MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (March 2, 2016) - Coach Dana Holgorsen addressed members of the media on Wednesday, March 2, at the Milan Puskar Center Team Room.
Opening Statement
Welcome everybody. We are about 10 days away from the spring starting, so we are getting closer. I’ll start with where we are at with our winter conditioning. We are not ready to wrap that up yet. We still have another week and a half of that before we roll into spring practice. Our focus is still offseason conditioning. We will continue to focus on that for the next week and a half. Obviously, we quickly roll over into spring practices. I think it’s going good.
Once again, (director of strength and conditioning) Mike Joseph leads the charge with that. I think we have the best strength and conditioning staff in the country. All parties involved down there do a great job. It’s funny when you bring in new coaches, and brought in a couple of good coaches that have been at some pretty good places. The first thing that they say is that they are impressed with the work that happens downstairs in the weight room. I rely on those guys a lot. (Director of strength and conditioning) Mike (Joseph) is the head coach of this program during the conditioning stages. We are in our sixth week. It is hard to believe that we are real close to midterms for this semester. It flies by, as everything does. We are in our sixth week. From the coaches’ perspective, we have been with them for four weeks.
We don’t see our guys very much through the January portion of recruiting. (Director of strength and conditioning) Mike (Joseph) has complete control of them. We are going on our fourth week, and we do a bunch of competition stuff. We do early morning stuff a couple of times a week, and then we do football activities in the afternoon a couple of times a week. We watch video with them, and we install some things with them. It is very limited on-field football stuff, but there are a couple of things that we can do with them. We have been doing it for four weeks now, and we will continue with that. Our team looks good. We have a lot of bodies out there, and we have a lot of guys that have been in the program for some time. I have 22 seniors. Last year, we had a big senior class, and I think it paid dividends when things got tough. We finished the year really well. Next year, we are looking for it to be the same way. We have a lot of seniors and a lot of juniors that have been in the program. That’s just the start of what this 2016 team is going to be like. We will continue to add to it, and we will continue to build this team. Recruiting went very well. We will keep adding those guys as well.
Spring practice starts Sunday. We will play it by ear. We will get three practices in before spring break. We have done it this way for two or three years now. I like it this way. I like how it’s structured. Obviously, you don’t know what you are getting with the weather this time of year. We were outside with them yesterday, believe it or not, and then today, we are going to get a bunch of snow. Who knows where that is going to head? The first three, I am prepared to go inside if we need to. You can knock out three non-padded practices. That gets you a couple of weeks closer to potentially some good weather. Once we get back from spring break, the heavy work takes place. If we get a good day, then we will go outside and put the pads on with one of those three days if we can. If we can’t, we will be inside non-padded. It’s tough to have a full practice inside with the pads. We have talked a lot about that before. If not, we will come back with our 12 practices. We will have three a week: Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
You all are invited to each and every one of the Saturday practices. You can be there the whole time. We are not really traveling as much as we have in the past. We will be on the practice field for those three Saturday’s, probably somewhere around noon. I haven’t really set the schedule yet. Then the spring game. We will conclude with one practice down at the Greenbrier like we did last year. That worked out really well for us last year. A lot of West Virginia University stuff happens down there that weekend. We are going to make it a real spring game. We are anticipating more people there than we did the previous year. It was a really good turn out last year. We are pretty fired up about that.
I am not going to give out a depth chart at this time, for obvious reasons. We have eight starters back on offense. You can pencil in and figure out who some of the guys are by who played a lot of football for us. Those guys are going to have a little bit of an upper hand, but with a lot of bodies out there at specific positions, you never know how things are going to go. A depth chart toward the end of spring is going to do everybody a little bit more good than at the beginning. We change our depth chart daily. Our players know this. It’s changing right now with the very limited amount of football time that we have. Once we get into real football time, it will change a good bit. We will talk about position battles as we go through the spring. There are a lot of opportunities for guys to improve. There are a lot of opportunities for guys to make moves. There are going to be some battles at a lot of positions that I am very eager to watch.
We have eight guys back on offense, and four guys back on defense. We all understand that we lost some pretty good players at the combine a couple days ago. It has been following those guys and leading into the draft. I think a lot of those guys’ names will get called. It’s not a sign of panic, because everyone will say to me how in the hell are you going replace those guys? The same way we replaced the previous starters with them. Our guys went out and recruited pretty well. Our strength and conditioning program is pretty good. Our football sense around here is pretty good. We are developing some guys that have the opportunity to play at the next level. We are going to take a little credit for developing some of those guys. We have a bunch of guys on the roster right now that are going to do the same thing. They are going to develop. We are going to practice them hard. They are going to lift, run and play football. We are going to run a bunch of plays next year. That’s what spring ball is all about. We are looking forward to getting started. With that said, I’ll take some questions.
