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Aug. 3, 2008

Opening statement: Reporting day is one of the more exciting times of the year for college football fans, coaches and players. You go back to signing day, go back to spring practice, but there’s such a span of time from the end of spring to the start of fall, and everybody reads the magazines, reads the paper, sees the TV reports, gets on the Internet, starts talking about the buildup of preseason polls and who’s healthy and who had a good summer and who’s eligible academically. It just means that (college football) is back. It’s time to start over. All of our guys got in today on time. We’re really, really excited about their attitude. You go back and look at our offseason, there was a tremendous amount of carryover between the bowl game and spring practice with the off-season, and then it carried into spring practice. We probably had our most physical spring practice and were able to stay healthy. Last summer, we did not have as good of a summer as we needed. There were too many distractions, and we feel like it’s a great show of leadership and carryover that we didn’t have any problems off the field this summer. We’re proud of the leadership of this group, and we think that on and off the field that is coming out, and the kids are proud of it too, as I talked to them at 1:00 today.

In the press conference the other day for the kickoff luncheon with the Austin Sports Commission, some of (the media) asked about me being mad at the bowl game and would I continue to be mad. In thinking about it, really and truly our team was mad, and the coaching staff was mad because we did not play up to our standards that we want to at times last year, and specifically in the last game. We felt like all we needed to do as a group is pick it up and go back to work. So it wasn’t about me, it wasn’t about anything specifically except it wasn’t the standard that we have set here for many, many years here at The University of Texas. Instead of me getting the credit for tying that together, those kids got up every morning at 6:00 and they worked really hard, and the coaches worked really hard. We pulled together as a group and played better than we did at certain times during the year, and that’s what we’ve got to continue to do.

There were some questions the other day about whether we like to play young players or not. We’re going to play the best players. Splitting practice tomorrow is one of the reasons that we feel like we can have a closer look at each individual player in the first two days of orientation. In the afternoon group, we’ll have some of the younger guys, and that will be more involved in the kicking game so we can actually see if we feel like some of those guys. You check your snappers, you check your holders, you check your kickers, you check all of the things that they might do as gunners or protectors on the punt team, and so forth. The teams will be split up, so the freshmen may be the first in line in that afternoon group. A young receiver, a young defensive back would get much more attention in this type practice than he would if he’s in a two-and-a-half-hour practice with the older guys.

The guys will wake up at 4:30 in the morning. They’ll be on the field starting practice at 6 a.m. They’ll be out there about an hour and 15 minutes. Some of that is to beat the heat in the morning; the other is because we still have guys in summer school for another week. Guys that have morning classes would not be able to practice at 9 or 10 a.m. We’ll have to adjust really early and really late with our class schedules like we have in the past. It’ll be the same at night. The night practice will start around 6 p.m. as well, and probably finish around 7:15 or 7:30 p.m.

Luke Poehlmann hurt his ankle early in the All-Star Game but finished, and he should be full speed tomorrow. Greg Davis is going to be full speed. He overcame his appendicitis. Antwan Cobb will be the only player that’s limited. He is still limited because of his knee. He’ll be out there, but limited, so hopefully we can get him back. We’re coming in really healthy after having great summer workouts. It is Will Muschamp’s 37th birthday, so the players will be excited about them kicking off the season with his birthday today. Coaches do have to come back right after appendicitis, and they do have to work on their birthday.

(There are) a couple of freshmen that we’ve talked to about positions and we found out today where they wanted to play. Ryan Roberson had looked at running back and linebacker, and he would like to start at linebacker. D.J. Monroe had looked at corner and wide receiver, and he would like to start at wide receiver. Ryan will work with the linebackers tomorrow night, and D.J. will work with the receivers tomorrow night. D.J. and Ryan will be involved in kicking game as well.

We’ll be in all shorts for the first two days. We’ll go in shoulder pads and shorts on Wednesday and Thursday, and then we can go one practice in pads on Friday, and then start our two-a-days on Saturday. There will not be a depth chart, as there was not in the bowl game. We’ll continue to work to try to get everybody up to our standard, but we will not have the Not Our Standard’s the first week, as well. We’d like for the freshmen to learn what that means before we start having an entire team do up-downs because the young ones have never been through that. Part of the other reason we’re dividing our team up and going through this orientation period, we’d like for young ones to learn how to practice so we can throw them right in there and make sure that they understand what’s going on.

We are committed to trying to get Colt (McCoy) and John Chiles on the field at the same time some, so we will start working immediately. I do want to say without question that John is still the second-team quarterback and will not move from quarterback. Colt will be the starter today, just because of the past, and John will be working with the first team some in packages, like he did a little bit last year, but at the same time, John will not move away from the quarterback position.

There’s a lot of excitement, as I walked out of my office a few minutes ago, the Web site said 26 days, 23 hours, 53 minutes and 11 seconds until game time. Now, since the game time’s not set, I’m not sure how we know exactly what time that means, but that might mean if it was today, and there’s a lot of question marks on this football team, so we’ve got 26 days, 23 hours, 53 minutes and 11 seconds to figure them out. At the same time, the excitement of the new stadium, I would think that this will be the largest crowd at opening day in the history of a football game in this state, and maybe the Southwest. Penn State’s got the largest stadium, Michigan’s second, Ohio State’s third, Tennessee’s fourth and now we’re fifth with 98,000 that will be at the opening ball game.

