Training Camp Cast 8/5: Day 8 Recap, Competition on Offense, Injury Updates

and the skies opened up. Welcome back to Gillette Stadium, Americ Sclovino joined by Paul Perillo on what was a very very fall like day, Paul, with the chill in the air, the overcast skys, the incessant rain throughout today's practice, and I think the weather did play a part in some of the performances we saw today. I do some pretty good tempo. I thought at times, especially early, they would do in a lot of work on the running game. But I do think the rain affected both the quarterbacks

throwing the ball in the receivers catching yet. But probably not a bad thing in terms of, you know, Bill Belichick's mindset, you know, talking about the different conditions that

they can't control. He talked about before practice, and it just offered another sort of set of circumstances for the players to deal with mentally, and in particular for Mac Jones, the rookie quarterback who played at Alabama, place where they don't typically get, you know, inclement weather down in the SEC and today I think was a little bit unusual.

And we saw him a couple of times make some really great throws in bad weather, but also at times it looked like maybe the ball like squirted away out of his hand. He had some good moments today. I thought overall he was pretty strong, but he did definitely in my view, had some balls that got away mostly high as you would expect. Also had a play early on a little kind of a wheel route kind of thing to Hunter Henry, Yeah, where it looks like the throw came really short, like kind of scored out of

his hands. A little funny. I'm wondering if maybe he didn't mean to throw it and it's just slipped out. A couple higher passes to one day Kendrick Boyne that went off his hands later in practice, a couple that were complete but just didn't really look right. But at the same time, Eric, you see some of the things that the coaches are probably excited about with him. Beautiful over the shoulder throw to James White early on, just

a perfect drop in the bucket. You saw some signs from from from Mac Jones today that I think the reason why people are excited about him. I want to get back to James White in a second, but let's get to some housekeeping. In the attendance. We had a lot of people who weren't out there today. It was very thin down roster. We had, by my count, seventeen players and all who weren't including players who've been on

the lists since the start of camp. But in addition to those guys and a couple of the veterans who got hurt during camp, like Ted Carris Akeem Spence, we added to that list, Nick Folk, everybody, Devin Ross and Dannel Ross, the two russ Yeah twins out there who I don't know we did. We didn't see them get hurt yesterday as far as we could tell. I didn't see anything happen to either one of those guys. The other two guys that you haven't mentioned, we kind of

think we might know what happened to them. Yeah. Cody Davis also looked like he got a little bumping the knee yesterday, maybe trying to cover Gunnar Olshefsky on that deep ball that that Gunnard came down with was probably the play of the day on Wednesday, Davis looked like he got shaken up on that. And then Christian Barmore goes back a couple of days when he had loot

ankle kind of thing looked at by the trainers. He was out there yesterday, but none other than the illustrious Fred Kirsch came up with a plausible scenario, actually came up with a good point, actually made a good point. He did on Wednesday it was, you know, no pads, a little bit slower tempo, almost walked through like maybe that's why Barmore remained out there, and then today when the pads went back on, he wasn't able to answer

the bell. Okay, I want to get back to James White for a second, because this is a guy who obviously had a very traumatic twenty twenty for reasons other than the pandemic. We all know his story, and he became a free agent, resigned. But I think he's had you know, he's been one of the most reliable players out there, obviously a key player in the Super Bowl a few years back at the winning touchdown. He's been a reliable pass catcher. I thought he's had a tough

start to this camp. Yeah, I don't think he's looked like himself. There have been some routes, some of those shorter routes. Now, I don't know how much of this has to do with the quarterbacks, because you know, Newton hasn't really shown to be consistently accurate, and obviously mac Jones is learning, so there are times when they're not on the same page. Maybe those are all strictly on the quarterbacks and not on James White, but a couple

of passes I think have gone off his hands. He had a toss sweep to him today that he just slipped, yeah and fell. I mean, it happens to everybody, but it doesn't always happen to him, but it never happens to James White, and that's why it was noticeable. But I agree with you a little bit. I'm characteristic a little bit up and down to our camp for the veterans,

So hopefully he can clean that up. A week from tonight, Paul, we have a game, not a practice talking about a game, and it's a preseason game, obviously, but we saw at the end of practice, say, a little bit more game like conditions we had down in distance. We had the referees out there again for what is this now, the

third or fourth day? Yeah, third straight day, and it looked like we had a little bit of a more of an up tempo, sort of a two minute hurry up kind of scenario, maybe end of half kind of thing, and that sort of livened up the tempo or practice a little bit, even with the pouring rain coming down. Yeah, and there was an opportunity. I thought it was interesting that that Mac Jones got to go first at the

end of that practice. Then Cam came in afterwards, but both quarterbacks, I thought, um, not really there was up tempo like it was two minutes, but a lot of running plays, a lot of short dump boster backs and a lot of running plays during seven on seven, almost an extension of the of the spring the OTAs. But again I thought, you know, both guys, you know, kind of struggled a little bit with the conditions at times, and I think Mac looked a little bit better to

me than Cam. Yeah, but overall, not as sloppy a practice as you might think, given how strong the rain was and how consistent it was throughout practice, So yeah, it was a factor, but I think overall we saw some some pretty decent things today, So that'll be a rap for Day eight. Tomorrow, we are going to be in stadium getting ready for next week a little bit

with nighttime practice. Nighttime practice, and it's for season ticket members and Foxborough area residence only, so if you were from out of town and had designs on coming to practice tomorrow, you probably will be out of luck. But next week's supposed to be hot, summer like again. Paul's going to be very happy about that. He can put his short pants on again and we'll be there to cover it all. So for Paul Perillo, our producer Matt Morrell,

we'll see you again soon here from Gillette Stadium. Thank you for downloading this podcast, Subscribe on Apple, google Play, and everywhere else you listen. Like the show, Please rate and review us. Listener comments and ratings help keep us high in the podcast rankings so new listeners can find us. Be sure to check Patriots dot com for more news and more podcasts.