On if there are any position changes
A couple. With bringing (assistant coach/offensive coordinator) coach (Joe) Wicklineon, he is handling all the hybrid guys offensively. He is going to do all the tight ends, h-backs and all of the guys that are in-between positions. He is going to take all of that and work with it. He watched all of our cut-ups, and he is going to put his spin on it. That has always been a position that was overlooked a little bit. (Offensive graduate assistant) Dan Gerberry did a really good job with Cody Clay last year. I think it helped Cody (Clay). We are going to take it another step and let (assistant coach/offensive coordinator Joe Wickline)coach Wick do that. He will be able to coach all of the o-linemen at times with these specific guys. He will be able to do some backfield stuff with these guys, and then he will be able to tie everything together. We moved (redshirt junior tight end/fullback) Jon Lewisto tight end. We just don’t have a lot of tight ends in the program right now. We have (tight end Trevon) Wesco coming in. Johnny is going to come over and play tight end. (Redshirt junior tight end/fullback) Alex Brooks was a reserve linebacker who is going to come over and play fullback. With having (redshirt sophomore tight end/fullback Michael) Ferns, (redshirt freshman tight end/fullback Stone) Wolfley, and (redshirt junior tight end/fullback Elijah Wellman) Eli, it’s a bunch of bodies that you can keep doing that. With a fullback, you can do some lead stuff and keep pounding those guys. They wear out. If you don’t have backups, you can’t run those schemes anymore. We added a couple guys there that can do that. Other than that, that’s pretty much it. Marvin Gross is going back and forth from linebacker. He hasn’t gained a lot of weight, so we need a spur right now. He is going to give us a body at spur. Other than that, that’s about it.
On whether redshirt sophomore Michael Ferns will be a fullback or tight end
Both. (Redshirt junior tight end/fullback Elijah Wellman) Eli can be both too. With the emergence of (redshirt junior tight end/fullback Elijah Wellman) Elias a true fullback/running back kind of guy, which I think (redshirt sophomore tight end/fullback Michael) Ferns can do that too. It allowed Cody (Clay) to spend most of his time as an attached tight end. That was good for us. Everyone always said that Cody (Clay) didn’t have any stats, that no one threw him the ball. Cody (Clay) can’t run, but he did a lot of stuff to enable us to have the leading rusher in the Big 12. That wasn’t just all Wendell (Smallwood), as much as I love Wendell (Smallwood). He’s a good player, and he will play for a long, long time. We did some good stuff up front. That started with the quarterback. He did some things to hold the backside a lot. Things that you are not able to see. He did some things that you don’t give them credit for. Also, the coaches did a good job of scheming some stuff. The o-line had a pretty good year coming off the ball, run blocking. Then having those hybrid kind of guys with (redshirt junior tight end/fullback Elijah Wellman) Eliand Cody (Clay) gets us in a pretty good place running the ball.
On emerging leaders in the offseason
We have seen some guys emerge. We can spend eight hours with them, so we are seeing things. We don’t just rely on reports at this point in time. We have been with them for four weeks, eight hours a week. We have seen some guys do that, and it’s going to continue to happen. Like I said, there are 22 seniors. There are guys that are stepping up. I don’t know who those guys are going to be yet. You have guys that are coming into their own that have been starters – (junior safety) Dravon (Askew-Henry), (redshirt senior defensive lineman) Noble (Nwachukwu), (redshirt senior defensive lineman) Christian (Brown), (redshirt junior tight end/fullback Elijah Wellman) Eli, (redshirt senior offensive lineman Tyler) Orlosky, (senior wide receiver) Daikiel (Shorts Jr.), (senior quarterback) Skyler (Howard) and (redshirt senior running back Rushel) Shell. There are guys who have played a lot, but what is fun to watch is the guys who haven’t played a whole bunch. It’s their turn to step up. Guys like (redshirt junior linebacker Al-Rasheed) Benton and (junior safety) Jeremy Tyler. The two corners – (redshirt senior cornerback) Nana Kyeremeh and (redshirt senior cornerback Antonio) Crawford. All these guys are poised and can make a difference. (Redshirt senior linebacker) Sean Walters has been around for a long time. You will see him emerge on a lot of things. It’s too early to kind of pinpoint guys. It’s fun to watch those guys say that it is their time to step up and do the things that they haven’t done in the past.
