By Hayden Sowers
Ole Miss coach Houston Nutt walked off the field Wednesday pleased with his team's effort in practice just days after, by his own account, an embarrassing loss to Vanderbilt.
“We had a good day today, a lot of fast ball together, trying to create their speed because they are so fast. Third down situations things like that, we are really just trying to work on the speed of the game.”
Senior DE Wayne Dorsey drew praise from Nutt for his recent play. “I think Wayne Dorsey continues to just play really with the intensity on Saturday, but he does it on Tuesday and Wednesday too. He’s been an awesome leader for us.”
By his own account Wayne had a disappointing season last year and DC Tyrone Nix had high praise for Dorsey’s offseason commitment saying, “Wayne made a commitment in the offseason. Everyone was disappointed in his performance, including himself, a year ago and he took it as a personal challenge. A lot of these young men have, and he has upped his game. I’ve seen tremendous effort and work ethic from Wayne. I see a leader in our defense.”
MLB Mike Marry was limited in practice today but Nix expects to get a “full game” out of Marry on Saturday. If not Nix expects Ralph Williams and Keith Lewis to be able to step in and play well. Both Nutt and Nix said Marry’s practicing was limited to just getting the game plan and mental reps down.
Nix had high praise for Georgia QB Aaron Murray saying, “He’ll be the best one we’ve seen so far.” Nix also said Murray is probably the best QB on paper in the SEC.
Nutt mentioned Barry Brunetti was back in the mix at QB because of a thigh bruise to Randall Mackey, but Nutt said today that Mackey was better and that he will look into redshirting Brunetti. He added, “We’ll continue to have Brunetti ready just in case.”
Nutt was hopeful that RB Enrique Davis would be back in the mix this weekend saying simply, “He’s better.”
And what else is he supposed to say after any practice??? We looked as good as we did Saturday, can't wait to see all of you in VHS Saturday when we get our rear handed to us??? The Coach HAS to be positive, regardless, at least in front of the media. If not, he looks like he is throwing all the kids under the bus and we all know the critics would crucify a coach for that (see Les Miles / Jordan Jefferson 2009 Saga - Oxford, MS).
Houston threw out that redshirt thing on the SEC teleconference yesterday. Here is what he said after practice:
Q: You said you would like to redshirt Barry, considering how much he did play is there a way to redshirt him at this point?
“Don’t know. I don’t know yet. You know it used to be under 25 percent or something, but the rules have changed. I just don’t know.”