ufl
Dan Burns
The Hartford Colonials three-day Mini Camp has come and gone. The team practiced in the morning, broke for lunch and worked out in the afternoon on Friday and Saturday. On Sunday the team practiced only in the morning.
Overall, Head Coach and General Manager Chris Palmer was pleased with most of what he saw on the field at Sage Park in Berlin.
“The guys are working very, very hard and we have a long ways to go, but they’re giving us a good hard day’s work,” Coach Palmer said. “We’re in Stage 1, we’re learning the system and the guys are doing a good job.”
Afterward he discussed it with reporters in attendance. Here is a partial transcript of the interview.
Question: What did you think of being out there today?
Coach Palmer: “I’m please. For being the second time on the field, it didn’t look bad. I was very pleased. The thing that excites me is to see some young kids that are just getting started, they’ve got some potential. That’s what excites you as a coach. If you can develop them and they go on and have more success, you can say, ‘Hey, I’ve given them a little bit of a spark to get going.’ So it was very good.”
Q: What sort of read did you get from the first day?
CP: “We will go back and watch the films. It’s easy to notice the good plays and it’s easy to notice the bad plays. Those jump out pretty quick. The guys that are all kind of bunched up, where they don’t do anything bad and they don’t do anything good, those are the hard guys to evaluate. You’ve got to look at it on film. I try to rank each position in my mind after every practice, I talk to every position coach. We’ll meet tonight, watch film and talk about the players. Before you didn’t know who they were, they were just names. Now we’re in a situation where you have an idea of what they can and can’t do.”
Q: Is there any particular area you need to work on?
CP: “I’m not at that point where I can say that. I did like the line. I thought this morning the offensive line did show some things. There’s some possibilities in the defensive line that looked pretty good. I was pleased with the quarterbacks. I thought all three guys did a very nice job. I thought Ryan Perrilloux had a real good morning, I thought Andre Woodson had a real good afternoon, and I thought Billy Stull had a good morning and a good afternoon.”
Q: What impressed you about Bill Stull?
CP: “He’s done a good job. He’s not spectacular. He’s a guy that had a solid performance in both practices. He did everything right. You didn’t go, ‘Wow!’ or you didn’t go, ‘Oh, why did you do that?’ or anything like that. He was just a good solid football player. We’re always looking for good solid football players”
Q: In your experience of coaching quarterbacks, that must have been a good place to start.
CP: You take a guy like Woodson, he knows the system. He’s very smart. He’s a smart football player, he knows what to do. Ryan Perrilloux has the most talent of all of them. He has tremendous upside, but he’s a guy who has never been underneath center the last couple years because his teams are all spread offenses. Billy, he’s been under center and he was solid. I’m pleased with all three quarterbacks.”
Q: Will it be a tough choice?
CP: We got a lot of football to play before than. We’ll have a scrimmage the first Saturday we get back for training camp and we’ll have a scrimmage in Danbury on August 28. We’ll see where we are. They’ll come in for their physicals on August 16th and 17th, and we’ll probably hit the field on the 18th. It’s just good to be with the players and coaching them. The thing that was nice, we had some people sitting in the stands watching practice. A woman brought her children and they’re sitting in the stands, that’s a great treat for them. It’s a good situation.”
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Hartford Colonials Head Coach Chris Palmer knows good quarterbacks when he sees them. And he had three good ones in Mini Camp on Friday at Sage Park in Berlin, CT. Andre Woodson (Kentucky), Ryan Perrilloux (Jacksonville State) and Bill Stull (Pitt) all had a solid workout.
Stull, who signed as an undrafted free agent with the Colonials, participated with the Kansas City Chiefs Mini Camp after the NFL Draft. In speaking with Palmer, Chiefs Head coach Todd Haley recommended Stull
“Todd Haley called me and said that they were very pleased by what he did in Kansas City,” Coach Palmer said.
Here is a Q & A with Stull:
Q: How would you assess the overall performance of the first day of Mini Camp?
Stull: “I think it went very smooth, considering it was the first day of two-a-day practice, new things that a bunch of guys never really experience. From a standpoint of going through things the right way, I think guys picked up a lot of things today. We definitely got better from the first practice to the afternoon practice. I think overall, it was a good day.”
Q: There are some very good quarterbacks on the roster – Andre Woodson, Ryan Perrilloux and Josh McCown and of course yourself. Do you guys push each other?
Stull: “I think it’s great. Competition brings out the best in everybody. There are some very talented quarterbacks. We’re definitely looking forward to getting better every day and learn from each other and just having a good healthy competition.”
Q: Have you given any thought that you might be playing your home games at Rentschler Field. It wasn’t that long ago that you played there as a visiting player with Pitt.
Stull: “I thought about it, but I don’t want to get too ahead of myself. Yes, I definitely thought about it. I’ve already played a couple of games there, in the away locker room and on the away side with the fans not cheering for you.”
Q: How would you describe the atmosphere at Rentschler Field in the times you played there?
Stull: “It’s definitely not very welcoming to the opposing team. You definitely can experience the 12th man. I’m definitely looking forward to that and looking forward to making Hartford my second home.”
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Hartford Colonials running back Andre Dixon is wearing No. 26. He always wore No. 2. Why the switch?
Dixon is paying tribute to Jasper Howard, his former teammate at UConn. Howard was the victim of a fatal on-campus stabbing last October.
“I wanted to get No. 26 because I wore No. 2 at UConn and Jasper Howard, who passed away, he wore No. 6,” Dixon said. “I want to represent my former teammate and honor his memory.”
Dixon and Howard had adjacent lockers at UConn. So they would talk every day.
And when Dixon scored the winning touchdown in an overtime victory over Notre Dame on November 21, giving the Huskies their first victory since Howard’s death, Dixon immediately thought of Howard.
“That was a crazy time. We always wanted to get that win for him,” Dixon said. “When I scored and we got that win, it was like a sigh of relief. We finally felt like we did something for him.”