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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 Can you describe your confidence in the offensive line going into this sea- son, and what kind of camp did Michal Menet have? Our offensive line situation has changed dramatically from when we ar- rived till now. I still think we have a lot of room for growth there, and that's ex- citing, because if you look at us, we're still pretty young. We've got a sopho- more at leD tackle, a sophomore at leD guard, a sophomore at center. Got some maturity at the right guard position and then a junior at the right tackle position. So we're still young but I like where we're at. I like our depth. I like our growth at that position and I feel like we do have confidence there. Especially comparatively speaking over the last couple years. Michal Menet is a guy who we're really excited about. You know, he's still a freshman when it comes to football. He's been able to put on the size that we think he needs to have to play at this level. He's had some bumps and bruises and nicks that haven't been major is- sues, but it's been enough that he's missed a significant amount of practice time during the spring and during the summer. He just needs the time and the reps to develop the fundamentals that he needs to play at this level consistently. I don't think there's any question about his athleticism and his strength and his power and those types of things. He just needs to practice consistently to build that chemistry up with his teammates on the offensive line, as well as just the fundamentals and the techniques he needs to be successful at this level. But we think he's got a very, very bright fu- ture. Could you speak to the depth that you've been able to create in your quarterback room behind Trace Mc- Sorley? What have you seen from Tommy Stevens since the end of last year in the spring and in August? And have you been able to form an opin- ion on your freshman, Sean Clifford, yet? Obviously, you guys know how we feel about both Trace and Tommy. I mean, I remember a year ago, we had made the conversation that it was a legitimate battle for that spot. You know, people had made their opinions off the spring game two years ago. But we felt like we had a legitimate battle and a legitimate competition there. I think the quarterback position is like a lot of the positions that we have on our team, and it's a challenge and it's a change – that this is normal. For you to be a big-time football program, you should have two legitimate quarter- backs on your roster that you feel you could win with, and you feel like you have a young, developing guy. So we have a lot of confidence in Trace. We have a lot of confidence in Tommy. Tommy has matured so much in so many different areas of his life. I just couldn't be more proud of him. He's really developed into a complete quarterback who I think has a very, very bright future. Sean Clifford is a guy who we were ex- cited about coming in. He probably was much further ahead than we had antici- pated mentally. Has really picked this offense up quickly. Asked a lot of ques- tions, is locked in, takes great notes, is right on Coach [Joe] Moorhead's and Trace's and Tommy's hip all the time. In practice, taking mental reps, he's really made a nice move. He probably runs better than we anticipated, as well. He shows really good athleticism, and he's got some of the "it" factor that people have been trying to figure out and de- scribe for 25 years at that position, or probably longer than that. So we're excited about him. We think we've got three quarterbacks, and even more than that, when you factor in Jake [Zembiec] and you factor in [Michael] Shuster and you factor in [Billy] Fessler, we've got a really good room of guys who allow our team to grow and con- tinue to develop. You've mentioned the play of Troy Apke a few times since camp began. What has he shown you and the staff heading into the season at the strong safety spot? Well, he's always been an athletic guy, he really has. He's a big guy. He's 6-1, basically 200 pounds. He's always been one of the more athletic guys in terms of vertical jump, broad jump, 40. He's al- ways had those things. He's obviously a guy who played as a freshman for us because we felt so highly of him on special teams and some other areas, and has been what you want – a guy who's going to con- tinue to work hard and embrace the role he has but has continued to strive for more. There's a lot of confidence on our team. There's a lot of confidence in our defensive room. He's a guy who's got really good range. He's got the size to be physical enough in the run game. He's got tremendous maturity, which we also think is important and we have right now in our secondary. You look at him and Marcus [Allen] and Christian [Campbell] and Grant [Haley] – that gives us a lot of guys that have played a lot of football. I think they're going to have a really, really good year for us. You mentioned earlier about this being probably the most consistent training camp you've been associated with. In what way? How did you measure that consistency and rank it at the top? The programs that I've been associ- ated with, you get into the dog days of summer camp, and there are always one or two practices where the guys are sore or it's hot or they're tired or whatever it is, and you've got to pull it out of them. You've got to go out there and you're, you know, using every method and every technique you've got to try to get them to practice as hard as you think that they need to practice, and we didn't have that. I thought the coaches did a good job of setting the tempo in our meetings. I thought the leaders on our team really brought the right energy and mindset out to practice every single day, and we practiced really, really well. I think ob- A U G U S T   3 0 ,   2 0 1 7 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 12

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