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C OA C H S P E A K| EXCERPTS FROM JaMES FRaNKLIN'S WEEKLY PRESSER When might you expect Andrew Nelson to be able to play again? Will Brandon Bell and Grant Haley play this week? I'm hopeful that we have the possibil- ity of all three. Grant and Brandon – we feel pretty good that we'll have those guys. Those guys will be significant ad- ditions for us. Grant would be really im- portant for us. He was fantastic last year as a gunner on the punt team. That would be huge for us this week having him available in that role. Obviously, as we all know with our depth and our confidence continuing to grow on the offensive line, being able to have Nelly available would be great for us as well. I can't give you specific dates. I don't get into those things any- way. It's really up to our training staff and our doctors to make those decisions anyway. You had a lot of praise a6er the Buf- falo game for Troy Reeder in his first start outside. Did he surprise you a little bit? How did you think he played in August? What did you think of Jason Cabinda when you moved him to middle? I think Jason is a man. Jason is playing really well. He's very mature. He's lead- ing very well. I think Jason has a chance to be really good. He's doing everything right. Got some great messages. His mom direct messages me all the time. She's a sweet lady, cares about her son, does a great job. She should be very proud of Jason because he's doing a great job. I think he's going to continue to grow and continue to play at a very high level for us. Reeder is an interesting guy. He was a guy we were really excited about last year as a redshirt. We even thought about burning his redshirt and playing him. His testing numbers are really good. This summer he got sick and just was- n't playing the same. It took him a little while to bounce back. In the last couple weeks he's really come on strong. For- tunately for us right [it's been] at the right time, as we lost some guys. So he's a guy who as a freshman we were really excited about. He didn't have as good of a camp as I thought he wanted to have or we wanted him to have. The last two weeks, he has really come on strong and is doing some re- ally, really nice things. I'm real pleased with him. Those are two young guys, a true sophomore and a redshirt fresh- man linebacker, who are able to provide depth and experience for years to come in play-making ability. Last year when you had to shuffle things around on the O-line, you moved Angelo Mangiro out to right tackle. Last week it was Brendan Mahon. How do you think Brendan handled the switch? We didn't have [backup center] Wendy [Laurent] completely available the last couple weeks. I think I mentioned that to you guys before. I think that factored into it. The other thing is that you could make the argument that your tackles are very important to what you're doing of- fensively, but your center is the quarter- back of the offensive line. Angelo has a calming effect on the entire group. He's right there in the middle, he's able to communicate, he's able to take charge, he's able to lead and be a real vocal pres- ence in there. I think that's the biggest thing, having the one senior on our of- fensive line be at center. We thought it was valuable to do that. Mahon has played some at tackle be- fore. We felt like he would be able to do it and get Paris [Palmer] back in there. I thought those guys played pretty good. I think having Wendy back full-go this week provides a little bit more flexibility for us. We feel good about that unit. We've just got to continue getting those five playing together for significant amount of time to build the type of chemistry and cohesion that we want. Von Walker has had an interesting journey from walk-on offensive player to starting games for you at linebacker. Talk about his importance on the team, his role, what he means to you guys. I love Von. I think you know that. You've heard me talk about him over and over and over again. He came in as a running back. He's returned punts. He's played safety, linebacker. He's kind of done it all. He's earned a scholarship. But more importantly, he's earned the respect of everybody in our program. I made a big deal out of him on Sun- day with our team, in our team meet- ing, on the PowerPoint. Talked about being a leader on this team. A lot of time the offensive guys focus on the of- fense, and the defensive guys focus on the defense, and special teams guys in their own areas. Von I think did a great job of not only playing on defense and playing on special teams but also com- ing down to the offensive side of the ball, being real energetic and positive with those guys. I thought Nick Scott was another guy who did that as well with offense and defense. He brought great energy on special teams and is really doing some nice things. We're excited about him and his future. What have you done in the past when you're playing against a guy like Janarion Grant? How do you game plan against a guy who can hurt you in the return game so much? If you're doing the things the way we think things should be done in terms of techniques and fundamentals, it should take care of itself. You have to be careful because you make a big deal out of it and you're going to have the opposite effect. The biggest thing is that we look at it as a tremendous challenge. It's exciting when a great player comes in and you have an opportunity to maybe do some things to make sure he doesn't have a big impact in the game. We're going to basically continue doing the things that we're doing and emphasize the things we think are important and areas we need to do better in terms of our punt location and hang time, which haven't been up to our standards at this point. That's going to be really, really impor- tant. These are the type of guys who S E P T E M B E R 1 6 , 2 0 1 5 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 14

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