Tight ends Marcus Pollard and Stephen Spach and third string quarterback Matt Gutierrez spent a fair amount of time after practice practicing run blocking and certain passes. Pollard appeared to telling Spach how to use his hands and feet to engage a defensive player when run blocking. The session included a few second of Pollard doing some sort of boxing like punches before showing off a haymaker of sorts:
It may have been that tight ends coach Pete Mangurian felt that Spach wasn't blocking correctly in one of the drills during the practice. This picture suggests that Spach had too much upper body and not enough hands on the blocking sled:
Here's an example of what Pollard looks like when drive blocking back-up linebacker Pierre Woods:
To my untrained eyes it looks like Pollard has good leverage and hand positioning but his right foot has a bit of Charlie Chaplin angle.
Patriots picked up Spach in December 2007 to bring some depth to an injury and incompetence ravaged lineup. Starters Benjamin Watson and Kyle Brady took turns being sidelined by injuries, David Thomas was out for the season and Marcellus Rivers looked good in training camp but increasingly in over his head during the regular season (culminating with a meek block at the point of attack on the play that ended running back Samy Morris's season). Patriots have yet to replace the run-blocking ability that Daniel Graham - who left as a free agent after the 2006 season - brought to the offense. Thomas appears to be a better tight end than Watson but is rarely healthy, so what good is that?
Spach isn't likely to ever amount to much in the passing game but he might be adecent enough run blocker to earn the third spot on the roster.
I don't know how much Pollard has left in him, but perhaps he can be a capable back up this season? He looked a bit winded at the end of practice, but a few weeks of pre-season and another couple of weeks of regular season conditioning should get him in decent enough shape for a back-up role.