Arizona football: Notes and observations from Wildcats' first fall practice

Nothing too interesting going down

The Arizona Wildcats officially kicked off fall camp on Wednesday night, and nothing too crazy went down. Here's some observations I had:

• Trey Griffey was out. On Tuesday, he had a walking boot on his left foot. He did do some running by himself on the side, and was not in a boot on Wednesday.
• Jarvis McCall went down with some sort of left leg injury during practice as he was chasing David Richards down the sideline. McCall didn't look particularly quick and agile during defensive back drills early on in practice either, so that'll be something to keep an eye on.
• Samajie Grant had his left hand wrapped up, but it didn't seem to hinder his performance at all during practice
• Tyrell Johnson was on the sideline early in practice, but then for the last two thirds he was full go
• Last year's first practice saw a lot of overthrows from every quarterback. This year, both Anu Solomon and Jerrard Randall looked locked in the entire time. There were a couple of bad misses from Brandon Dawkins and Zach Werlinger, but Solomon and Randall look like the clear-cut top two QBs right now
• Carter Wood got the majority of the first team reps at center. Another guy who was getting reps that maybe hasn't been on people's radars so far was Chase Hanlon. But Anu likes the way Carter's looking so far... "He's been doing good. Every snap is right there where I want it to be. With Carter, he's just gotta be the guy that controls the offensive line."
• First team defense looked like this at the beginning of 11-on-11:
  • Line: Reggie Gilbert, Parker Zellers, Luca Bruno
  • LBs: Scooby Wright III, Jake Matthews, Derrick Turituri
  • DBs: Cam Denson, Jarvis McCall, Jamar Allah, Will Parks, Tellas Jones
• Second team defense looked like this:
  • Line: Jeff Worthy, Sani Fuimaono, Anthony Fotu
  • LBs: DeAndre' Miller, Haden Gregory, Cody Ippolito
  • DBs: DaVonte' Neal, Devin Holiday, Paul Magloire, Demetrius Flannigan-Fowles, Anthony Lopez
• Before Jarvis got hurt, Cayleb Jones had an absolutely sick catch over him as they both went to the ground.
• There was a different routine to the drill part of practice, including a block dedicated just to tight ends and running backs working on catching passes from the quarterbacks. It was certainly an interesting twist
• On one play where Jerrard Randall was trying to get the ball to Josh Kern during 11s, Anthony Lopez came up with a big pick, which ended up being the difference as the defense won by two points
• Last but not least, there was a pretty legit fight between RJ Morgan and Cody Creason. Morgan weighs 60 pounds less than Creason, so it was not exactly a fair matchup.

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