Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/144988
Are the improvements you'd like to see between spring and preseason specific to each individual player? Or are there some more general, team-wide improvements that you'd like to see? It's basically broken down into three parts, and they're all equal. It's the improvement of the individual player, which is what they're trying to [accomplish] this summer. They're trying to get in better condition and get faster and stronger and more consistent catching the ball or changing direction, things like that. Then, it's the improvement that our staff hopefully made with our schemes. After watching spring practice, what do we think the strength of our team is going to be? Can we improve on some of the things from last year that we need to do better? Then, I think it's our staff. How are we going to improve? How am I going to improve with situational football? Are we going to be able to deal with our issue [concerning] linebacker depth? If somebody goes down there – God forbid – what are we going to do to alleviate that problem? It's those three things that we look at. It's the individual player, it's the scheme and then it's your coaching staff. You said last year that you thought the team may have peaked too early in preseason camp. Have you worked out, in your mind, a solution to that this year? I have. I think I have. Basically, what we have to do this year is we have to practice hard once a day. The night practice has to be more of a teaching practice where we walk through, a lot like pro football. We're going to go hard in the morning and then the night practice, we'll go out. We're not going to just sit in the meeting room. But we'll have a jogthrough, a walk-through. We'll break a little sweat, but we're not hitting each other. Maybe do a little conditioning at the end. Every now and again, we've gotta give them some time off. Will you continue to bring in guest speakers to address the team? My philosophy there was basically formed in New England. The pro season was such a long season, and then the off-season was long, too, with the mini-camps and things like that. So Bill [Belichick] would bring in a lot of fascinating speakers. He brought in [NBA coach] Doc Rivers, he brought in the squash coach at Trinity [Paul Assaiante] who won 200 matches in a row. The reason I like to do that is instead of me standing up in front of the team every single day and talking to them about character and toughness and resiliency, well, why not bring somebody else in who maybe was a former athlete or military guy and have them talk to them? This training camp, we're going to bring [former basketball player] Chris Herren in, and he's going to come speak to our team. He's done a good job. At the NFL Rookie Symposium, he did a really good job. He's spoken to a number of pro teams, so he'll come in during training camp and talk to our team. Do you give yourself the same kind of flexibility to switch a player's position in the preseason that you do in spring practice? Or do you enter with the mindset that players will stay where they are now? I would say that you always have to give yourself flexibility to be able to look at a guy's skill set, especially with the freshmen. You recruited them, but you haven't seen them on the college field yet. You look at those kids and you and say, "This guy, he's a corner, but maybe he can run a couple reverses for us. Or maybe he's a really good punt returner rather than a kick returner, or vice versa." So I think you always have to leave yourself some flexibility, especially with the younger players. When injuries occur, you've got to have a really good idea of your veteran players, what their skill set is. Can Adrian [Amos] go back from playing safety to corner? Yes, we know he can do that. He's done it. Things like that, we have to make sure we're on top of, and I think we do a good job of that as a staff. The immediate impact of the sanctions was felt last year when some key starters transferred from the program. How will the effect of the sanctions be different this year as opposed to last year? We know that as time goes on, it will become more and more difficult with these sanctions. Last year everybody made a big deal of the fact that 12 kids transferred, but, in reality, it was four starters who transferred. Nothing against those other eight kids, but it wasn't like they were the second coming of hall of fame players. Now, the problem is that there's kind of a perfect storm, because you have the open transfer rule. You have to get down to 65 [scholarship players], and we're at 66. Now, you have really less depth than you had last year at certain positions – like linebacker and probably the defensive line a little bit. Mostly linebacker, though. [That's] the biggest thing. So it's just going to be harder to deal with that as time goes on. But that's the challenge. I don't want it to come across as though we're crying about it. We understand the challenge, but it's certainly not an even playing field, and every year we're going to have to do a good job of managing the roster, which is what we're trying to do. From some of the interactions you were able to have with Christian Hackenberg before his arrival at Penn State, do you already have a gauge of his level of progress? I have a pretty good gauge because one of the things that I've learned in coaching is when you're talking to a guy over the phone, can he articulate football to you? When I would pick up the phone and call Christian or Christian would call me, the conversation wasn't really about what he had for dinner that night or how his girlfriend is doing. Those are things that I don't really care about. It was more, "How are you doing personal-