HATTIESBURG, Miss. - Southern Miss entered Saturday's first live scrimmage of fall camp looking for answers. By the end of it, the Golden Eagles appeared to find a few, but also created a couple more questions along the way.
From the quarterback situation having some early drama to offensive and defensive playmakers emerging and more, here are our biggest takeaways from Saturday's scrimmage.
Josh House
The most important development came at quarterback, where Ethan Hampton appeared to be putting together a strong performance. He was a perfect 3 for 3 on passes for 34 yards and executed an impressive run-pass-option keeper before leaving the scrimmage in the first half with what appeared to be a wrist injury on his throwing hand.
Blake Anderson said afterward that there was no structural damage, though, which is an encouraging initial diagnosis, but Hampton's early exit prevented what might have been the clearest separation yet in Southern Miss' three-man quarterback competition .
"Yeah, RPO, so he's not really retreating in the pocket at all," Anderson said. "Just caught a helmet with his hand. We've had an X-ray, no structural problems, just good solid contusion. He'll be okay. It could be a few days till he feels better, but couldn't hold the ball today after that."
Landry Lyddy was the second quarterback to get action on Saturday. He threw two interceptions, but ended up completing 16 of 24 passes for 212 yards.
John White was the third quarterback to take the field, and his numbers were fairly similar to Lyddy's, completing 13 of 23 passes for 216 yards but throwing a pick-six as well.
We still expect Hampton to be the starting quarterback by the time the season opener rolls around if he can stay healthy, but Anderson and offensive coordinator Kyle Cefalo will hope to see more of him in live action during next Saturday's "Fan Fest" scrimmage.
Note: Although 6-6 true freshman Hugh Price doesn't figure into the starting quarterback competition this year, he got to lead a couple of drives during Saturday's scrimmage and looked solid with his reads. He is still a raw talent, but Anderson might have something in Price going forward. He also seemed to have solid chemistry with true freshman wide receiver David Aboya. The two connected a handful of times on Saturday.
Josh House
Even without Aloali'i Maui, who was on the sidelines but with a no-contact red jersey on, and Brock Roman, who Anderson announced after the scrimmage was medically retiring from football , the Golden Eagles' offensive line looked sound for most of the scrimmage. The offensive line seemed to control the line of scrimmage more in the first half, but the defensive line came on stronger late and closed that gap as fatigue from the unrelenting heat started to set in for the big guys up front on offense.
There were several times when guys were swapped out on the offensive and defensive lines between the first and second units throughout the scrimmage, which is a good sign that this coaching staff is still looking for some guys to separate themselves.
Overall, though, there were times when the defensive front made some big plays, recording nine sacks on the day, and times when the offensive line opened up holes for running backs and protected the quarterback long enough for a big play to develop. It will be hard to gauge just how good either front is, though, until they start playing against other teams' fronts.
Note: The linebacker room appears to be one of the strongest the Golden Eagles have, especially on defense. Several big plays were made by Tyler Lassiter and Wesley Edison on Saturday. Both have good timing and pursuit skills. Mathis Haygood and Edison were the two starting linebackers on Saturday, but it wouldn't shock us if Lassiter is a starter sooner rather than later. Either way, he will be receiving plenty of playing time this year, it seems like.
"I feel like the linebacker room is super solid, from the top to the bottom," Lassiter said. "We're rotating. No position's solidified yet, and I feel like everyone out there can play. There's generally not one person in the room that I don't think that can go out there on Saturday and make plays."
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Note: Defensive lineman Jameer Lewis, who just returned this week after receiving an extra year of eligibility , looked to already be in great shape during Saturday's scrimmage. He recorded a sack almost immediately upon getting his first action, something Anderson said was "no surprise" to him, given the burst off the ball Lewis possesses.
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Although there were definitely some things that Anderson and his staff will want to have cleaned up by this time next week, there were a couple of encouraging explosive plays made on both sides of the ball on Saturday.
Before Hampton left with an injury, he completed a pass to his former Illinois teammate Mario Sanders for 24 yards and ripped off a run that probably would've gone for just as much yardage had the play not been called dead. Lyddy completed a pass to Eelijah Singleton for more than 20 yards, and White also found Singleton for a 49-yard heave as well. Needless to say, Singleton emerged as one of the team's most dynamic receivers on the day. He also ended up with a couple more deep receptions of 29 and 66 yards.