On players that he added on scholarship who are already in the program
There are about five of them that are on for the spring that are not guaranteed to be on for the fall. We had so many kids graduate, and we have so many kids that are gone. There is an empty pile of scholarships, but when you sign as many kids as we did, those scholarships for the fall are already accounted for. None of those guys are guaranteed one right now. (Redshirt junior tight end/fullback) Jon (Lewis) is definitely a guy that is line. The one guy that is probably going to get one is (redshirt senior safety) Khairi Sharif. He is a great student. He is going to play ball for us again this year. He played a little bit last year. He will be the first one to get it, because he is a senior. You always take care of the seniors first, but you are not going to totally know it until August. Right now, we are over one. Fruition is always going to happen. There is always going to be a guy that is not doing what he is supposed to academically or live up to the social standards that we put on these guys. Something is going to happen. One of the recruits may not qualify. There is always those examples, so you can’t promise these guys that they are going to get taken care of in the fall until that happens.
On if there was a change in the structure of spring practice or if it’s similar to previous years
We are going to have spring game even though we don’t have a stadium right now. It looks pretty good out there. They are clearing things out. A lot of the times coaches say that because they don’t have any support or they don’t want to have a spring game. They cancel spring games, and they say that they are just going to work on skill development. Well bull crap. There is enough time in the spring to work on skill development, offense, defense and special teams. If you have a three hour practice, 15 times, it is almost too much. You have plenty of time to accomplish everything if you want to. We did a study a year ago. I don’t have the exact number. I can get you this exact number. The only team that got more live reps than we did a year ago was Houston. They had about 70 more live reps than we did. I feel like our numbers are pretty good. We have three full o-lines. We have three full d-lines. We are going to play a lot of football. There is still time to be able to work on developing their skills when it comes to being a football player at a specific position.
On sophomore wide receiver Jovon Durante
I would be surprised if these receivers don’t turn some heads this spring. Not just him. (Redshirt junior wide receiver) Shelton (Gibson) looks great. (Redshirt junior wide receiver) Ka’Raun (White) looks great. (Sophomore wide receiver) Gary Jennings looks great. (Redshirt senior wide receiver) Devonte Mathis looks like he has decided he wants to contribute. (Senior wide receiver) Daikiel (Shorts Jr.) has made a bunch of plays. (Redshirt sophomore quarterback William) Crest has done a whole bunch of things for us, so don’t be surprised to see him lined up in a bunch of different spots like he has. (Redshirt sophomore wide receiver) Ricky Rogers is doing some things. That is one example of why I don’t put out a depth chart. I don’t know who is going to step up and be real guys. I think they all have a chance to be pretty good. That is why I am pretty excited about the spring. I want to work with these guys. We have a lot of arms. We will be able to throw it a bunch. We will be able to catch it a bunch. We will be able to see which one of these guys will be able to step up and make a whole bunch of plays and score a whole bunch of touchdowns.
On certain positions that he feels comfortable with or has concerns with
Linebacker is a little bit of a concern just because we lost five seniors. You have to pinpoint that, but we brought in a lot of guys in. We are going to have some young guys come in and be able to contribute. We have guys – (junior linebacker) Xavier Preston, (redshirt junior linebacker Al-Rasheed) Benton and (redshirt senior linebacker) Sean Walters. We have some guys that have played, but those seniors took a lot of reps. That’s a concern. I think we are in a better place at d-line than we have ever been. We lost some pretty good ones at safety. Karl (Joseph) is going to be the No. 1 safety taken in the draft, and we didn’t have him for a whole year. We have (Redshirt senior safety) Jarrod Harper and (junior safety) Jeremy Tyler. (Junior safety) Dravon (Askew-Henry) is going to step in and do things. You say how are you going to replace those two guys, but we are replacing them with guys that are junior now as opposed to last time we replaced them with these guys who were freshmen. It is nice not to replace them with freshmen. Corner is going to be interesting to watch. (Redshirt senior cornerback) Rasul (Douglas) and (redshirt senior cornerback) Antonio Crawford are seniors who have a lot of experience. Who knows? We may be better there. O-line has a lot of guys back. I feel good about it. Right now, it’s about health. The two concerning positions are running back and linebacker to answer your questions. We feel good about the other positions, because we have a lot of guys who have played.
On if sophomore quarterback David Sill’s prefers one position over the other
He’s in the quarterback room. He wants to be a quarterback. (Redshirt sophomore quarterback William) Will (Crest Jr.) bounces around a lot. (Redshirt sophomore quarterback William) Will (Crest Jr.) has been in the quarterback room for two years now. He has bounced around a little bit. (Sophomore quarterback) David (Sills) is in the quarterback room. We can’t be out there with him, but you see him go from quarterback and move into a receiver drill. He moves back and forth a little bit. We will let it play out and see how it looks.
