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The physicality turned up a notch for the Troy Trojans on Thursday as the football team put on full pads for the first time during spring practices.

Troy returned to the practice field on Tuesday after more than a week off for Spring Break and were in full pads on Thursday when things got even more physical.

“Tuesday’s practice, coming off Spring Break, was really efficient and a lot cleaner than maybe sometimes when you come off a long layoff like that,” Troy Coach Jon Sumrall said. “We had a few missed assignments to be expected off a long layoff but the energy was good and today’s practice was physical, guys were flying around and pads were popping.”

While Sumrall wants to ensure his players are smart about the physicality, he continues to emphasize that he would much rather have to reign in his guys than have to push them to be more physical in practices.

“I’d much rather say, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa’ than, ‘Giddy up.’ If we have a team that wants to be physical, I can live with that,” he continued. “I’d rather me have to pull them back when it’s time to protect the team. When you have a problem is when you have to push them to play harder and play faster and more physical, which we did not have a problem with today.”

After the Troy defense “won” the first few days of practice, the offense has started to turn the corner.

“It’s the two best offensive days, back-to-back in both the run game and pass game, since I’ve been back here,” Sumrall said. “The offense right now is operating at an extremely high level and it looks like a different unit completely, which is exciting because we need them to be.”

The Trojans were able to rely on one of the best defenses in school history last season but many of the starters from that unit are gone heading into 2023 and Sumrall knows the offense will have to step things up.

“The efficiency with the timing with how we’re operating at the line of scrimmage are much better,” Sumrall said of the differences he sees in the offense. “Sometimes we’re in the huddle, sometimes we’re on the line of scrimmage. The tempo, changing the pace, the communication and alignment and assignment with confidence has all been improving. In the running game, we’re creating different angles and leverage plays that are creating some problems for the defense. That’s good for our defense, too, because we’re going to get better there because of that.”

Sumrall believes that the offensive group is already better than last season but thinks improvement can still come, even from a personnel standpoint.

“I like where we’re at and I think all of our offensive position groups are much improved from last season right now, and that includes the offensive line,” he emphasized. “Everyone will talk about losing Jake (Andrews) and Austin (Stidham) but I think our offensive line is even getting better right now.

“We have good players over there but we probably need to still add a couple of players at a couple of spots to take it to another level and I think we’ll pursue that later.”

A new face that the Trojans added on Thursday was JUCO offensive lineman Elijah Philipe, who started at Troy this week, after initially signing with the Trojans in February.

The 6-foot-7-inch, 305-pound offensive tackle comes to Troy from Lackawanna College and previously held offers from Power 5 schools like Auburn, Florida State and South Carolina before transferring to Troy.

“He’s a good looking dude,” Sumrall said with a smile. “He looks like what (a lineman) is supposed to look like. That’s one (player) that I’m really excited to see how he grows and develops in the next month or so.

“That guy walks out and he looks like a big time football player and he moves like one, too. He’s got a lot to learn in regards to the terminology and how we do things, but athletically he is extremely impressive.”

Troy will amp up the physicality a bit more on Saturday when the Trojans hold their first partial scrimmage of the spring inside Veterans Memorial Stadium.

“It won’t be a full on knockdown, drag out scrimmage,” said Sumrall. “We’ll do like a half practice to start. Today, we installed some third down stuff and on Saturday, we’ll have some red-zone action.”

Sumrall has said all spring that he feels like the Trojans are far ahead of where the team was last spring and he continues to hold that belief.

“We’re way ahead of the learning curve on the installation from a year ago,” he said. “It was day eight when we were doing red-zone and third down stuff and we’re doing it now this year, three or four practices ahead of where we were last year.

“So, I just want to see us execute. We need the offense to keep improving. There was improvement from 2021 to 2022, we were 30 yards and three points per game better, but we still need more. We knew last year we would be really strong on defense and we’ll still be strong this year, but we have to take steps forward in being able to create explosive plays at any point in a game. We did that in flashes last year but I want to see us do it day in and day out. I think the first two practices went to the defense but I think three and four, the offense was really good.”