CEDAR CITY, Utah, Aug. 8 – After the first week of football camp Southern Utah is right where it wants to be, Thunderbird head Coach Ed Lamb said Saturday afternoon after a controlled scrimmage capped the first six days of fall workouts.
    The hour and 45 minute scrimmage finished off the first full day of two-a-day practices for the Thunderbirds. Every phase of the game, including all phases of special teams except the return game, were covered Saturday. Every one of the 90 players in camp saw the field in the scrimmage, including all six quarterbacks. Not counting the quarterbacks eleven different players had rushing attempts and eight different players had receptions.
    Cade Cooper, who is slated to take over at quarterback this year, completed eight of 11 pass attempts on the day, including his final six in a row. His last pass found junior all-American Tysson Poots in the back of the end zone, where Poots stretched to both catch the ball and stay in bounds for the score. Poots finished the day with four receptions for 83 yards, including the 16-yards scoring catch.
    Defensively, senior linebacker Rob Takeno, a three-time all-Great West Conference performer, had five tackles playing on the first defense, while his backup, redshirt freshman Ricky Clark, tallied seven stops, including one tackle for loss. Freshman linebacker Brady Davies had the most tackles, with nine combined solo and assisted stops. Sophomores Tyson Turley and Nick Witzmann each had sacks, while a pair of freshmen, Dennis Fite and Josh Johnson, came up with interceptions.
    On special teams, kicker Ryan Griffith attempted just one field goal after his first try was foiled by a bad snap, but he did hit a 28-yarder into the wind. A.J. Forestiere, who is battling Griffith for the starting kicking job, missed his only attempt, a 40-yarder that sailed just wide right, also going into the wind. All-American punter Trevor Ward was his usual reliable self, averaging 47 yards on five punts, including one rugby-style and four traditional kicks.
     All that led Lamb to seem fairly pleased after it was all said and done Saturday.
    “At this point absolutely, yes [we are where we want to be],” he said. “We have three objectives all the time: We want to fight fatigue, we want to fight division from within and we want to have great public perception. Our guys are staying out of trouble, they're making good decisions, they're making bed-check on time and they're getting up early in the morning. They're not showing fatigue, they're hustling on and off the field, and right now we've got a great team attitude, everyone is pulling for each other. We've got a lot of position battles going on but there's no back-biting that I can see.”
    The team's biggest accomplishment in week one, according to Lamb, is that the work in adding size and strength is starting to show dividends.
    “Right now we're playing to the increased physical stature of our team,” he pointed out. “We're running the ball more effectively, we're stopping the run more effectively on defense. I've just got a great feeling that we're a physical football team, but it's hard to tell if we're more physical on offense or more physical on defense if we're always going against each other. I've got a great feeling about this team being able to push other teams around and being able to stop the run.
    “We've got the physical piece of this down,” he noted. “We've asked them to be the most physical team in America and as of this moment they've put all the physical work in to do that. We've been lifting them twice a day, we've been having two practices a day, we've been running around during our walk-thrus, which is I think is rare, so even though some people would accuse us over-training, we're going to hang our hats on being the hardest-working team in America. I think our guys put in a great week.”
    When asked what the team needed to accomplish next week to stay on track, Lamb said he would like to see the running back situation settle, while the defense will work to shore up zone coverages. And on special teams he wants to see more reserves step up to win a spot.
    “Next week we'd like to get our running backs depth chart more clear,” he said. “We've got a lot of good running backs and a lot of different types of talent. Right now it's hard to evaluate how many carries we want some of those guys to get because we're not comparing apples-to-apples. We'd like to get a clear picture of whose going to be our guys carrying the ball and how many times per game.
    “On defense we need to shore up some of the details of our coverage,” he pointed out. “We're doing good in our basic coverage, we play a lot of man-to-man defense, and our guys have made good strides in that area. Right now in some of our zones we need to pay more attention to detail, we need to protect the safeties and the safeties need to protect the other guys on defense with depth and things like that.
    “What we need to get better at in the special teams is to get some of the guys who may not be starters on offense and defense to push the guys who are starters because as of right now we've got starters in our kicking game and that's our philosophy: the best players for the job will play, and right now that's starters. We'd like to see some other guys step up and battle for those spots too.”
    Camp continues next week with two-a-day practices Monday, Wednesday and Friday, while on the other days the team will have a walk-thru in the morning and a full practice in the afternoon. Another scrimmage is scheduled for Saturday at 4:15 p.m., in Eccles Coliseum.

-- SUU --