On if assistant coach/offensive coordinator Joe Wickline can help the run game
It will help. Anything that will help is a good idea. I am very happy with (assistant coach/offensive line) Ron (Crook) and the mentality that he has installed with the offensive line guys. We are really good at coming off the ball. We will stack up against anybody out there being able to do that. We need help in the pass protection area. Looking back on our stuff throughout the year, I don’t think we did a very good job with that. The schemes are there. We are fine. We know what we are doing. I think (assistant coach/offensive coordinator Joe Wickline) Wick is really going to help us with some tackle situations with the protections. He has coached a lot of All-American and All-Pro tackles, so he will help with that. I have always said, the offensive line is the hardest position to coach. I am looking at 20 bodies on my sheet that are going to be at o-line in the fall. If you put one guy in charge of 20, that is not fair. Those guys need help, so (offensive graduate assistant) Dan Gerberry is our o-line GA. Then (assistant coach/offensive coordinator) coach Wickline is going to coach a position and overall head things up and be the coordinator. He is going to coach tight ends and fullbacks, but who is right next to the tight end. That is usually a tackle, so he will be able to have his hands on those guys a lot.
On if he has decided on a cornerback coach
No. We brought some guys in. We are going to take our time and make sure that we bring a good one in here that wants to be here. We have brought a couple in. (Assistant coach/defense/special teams) Mark Scott has been dealing with those guys for three years now. Those guys are still getting coached. We are not prepared to make (assistant coach/defense/special teams) Mark (Scott) the corner coach, because he is the special teams coach right now. In the interim, they are covered. That down plays the importance of getting a guy in here yesterday. We will make sure we get the right now.
On redshirt freshman quarterback Chris Chugunov opportunities in the spring
He’s got a lot of reps. We kept him with us for the majority of the year last year. He took some second team reps throughout the course of the year. He’s right up there around a 4.0. He is a very smart kid. He absorbs a lot of things. He can throw the heck out of it. He has never had to take the team and move them down the field. He is going to look good in all the drills. He throws the ball really well. He is not the runner that those other guys are. He can’t run like (senior quarterback) Skyler (Howard), (redshirt sophomore quarterback William) Will (Crest Jr.) or (sophomore quarterback David) Sills. That is going to set him back a little bit. (Freshman quarterback) Cody Saunders is in that room as well. He has really good ability, and he can run a good bit. When we have all of these live reps, he is going to take a lot of them. How does he take control of the huddle? How does he move the ball? How does he handle specific situations on third and short or once we get in the red zone? How does he handle certain situations? (Senior quarterback) Skyler (Howard) has a lot of ball under his belt. He has played a lot. We know what he can do as far as that is concerned. He has done better this year than last year. His numbers are great. Let’s not forget that this kid had the second most passing yards in the history of this program. I think some of that has to do with the receivers finally being in the spots that they need to be in. With that said, we know (redshirt freshman quarterback Chris Chugunov) Chugs can throw the ball. He will get plenty of opportunities to be able to prove that he can be the starter.
On redshirt senior defensive lineman Noble Nwachukwu coming back this year and the rest of the defensive line
He’s the Big 12 returning leading sack hitter. We haven’t been able to say that for a while. He looks good. (Redshirt senior defensive lineman) Christian (Brown) looks good. (Senior defensive lineman) Darrien (Howard) looks good. (Redshirt junior defensive lineman) Xavier Pegues looks good. Some of these kids we redshirted – (redshirt freshman defensive lineman) Adam Shuler and (freshman defensive lineman) Reese Donahue is with us. We have 10 bodies on the d-line that we can practice right now. (Assistant coach/defensive line) Coach Tall has done a great job. That’s where it starts. We are in a pretty good spot at the position, and that is a good start defensively.
On if he will have assistant coach/defensive coordinator/linebackers coach Tony Gibson’s issues in mind or will he try to beat him this spring
No, I am going to try and beat him every time we play. Last year, he just completely shoved it right where it counts. The offensive was in a bad spot last spring. Everyone is walking around the halls saying that this is the offensive’s time to be able to have some success. I’m picking. They have players that know what to do. We are going into the third year of this system. All the backups know what (assistant coach/defensive coordinator/linebackers Tony Gibson) Gibby’s talking about. They had a lot of reps, and they are going to compete just fine. In the papers, the perception is that we are not going to be any good, especially defense since we lost so many guys. I don’t buy into that. We have a lot of guys that look pretty good. They think they are pretty good, and they feel pretty good. They are going to get out there and play pretty good. That is not just defense. That is offense too. That is our team.
