LARAMIE – There was a time when Craig Bohl would have walked off the field feeling satisfied after a practice like the one Wyoming had Wednesday at War Memorial Stadium.
These are different times for the Cowboys.
UW’s head coach was left wanting more after the team’s 11th practice leading into a season of great expectations.
“My sense is right now there’s some guys that just wanted to survive today and not really (man) up and really push,” Bohl said. “But I’ve got a pretty critical eye. The bar we set is really high. A couple years ago, I would have thought that was a great practice. It ain’t a great practice around here anymore.”
Bohl noted “it was important for us to have a pretty physical day” as the Cowboys competed in full pads. The session included a goal-line scrimmage and a period working on the defense’s third-down pressure package.
Running back Titus Swen and offensive lineman Nofoafia Tulafono were unable to finish the practice, but neither injury was believed to be serious.
From a competitive standpoint, both sides of the ball had their moments.
“I think it’s great and it’s what the standard needs to be in this situation,” defensive coordinator Jay Sawvel said of Bohl’s critique of Wednesday’s practice. “We’ve got good players here. We do. We’ve got good players at a lot of different positions. At every position, do we have the best guy in the Mountain West? Maybe not that necessarily. But at every single position, I can go down through the defense and everything else, and I don’t see a situation where we’re like, ‘Well, we don’t have this or we don’t have that.’
“At every position we’ve got players that we’re going to expect to play well on Saturdays.”
Sawvel believes the Cowboys have all-Mountain West players on the defensive line, linebacker and in the secondary.
First-year offensive coordinator Tim Polasek inherits a deep, experienced offensive line, a stable of running backs led by star Xazavian Valladay and two healthy quarterbacks with starting experience in Sean Chambers and Levi Williams.
“We go against an offensive line that looks like they’re 30 years old because they’re big guys with beards and everything else,” Sawvel said of the balance in practice. “We’ve got good tight ends and we’ve got good receivers and we’ve got good running backs. It’s a good football team.
“So yeah, there is a standard to where practice has got to be high-level all the time. So that’s great.”
Bohl has also been raving about the competition at tight end between Parker Christensen and Treyton Welch and the young talent at wide receiver with Isaiah Neyor flashing last season and freshman Jaylen Sargent turning heads this summer.
“It has been fun to watch the guys grind. I think it’s been up and down,” Polasek said. “It’s not like the defense is just going out there and winning every day. We’ve had our share of great days. … I mean, we’re really here to support the defense and do what we have to do to win games. But we’re not trying to take a backseat to anybody. And we want to be an explosive, efficient outfit.”
Bohl, who met with the media moments after the conclusion of Wednesday’s practice, said the effort probably wouldn’t be as disappointing as it felt coming off the field.
But rewinding the performance in the kicking game didn’t sound appetizing.
“I didn’t think our specialists performed particularly great today,” Bohl said. “We didn’t punt the ball as well as we have been punting it and we missed a couple field goals.”
UW’s camp rolls on with practices Thursday and Friday leading into a major scrimmage Saturday. Then the countdown to the Cowboys’ Sept. 4 opener against Montana State will be down to two weeks.
If this veteran team is going to take care of unfinished business, namely winning a Mountain West championship, a strong finish to camp is required.
“I think we need to be more consistent,” Bohl said. “When I say that, we’re about done with our install, so there’s still some little things that turn into big things like a misalignment, a missed assignment. Sometimes you graze over those things, but if you are going to play at a really high rate you’ve got to clean those things up.”
