On James Turner and Tommy Doman
Been really pleased with both of them. Both of them are still not quite at where they can be in terms of their potential. Probably to be expected. New players and field goals is a little bit of a new operation so you just hope for gradual improvement as you get going and if they continue with the path that they're on, they'll be in a good spot throughout the year.
On the return game and the punt versus Rutgers
That was an unfortunate play. That guy was out of position so it was a missed assignment not containing the punter. In that particular system and that particular punter, he's able to stay on the move and that basically creates artificial hangtime because he's running and he hasn't even punted it yet and they're still covering ground. Cover more ground and the ball goes further and you compound that with the time of day and the sun directly overhead and he didn't field the ball. Disappointing play, could've liked to have been avoided. You hate big field position swings like that. Through the four games, we didn't have any return yards against Rutgers which is the norm for most teams and it's unfortunate we didn't break that trend but through these three games we've had a 15 to 20 yard return in each of them. We're not huge into stats in terms of rankings. I don't know what we're ranked. Most special teams rankings are really deceiving. They're easily manipulated or that kind of thing. You want to field everything you can and if you can get one yard, that's great, that's better than no yards. In doing so, you should have a really poor average on punt returns as opposed to if you return just the ones that could be big returns. Those stats would be inflated. I like where we're at. Just trying to get better constantly at odds with the stats quo with everything that you do. Trying to find ways to get more big plays.
On whether he's seen anything that hasn't been as crisp through four weeks
Certainly. We muffed the kickoff return, true freshman, I think the third time the ball has been kicked to him. He's going to be really good at it, it was just a tough situation. We have a lot of new players and, unfortunately, those types of things happen. You have to get through them and get through to them fast. It doesn't mean you're happy or you're OK with them but they are understandable. You try to see as many as those things coming as you try to prevent them. The big thing is to constantly getting better. Better this week than we were last week. If we do that and keep stacking those improvements we'll get where we want to be.
On evaluating Jake Thaw and Tyler Morris
By far, and it's not even close, the main criteria is the ability to field the ball and not put us at risk of losing possession. If you have a guy you don't trust, you really can't play him as a punt returner. Of the body types that are good at making people miss and are good at running the ball, running with the football, maybe 5% of those guys are actually good at fielding punts and probably less when you start factoring in the sun, the wind, reading the ball off the punter's foot. You're trying to build depth at the position, you want to have 5 or 6 guys that can do it, couple of years ago we ended up with our fifth guy and sixth guy at one point as the returners. Need to try and build that depth. By far the most important thing is the guy's decision-making and the ability to field the ball clean. You'd take that gladly as opposed to putting the ball on the ground and giving it back to the other team. That's the main thing.
On the thought process of putting different guys back at returner and wanting to have one guy as the main returner eventually
We could end up in that position where one guy has asserted himself as the best guy. I feel really good about both guys right now. They're a little bit different in terms of what they're better at, what they excel at in terms of tracking and catching the ball. We'll play the guy that we think gives us the best chance to have the ball on the next play. That's the number one thing. If nothing else, we want the offense to go out there the next play. The next best thing is a PAT, go out there and kick the PAT. We'll play them both and glad we've gotten a few guys' reps there this year and we'll see how it goes.
On what makes special teams statistics deceiving
It's kind of an interesting topic because there's a lot of give-and-take with the offense and defense. You can't just look at one of the things, isolate it, and ignore the other. The same thing if a defense is out on the field playing more, things can be a little misleading. For instance, if you only were to punt, say, in a coffin-type scenario around the logo, trying to pin them deep, just by default, your net punt is going to be shorter. It could be a team that's not as great on offense that is constantly punting from the 20 or 30 and trying to punt as far as they can, that's great, maybe they're not as great at pinning people deep or won't have the opportunity to. There's a lot of variation to things like that are misleading. The drive start on kick return are more of the pure ones that are harder to get skewed. Even that, you have an onside kick, that changes those numbers. Just focusing on fied position in a course of a game and the course of an exchange between an offense and defense being as efficient as we can, that's the most important thing as opposed to looking at isolated stats. That was really my point before.
On whether a guy can marginally get better at fielding kicks and punts
There's totally the case where people who have great ball skills who just aren't quite as good at tracking the ball or judging the ball. That sort of thing. There's guys you definitely want them to do it who are ridiculous with the ball in their hand. It takes a lot of time to get really good at it. Some people have a hard time ever becoming great at it. It's not just getting to the point where you can catch it, right? The threshold of trust you have to get to in order to get back there is ridiculously high. It's such a high-leverage play. You're talking about you put the ball on the ground and the other team recovers, it's momentum-changing, a 40, 50, 55-yard swing in field position. It's a really big deal. Is it hard to catch punts? Yes. It's very hard to get to the point where we trust you enough in sun, wind, rain, people in your face to confidently do it. There are definitely guys that fit that bill.
On Rod Moore in his return
Rod was really pretty good. He had the one play that was unfortunate, that was a tough situation to have that be your very first play. We loved how he bounced back and his demeanor. I think it's going to be better and better from here on out.
