As you might have seen on lubbockonline.com earlier this afternoon, Tech established for certain today that McKinner Dixon is eligible to play this season.

My impression is many Tech fans had been holding their breath and hoping for the good news that they got on Dixon. Thing is, Mike Leach didn't exactly give McKinner a hug and welcome him back.

I'm trying not to put the same quotes in two places, but you might want to check out the Monday Red Raider Notebook elsewhere on this site. If Dixon is going to make an impact for the Raiders this season, he's going to have to work his way out of Leach's doghouse to do it.

--Taylor Potts completed only three passes in a 10-play sequence of 7-on-7. Some targets, he just missed but other people contributed to the missed connections. Ed Britton dropped one with S Franklin Mitchem closing in on him. MLB Brian Duncan intercepted Potts, but Mike Leach hollered that the receiver wasn't where he was supposed to be. Lyle Leong dropped a pass, and Detron Lewis missed another that could have been caught, something you seldom see from Lewis.

--Leong missed a couple of catchable passes during 7-on-7, though a few plays after he missed the second while trying to twist his body, Leong bounced back and caught a TD pass from Potts.

--Adam James made the best catch I saw all day, this one in the 11-on-11 team period. Graham Harrell threw a pass high over the middle, and James had to leave his feet and extend to pull it in. The play went for 27 yards. James got bumped up in the pecking order Sunday because Eric Morris was out. It looks like he's going to be hard to keep off the field. He has pretty good hands, pretty good speed and pretty good toughness. Late in the spring, he was playing with a shoulder separation, but still going out there and doing the job.

--Julius Howard hadn't really caught my eye much in the past week after he was just everywhere during spring practices. But Howard made quite a few plays today. In 7-on-7, Victor Hunter hit a receiver just as a pass arrived, the ball popped into the air, and Howard intercepted it. Good awareness. In the goal-line portion of 7-on-7, he broke up one of Harrell's passes for Mike Crabtree. Then in 11-on-11, I had him down for being in on at least four tackles.

--Tech generally closes out the team period with a few plays of simulated goal-line situation with the football snapped from the 3. A few notable things from there: Detron Lewis locked up CB Taylor Charbonnet, and the block played a big part in Shannon Woods' getting into the end zone as he came around right end. Woods scored again on the next play, this time up the middle. Next snap, DE Brandon Williams drew a lot of cheers from his defensive mates for stonewalling a to his side. On the last of six plays, RB Baron Batch ran it in behind big OG Jake Johnson. Line coach Matt Moore came in and slapped five with Johnson, telling him it was much better than some lapse he'd had earlier.

Just before we went to practice Sunday, reports started to come in about the death of Isaac Hayes, the legendary soul musician and Rock 'N' Roll Hall of Famer.

Hayes and Tech WR coach Dennis Simmons both are from Memphis, Tenn., which is where Hayes was found dead early Sunday afternoon.

Simmons said he knows Hayes' daughter, well enough that he would telephone condolences, although he no longer had a good telephone number.

During 7-on-7, OLB Blake Collier made a sloppy tackle up around the neck on SE Rashad Hawk, and boy did that set off Ruffin McNeill.

McNeill yelled out that it would be a 15-yard penalty in a real game, and he didn't drop the subject.

"Tackle the way we tackle! None of that horse-collar crap!,'' McNeill screamed. "Be smart! Be smart!''

Just thought many Tech fans would find that interesting. Tech's propensity for penalties has been a polarizing issue throughout Mike Leach's tenure. I've covered the subject more than once in stories. McNeill says they don't like penalties, nor do they look the other way. (Players do the body rolls on Sunday night for flags they've incurred the day before.) But they don't want players to go passive if they harp on penalties too much. ("It's not a contact sport. It's a collision sport,'' McNeill once told me when we talking about the penalties issue.

The Raiders are always one of the most penalized teams in the nation. Their penalty-yardage average in 2007 (71.7 per game) was fifth-highest in Divison I-AA.

But they'll get their butt chewed if they try a horse-collar tackle. I know. I saw it myself today.

For the second day in a row, it was 94 degrees when practice started. The intensity, though, was much better to begin with. That's key. Don't think the players wanted to test Mike Leach's patience if what he subjected them to yesterday.

