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 I want to get your thoughts on the importance of the matchup between Wisconsin's secondary and your re- ceivers. Also, in your mind, why have you become so dangerous as a deep passing team? You've been able to ex- ploit teams down the field and be- come very dangerous with the passing game. I think you're exactly right. That matchup is going to be interesting in the game. They lead the nation in inter- ceptions. We lead the nation, I think, in explosive plays in the passing game. That will be an interesting matchup. They are talented in the secondary. They're experienced in the secondary, no doubt. I think we are talented at re- ceiver and tight end. We are experi- enced at receiver and tight end. That will be a really interesting matchup in this game. I think the explosive plays come from Trace [McSorley's] mobility; he is able to step up in the pocket and extend plays. He's also one of those quarter- backs who, when he steps up in the pocket, even when he's on the run, has his eyes downfield. That puts your un- derneath coverage and defense in con- flict. Are they going to step up and stop Trace from running? When you do that, it creates really good throwing lanes. Or are you going to drop back and get really soB and try to help the underneath cov- erage on deeper routes and be suscepti- ble to the quarterback being able to run on you? The other thing is, as good as defen- sive backs are all over the country, and specifically in the Big Ten, if the offen- sive line can protect, then the quarter- back can extend. I don't care who you are, I think playing defensive back may be one of the most difficult positions in all of sports. You're basically doing everything that most people do back- wards. It's all reactionary. I think play- ing offensive tackle and corner are probably two of the most difficult posi- tions. If [the quarterback] can buy time and extend plays and force people to cover longer than is normal, it's really chal- lenging. So I think that's where a lot of our big plays have come from. How do you feel the transition has gone at tackle for Ryan Bates so far? How challenging has it been for him to move out to le3 tackle in the mid- dle of season? Really good. I think that's probably one of the bigger stories of our season. We got into a discussion with the staff the other day. [Receivers coach] Josh Gattis brought this up a long time ago, and we've all kind of seen it and dis- cussed it. We always thought Bates was a really, really talented guy. There are some aspects of his body type that would make you say he's probably more fit for center or guard. But his feet and his athleticism and his com- fort in space make him really good at tackle. You would love a little bit more length, but his feet are just so good. You really see it if you go back and watch plays of whatever he pulls. When that guy pulls and runs, he is a really, really good athlete. Then you see the same thing now with him on the edge playing leB tackle. His play at leB tackle, as well as Chasz Wright's play at right tackle, has really, really helped us. Connor McGovern having experience, playing tackle all spring, helps us as well. I think [assistant coach] Matt Limegrover and our offensive line and the perseverance and the flexibility and the next-man-in mentality are proba- bly one of the bigger stories of our team this year, that and obviously linebacker and Coach [Brent] Pry, and obviously Coach [Joe] Moorhead. Your former coach at East Strouds- burg, Denny Douds, said one of the pieces of advice he gave you about coaching was to do it right. What else have you taken from Denny into your coaching career that you can apply so far, maybe that you can apply to Sat- urday's game? That's funny. I think back years ago when I started in this profession, and I went to Kutztown for six months. I got done at Kutztown. I accepted a position to be the quarterback and offensive co- ordinator in Roskilde, Denmark. I did that. My contract ran till the end of the season. They never had a whole lot of success, but we ended up making it to the national championship game. I agreed to start my graduate assistant position. I actually flew back from Denmark at the end of the season, went to school for a week at East Strouds- burg, flew back to Denmark for the weekend, we won the national champi- onship, then flew back and was at school on Monday. That's why I have no sympathy or excuses for our players missing class. I lived with Denny and his wife, Judy, for a month, maybe two months. They were awesome. I remember sitting there at night, we would go out on the back patio and talk. I was a young coach, try- ing to figure it out, what direction I wanted to go, really what I wanted to do. We talked about his background. He had opportunities to leave. He was very successful early on in his tenure there and had opportunities to leave. I think as we all know, he's going into year 51, I think it is. He's a guy who did it right. He had a lot of consistency on his staff, consis- tency in his message. Denny had a book, kind of a coaching manual similar to what I had, and he was probably more consistent than even I try to be. I mean, literally the first Thursday of training camp, he had his page. That's what he was going to say. By the time you were a senior, you could recite the meeting. You knew exactly the entire year. I think that's really why they've been able to sustain it at a pretty high level for so long. There's consistency in his message, consistency in his beliefs, consistency on his staff. That's some- thing that's really kind of hit home with me. He's also a guy who was really appre- ciative. We talked about the opportuni- ties here, how you perceive things in life. I'll never forget at camp, at East Stroudsburg, we had three-a-days at N O V E M B E R 3 0 , 2 0 1 6 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 12

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