BATON ROUGE — Nick Saban and his staff were greeted by a day of rain and were forced to move indoor for the first practice of the Spring Practice Session Monday afternoon.
Wearing helmets, T-shirts and shorts for opening day, the Tigers practiced for about two hours in the LSU Indoor Practice Facility.
After Strength and Conditioning Coordinator Tommy Moffitt led a team stretch to open practice, the offensive unit — which will wear white jerseys throughout the spring — and the defensive units split to opposite ends of the Astroturf field. First year head coach Nick Saban, who has spoken on several occasion about his swarming and attacking defense, was heavily involved with the defensive backs, participating in drills and feeling his way through the abundance of new faces.
“I thought we had a good first day of practice,” said Saban. “We really wanted to go outside today but the weather didn’t want to cooperate with us. Everybody did a good job of adapting indoors and the players showed a good attitude in doing it.”
Even though it was the first day of practice, the players were able to accomplish several new concepts that were being introduced for the first time.
“They certainly gave effort and competed out there,” said Saban. “There is certainly a lot of new stuff being thrown at them on offense, defense and special teams and they’ve had a really positive attitude about learning, which made us pleased about what we were able to get accomplished today.”
Quarterback Rohan Davey, who led LSU to a season-ending victory over Arkansas in November, attended practice and watch drills from the field. Davey, a junior, torn his anterior cruciate ligament in February and will not participate in spring drills.