As mentioned earlier, Mike Leach didn't allow any interviews -- himself included -- after practice Saturday. But after a few hours of cooling off, Leach gave us a ring later.

He said he was generally pleased with the week's first five practices, but thought the team showed "a ridiculous lack of toughness'' Saturday. Leach said he and his coaches deserve the blame for that.

This is how he explained his dissatisfaction with the workout:

"I thought it was inconsistent from start to finish. Sometimes offense would do very little and play very weakly, sometimes defense would, and it just traded back and forth. Long story short, as coaches and players, we did a poor job of doing our jobs. There's guys with frowny, tired expressions on their face. That can’t be tolerated. I tolerated way too much of that. We’re a team that's got to do our job and finish. We didn't do that today.''

Sunday's practice is still at 3:30 p.m. ... at least as everyone prepared for bed Saturday. Leach said he and his staff will go over any adjustments to the schedule that are deemed necessary this morning.

"Certainly, if we have to double up practices to get our work done with regard to focus and our ability to push through things, we won't hesitate,'' he said. "Nobody's comfort's going to get in the way of what we need to do and what's important in regard to that.''

With that said, I'll be surprised if any two-a-day practices are added. The Tech staff feels it's very important to save players' legs and be fresh when the season opener rolls around.

And it's just less than three weeks away, ya know.

Not a good practice today for the Red Raiders. After five straight 8 p.m. workouts, Tech went at 3:30 p.m. today, when the temperature was 94 degrees and didn't rise to the occasion.

Mike Leach ripped pretty much the entire team during the huddle-up after the 11-on-11 team period. Told the offense they had just gone through the motions, then turned to the defense and asked why they let freshman RB Harrison Jeffers stick to them so many times.

Leach didn't put it as delicately as I did. Actually, it qualified as the (get ready for the cliche here) profanity-laced tirade. After the tirade, there were extra sprints and body rolls. When the players and the assistants dispersed back into position drills, you sort of wondered if Leach was going to do the workout over from the start. But it did end after the position drills.

College football analyst Craig James was on hand today and told me that Leach was right on. Speaking from his experience as a former player, he said there are workouts that you're tempted to just try to get through without your best effort, and he said Saturday's workout looked like one of those. He saw what Leach saw, guys not really going all-out.

No interviews were granted. No players, no coaches, not even Leach himself. He said he didn't coach well enough to talk to the media.

Luckily, I had plenty of notes and stuff stockpiled from the last night or two.

-- IR Tramain Swindall made the play of the day. He got behind CB Brent Nickerson and S Anthony Hines during team period and pulled in a 55-yard bomb from Graham Harrell. Touchdown.

-- S Daniel Charbonnet made a bunch of plays in the spring, making a pretty strong case for the starting job next to Darcel McBath. On Thursday night, he had another couple of interceptions. The more impressive of the two came when he cut in front of FL Mike Crabtree and swiped one of Taylor Potts' passes. Charbonnet is going to factor in and play a key role this season. It wouldn't be a surprise to see him starting. If coaches opt for more size at safety with Anthony Hines, look for Charbonnet to be an extra DB on passing downs.

-- Sandy Riley has a ton of competition on the depth chart at defensive end, so he needs to do stuff to get noticed. He did team period, making back-to-back plays. First, he broke up a Stefan Loucks pass. Then he tackled Harrison Jeffers for a 2-yard loss as LB Riley Harvey came in to assist on the tackle.

-- IR Detron Lewis, IR Eric Morris and SE Ed Britton each caught a touchdown pass during the 7-on-7 passing period. ... Lewis snagged a tipped pass during 11-on-11.



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--Tech's defensive front seven generally got the better of the offense during the inside running drill. There was a stretch of 10 plays in which the "O'' netted more than 2 yards on only eight plays -- and those were for gains of 5 and 7 yards. It has to be noted, though, that Shannon Woods, Aaron Crawford and Baron Batch were running behind mostly backup offensive linemen.
During the aforementioned sequence, Brandon Williams got Woods for a loss of 8; Daniel Howard and Richard Jones stacked up Batch behind the line for a loss of 5; Jones got Batch for a 2-yard loss; Chris Perry tackled Crawford for 2 yards on a run up the middle; and Perry and Julius Howard combined to stop Crawford after a 1-yard run as he hit up behind left guard.
A couple of plays later, Jordy Rowland, Riley Harvey and Sandy Riley were all in a stop of Woods for no gain, and two plays after that Clint Stoffels recovered a missed exchange between center and QB.
Finally, on about the 13th snap of the middle drill, Harrison Jeffers got outside and took it 10 yards to the end zone.