People have talked repeatedly about us being under the radar. The coaches did pick us 10th in the polls, so only at Texas is that under the radar. That’s a good thing. That means that standard’s set really, really high. The schedule’s probably the toughest we’ve had since we’ve been here in preseason, understanding we don’t know what that means for sure, but four of the top 15 teams in the country are on our schedule, and nine bowl teams. (There is) a lot we’ve got to get answered, a lot of work we’ve got to do, and really very little time to do it when you go back to the 26 days.

On John Chiles’ practice reps: John will get more reps than Sherrod (Harris). Sherrod will get some. John will try to work in that package and still try to be the second-team quarterback. So he’ll run a play, and then get back in the huddle as a quarterback and run another one. He’ll be in a package with Colt.

On John Chiles’ package with Colt McCoy: We’d like to see if it works first. We didn’t do it in the spring. We’re really developing that package as we speak and we’re going to start working on that immediately to see where it goes, simply because John and Colt are two of our best players. They’re two of our most productive players, so we need to see what we can do. We did feel like playing both of them at separate times in the bowl game was very productive, so if we can continue to do that, but get John on the field more to get the ball in his hands, that would be a help as well.

On what positions are settled and what positions are unsettled: You start looking at offense first. We feel pretty good about the offensive line two-deep, so we’re in pretty good shape there, probably better than we’ve been in a while, not as good as 2005 yet with the front line guys. Quarterbacks, we just discussed that. It’s key for us to try to figure out how to use both guys, and how to get the most production out of Colt and John. Tight end’s a question mark because Peter Ullman’s really the only guy that’s played very much. Wide receivers, you’ve really got two that have played, and a lot of other guys you’re looking at. You’ve got to find a third one and you’d like to have six. You need to figure out how to separate your tailbacks. Other than offensive line on offense, everything is pretty much up for grabs in some form or fashion. Obviously, Colt’s paid his dues at quarterback. Defensively, we’ll look at playing guys like Aaron Lewis, who missed the spring, inside and outside. You’re trying to build the depth inside and make sure that you don’t take too much away from your defensive end group. You’ve got to settle on linebackers, because Sergio (Kindle) was not out there this spring, so Will (Muschamp) hasn’t seen him at all, and then you’ve got some young ones to look at. More importantly, you’ve got four or five corners to look at, with a young guy or two. Really, other than Ishie Oduegwu, you’ve got absolutely no experience inside at safety, so safeties are huge. Safety’s really one of the more complicated places to play on the defense. We’ve got a new system and a complicated system that we’re going to have to make sure those guys can handle. You go back to Quan (Cosby) doing the kickoff and punt returns, we’d like to have some more depth there. The kicking got exciting this spring because Justin Tucker’s pressing those guys, and he did a good job. The punting has been wide open. I’m not sure there’s much that is settled as I sit here and talk about it.

On giving the freshmen their own practice the first two days of camp: The freshmen will go in the afternoons. You’d like to separate those guys so you can watch them for two days, and the coaches can coach them specifically. It’ll be real slow, it’ll be like the old freshmen practice in the afternoon where you’ve got 18 guys. It’ll be teaching more than anything else. We felt like the last couple of years that our freshmen get bogged down in numbers and the spirit of practice and it goes so fast. The coaches like to work with the ones that know what to do. If you’re not careful, those are the ones that get the attention, the ones that can run routes and catch. We’re going to have the young ones watching the older ones, they’ll learn. We felt like we had great success with the older ones coaching the younger ones in the bowl practices, so we’re going to allow them to do that tomorrow afternoon, and then see where we go from there. Everybody’s at every meeting, everybody’s at every practice. So, the afternoon group will be out there in street clothes for the morning practice, and vice versa.

On redshirting freshmen: They probably don’t bring it up now because we tell them that will be midseason. If you’re not ready to help us win by the third, fourth, fifth ball game and injuries haven’t occurred at your position and you want to red-shirt, we’ll try to do that. If one came today and said ‘I’d like to red-shirt,’ we wouldn’t promise him that at this time. We would tell him, ‘You play like you’re not going to red-shirt, and then we’ll figure it out.’ One of the problems with a young guy that wants to red-shirt is sometimes they don’t come in ready to go, they don’t work as hard, and they’re not as focused, and then they’re behind for spring. We’d like to take the red-shirt mentality out of it 100 percent.