Jaylen Himes had himself a productive day as well, finishing with eight receptions for 81 yards, but Singleton more than doubling that production was certainly one of the biggest bright spots and surprises of the scrimmage for Southern Miss. If the Golden Eagles are going to be able to take the top off of some of the opposing defenses they're going to face, Singleton figures to play a big factor in making that happen.
On the defensive side, redshirt-senior defensive back Laquon Robinson recorded a 56-yard pick-six against White, and redshirt-sophomore linebacker Tyler Lassiter nearly had a pick-six of his own against Lyddy and ran it back around 30 yards close to the goal line.
Josh House
For the most part, this was a pretty clean scrimmage as far as penalties are concerned. There was only one penalty called in the entire first half, and you could count on one hand how many penalties there were altogether by the time the scrimmage was over, so that was a plus. Going into the day, I was curious about how disciplined the team would look during its first live action, and they looked well composed, which should be credited to Anderson and his staff.
There were many areas that offered up optimism and encouragement for the Golden Eagles on both sides of the ball, but if I had to pick one area of concern going forward, it would be tackling in the secondary. In the secondary's defense, it is pretty hard to tackle when you're going up against dynamic talents like Himes and Singleton, but that's something defensive coordinator Joe Bolden and defensive backs coach Taveze Calhoun will look at and try to correct over these next few weeks.
"Made some good plays," Anderson said of how his secondary did on Saturday. "Hard to tell. I just think big picture overall, too many missed tackles probably would be the thing. I don't know if that's safeties or linebackers. Too many missed tackles. Had them behind the chains a couple times, let them off the hook. Can't happen. It happened last year, and it hurts. But then we created some turnovers, so if we can do that, we got a chance."
Josh House
Although we'd still expect veteran running back Robert Briggs to start for Southern Miss by the time the season opener rolls around, redshirt-junior Steven Robinson got the start during Saturday's scrimmage.
Robinson, sophomore Robert Henderson and redshirt-sophomore Brandon Hood, who broke off the longest run of the day (around 25 yards), all had solid moments and appear to be guys who run hard and don't go down easily.
Even if one of those guys ends up starting instead of Briggs, who has been limited throughout fall camp due to a shoulder injury he suffered in the spring, he will still figure to get a good portion of playing time. This is a talented running back room, and it will allow Anderson to have fresh legs in the backfield at all times this season.
"There were some holes. I thought we ran the ball better as the day went on, which is not that atypical of this offense," Anderson said. "You kind of have to run the dive, run the dive, run the dive, and then little by little, it starts to create some creases. We've got to tire them out a little bit, make it hard. So it doesn't surprise me. Balls on the ground and a few too many runs that probably should've stayed inside the bounce, but little by little, which is the same in the spring, little by little, those runs started to be more and more effective."
Josh House
One scrimmage isn't enough to settle every competition or answer every question Southern Miss carried into fall camp, but Saturday, at the very least, provided the coaching staff - and everyone watching - with a slightly better idea of how this depth chart could look come opening night.
"I was pleased," Anderson said. "Our goals were pretty simple: come ready to go today. I thought we did. It was really hot. I knew it was going to be hot, needed it to be hot. At one point, it was 126 [degrees] on the turf. And I really felt like, for the day, they tried to play hard. I'm sure someone's going to be ugly on tape and sloppy, but nobody griped, nobody complained. Thought guys tried to give us what we wanted."
Anderson continued: "We didn't have a lot of undisciplined penalties. Turnovers are the biggest key. And you want the defense to create them, but you want the offense to protect it, so I'm going to lose either way. But some really good teaching moments and enough positive on both sides to be excited about, just the ability to create some stuff, and we just got to clean up the rest. But overall, we didn't have any significant injuries."
Now comes the important part: seeing which players build on what they showed, which position battles begin to separate and how quickly the Golden Eagles can clean up the issues that surfaced once the action went live. With the season opener less than three weeks away, the margin between evaluation and preparation is beginning to shrink.
This article was originally published on www.si.com/college/southernmiss as Southern Miss Scrimmage Observations: Hampton Injured, Himes and Singleton Shine, Linebackers Impress .
