The San Francisco 49ers wrapped up their first week of OTAs yesterday and we've got some final video from Thursday's practice session. Yesterday's video features a lot of passing and catching early on. There are several opportunities to break down Alex Smith's knee-bend. That's a bit more of a story than the Alex Smith-Jon Beason non-story, but still something we just spend a ton of time on this time of year.
After the jump, I've got a few comments on yesterday's video.
The team worked on some sideline catches, and we get to see A.J. Jenkins and Kyle WIlliams making some toe-tapping catches. For Jenkins, the instant replay cameras would be working over-drive. Initially I thought he didn't get both feet in-bounds, but upon further review, you see the right foot dragging. The question is whether he dragged the right foot a little too early. If this was in-season and the play was ruled out of bounds, I'd imagine we'd have a 500 comment threat breaking down how close it was, with plenty of snapshots from the play.
About halfway through the video, we get into some defensive drills. The first part is some side-to-side shuffling by linebackers. My favorite part might be at around the 53 second mark where three defensive linemen (Ian Williams, Patrick Butrym and one other guy) do a little move to the left. It is completely random and makes no sense, but I find myself amused while watching it, and I don't know why.
The video wraps up with the linebackers working on pass coverage drills. We can't see much at this point, but with Aldon Smith making the move to fulltime outside linebacker, these drills could prove as important as anything in OTAs. Aldon's natural pass rush skills are not in doubt as he moves to 3-4 outside linebacker. The big test is working on the other skills, with pass coverage being the most pertinent. He can get the deflections with his big arms, but he also needs to be able to cover tight ends and running backs with some measure of effectiveness.