OK, here are a few more comments. On your action shots, especially the wider one, the whites are too blown out on the pants. If you were using the 75-300, it's hard to get that to a fast enough aperture to do what you want to do. You also can't always trust the camera's meter when you have extremes of light & dark. Take it as a suggestion and set things manually. You may have to do some touch up in PP to compensate.
As I'm learning, I've found that for action, as a general rule, shoot with a large aperture and fast shutter speed to freeze action, if that's what you want to do. For football, this past week in shooting the Falcons, I tried to stay above 1/500 and preferably faster. I adjusted ISO up as the lighting went down Friday. I started the game at ISO400 and ended at 1600.
I would occasionally take a stationary shot of the players to check my exposure and adjust if necessary before trying to shoot the action as the lighting changed. In PP, it's easier to bring up dark areas on a photo than it is to recover white areas that are over exposed.
I know there are other folks here who can probably give much beter advice, but these are a few things I've learned recently. I'm still tweaking and trying to improve. The best advice is to go shoot, come back home and analyze your shots & settings, and learn from what worked and what didn't. Take that knowledge out with you next time and try again. Keep doing it until you get the shots you want.
Here are a few of my favorites from the other night. I welcome C&C as well!
