Hello everyone.
I arrived in training camp early Friday morning. By the way, if you're coming to camp and want to fill up on cheap gas, wait until Exit 78 off of Route 85 South just before Spartanburg. The gas there is $2.47 per gallon, a little cheaper then when I left home ($2.93 per gallon).
OK, on to the news
Both defensive tackle Kris Jenkins and guard Jeremy Bridges, who was arrested on Thursday on a misdeanor charge of pointing a weapon at a woman, are here at camp but neither have made themselves available to the media. In fact, don't expect to hear from Jenkins today.
He arrived in a black Escalade, but quickly yelled to reporters he wasn't talking today. Instead, he allowed his personal trainer Messay Hailemariam to do the talking for him. Basically, Hailemariam, who is a former walk-on at Maryland who trains some other pro athletes, said Jenkins is in great shape, although he wouldn't give up Jenkins' weight or his body fat. (There is a reason for that, folks). Granted, Jenkins does look a little thinner than he did back in May. More on that story later.
In the meantime, no sign of linebacker Jon Beason as a holdout possibility lingers in the humid South Carolina air. The last Carolina rookie to holdout was second-round pick Bruce Nelson back in 2003. Nelson missed only one day of practice before signing his contract.
To give you a taste of camp, here's some early nuggets from quarterback Jake Delhomme:
On if it’s good to be in camp:
On why he’s so excited this year:
On the new offense:
On what one item he has to have at camp:
On playing for a new offensive coordinator after four years with Dan Henning:
On if the offense needed a new voice or direction:
I think we just needed to play better, to be honest with you. When we went in a new direction, I can’t say I was totally surprised. When we don’t play well, we’re all on the hot seat. (Head coach) John (Fox) and I talked about the time of the Senior Bowl, and he told me he was going in another direction. He’s the head coach. He makes the calls here. I believe in him. I like Jeff. I like a lot of the things he does. On second thought, I don’t like it, I love it. Hopefully, we can do well so next year we can be sitting here talking about a successful 07 season. One thing that helps is still having (quarterbacks coach) Mike McCoy. He’s an up-and-comer. I think everybody knows that. We also have Skip (running backs coach Jim Skipper) back and Richard (Williamson, wide receivers coach), too. I know what those guys expect out of their players and how they get their guys ready to play. We had some success here with Dan. Last year we just didn’t play well. But I do like Jeff. Jeff comes from the same school Dan came from. I guess it’s the Joe Gibbs/Bill Parcells coaching forest. One thing I learned from Dan was that he made things simple in a good way. People can get too complex sometimes. Like we always say, it comes down to blocking and tackling, catching and throwing. Dan had been around long enough. I came from a West Coast system to his system. I learned a lot from him and appreciate everything he did here. Hopefully, we can go forward and do well. I know he’ll be pulling for us. I promise you that. Definitely a fan. You want to drown out as much noise as possible (in the dorm rooms). Somebody gave me great advice as a rookie. They said to go to camp with one bag so that if you get cut, you can put the bag in one hand and cover your face with the other. I always try to pack as little as possible. I don’t overpack, I’ll say that much. I bring a laptop and some reading material, but other than that not much. It’s a lot of the same terminology, which is good. But the thing is, no matter how good the play looks on paper, can we run it effectively on the field? That’s the thing. We’ll do some different things. You’ve heard a lot about the zone blocking schemes. That’s all nice, but we do a lot of different things and I think we set up matchups pretty well. I’m still learning. I don’t know what (offensive coordinator) Jeff (Davidson) brought down here. He might have a whole bunch of new stuff for us to learn. That’s one of the most exciting things for me. We’re installing new things and that brings with it a learning factor. It establishes that fear of, "Man, I gotta know it." I kind of like that. I think I do well in that situation. I don’t think you could have a year worse than last year, for starters. We have a lot of young guys (this year) who haven’t played and have to learn. We needed a positive change. We lost some key guys and some veteran leadership. But we have some young guys, and that was evident in mini camp and summer school. There was a lot of excitement. I think we still have a good nucleus here. We do have a new offense. We’re doing some different things. We have a new offensive line coach (Dave Magazu) who has had a very positive impact so far. Right now we’re somewhat healthy, too. I say that because you never take anything for granted in this League. I think it’s evident that the two years where we stayed kind of healthy we did good things, and the two years where we got banged up really hard we were average. If we can stay healthy, I think we can do okay. It is. I know everybody says that, but it is. It’s probably the most excited I’ve ever been to come to training camp. I’m not just saying that. I haven’t felt this way in a while. Everybody knows camp is tough. It’s hard. Your body’s not going to feel good starting tomorrow afternoon, and it’s not going to get any better. But I feel we can do some good things (this year). I don’t know why, but I have that feeling.