Opening Statement
Welcome everybody. We are about 10 days away from the spring starting, so we are getting closer. I’ll start with where we are at with our winter conditioning. We are not ready to wrap that up yet. We still have another week and a half of that before we roll into spring practice. Our focus is still offseason conditioning. We will continue to focus on that for the next week and a half. Obviously, we quickly roll over into spring practices. I think it’s going good.
Once again, (director of strength and conditioning) Mike Joseph leads the charge with that. I think we have the best strength and conditioning staff in the country. All parties involved down there do a great job. It’s funny when you bring in new coaches, and brought in a couple of good coaches that have been at some pretty good places. The first thing that they say is that they are impressed with the work that happens downstairs in the weight room. I rely on those guys a lot. (Director of strength and conditioning) Mike (Joseph) is the head coach of this program during the conditioning stages. We are in our sixth week. It is hard to believe that we are real close to midterms for this semester. It flies by, as everything does. We are in our sixth week. From the coaches’ perspective, we have been with them for four weeks.
We don’t see our guys very much through the January portion of recruiting. (Director of strength and conditioning) Mike (Joseph) has complete control of them. We are going on our fourth week, and we do a bunch of competition stuff. We do early morning stuff a couple of times a week, and then we do football activities in the afternoon a couple of times a week. We watch video with them, and we install some things with them. It is very limited on-field football stuff, but there are a couple of things that we can do with them. We have been doing it for four weeks now, and we will continue with that. Our team looks good. We have a lot of bodies out there, and we have a lot of guys that have been in the program for some time. I have 22 seniors. Last year, we had a big senior class, and I think it paid dividends when things got tough. We finished the year really well. Next year, we are looking for it to be the same way. We have a lot of seniors and a lot of juniors that have been in the program. That’s just the start of what this 2016 team is going to be like. We will continue to add to it, and we will continue to build this team. Recruiting went very well. We will keep adding those guys as well.
Spring practice starts Sunday. We will play it by ear. We will get three practices in before spring break. We have done it this way for two or three years now. I like it this way. I like how it’s structured. Obviously, you don’t know what you are getting with the weather this time of year. We were outside with them yesterday, believe it or not, and then today, we are going to get a bunch of snow. Who knows where that is going to head? The first three, I am prepared to go inside if we need to. You can knock out three non-padded practices. That gets you a couple of weeks closer to potentially some good weather. Once we get back from spring break, the heavy work takes place. If we get a good day, then we will go outside and put the pads on with one of those three days if we can. If we can’t, we will be inside non-padded. It’s tough to have a full practice inside with the pads. We have talked a lot about that before. If not, we will come back with our 12 practices. We will have three a week: Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
You all are invited to each and every one of the Saturday practices. You can be there the whole time. We are not really traveling as much as we have in the past. We will be on the practice field for those three Saturday’s, probably somewhere around noon. I haven’t really set the schedule yet. Then the spring game. We will conclude with one practice down at the Greenbrier like we did last year. That worked out really well for us last year. A lot of West Virginia University stuff happens down there that weekend. We are going to make it a real spring game. We are anticipating more people there than we did the previous year. It was a really good turn out last year. We are pretty fired up about that.
I am not going to give out a depth chart at this time, for obvious reasons. We have eight starters back on offense. You can pencil in and figure out who some of the guys are by who played a lot of football for us. Those guys are going to have a little bit of an upper hand, but with a lot of bodies out there at specific positions, you never know how things are going to go. A depth chart toward the end of spring is going to do everybody a little bit more good than at the beginning. We change our depth chart daily. Our players know this. It’s changing right now with the very limited amount of football time that we have. Once we get into real football time, it will change a good bit. We will talk about position battles as we go through the spring. There are a lot of opportunities for guys to improve. There are a lot of opportunities for guys to make moves. There are going to be some battles at a lot of positions that I am very eager to watch.
We have eight guys back on offense, and four guys back on defense. We all understand that we lost some pretty good players at the combine a couple days ago. It has been following those guys and leading into the draft. I think a lot of those guys’ names will get called. It’s not a sign of panic, because everyone will say to me how in the hell are you going replace those guys? The same way we replaced the previous starters with them. Our guys went out and recruited pretty well. Our strength and conditioning program is pretty good. Our football sense around here is pretty good. We are developing some guys that have the opportunity to play at the next level. We are going to take a little credit for developing some of those guys. We have a bunch of guys on the roster right now that are going to do the same thing. They are going to develop. We are going to practice them hard. They are going to lift, run and play football. We are going to run a bunch of plays next year. That’s what spring ball is all about. We are looking forward to getting started. With that said, I’ll take some questions.