--Some might have expected a slam dunk for Donnie Carona in the kicking competition since the Raiders signed him to a scholarship coming out of high school, but it's not shaping up that way. It's not that Carona has looked bad -- coaches are plenty impressed with how strong his leg is -- but Cory Fowler isn't just giving Carona the job.
Fowler, best known as Tech's onside kickoff specialist, converted a 47-yard field goal on Wednesday night and was good from 35 and 45 yards on Thursday. He and Carona pretty much matched each other the last two nights, and both missed from 52 yards on Thursday.
Special teams coach Clay McGuire said Fowler appears to have improved in multiple aspects: Leg strength, accuracy, height on the ball and operation time.
"We talked in the spring,'' McGuire said, "and I told him, 'Come in. Do your job and compete. It's an open competition. It's not Donnie's a starter automatically.' And he's done that. He's worked his butt off all summer, and he's gotten a lot better.''
McGuire said Carona's demeanor has impressed him. He works hard and shows resilience.
"He had one bad day, came back and was perfect the next day,'' McGuire said.
Carona probably has kickoff duties locked up, based on his leg strength.

--While the kickers were doing their thing on one end, Jamar Wall, Eric Morris and Cornelius Douglas were fielding punts on the other. Tech's doing a drill the Cowboys and some other teams do to improve concentration. A coach throws the football up with a punt-like trajectory, the return man fields it ... and then holds it while he catches the next ... and then holds those two while he catches the next ... and then holds those three while he tries to field the next. Wall was able to control six. Dennis Simmons, the coach doing the drill, told me Eric Morris also controlled six. (I thought I saw five; guess I lost count). Douglas handled five.

--Speaking of Douglas, the Raiders have projected him as an inside receiver, but he practiced at split end on Thursday. Simmons said they're constantly evaluating talent and trying to determine where young guys fit best, so he's not sure whether Douglas will keep working out at split end or back inside. I'd expect to see him back in the slot, at least in a few days when Todd Walker gets back into workouts.

--The new wrinkle Tech's shown in camp got plenty of attention Thursday night. The play in which IR Eric Morris lines up next to the QB and takes a direct snap is the one I'm talking about. Morris and a RB cross in opposite directions, and Morris either hands off or keeps. It looks a little like a zone-read play.
Anyway, the offense ran the play at least five times -- that I marked in my notepad; it might have been one or two more -- in quick succession.
Tech coach Mike Leach told me he might keep the play or discard it, but thought it was at least worth looking at.
Where did the idea come from? Leach mentioned that it's similar to something TCU runs but with the QB either keeping or handing off.

I'm sure many people want to know the bright side on a day when Mike Leach said McKinner Dixon is likely to be ineligible.

For one thing, Brandon Sesay is good to go. He had to finish up a summer-school class this week, and he found out for sure on Thursday that he'll be able to play for the Red Raiders this season. Sesay told me he did "great'' and never worried about making it.

So there will be a 6-foot-6, 278-pound guy playing defensive end for Tech this season. I've followed Tech football for 35 years and like to think I know its history well, and I can't remember anyone of that stature lining up for the Raiders at D-end.

The other good news: Well, it's old news, but it's still worth remembering. As deep as this team is, defensive end is one of the deepest positions on the team with or without McKinner. At left end, it's Jake Ratliff, Daniel Howard and Sesay -- and I believe a lot of Tech fans underrate the first two -- and at right end, it's Brandon Williams, Brandon Sharpe and Sandy Riley. I'll say again, I think Williams will take his play up a notch this season, simply because this is his third year in the program. Two years ago, he hit the ground running to earn a role as a true freshman. Last year, he was second-team all-Big 12. Now he's all grown up -- at least so far as completely grasping what it takes to play in this league.

As for Brandon Sharpe, I've been impressed with what he's done last spring and how he's carried it over into August.

So, not to diminish the potential impact of Dixon, but if there's a position the Raiders could afford to lose a player, DE is one.