Day 1 practice report

Published 7:17 pm Monday, August 4, 2008

This afternoon’s practice was a rare open-to-the-media affair, and in fact it might be the only open one of fall camp. Being the first day, however, with players not in pads, there isn’t a whole lot of big news to pass on.

After an afternoon of bad news involving EJ Savannah (he was at practice, but not participating) and Chris Izbicki (he was practicing) the best news of the day for Washington had to be Juan Garcia’s presence on the field. Garcia went through a few drills early in practice, even pushing off against some of his fellow linemen, then sat out most of the practice during team drills. Still just seeing him out there running around at all had to be good news considering how negative his prospects seemed in April when he suffered the Lisfranc sprain.

And speaking of Garcia and the center position, guard Ryan Tolar was working with the second string offensive line at center. There has been speculation that he would get work at center with Garcia potentially out for some of the season, and it appeared today that the Huskies are doing just that.

It also appeared that the safeties moving to cornerback move in the spring is going to stick, as former safeties Quinton Richardson and Mesphin Forrester were the first-string cornerbacks ahead of Vonzell McDowell and Byron Davenport. Victor Aiyewa and Nate Williams were the first-string safeties. The starting linebackers were Josh Gage, Mason Foster and Donald Butler, as expected. The first string defensive line also looked the same as it did at the end of spring with Daniel Te’o-Nesheim and Darrion Jones at end, and Cameron Elisara and DeShon Matthews at tackle.