Southern Miss Football Practice Report: 10/12/22
The overcast Hattiesburg sky soon gave way to some temporary heavy rain as Southern Miss sharpened their tools at “Workday Wednesday” ahead of Saturday’s showdown against Arkansas State.
It was a standard practice outside of the rain, as the first team offense had good practice reps against the second team defense and vice-versa. One thing of note occurred during the seven-on-seven drills where the first team pass catchers went against the first team defensive backs and linebackers. The defense won the rep as Zach Wilcke’s pass intended for Jakarius Caston fell incomplete with Jay Stanley and Tylan Knight on the coverage. Knight and Stanley made a great play, so, naturally, they exchanged some words to let the offense know. Head coach Will Hall took exception to this, and told his players to hype each other up instead of tear each other down.
“We're not a trash-talking football program. That's not what we do,” Hall said. “They did a great job of running an Indian bracket -- an Indian bracket is what we call an inside bracket on a corner route. It was a [textbook] rep. It was just beautiful, and it was on Jakarius Caston. He's a great player who ran a really good route. He ran the route correctly, and Zach made a great throw. Yet it still wasn't complete because two guys just did a phenomenal job.”
Hall went on to say that it is important for his players to understand that they are “good players going against good players.” This incident was not a major issue at practice, but it is worth mentioning that Hall is doing his best to instill a culture where teammates are positive towards each other instead of negative. It appears that he is trying to form a brotherhood between offense, defense and special teams as one.
In depth chart news, Paul Gainer Jr. has reclaimed his starting right tackle spot over Kyron Barnes. Barnes struggled against Troy, and Gainer’s veteran-experience cannot be ignored.
“He's practiced really well, and I'm proud of him because that's hard [to lose your job]. And that's no knock on Kyron. We had really good competition there. Paul is a better player today than he was four weeks ago because of Kyron,” Hall said. “Paul has embraced [the challenge], competed and got his job back because he;s playing better right now. It's such a great lesson that we talk about is that's life. You wake up and go to work, and if you're not productive and do your job, somebody that will do it better than you will replace you. Nobody will feel sorry for you, and that's called life. Anybody that thinks it's not is being unrealistic, so I'm just proud of Paul.”
There were no other notable changes on the depth chart outside of right tackle. Wilcke remains the starting quarterback as Ty Keyes is still out with an injury, and Jake Lange is the backup followed by Trey Lowe. Hall mentioned last week that the lack of competition at the quarterback position could be a negative this week, but Lange and Lowe were once again no threat to Wilcke’s job this week as he got all of the first team reps.
The Golden Eagles look to bounce back from a tough loss at Troy as they host Arkansas State. Southern Miss plays at home for the first time in a three-week span, so it’s a homecoming in more ways than one.
“It's good to be home, and we want to play well at home at The Rock in front of our fans. We had a great crowd in our last home game versus Northwestern State, and we hope to have that again."
Kickoff from The Rock will be Saturday, October 15 at 6 p.m.