Monday Roundup: Spring Practice Notes

Spring Practice has started and many of you have emailed us with your thoughts. Here are some notes:

• People are liking what they see on defense … speed, strength, coach Walker taking control. Looks good. There are questions about the offense. As you surely know by know, RB Chris Markey is out with a fracture on his right foot. He won’t be practicing for the rest of the Spring. That’s not good, considering we are breaking in a new OC with new plays. And judging from many of your comments, we don’t have a good looking corps of running backs.

• We like that the offense is looking faster according to many. We needed that. But with all the new OC, new plays, and new terminology, we wonder if the speed may contribute to mistakes early on. We can’t afford to blow it against BYU or Utah. Bottom line though, we like the idea of picking up the tempo. Training Jay may be expecting some close battles, hence the early no huddle run throughs.

• Ben Olson is out with a hamstring injury. Should be back soon, but it would be helpful to get him as much experience with the new playbook as possible while Dorrell is looking to make a call on the QB starter by the end of Spring.

• Which brings us to the QB battle. Dorrell went back on his word regarding the QB situation last year. He said many times publicly that BO was the starter and that he hadn’t lost his job. Once BO was ready to go he would be back starting. That didn’t happen. Regardless of your opinion about PC, BO should have gotten back his starting position. Dorrell needs to stick to his word about picking a starter by the end of Spring Practice. Something tells us he won’t. It’s not a good situation to bring in a new OC, new playbook, new terminology, and also have a QB controversy. It’s too much, especially with the expectations on this team this year.

• Interesting media notes on Dorrell and Walker. Nestor at BN has a great writeup on Dorrell’s stammering to the media about having to get it done this year. No question, he is feeling the pressure. On the other hand, Walker is getting all the love … without any mention of his failure to beat a spread offense team last year. Walker needs to step it up this year, but he is being a little detached when it comes to talking about next season. Not a good sign. Still, we like our chances next year with this defense.

• Finally, as we have long been saying, Walker is not giving any signals that he is here for the long haul. His strong public announcements that he wants to be a head coach were clue enough. Now his son Kevan has committed to Minnesota. It was long a rumor on the Walker-for-head-coach threads that Kevan would come to UCLA to play and therefore Walker was here to stay. Not anymore. Now those same Walker-for-head-coach cheeseheads are saying that Kevan going to Minnesota is a sign that Walker could be the next head coach at UCLA. Whatever. We tried the inexperienced head coach experiment .. hasn’t worked out.

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