tackles in four games as a true freshman and five tackles in six games as a sophomore, said the redshirt season supplied him with a new sense of urgency. He said it added “fuel to the fire” and made him work “10 times harder” once spring practices began. Now, he appears to have solidified a spot among the top four defensive tackles alongside Jordan Elliott, Akial Byers and Kobie Whiteside.

Utsey said the biggest difference between now and last season is not physical, but mental.

“I feel like I’m way more confident now, and I just feel more comfortable like with myself,” he said. “I feel like I’m overcoming that self-doubt, and that’s just a huge thing for me.”

Depth tested at tight end

As we reported yesterday, Missouri has had to mix and match a bit at tight end during camp. Both Albert Okwuegbunam and Daniel Parker Jr. have missed time due to injury. Position coach A.J. Ofodile said that, of course, injuries are not ideal. He would like to have the players who are going to play the most during the season prepare by taking the most reps during camp. That especially applies to Okwuegbunam, who missed the last four games of the 2018 season and most of spring practices due to an injury.

However, Ofodile said, there is a silver lining. The players behind Okwuegbunam and Parker on the depth chart are gaining experience and chemistry with the first-team offense. Last season, the position group saw firsthand the importance of reliable depth.

“You get a chance to create some depth, get a chance to see exactly what you have with your other guys,” Ofodile said. “They get a chance to mix in with the one’s and get that feel, and that’s kind of daunting sometimes when you’re not used to repping with that one group and the expectations there, and then all of a sudden you are. So these guys get a chance to get a taste of that, get their feet wet, get some confidence in it, and then ultimately, you hope, for the long haul you have a much more deeper group, a few more guys that you can function with effectively.”

Ofodile specifically praised the play of redshirt junior Brendan Scales, who looks to have established himself as the No. 3 tight end after a rocky first few seasons in the program. We touched on Scales’ progression in yesterday’s notebook. He also complimented true freshman Niko Hea, who could be in line to shed his redshirt and appear in more than four games this season.

“The exciting thing is to see his athletic ability that we saw on film translate here,” Ofodile said of Hea. “You saw a big, fast athlete at the high school level, but then to make that next jump to our level, does that speed still translate? Are you still a fast guy? And he is. You know, as far as tight ends go, he’s in that upper-echelon speed-wise, so that’s pretty exciting.

“The pleasant surprise, the thing you never know, is he’s a guy who lined up out wide mostly, similar to Albert when he was in high school, and his physicality, willingness to be physical, willingness to mix it up has been really exciting, and then also he’s a competitive kid who really takes pride in knowing an assignment, asking questions, all those things really has made his growth curve really fast.”

PowerMizzou caught up with Hea for a Q&A Tuesday morning. Read it here.

White brings 'nastiness' to O-Line

Missouri’s starting right tackle spot became vacant after last season due to the graduation of Paul Adams, but it didn’t stay that way for long. Redshirt sophomore Hyrin White wasted little time in asserting himself and claiming the spot.

Third-year starting center Trystan Colon-Castillo said that, while White hasn’t yet developed the same instincts as Adams, he sees some similarities between the two players. Both are surprisingly agile for their size, able to overcome a misstep with sheer athletic ability. White also brings something to the table that Adams lacked: a nasty demeanor.

“He comes out here and works every day, super, super gritty, hard-working, just nasty,” Colon-Castillo said of White. “That last shove after the whistle, talking trash, you know, if I need to turn up on the sideline, he over there just turning it up.”

Colon-Castillo assured that, in an offensive lineman’s world, being called nasty is a major compliment.

“At wideout, you might have a play where you give a guy a three-step real quick and fake a fade and he going to follow you, and that’s your rep for the day,” he explained. “Nah, on the offensive line, you’re blocking somebody on every play. And if you’re not, you’re not doing something right. So having that nastiness is definitely critical, but that’s something Hyrin has.”

Hyrin White is expected to take over for Paul Adams as Missouri's starting right tackle.
Hyrin White is expected to take over for Paul Adams as Missouri's starting right tackle. (Jordan Kodner/PowerMizzou)

McGuire playing inside and out

Last season, Akial Byers emerged as an important playmaker on Missouri’s defensive line because of his ability to play both defensive tackle and end. He appears to have started a trend. True freshman Isaiah McGuire said that, as of right now, he is working on both the interior and the edge of the defensive line during practice.

"They have me playing both right now,” McGuire said. “Today, I was at end. ... It depends on what coach tells me to do and I'll do it with 100 percent effort."

The path of McGuire, who played defensive end in high school, and Byers may show what the coaching staff has in mind for several of its current commits. Missouri has received commitments from three defensive ends and one defensive tackle in the 2020 class, with at least one spot remaining for another defensive end. It’s unlikely the team will keep all four or five players who played end in high school on the edge. Instead, look for a couple to follow in the footsteps of Byers and McGuire, who provide defensive line coach Brick Haley flexibility based on his other personnel.

Late-game practice

It's no secret that Missouri struggled at times late in games last season. The Tigers blew leads in the final minutes against South Carolina, Kentucky and Oklahoma State. Last month, an article from ESPN.com's Bill Connelly showed that Odom has underachieved by about one win per year based on postgame win expectancy. That has a lot do with late-game execution.

Odom and his staff made cleaning up that late execution a priority during Tuesday's practice. Odom said the coaching staff worked to simulate every potential late-game situation it could think of so that if the team finds itself in a similar setting during the season, it will know how to respond.

“We kind of compiled, everyone on the staff went through and researched the last couple years on situations at the end of games on what we need to work on,” Odom said. “You can’t script it perfectly, but also it causes the opportunity to have staff discussion and learning and teaching, and hopefully when those situations come up we have a calmness about us and we know we’ve been there.”

Talking about executing better late in close games is, of course, far easier than actually pulling it off, but Odom at least showed he is aware of an area that could use improvement.

Up next

Missouri will be back on the practice field Wednesday morning, and PowerMizzou will be there as well to provide coverage. One other note: You may have noticed there was no "injury report" section in today's notebook. There has been a change in the team's policy about reporting injuries. An injury report will be provided at the end of each of the next two weeks. Before then, we will not be allowed to report who was limited or did not participate in practice due to injury, nor will we have specific diagnoses.

Advertisement