Column: What we're missing with spring practice

It goes without saying that we were all excited about the expected start of spring practice this week to get our first opportunity to see Lane Kiffin with a whistle around his neck coaching Ole Miss Rebels. With an almost entirely new staff of assistants, it was high on our list to absorb and learn the styles of the position coaches, too. We had been told every practice would be wide open to the media.

The unfortunate course of events over the last week has taken those opportunities off the table, at least for the time being. As Americans and as human beings we have bigger fish to fry in wake of the worldwide coronavirus outbreak. Our country has prioritized correctly.

It's still a shame that spring football practice looks to be the next, but necessary, casualty in all of this, particularly for Ole Miss. Kiffin had alluded to the importance of spring practice for a number of reasons, the first being the opportunity to conduct first-hand evaluations of the players on the roster he and his staff have inherited. It looks as though that will have to wait until the summer months at the earliest when a new season is hopefully still on the horizon.

The next biggest concern has to be the delay of installing new systems on offense, defense and special teams. Sure, some of that had begun inside the Manning Center, but the process of putting it all together can't move forward without live-speed reps in helmets and pads. There's likely to be some Skype and Zoom sessions between the Rebels and their coaches during the interim, but the real teaching has to take place on the field. If it's the summertime before that opportunity presents itself, things will most certainly be frenzied and hurried preparing for the season opener.

These things are exasperated for a first-year coaching staff.

We're also deprived of watching the most anticipated and biggest storyline of the spring: The quarterback battle set to play out between Matt Corral and John Rhys Plumlee. Granted, it was unknown how much time Plumlee would have actually spent in the Manning Center this spring, as he continued to play baseball, but we would have received at least a glimpse of how things might have shaken out.

It was also going to be intriguing to see co-defensive coordinators D.J. Durkin and Chris Partridge wade through their personnel and figure out what system best fit the Rebels. That, too, is on hold.

Something else lost in all of this are the valuable reps that younger Rebels would have gained with 15 spring practices. Those reps would have created a deeper roster, for sure.

For now, we're left in a wait-and-see mode for football, and that's OK. It has to be OK.

And somehow, everything else will eventually be OK, too, I truly believe.

SOURCE: Johnson, David. "Column: What we're missing with spring practice." OMSpirit - 247Sports.com, 19 March 2020, https://247sports.com/college/ole-miss/Article/Ole-Miss-Football-Column-What-were-missing-with-spring-practice-145195446/