On if there are any position changes
A couple. With bringing (assistant coach/offensive coordinator) coach (Joe) Wicklineon, he is handling all the hybrid guys offensively. He is going to do all the tight ends, h-backs and all of the guys that are in-between positions. He is going to take all of that and work with it. He watched all of our cut-ups, and he is going to put his spin on it. That has always been a position that was overlooked a little bit. (Offensive graduate assistant) Dan Gerberry did a really good job with Cody Clay last year. I think it helped Cody (Clay). We are going to take it another step and let (assistant coach/offensive coordinator Joe Wickline)coach Wick do that. He will be able to coach all of the o-linemen at times with these specific guys. He will be able to do some backfield stuff with these guys, and then he will be able to tie everything together. We moved (redshirt junior tight end/fullback) Jon Lewisto tight end. We just don’t have a lot of tight ends in the program right now. We have (tight end Trevon) Wesco coming in. Johnny is going to come over and play tight end. (Redshirt junior tight end/fullback) Alex Brooks was a reserve linebacker who is going to come over and play fullback. With having (redshirt sophomore tight end/fullback Michael) Ferns, (redshirt freshman tight end/fullback Stone) Wolfley, and (redshirt junior tight end/fullback Elijah Wellman) Eli, it’s a bunch of bodies that you can keep doing that. With a fullback, you can do some lead stuff and keep pounding those guys. They wear out. If you don’t have backups, you can’t run those schemes anymore. We added a couple guys there that can do that. Other than that, that’s pretty much it. Marvin Gross is going back and forth from linebacker. He hasn’t gained a lot of weight, so we need a spur right now. He is going to give us a body at spur. Other than that, that’s about it.
On whether redshirt sophomore Michael Ferns will be a fullback or tight end
Both. (Redshirt junior tight end/fullback Elijah Wellman) Eli can be both too. With the emergence of (redshirt junior tight end/fullback Elijah Wellman) Elias a true fullback/running back kind of guy, which I think (redshirt sophomore tight end/fullback Michael) Ferns can do that too. It allowed Cody (Clay) to spend most of his time as an attached tight end. That was good for us. Everyone always said that Cody (Clay) didn’t have any stats, that no one threw him the ball. Cody (Clay) can’t run, but he did a lot of stuff to enable us to have the leading rusher in the Big 12. That wasn’t just all Wendell (Smallwood), as much as I love Wendell (Smallwood). He’s a good player, and he will play for a long, long time. We did some good stuff up front. That started with the quarterback. He did some things to hold the backside a lot. Things that you are not able to see. He did some things that you don’t give them credit for. Also, the coaches did a good job of scheming some stuff. The o-line had a pretty good year coming off the ball, run blocking. Then having those hybrid kind of guys with (redshirt junior tight end/fullback Elijah Wellman) Eliand Cody (Clay) gets us in a pretty good place running the ball.
On emerging leaders in the offseason
We have seen some guys emerge. We can spend eight hours with them, so we are seeing things. We don’t just rely on reports at this point in time. We have been with them for four weeks, eight hours a week. We have seen some guys do that, and it’s going to continue to happen. Like I said, there are 22 seniors. There are guys that are stepping up. I don’t know who those guys are going to be yet. You have guys that are coming into their own that have been starters – (junior safety) Dravon (Askew-Henry), (redshirt senior defensive lineman) Noble (Nwachukwu), (redshirt senior defensive lineman) Christian (Brown), (redshirt junior tight end/fullback Elijah Wellman) Eli, (redshirt senior offensive lineman Tyler) Orlosky, (senior wide receiver) Daikiel (Shorts Jr.), (senior quarterback) Skyler (Howard) and (redshirt senior running back Rushel) Shell. There are guys who have played a lot, but what is fun to watch is the guys who haven’t played a whole bunch. It’s their turn to step up. Guys like (redshirt junior linebacker Al-Rasheed) Benton and (junior safety) Jeremy Tyler. The two corners – (redshirt senior cornerback) Nana Kyeremeh and (redshirt senior cornerback Antonio) Crawford. All these guys are poised and can make a difference. (Redshirt senior linebacker) Sean Walters has been around for a long time. You will see him emerge on a lot of things. It’s too early to kind of pinpoint guys. It’s fun to watch those guys say that it is their time to step up and do the things that they haven’t done in the past.
