Sunday Camp Notebook

Wide receivers coach Rob Ianello and the wide receivers talked before the fourth day of fall camp on Sunday.

Play of the Day

Defensive end Keba Agostinho made the play of the day of camp on Saturday. The offense had fooled the defense off of a screen pass to James Sims and Agostinho stayed with the play and caught Sims 30 yards downfield to save a touchdown for the defense. Later on Weis made it clear when the team watched tape of practice that he wanted to see that effort out of everyone. Sims also received some ribbing from the other offensive players.

"James needs to pick it up because you can't have a defensive lineman chasing you down field from 30 or 40 yards away but it was good effort by Keba," D.J. Beshears said.

Installing two new formations

The third day of camp on Saturday consisted of installing two new offensive personnel groups: two tight end sets and a formation containing two running backs and one tight end. Those formations meant the receivers spent a bigger portion of their day working on blocking techniques.

"We spent a lot of drill time on it yesterday," Ianello said. "Hopefully that will continue carry over to us being a good blocking group. We'll block downfield. We'll have guys that show good effort and are physical that understand the importance of blocking. I'm certain we will do a good job of that."

Wide Receiver Positions

Ianello on Sunday gave a general overview on what some of the different wide receiver positions meant on the depth chart that was released last week.

Two Wide Receiver Sets:

X: "Sometimes you put a bigger body at the X receiver position because there the guy who is on the line of scrimmage and they will have a guy who is right on them so you look for a bigger body."

Z: "You can get away with not as big of a body as long as you have good quickness and good feet."

Three Wide Receiver Sets

S: : "You are looking for somebody in the slot who can run those nuanced routes and can work through traffic down the field. It doesn't have to be a bigger guy, but someone with good feet, a feel for the game and good hands."

X: "Is still a bigger body who plays close to the line."

F: "Is something between the X and Z guy. You want a guy with burst and a guy who can win one on one matchups in perimeter blocking in our edge outside zone stuff. "

Rob Ianello Q&A

On the battles for playing time at wide receiver

"We have great competition. We have some guys who have played quite a bit with Kale (Pick), Daymond (Patterson) and D.J. (Beshears); we have a lot of emerging guys like Chris Omigie, Andrew Turzilli and JaCorey Shepherd; then we've got a couple of new guys like Tre' Parmalee and Josh Ford, so I think we have a good room. Christian Matthewsis battling. He's played some in the wildcat/quarterback system. We have great competition, good spirit and it's a great group of guys to work with."

On what it takes to move up on the depth chart:

"You need to continuously develop as a receiver. You need to be able to get open in tough press coverage, which our defense is going to show us some here. You need to continue to develop your route running, you're knowledge of the offense and just be a complete receiver. We've talked about from our first meeting that complete receivers run good routes, complete receivers block, complete receivers have runs after the catch, complete receivers know what to do, complete receivers are in great physical condition. That's what it's going to take for guys (to get playing time). There's a line (of where we need a receiver to be) and you want to get as many guys as you can above that line that can play in a game and perform for you. We're working every day to try to see how many guys we can get above that line. We're three days in, so we're in no way, shape or form to determine any of that. It's just a consistent battle every day, in a positive way, that we're going out to work and try to get better. I tell the guys all the time that you either get better or you get worse, you never stay the same. We're trying to be better today than we were yesterday."