Blue White Illustrated

Stevens has embraced it. How does he show you that every day? Well, no, don't get me wrong. When I say he's embraced it, it's not like he's happy being the backup. He wants to be the guy. But his relationship with Trace is really good. His relationship with Billy Fessler and the other quarterbacks in the room is really good. When he gets his reps, he maximizes his reps. That's in practice and games. His re- lationship with Coach [Joe] Moorhead is really good. How the other players on the team respond to him is excellent. There's tremendous confidence. One of the things I did a few months is that I showed Tommy an example of all these really good college players who kind of waited their turn then took advantage of it when the time came. He's just han- dled it really well. Is he satisfied? No. But he's handled it really well. He's been a great teammate. He's prepared. When his opportunity comes, he's going to be ready for it. When he gets his reps and opportu- nities, he maximizes it. I thought the play he had on Saturday where he bounced, bounced, bounced on one foot down the sideline, kept his bal- ance, avoided a guy, was one of the more impressive athletic plays I've seen since we've been here. The funny part is, I gave him a hard time. He did all the hard stuff, got himself under control, started run- ning, then planted to cut back and get it out of bounds. He could have jogged into the end zone without that hard play. I think he's got a bright future. I still think we're in a little bit of a transitional stage as a program and there are still some positions and still some areas where they've seen players play as freshmen or play as sophomores. That's really not al- ways the case at programs like us. It's funny. Me and Charles Huff were talking this morning about [Mark] Ingram at Alabama. I think there was an article that came out [pointing out] that when Ingram showed up at Alabama, he was the seventh-string tailback. The guy won the Heisman. We talk to the guys about that all the time, as true freshmen or redshirt freshmen, they're playing, but not playing as much as they want to be playing, and they struggle with that. There's so much football in front of them. If they just keep a really good atti- tude, keep working hard, keep trying to improve, then their time is going to come at some point. When it does, they'll be ready. That's the challenge of getting 18- and 19-year-old kids to understand that. And sometimes they don't. We just try to use example aBer example, try to show them those things. But Tommy has been great. He really has. He's been great for our team, for our locker room. I know there's a tremendous amount of confidence in him and excite- ment about his and our future. How would you assess Lamont Wade's development? What do you see as his primary strengths, and in what areas does he need to improve? Lamont is a true freshman who obvi- ously came in with a lot of hype. I think his greatest strength is his confidence, his competitive nature. He's also a guy who can run. He's not the biggest guy, but I think he'll hit you. He plays big. Had a great spring ball. Really got a lot of reps and matched up with our wide receivers, which for an undersized corner is proba- bly a challenging situation. He handled it really well. I think this year he's done some really good things. There are some areas where I think he knows that he needs to improve, and we need to help him improve. But I think he's got a really bright future be- cause he's confident, because he's smart, because he's tough, because he's explo- sive, because he's fast. He's just a natural football player. But, you know, I think I have told you guys before, playing offensive tackle and corner at this level are probably the two hardest positions, as well as quarterback with all the other responsibilities that are on there. [At cornerback] you're basically trying to cover the best athlete on the other side of the field in space, and you're not the one who's making the decisions; you're reacting to somebody else's deci- sions, which makes it even harder. I'm pleased with him. But the exciting thing is that he's got a lot of football leB ahead of him. There are definitely some areas [for improvement]. I think challeng- ing [receivers] at the line of scrimmage is something he can do better to get people off-balance. In high school, guys could just rely on their speed and things like that. That's not going to work at this level. But I could say that for a lot of these guys. Do you think the pass rush is good enough for the rest of this year, or are you looking at plugging in some other guys? Well, we don't have much of this year leB. We have this last [regular-season] game, then whatever opportunity we have aBer that. Hopefully we can get [Ryan] Buchholz back. Obviously, we all know he's a very experienced, productive player in both the run game and the pass game. I think we had four sacks last week. That's a positive. I think [Nebraska] had two sacks and we had four sacks. So that's a positive. But, yeah, we're always looking for more pressure on the quarterback. We're always looking for more sacks. That's always going to be a situation where we need to continue developing the guys who we have and then continue to try to bring in more reinforcements. That's always going to be the case. I think in one year we led the nation in sacks as a defense, then one year individually with Carl Nassib. … You're constantly trying to grow, improve in those areas. I like where we're at. I think we can be better. That's in both of those situations. That's developing the guys that we've got. What you're really trying to do is you're trying to find guys who can master one move. In college, I think a lot of times guys try to be good at four moves and they end up not being good at any one. Have one move you master that you feel like is your signature move, whether it's a speed rush or a long arm, an up-and-under. Whatever it may be, master that. Then you have to have the complementary. That's what we try to help them do. Here is your best move, then you need to have a complementary move. To be honest with you, it's all of it. You could have one great defensive end, but the defensive end across from him better be really good, too, because a lot of times the sack doesn't happen just based on one guy, it's a couple of guys forcing a guy in the pocket in a certain direction, which creates an opportunity for someone else. It's being really good at D-tackle to push and be explosive. It's being really good on the edges to take advantage of the oppor- tunities that the D-tackles presented, or vice versa. Tyrell Chavis has played pretty well as the season has gone on. How much do you think he's improved? N O V E M B E R 2 2 , 2 0 1 7 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 13

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