The Miners’ football off-season activities in preparation for the 2016 fall season has started with the first week of spring football practices coming to a close. The week featured new faces, experimental schemes and hard hits. Spring practices will run for five weeks leading up to the spring game, which will be held on April 17 at 7 p.m. in the Sun Bowl.

Results on Defense:

The Miners’ defense made a statement on Friday, March 18 when facing any of the team’s quarterbacks. The defense was able to create turnovers and linebacker Johnny Jones stole a pick-six off a Kavika Johnson pass.

“Defense is doing a nice job getting turnovers–they have been doing it all spring,” head coach Sean Kugler said. “I think they’ve had one or two a day, which is good.”

Even the quarterbacks are embracing the new 3-4 defense that defensive coordinator Tom Mason has instilled. By having to play a different defense this year in practice, it helps them to get acclimated.

“I think it will help us in the long run,” quarterback Mack Leftwich said. “The more defenses we can see and the more practice against different defenses we can see, the better.”

Quarterback Battle:

Last year the Miners had a three-way quarterback battle throughout the spring, which led up to the first game of the season when Mack Leftwich was eventually named the team’s starter. This off-season, new offensive coordinator Brent Pease will handle the quarterback battle that is still alive. Leftwich, Metz and Johnson are all fighting for the job to be the signal caller in the fall.

This week, the Miners had all three quarterbacks spilt the reps with the first team.

“Give and take–they have all had their moments where they look good, they’ve all made mistakes, they will continue to make split reps until one of them starts to separate themselves–and so far they are all doing a nice job,” Kugler said. “Nobody is really separating themselves–we expect that–it’s a long process.”