Texans' Training Camp Open Thread - Day 3

My favorite one from Pollard:

(on feeling like if he overload CB Kareem Jackson on defense) “You cannot overload. I do not think when (CB) Kareem (Jackson) signed his deal, did he say ‘you are overloading me with this check.’ This is a great game. This is a great game and we all play it. We get paid a lot of money to play this game. I think coming on as a rookie it is a lot different than college football. When you step in between these lines and you get placed with the first team, you know it is an expectation. You have got to have expectations and goals that you have to reach and you have got to be accountable. We are holding him accountable to know his side of the playbook. We are holding him accountable to carry himself on and off this field.”

Apologies for not tweeting much but I find it hard to tweet at camp and watch at the same time—lots of stuff going on. I also am very cautious about what I tweet because I worry some that people read too much into individual things that happen on a particular camp day. (My twitter audience has diehards that see all Texans tweeters, but also general NFL fans trying to learn about the Texans, so I don’t want to tweet too much, or say things that people will blow up into something bigger).

I totally understand the desperation of fans to figure out what is going on, and I will be sharing that because I won’t be able to get to camp this week. I’ve asked the HT.com staff to put as much camp stuff as possible on the mothership.

Here’s some thoughts through the Sunday AM practice:

1. It will be a miracle if they can get Trindon Holliday to function as a WR. He struggled with it at OTAs, and in drills, you see him drop more catches than he grabs. Punts could be an adventure too—on a no cloud day, Holliday and Jacoby were either taking punts to the house or mufffing/fumbling.

2. Camp improvements in a few days: I thought Dickerson/Tate are my votes for most improved.

3. Can’t read too much into CBs getting burned. 1 on 1 drills there is no pass rush, and even with a 11 on 11s, there were times when Orlovsky in particular would have got killed in a real game for holding the ball too long. Players avoided killing him but he would have got killed. Kubiak yelled once at Orlovsky to get rid of the ball.

4. I would pay money to hear Bernard Pollard miked up. Just the stuff you can hear him say is hilarious. It was good to see the camp quotes from both Pollard/Kubiak that acknowledge that Pollard needs to not cross the line at camp or during games.

5. I would like to remind everyone here that Andre Johnson is special. I mean, you know that, but we are privileged to watch him play, and we may never see such a remarkable wide receiver ever again. We are watching history. During 1 on 1 drills, he did a move that was so stop on a dime sudden, that it made me flinch and the cornerback just ankle broke (don’t remember the CB—I was just so stunned that somebody that big could be running what looked to be full speed and then just stop). He ran that route like it were a game.

6. Mario sat out Sunday as a precaution due to his hip. On Saturday, I saw a trainer stretching him out on the field while they were doing drills.