On the secondary play

Starting with the secondary, we were pretty pleased with what we saw. I think a lot of times in the first game, especially if it's first action, new action for new guys, things can get a little sloppy. Nice to see pretty clean communication, rotation in the coverages, et cetera. Pleased to see that. Some of the new guys, Zeke and Keon, Brandyn Hillman, those guys flashed and did some positive things, which was nice. Josh Wallace is really part of that group as well and he did some good things as did Keshaun Harris in his first extended Harris. Love what we saw from those guys.

On the special teams and the big shoes to fill

Kicking game-wise, you said it, it's a lot of change. A lot of new guys and new operation field goal-wise where two of the three guys are new. Obviously, new guy doing kickoffs and all that. It's exciting, a little stressful and overall we were pretty pleased with how it went. Some things to improve on but that's normally the case.

On what needs to improve next week on special teams

There's a lot of stuff. Punt return game, there was some missed opportunities that we had just with some decision-making. Not really by the returners, though, and I think that's something people kind of assume. Jake Thaw really did a nice job. There were some balls there that you just can't catch them, they're too short, their hangs are too low. That guy has got to make really fast risk assessments and unfortunately, they missed the call, the ball hit their guy on the first one and it ended up being a 31-yard swing which would've been one of the biggest plays of the game yardage-wise. That was a bummer. He did a nice job. We can clean up some of the decision-making by the other players on punt return just trying to create lanes for him. Kickoff was good, kick return we didn't get any chances and was pleased with the punts. It was a pretty clean game. I'm curious to see in the next action how do some of the newer guys do when they're really covering some more kicks and UNLV has a lot of speed, they have a dynamic returner and a lot of fast players. We'll be tested.

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