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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 Do you feel that you guys have played or coached up to your standards this season? No. Obviously, our standard and our ex- pectation is to win every game we play. So we have not done that for a number of reasons. I think you can list them all out, but at the end of the day we have not played up to the standard that we have because our standard is to go out and put ourselves in the best position to win every single game, and we haven't done that. We will not be satisfied until we're in that situation. We have very, very high stan- dards and expectations of who and what we want to be. What ar your thoughts on how Miles Sanders and the running game have performed the past couple of weeks? Last week, obviously a big storyline in the game was up front, especially their D- Line and linebackers against our O-line and tight ends, and we did not play well enough there. We did not put our players in the best position enough. So we've got to get our running game established. Miles has shown that he can be a big- play back in this conference and that he can carry the load and get you the tough yards, as well as the big plays. It's going to be very important that we find a way to establish the run game, again, so there's not so much on the shoulders of Trace McSorley. What has stood out most to you about John Reid with how he's progressed and dealt with his recovery and the rust that came with that early on? I think early on, you've got the physical aspect of coming back from the injury, and you also have the mental aspect of coming back from the injury. I think weekly, he's grown and gotten better and gotten more confident and those types of things. We believe in John. We've got a lot of confidence in John. He's a tremendous leader for us. He's a tremendous team- mate. Has the ability to be a big-time playmaker for us, as well. We're expecting him to have a great game this week. Last week in response to a question, you discussed experience and stability with regard to the coaching staff. How has your offensive staff handled the changes made in this off-season, and how have they approached that stabil- ity and experience component throughout the course of this year? When you lose as many staff members as we lost from one side of the ball, it has an impact. Obviously, it helped to get Tyler Bowen, who really understands our culture and has been involved in this of- fense for a number of years. But yeah, there's a transition there. So I think at times we've done some really good things, and at other times we haven't. That's re- ally in all three phases: offense, defense and special teams. It's going to be impor- tant that we just continue to grow and continue to evolve and get better this week, and build on it. You know, keep tak- ing steps in the right direction, and that's players, that's coaches, that's all of us to- gether. What has been the biggest issue or the most disappointing aspect of the pass game operation? And at this point in the season, how can you fix that or get that better? Well, I think one of the issues that we've been battling all year long is drops. We've had too many drops. I think that's obviously been stated a number of times in here, people asking me that question. Last week, we had protection issues. So it's a combination of those two things. We've got to be more consistent in the throws we make. We've got to be more consistent in catching the ball. When we have an opportunity to make a play, we've got to make a play, and we've got to be able to give our quarterback as much time as he needs to go through his progression and his reads. It's a little bit of all of it, and that's how we're going to have to approach it. I don't expect us to just get dramatically better in one area. We've just got to get a little bit better in each area and do that weekly. You had mentioned a5er the game Saturday that your team was really hurting in the locker room. When you saw them on Sunday, were you pleased with the response they showed, or did you feel they were still a little bit down? I think obviously, the losses hurt. There's no doubt about it. But I also want to make sure that we're doing a good job of managing those losses and how we approach them and how we talk about them and how we recover and move on to the next game. That is criti- cal, to give us the best opportunity to go out and get a win. I think the meetings were good. All the feedback I got from the coaches was really good. The team meeting was really good. The offense, defense and special teams meetings were really good. I thought the messages were great. I thought the ques- tions were really good. I see all the signs we've had the last cou- ple years when we've had success. We just have to consistently make more plays and be more detailed. Your first go-around with the new redshirt rule, how do you feel like you're managing that, and have there been any surprises? Has that gone the way you wanted it to? Yeah, I think so. Obviously, Jahan [Dot- son] is a guy who we're playing and prob- ably had planned on trying to hold his redshirt, but back to the point we were just discussing about needing a little bit more production in the passing game and a little bit more consistency catching the ball, he's a guy who's done that. When- ever we throw the ball in his direction, he seems to find a way to come down with it. That's probably the one that's gone a lit- tle bit different than what we had planned for. But I would also say that part of the plan for production and other things [was that] we would evolve and change as things went. In a perfect world, you would love to be able to hold those guys if you could, but it didn't necessarily play out that way. If you burn Dotson's redshirt, will that take reps away from K.J. Hamler? How are they both going to factor in going forward? N O V E M B E R   7 ,   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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