Blue White Illustrated

2 0 1 8 S E A S O N P R E V I E W is on more than one and they're compet- itive for it. We want to win, so the way you win is to put your best players on the field. If they're a starter on offense or defense, there's a chance that they're one of our best players and that's why they're starting, so we're going to be able to use them on special teams. And that's on every level. When I was in Tampa, when I was in Miami, even in the NFL, starters played on at least one special team. Now, there might be an extenuating circum- stance. When I was in Tampa, we didn't play Darrell Revis or Vincent Jackson. They didn't play on a special team. But when we went to our hands team or in special situations, they were. I'll be honest with you, the type of players that we recruit and the players that we have, some of them get ticked that they're only on one special team. They're here saying they want to be on more. So I don't know any other way. If you want to be successful, I think that's the only way to do it. BWI How much of special teams suc- cess is based on effort and desire rather than technique and scheme? GALIANO I definitely think there's a correlation. Want-to is a huge part of it. Take Brandon Smith for us last year. He might not have been the fastest guy on the kickoff team, but there were times when he was the first guy down the field, because want-to is a big part of being able to do that. And I think when you can create a culture of guys who want to do it, and then we as a staff teach them how to do that effectively, with good technique and teach them some finer points of how to be able to be successful, well, that's the best combi- nation that you can have. BWI Is it necessary to constantly change things up to keep opponents off- balance with what you're doing on spe- cial teams? GALIANO There are minor tweaks, but I don't believe you can scrap everything and start fresh every week and expect your kids to be able to play fast and know what they're doing. I firmly be- lieve that we're going to have the best athletes out there, we're going to teach them to be able to play fast, and we're going to get them to understand what we want done. So I don't care if the oppo- nent knows exactly what we're going to do or not. We're going to do it faster and better than they're going to. We're going to play that way, our kids are going to believe that, and that's what we're going to go out and do. Of course, you always have a wrinkle here or there that you want to be able to tweak. One of the things about special teams that I learned when I went to the NFL was, special teams a lot of times are matchups as well. So we're going to have our base schemes, but we're also going to put our players in the position to be able to have success. So we might move a guy here or there to give us a matchup that we want to be able to take advantage of in the process of a game. BWI How did you feel like you came out of the spring with your place kickers, and how much time will you need with true freshman Jake Pinegar before you can start to evaluate that position? GALIANO It's too early to make any de- cisions. Obviously, we're very excited about Jake. We had a chance to have him at two camps in the summer, and that's why we made the decision to go forward with him. There are names that I can't mention for NCAA reasons, but we create a com- petitive environment at every position, in everything that we do. So Jake is not the only kicker who is coming into sum- mer camp, and we're going to compete in everything we do. Whether that's try- ing to find one guy who's going to be the kickoff guy, one guy who's going to be the field goal guy – maybe it's going to be one guy who is going to be both. Maybe Blake [Gillikin] is going to be in- volved in some of those other things. It's too early to tell, and that's the great thing about being able to have summer camp. You can see what a high school kid can do off his game film and what he can do in your camps, but it's a different situation when you're going into that stadium and playing in front of 110,000 people. So we'll try to simulate that and make it as competitive as we can in practice, but we're really not going to know until the games roll around. But I feel confident in what we have coming in. BWI As accomplished as Blake Gillikin is, is it tempting to want to use him too much? GALIANO There are not many guys in the college level, or hardly ever in the history of the NFL, who are able to do all three. When I was in Tampa, our punter was our kickoff guy. We led the NFL in average kickoff defense and he was sec- ond in the NFL in touchbacks. So I've been in a situation where we've had a guy who has punted and kicked off. So you can do two of them. I don't think you can do all three. But Blake's awe- some, and the last thing I want to do is take him from being the best punter in the country to now making him a good punter and a good kickoff guy or a good field goal guy. BWI What can Gillikin's talent and consistency do for this team? GALIANO I think Blake is special. He's really, really talented. And I think he's got an NFL future ahead of him, and he can go punt in that league for a good amount of years. He understands the technique that he wants to do. He obvi- ously has God-given ability and the leg strength to be able to do that. But he works. I mean, he is a worker who per- fects his craft, who works as well as any- body I've ever seen. And he doesn't always work at the kicking aspect. He understands how important taking care of his body is. Strength and conditioning with our strength staff. The core strength that he does. The flexibility and the yoga. He gets the whole big picture, so that's why he's going to be extremely successful. BWI Where do you stand with your punt return candidates heading into preseason camp? GALIANO Everything that we do is going to be competitive. Obviously, we have DeAndre [Thompkins] coming back. He had a good amount of success as a punt returner last year, and our guys have full confidence in him. Our coach-

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