The Ducks practiced in full pads on Monday afternoon, pushing through the second half of yet another fall camp double day.
Not a whole lot in the way of hard news to report. Sophomore wide receiver Josh Huff, who has been mostly sidelined throughout fall camp with various injuries, was dressed for the afternoon practice and appeared to be a bit more mobile. He was in shells, not fully padded as the rest of the team was, but did see the field in brief spells. During wide receiver drills, he lined up as a defensive back and ran at about half speed. Clearly, he is not 100 percent, but he does appear to be making progress.
Elsewhere, special teams coach Tom Osborne provided a particularly lively soundtrack to the day’s kicking drills. Despite the presence of a mysterious walking boot on his left leg (even Chip Kelly professed not to know the cause of the injury), Osborne prowled the field with a particular vigor, demanding a better effort from his players.
“That’s not a winning effort,” he told the kickoff team after a lackluster rep.
Perhaps a bit of week three fatigue had hit the players, but Kelly came away amused by Osborne’s no-nonsense approach.
“Oz is the best,” Kelly said. “I would love to see Oz like on caffeine or something. What would be a great battle is if (secondary coach) John Neal and Tom Osbourne downed a couple Red Bulls and then go out and coach. Because I don’t know if anybody could handle that.”
Practice ended with an overtime drill, which Kelly called, “a good way to end practice.”
“You want them to get kind of fired up,” he said. “And I thought they did a nice job.”
Finally, per The Register-Guard’s Rob Moseley, junior cornerback Scott Grady is set to transfer. Throughout his four years at Oregon, Grady played mostly on special teams.
Chip Kelly Surliness Meter: 1 out of 10
In the first ever installment of the “Chip Kelly Surliness Meter”, which measures the head coach’s ever-swinging mood with the media, Kelly played especially nice. We measure out of 10, 1 being “weirdly friendly” and 10 being “don’t talk to me”, and Kelly came in at the low end of the spectrum on Monday. He carefully answered every question for almost nine minutes, and came through with a few of his trademark quips near the end of session.
Choice quote: (On the tight end situation with redshirt freshman Curtis White injured) “There’s nothing I can do about it. I can go in and stay at a Holiday Inn Express and see if I can figure it out, but we;ll just go with what we’ve got.”