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Napier concerned over team’s lack of conditioning after first scrimmage

Posted at 6:05 PM, Aug 13, 2018
and last updated 2018-08-13 23:02:52-04

LAFAYETTE (KATC) — Despite holding just eight practices leading up to it, Ragin’ Cajuns football held its first intra-squad scrimmage of the season on Saturday. And if you’re wondering if Billy Napier is now ready to announce a starting quarterback this season–well keep wondering.

But Napier said on Monday he liked the intensity he saw from both first team units over the weekend. The first-year Cajuns head coach says he wasn’t surprised by the technical mistakes during the team’s first scrimmage, but was surprised by the team’s physical decline near the end of the two hour session.

On the plus side, with kicker Stevie Artigue’s ACL tear this offseason, Napier says both walk-on, Calvin Linden and Oklahoma grad-transfer, Kyle Pfau have been impressive this camp, and are running neck-and-neck for the starting job.

“Very pleased with the scrimmage in terms of the competitive spirit,” Napier said. “The effort you know was good for the most part. I think we faded a little bit at the end. We need to keep our urgency and intensity. We’re gonna make some wholesale changes on some special teams units to kind of get some players in position to make improvement, accumulate reps, create some intensity and urgency this week as we head into our second scrimmage. We’ve got lots of work to do before we get ready to play.”