On how to practice for high winds
It's a windy place here so we're lucky in that regard so we do deal with a lot of wind in practice. For whatever reason, there's a good gust of wind that comes in diagonally in our field so we get a little bit of each direction. In the stadium, we get the same thing. Our guys are pretty accustomed to it, which is nice. Our conference, I think it's probably the norm. Most teams from a special teams standpoint, you know that you're going to play in inclement weather and pretty much every stadium gets relatively windy. Ours is up there amongst the most in how the wind blows and all that stuff. Hopefully, you get some good windy days, rainy days, those kinds of things where you can get outside and work in it.
On opposing teams squib kicking
You would hope that when you have a good returner, we had a couple of good-looking returns against UNLV and then when you put that on tape, people aren't quite as excited to kick it deep to you. Also, people want to try and test your ball security. Obviously, didn't pass that test against Bowling Green with the fumble which is unfortunate. There's a little bit of that. Trying to surprise, maybe keep it away from a returner they think is good. Trying to see if someone will put a ball on the ground or the ball will hit and give them a chance to recover it. The element of surprise, that kind of thing. It's something we spend a lot of time on and have a really sound plan for. It's the kind of thing, especially, when people want to do that to you, it really should be to your benefit, you can field the ball, you can get whatever is there, you'd be really happy to have the drive start at the 30, 35, 38-yard line if they want to do that to you. You have to find a way to make the most of it.
On what makes the DB blitzes so effective
For our defense as a whole, just being able to be multiple, being able to adapt to whatever we need to be in that particular week, it's a great thing and Coach Minter does a fantastic job as well as Coach Clink being able to say, hey, this blitz will be good this week. On the back end, you want as much interchangeability as you can have so that it's not, OK, whenever Mike Sainristil is in this spot, it's a pressure or Will Johnson on the boundary as a corner, he's doing this or that. You want to be able to mix it up so that's going to be really helpful with the run game as well as attacking people's protections. Just the overall versatility is going to allow you to be multiple like that.
On Mike Sainristil's strength
He's a force. I've been around him for a while so you kind of expect it now. Maybe no bad matchup for the guy from the physical tool standpoint but also his mentality. It really is amazing the things that he can do. We all feed off of him.
On Colston Loveland
From the first time I saw him, it's like, 'Oh my gosh, this guy is ridiculous.' If he didn't live where he happened to live, just from an exposure standpoint, I don't think he would've surprised anyone at all. The reality he's out there in a really small town off the beaten path. When you saw him in person it's like, 'Oh my goodness.' He's really one of the best high school prospects I've ever seen. Fun watching him able to be here and he's such a great teammate and a great person and player he's capable of. The sky is the limit. He's going to keep getting better and better. Huge fan of him.
On whether he remembers how he came across him
Just watching—going through lists and watching guys. You kind of go from top to bottom. These guys are supposed to be the best, these guys are put on the ranking list and sometimes guys catch your eye, sometimes you don't like other guys as much. Maybe you move past a guy and maybe circle back and say, maybe I'll double-check on this guy again. He's one where he seemed really good, he seemed like a great player, great ball skills. Guy who was crazy productive, he was returning punts and stuff. Doing everything. He played D-end. He did everything on the football field. You don't recruit many players from that area of the country so you circle back later and then you go out and see him in person. That's when you see, oh my gosh, he really is probably the best, or one of the best, prospects at his position in the country.
On how different it was having Jim Harbaugh on the sidelines
It was awesome. It felt like normal. Just felt like normal. Really accustomed to that. A lot more games under my belt with him there. It just felt normal and I really don't know in what way. Just felt right, I guess.
On whether he's seen him applying what he's learned from watching the game away from the team
Not really, he did say that. I couldn't put my finger on any one thing that's different. He's always got enthusiasm, he's always excited to be in this building and being around the players and coaches and be working on the gameplan to go out and compete. He'd probably be better off answering that question than me.
On what he attributes to his eye for identifying talent
I wouldn't say I'm any better than anybody else or anything like that. The thing I would say that we do a great as coaches here in general is just really watching the film of the games and not just believing what other people say about a player or he's supposed to be this or that. Just watching games. It's amazing in recruiting, that is not the norm. People watch the highlights and this is what a guy can do and they don't always go and watch. What is a guy really like play in and play out when it seems like a play doesn't matter, how does he compete? What's his body language like? How does his teammates respond to him? You can learn a lot about a guy by doing that. A lot of the great players that we've had here that have been those types of people, the Schoonie's, the Ronnie's, a couple of them. They're the kind of guys where there's higher-ranked people but when you watch them in person or you watch film of them playing football or basketball, really, just observe them with no preconceived notions, you'll see the competitors, the guys the coaches really love and who celebrate with their teammates, they're all about the team. Hassan, for instance, was a guy who I was at his practice, he didn't know I was there and he was bringing water to people and I just got there, practice just started. He does a thing like that and he's the only guy on his team getting recruited, he's a guy doing something like that. You just look for things like that. Signs of guys that are disciplined, guys who are great teammates. When all else fails, if the guys high school coaches and the community around him truly, truly loves him, and tells you, hey, I'd let him marry my daughter, I'd let him house sit, those kinds of things, he's going to be good for you. People don't change all that much past a certain age, 17, 18. They don't change all that much. If a guy is loved where he's coming from, you're probably going to love him. As long as you do your due diligence and make sure you check that box.
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