NFL.com- Jermaine Kelly an Impact Freshman

I went back and rewatched some of the Spring Preview (SP) after reading through this thread.

Kelly looked great in man-coverage. He was able to stay with Mickens and the other WRs on their routes and even was able to step in the passing lane of a couple passes. He did lose Daniels during a scramble and tried to jump and bat the ball down (it was way over his head) instead of turn and chase him but the ball sailed OoB, so no loss there. Kelly's zone coverage, however, looked weaker and was burned on a few plays. One he could've gotten burned twice when WR was wide open behind him in his zone but Lindquist checked down despite no pressure and then missed the Cooper on the tackle but he was taken down by Feeney a second later. It wasn't terrible but there weren't too many passes his way on zone defense, so there's no much of a sample size to gauge his ability and confidence in a zone defense. However, he looked to be the 2nd best CB out there.

The freshman who stood out the most during the SP was Keishawn Bierria who is backing up Shaq this year at OLB. With Thompson out of the SP, Bierria was in the starting line-up and contributed to a number of tackles, including diagnosing an inside tunnel screen and tackling Campbell behind the LoS for a loss. He appeared to be a sure-tackler, was able to cover a lot of ground and was able to find his way to the ball. We'll hear his name quite a bit this fall, especially when Thompson plays RB. The only other freshman I really noticed was Qualls who is quick for a DT and was able to win a number of battles inside (though he did not accumulate any statistics I saw).

FWIW, Kikaha probably had the best game of any of the defenders with a number of sacks. Feeney was probably second and showed good tackling and an ability to disengage from OL to get to the ball-carrier and take them down. I think Feeney will have a big season, much like Aiyewa when he switched from SS to OLB in 2010.

But back to Kelly since this is a thread about him... I think probably the best way to measure his progress during the first four games of the season (Hawaii through GSU) will be to see how he performs in zone coverage and how well the secondary does on his half of the field (him and the safety on his side as opposed to Peters and the safety on Peter's side). If he does well in the zone defense, then I'm going to feel confident about the secondary going into Pac-12 play. Otherwise, if he bites on some play-action or losses defenders coming into his zone behind him, then I may reconsider our strength against pass-heavy teams like OSU and Wazzu.