On players that he added on scholarship who are already in the program
There are about five of them that are on for the spring that are not guaranteed to be on for the fall. We had so many kids graduate, and we have so many kids that are gone. There is an empty pile of scholarships, but when you sign as many kids as we did, those scholarships for the fall are already accounted for. None of those guys are guaranteed one right now. (Redshirt junior tight end/fullback) Jon (Lewis) is definitely a guy that is line. The one guy that is probably going to get one is (redshirt senior safety) Khairi Sharif. He is a great student. He is going to play ball for us again this year. He played a little bit last year. He will be the first one to get it, because he is a senior. You always take care of the seniors first, but you are not going to totally know it until August. Right now, we are over one. Fruition is always going to happen. There is always going to be a guy that is not doing what he is supposed to academically or live up to the social standards that we put on these guys. Something is going to happen. One of the recruits may not qualify. There is always those examples, so you can’t promise these guys that they are going to get taken care of in the fall until that happens.
On if there was a change in the structure of spring practice or if it’s similar to previous years
We are going to have spring game even though we don’t have a stadium right now. It looks pretty good out there. They are clearing things out. A lot of the times coaches say that because they don’t have any support or they don’t want to have a spring game. They cancel spring games, and they say that they are just going to work on skill development. Well bull crap. There is enough time in the spring to work on skill development, offense, defense and special teams. If you have a three hour practice, 15 times, it is almost too much. You have plenty of time to accomplish everything if you want to. We did a study a year ago. I don’t have the exact number. I can get you this exact number. The only team that got more live reps than we did a year ago was Houston. They had about 70 more live reps than we did. I feel like our numbers are pretty good. We have three full o-lines. We have three full d-lines. We are going to play a lot of football. There is still time to be able to work on developing their skills when it comes to being a football player at a specific position.
On sophomore wide receiver Jovon Durante
I would be surprised if these receivers don’t turn some heads this spring. Not just him. (Redshirt junior wide receiver) Shelton (Gibson) looks great. (Redshirt junior wide receiver) Ka’Raun (White) looks great. (Sophomore wide receiver) Gary Jennings looks great. (Redshirt senior wide receiver) Devonte Mathis looks like he has decided he wants to contribute. (Senior wide receiver) Daikiel (Shorts Jr.) has made a bunch of plays. (Redshirt sophomore quarterback William) Crest has done a whole bunch of things for us, so don’t be surprised to see him lined up in a bunch of different spots like he has. (Redshirt sophomore wide receiver) Ricky Rogers is doing some things. That is one example of why I don’t put out a depth chart. I don’t know who is going to step up and be real guys. I think they all have a chance to be pretty good. That is why I am pretty excited about the spring. I want to work with these guys. We have a lot of arms. We will be able to throw it a bunch. We will be able to catch it a bunch. We will be able to see which one of these guys will be able to step up and make a whole bunch of plays and score a whole bunch of touchdowns.
On certain positions that he feels comfortable with or has concerns with
Linebacker is a little bit of a concern just because we lost five seniors. You have to pinpoint that, but we brought in a lot of guys in. We are going to have some young guys come in and be able to contribute. We have guys – (junior linebacker) Xavier Preston, (redshirt junior linebacker Al-Rasheed) Benton and (redshirt senior linebacker) Sean Walters. We have some guys that have played, but those seniors took a lot of reps. That’s a concern. I think we are in a better place at d-line than we have ever been. We lost some pretty good ones at safety. Karl (Joseph) is going to be the No. 1 safety taken in the draft, and we didn’t have him for a whole year. We have (Redshirt senior safety) Jarrod Harper and (junior safety) Jeremy Tyler. (Junior safety) Dravon (Askew-Henry) is going to step in and do things. You say how are you going to replace those two guys, but we are replacing them with guys that are junior now as opposed to last time we replaced them with these guys who were freshmen. It is nice not to replace them with freshmen. Corner is going to be interesting to watch. (Redshirt senior cornerback) Rasul (Douglas) and (redshirt senior cornerback) Antonio Crawford are seniors who have a lot of experience. Who knows? We may be better there. O-line has a lot of guys back. I feel good about it. Right now, it’s about health. The two concerning positions are running back and linebacker to answer your questions. We feel good about the other positions, because we have a lot of guys who have played.
On if sophomore quarterback David Sill’s prefers one position over the other
He’s in the quarterback room. He wants to be a quarterback. (Redshirt sophomore quarterback William) Will (Crest Jr.) bounces around a lot. (Redshirt sophomore quarterback William) Will (Crest Jr.) has been in the quarterback room for two years now. He has bounced around a little bit. (Sophomore quarterback) David (Sills) is in the quarterback room. We can’t be out there with him, but you see him go from quarterback and move into a receiver drill. He moves back and forth a little bit. We will let it play out and see how it looks.
