I was over at the Training Complex for this afternoon’s seven on seven practice and thought I’d share some of my thoughts.

First of all, for those that played high school sports, these seven on seven practices are the equivalent to “captain’s practice.” The players moderate themselves, participation is optional, and other than trainers there were no coaches in sight. Thus, you have guys going at varying degrees of intensity. Some, like James Franklin and Kenji Jackson really seemed to be focused. A lot of the others joked around for the most part.

Practice Observations:

(Keep in mind this is just one practice on one day so take this all with a grain of salt).

With Blaine Gabbert out of town, James Franklin and Ashton Glaser split time with the first team. Tyler Gabbert and Jimmy Costello worked with the reserves. I spent most of my time watching Franklin and the first team.

- Franklin and Marcus Lucas do not look like a freshman. Most frosh are easy to spot because they’re not as big as everyone else. Bud Sasser and Jared Parham looked noticeably small for their respective positions.

- Franklin was throwing the ball really hard today. A few times receivers had trouble handling his passes. One knock on Franklin would be that he held on to the ball too long. The defensive linemen don’t ever touch the quarterback in these drills, but it was obvious Franklin would have been sacked several times if it were a real game situation.

- I thought it was interesting that Tommy Saunders was out practicing with the team. He is always around the facility but today he was actually out running routes with guys like Derrick Washington and Wes Kemp.

- Kemp, Michael Egnew, and TJ Moe had the most catches from what I saw. Moe looked really agile running after the catch.

- Add Lucas Vincent to the list of players who look too big to be freshmen. I’ve heard several guesses that Vincent may not redshirt this year. When I asked another defensive player about this, his reply surprised me:

“No, no, no. He is not ready to play at all,” the player said.

- Incoming freshman running back Marcus Murphy is no longer rocking the flat-top.

- Luke Lambert is easily Mizzou’s biggest linebacker.

Play of the day: After spending most of the day hollering encouragement at his teammates, Aldon Smith jumped into the drill for one play. Instead of running up-field toward James Franklin, he dropped back into coverage and intercepted the pass. He then proceeded to run it all the way to the end of the field where he spiked the ball between his legs and started dancing, which drew laughs and cheers from offensive and defensive teammates alike.