Coach Ralph Friedgen said the Terrapin football team looked tired in the hot and humid conditions during practice Friday morning, and he was forced to start a couple of practice periods over again to wake some guys up.
Friedgen has praised his team’s work ethic all preseason camp, and he said the players fought through their fatigue pretty well today.
He singled out center Phil Costa, linebacker Adrian Moten and safety Kenny Tate as the stars of camp so far.
Friedgen had mentioned his disappointment yesterday with the preseason camp performance of wide receiver Torrey Smith.
He elaborated on that today and also gave a possible reason for Smith’s sluggish practices.
“He’s making a lot of mental mistakes and he hasn’t caught the ball as well as I think he can,” Friedgen said. “I just found out the other day that he’s taking an online course so he’s been up late doing papers. But [the class] is finally over.”
I don’t know how Friedgen expects Smith to perform during the season when he’s taking a full semester’s worth of classes, but I guess we’ll see.
In other news, the Terps added a fifth quarterback to camp, Jonathan Pillow. Friedgen said true freshman offensive lineman Cody Blue hurt his shoulder and will be out for the rest of camp, so the Terps had an available spot.
True freshman running back Caleb Porzel was back in a normal white practice jersey after he spent the whole week wearing a green one with a strained MCL suffered in last Saturday’s scrimmage. Porzel still has a thick brace on his left knee. Cornerback Anthony Wiseman is back to full participation in practice after he missed a few days with an ankle injury.
The Terps will practice again this evening, but there will be no media availability.
They will scrimmage tomorrow at 5:25 at Byrd Stadium, and it is still unknown if the scrimmage will be open.
Greg Schimmel is The Diamondback’s Terrapin Football Beat Writer. He can be reached at schimmeldbk@gmail.com. You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Greg_Schimmel