On if assistant coach/offensive coordinator Joe Wickline can help the run game
It will help. Anything that will help is a good idea. I am very happy with (assistant coach/offensive line) Ron (Crook) and the mentality that he has installed with the offensive line guys. We are really good at coming off the ball. We will stack up against anybody out there being able to do that. We need help in the pass protection area. Looking back on our stuff throughout the year, I don’t think we did a very good job with that. The schemes are there. We are fine. We know what we are doing. I think (assistant coach/offensive coordinator Joe Wickline) Wick is really going to help us with some tackle situations with the protections. He has coached a lot of All-American and All-Pro tackles, so he will help with that. I have always said, the offensive line is the hardest position to coach. I am looking at 20 bodies on my sheet that are going to be at o-line in the fall. If you put one guy in charge of 20, that is not fair. Those guys need help, so (offensive graduate assistant) Dan Gerberry is our o-line GA. Then (assistant coach/offensive coordinator) coach Wickline is going to coach a position and overall head things up and be the coordinator. He is going to coach tight ends and fullbacks, but who is right next to the tight end. That is usually a tackle, so he will be able to have his hands on those guys a lot.
On if he has decided on a cornerback coach
No. We brought some guys in. We are going to take our time and make sure that we bring a good one in here that wants to be here. We have brought a couple in. (Assistant coach/defense/special teams) Mark Scott has been dealing with those guys for three years now. Those guys are still getting coached. We are not prepared to make (assistant coach/defense/special teams) Mark (Scott) the corner coach, because he is the special teams coach right now. In the interim, they are covered. That down plays the importance of getting a guy in here yesterday. We will make sure we get the right now.
On redshirt freshman quarterback Chris Chugunov opportunities in the spring
He’s got a lot of reps. We kept him with us for the majority of the year last year. He took some second team reps throughout the course of the year. He’s right up there around a 4.0. He is a very smart kid. He absorbs a lot of things. He can throw the heck out of it. He has never had to take the team and move them down the field. He is going to look good in all the drills. He throws the ball really well. He is not the runner that those other guys are. He can’t run like (senior quarterback) Skyler (Howard), (redshirt sophomore quarterback William) Will (Crest Jr.) or (sophomore quarterback David) Sills. That is going to set him back a little bit. (Freshman quarterback) Cody Saunders is in that room as well. He has really good ability, and he can run a good bit. When we have all of these live reps, he is going to take a lot of them. How does he take control of the huddle? How does he move the ball? How does he handle specific situations on third and short or once we get in the red zone? How does he handle certain situations? (Senior quarterback) Skyler (Howard) has a lot of ball under his belt. He has played a lot. We know what he can do as far as that is concerned. He has done better this year than last year. His numbers are great. Let’s not forget that this kid had the second most passing yards in the history of this program. I think some of that has to do with the receivers finally being in the spots that they need to be in. With that said, we know (redshirt freshman quarterback Chris Chugunov) Chugs can throw the ball. He will get plenty of opportunities to be able to prove that he can be the starter.
On redshirt senior defensive lineman Noble Nwachukwu coming back this year and the rest of the defensive line
He’s the Big 12 returning leading sack hitter. We haven’t been able to say that for a while. He looks good. (Redshirt senior defensive lineman) Christian (Brown) looks good. (Senior defensive lineman) Darrien (Howard) looks good. (Redshirt junior defensive lineman) Xavier Pegues looks good. Some of these kids we redshirted – (redshirt freshman defensive lineman) Adam Shuler and (freshman defensive lineman) Reese Donahue is with us. We have 10 bodies on the d-line that we can practice right now. (Assistant coach/defensive line) Coach Tall has done a great job. That’s where it starts. We are in a pretty good spot at the position, and that is a good start defensively.
On if he will have assistant coach/defensive coordinator/linebackers coach Tony Gibson’s issues in mind or will he try to beat him this spring
No, I am going to try and beat him every time we play. Last year, he just completely shoved it right where it counts. The offensive was in a bad spot last spring. Everyone is walking around the halls saying that this is the offensive’s time to be able to have some success. I’m picking. They have players that know what to do. We are going into the third year of this system. All the backups know what (assistant coach/defensive coordinator/linebackers Tony Gibson) Gibby’s talking about. They had a lot of reps, and they are going to compete just fine. In the papers, the perception is that we are not going to be any good, especially defense since we lost so many guys. I don’t buy into that. We have a lot of guys that look pretty good. They think they are pretty good, and they feel pretty good. They are going to get out there and play pretty good. That is not just defense. That is offense too. That is our team.
