Blue White Illustrated

C O A C H S P E A K • E X C E R P T S F R O M J A M E S F R A N K L I N ' S W E E K L Y P R E S S E R What did your freshman and redshirt freshman wideouts show you in Au- gust? Jahan Dotson has really had a productive camp. I think you saw, we put something out the other day (about how) he led us for touchdowns during camp. He's still un- dersized. He's got to get bigger and stronger in the weight room, but football comes very natural to him. Things make sense to him. He's able to take things from meetings to the field. He's a guy we think could factor in for us at some point. and the coaches would be very comfortable and confident with playing him. We'll see how that plays out right now. We'll have him slated as yellow, a guy we'll try to play at four games at some point, whether that's early, middle of the season or late in the season, to solve problems from an injury perspective or whatever it may be. (Justin) Shorter got dinged up during camp. He was really on a roll. Will proba- bly see significant action early in the sea- son, but was a little dinged up and missed some time. He's big and physical and re- minds you a lot of Juwan Johnson. Excited about those two guys' future. Then K.J. (Hamler), when you talk to our defensive coaches, we do a lot of interac- tion between the offense and the defense, and having discussions, having the oppo- site side of the ball rank the position. So having the DBs rank the receivers, the re- ceivers rank the DBs and so on and so forth, having discussions as a coaching staff. When you talk to our defensive coaches about guys who scare them when they've got the ball in their hand, K.J. is one of the guys at the top of the list. If we can get him involved in offense and get the ball in his hands and if we can get the ball in his hands on special teams, then we'd like to be able to do that, because he's an explosive player and he's also been a really good leader. What I mean by that is maybe not the leader that you think of when I say that, but a guy who brings en- thusiasm and energy to meetings and the locker room, similar to the way Marcus (Allen) did for four years for us. I think those three guys will not only have great years for us this year but also their ca- reers. I'm excited about their futures. How are you feeling about your depth across the board at defensive line com- ing out of camp, and where does Shane Simmons fit into that, not being on the depth chart? I'm excited about our defensive line, and really, the growth that we have made there in a short period of time. At defensive end, I think we're as good as we've been. Probably the best defen- sive end unit that I've had in my time as a head coach. I think Shane obviously would be a huge factor in that. He got dinged up a little bit during camp. We do expect him back. How quickly that is is (uncertain) at this moment. We'll know more on Thursday, but we feel really good about defensive end. Obviously, getting Shane back will take it to a whole other level because he had a great spring and a great summer and a great camp. At defensive tackle, I think we've still got some questions here. We feel a lot better than we did coming into the camp. We feel like we have a lot of depth, but who are the guys who are really going to take on the responsibility and say, we are the five guys who are going to play a lot in the rotation? … We would like there to be at least two, if not five guys, who we feel have separated themselves and will take control of that. They're all showing really good signs, but I think the name of the game for us and what we talk to the play- ers about all the time is consistency, and being able to be in the gap that you're supposed to in be consistently, being physical and striking your keys consis- tently and then making play when you're there. We've still got some questions that we've got to get answered there. We feel good about it, but we won't completely know until we get out there under the lights. Did you settle the question marks that you had going into the season on the offensive line, at least from the per- spective of five starters, and then the depth behind them? Yeah, I think right now we're very com- fortable with the six guys who we have listed. Wright and Fries, that will proba- bly be a game-day decision, but the real- ity of it is we feel like we can play and play well with either one of those guys. Nei- ther one has completely separated himself from the other, and a lot of times when that happens, you're concerned because you're not sure if you have one starter. I actually think we have two. Obviously, both of them have started a bunch of games here and we've been able to win bowl games and high-level Big Ten games with both of those guys playing, so feel good about those six, and then I think we've got a combination aCer that that we feel good about. We feel good about (C.J.) Thorpe; we feel good about (Zach) Simp- son and (Mike) Miranda and Des Holmes, but I don't know if it's necessarily purely a two-deep. I think we still have some mov- ing parts based on some guys going down to make sure we get the best five guys on the field from an experience standpoint. How have your young linebackers looked? Are Micah Parsons, Jesse Luketa and Ellis Brooks going to be pushing for time the first couple of weeks? You're going to see a lot of those guys. I think they are going to get a lot of reps. I don't think there's a huge gap between our ones and our twos. So I think you're going to see maybe the twos get close, if not the same amount of reps as the ones at a lot of those positions. Cam Brown is probably a guy who has differentiated himself and separated him- self a little bit from the pack, and then there's a gap, you know, between maybe his backups. Koa (Farmer) has done a good job, played a lot of football, and Micah is making a strong push there, and then I think between Ellis and Luketa, there's going to be a strong push (at middle line- backer) and you're going to see a lot of guys rotating and getting time. Your kickers are all young guys who have not had the opportunity to per- form under the kind of pressure that they are going to have to perform in. What have you done to get them ready for that, and what have you seen in their makeup and personality that makes you think that they will be able to deal with that? This is the most competition we've had, A U G U S T 2 9 , 2 0 1 8 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 10

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