On the possibility of cross-training any cornerbacks at safety: We would probably only look at that unless we’re unhappy after a week, because right now, we’re not planning on doing that. I don’t have my list in front of me, but that list of Ishie, and then a group of young guys right now would be the safeties, Earl Thomas, Christian Scott, Ben Wells, Blake Gideon, Nolan Brewster, and I’m sure I’ll miss somebody. Outside, the obvious four that have been around for a while are Deon Beasley, Ryan Palmer, Chykie Brown and Curtis Brown. And then you’ve got A.J. Williams coming in, who you’d like to see get a look too. Our defensive staff is talking about playing a lot of nickel, so that adds a fifth guy. You can take a corner and move him inside, and lock him up man-to-man a lot of times in nickel defense. We could have our best cover guy there.

On his feelings about the defensive backfield: We feel like we’re as talented as we’ve been, we’re just really, really inexperienced at safety. That’s just a concern.

On the impact of the new 40-second rule: We have to look very closely at what the 40-second rule does to time on offense, even more than time on defense. We’re fortunate that Will Muschamp coached under that system with the Miami Dolphins. We used it every snap this spring, and what we found is the more inexperienced quarterbacks that huddled up with two wide receivers in the game and would get to the line of scrimmage and check, would have trouble getting the play off. So it’s really, really a problem for offenses. We’ve been told that if you also huddle up and take your time, you’re probably going to lose numbers of plays during the game. We have to look very closely at, can we expand our package with no huddle, and run the entire offense with no huddle, and get more plays and still be able to do the things we want to do offensively? Because obviously most of the time you do huddle up on short yardage and goal line, and so we’re looking at all of those things throughout the summer and now. Defensively, Will thinks the biggest concern is that there still may be some inconsistency about how a ball’s spotted, but there will be less inconsistency. If Quan Cosby runs a deep route and it’s over his head and incomplete, they will spot the ball immediately, and if Quan’s taking his time getting back, we could have trouble getting the ball off. On certain deep routes, you may have to substitute to get him out there. Where Will thinks it’s a problem for the defense is with all of the specialized offensive formations now and people are rotating more players in than ever before, the officials have been standing over the ball to help the defense get set. If you send those substitutes in late, within 12 seconds, they could call a delay of game on the offense if the defense can’t get set. Now with the ball being spotted so quickly, if you’re an offense that sends subs in from the sideline and you send them in late, the official may step off of the ball. If they send substitutes in, he may have to step back over the ball to give the substitutes a chance to substitute as well. Will said that could be delayed now, where before that was done pretty quickly.

On his goals for the first part of fall practice: We would like to teach the young ones how to practice, because we haven’t seen nine of them. We would like to find out who they are as much as you can in a practice. That will get at least more information to us after you get in pads than it will the first two days. We would like to start looking at where we think guys will be special players, so we could feature them more if they’re going to step up and go. You want to see how much better John Chiles is throwing the ball since this summer. You want to see what receivers have grown up. Aaron Lewis, Eddie Jones, Sergio and Ishie were not in practice, so that’s four defensive players that Will has never seen before except for film, so you want to get him more comfortable with who they are. You’d like to continue to work with the 40-second clock to make sure you get all those things in before we get too deep into pads.

On what rule changes he likes the most: I like the five-yard facemask, because to me it’s really, really hard to judge if a guy just barely touches a facemask and lets it go and there’s no chance of injury. To me a lot of those were called, and they had to be called the way the rule was set. I’m glad that only flagrant facemasks are called, so I think that’s a good rule. I like the fact that we’re stopping the clock before the half and at the end of the game, because I do like the opportunity for a team to compete and come back instead of a team sitting on the ball and running the clock out and the end of a half or a game if you’re 10 points, 14 points ahead. So I think those two I like the most.

Usually everybody’s doing the same stuff. It’s amazing, the more that you change coaches, the more you realize there’s very little change. Our job will be to make sure we’re featuring the right guys on both sides of the ball, make sure we’re giving them a task-difficulty that they can handle, try to hit them enough to get them ready to go, make sure they’re in great shape and it sounds like Jeff (Madden) may have had his best summer with them in talking to them, make sure we handle the heat properly because we’re going to have to play in it probably in at least the first and the third ball games most likely. Arkansas is 2:30 (p.m.) so that will be right in the middle of the heat and finish in the hottest part of the day. Those are the things we need to do more than anything else. We do gain good ideas from people across the country with team building. We had more competitive drills in our spring practice, we just kept score more on drills and we showed the team. We do feel like the guys like the competitive stuff that Jeff added to off-season, so there were some things there, but most of what we’re doing other than trying to figure out who we are earlier than last year and get the ball in the right guys’ hands, and try to figure out who we are on defense to do a better job against the pass, is team-building stuff and building depth. It’s very, very difficult to figure out how many snaps one guy needs to play and when is the guy that’s working with him more productive after certain plays. Is it 12 plays? Is it 15 plays? And obviously that’s early in the season with the heat. Then you have to balance what you’ve got with the kicking game. I have a list on my desk of all the guys that are on every special team, and they’re color-code,d so if a guy’s on four special teams and he’s a starter and he’s going to play 50 plays a game in this heat, he’ll be out of there by the end of the first quarter and you have to have another guy ready. That’s my job, to be smart enough to know when they want him on this kicking team and they want him on this team and he’s got to play here. I’ve got to be the one to say, ‘Okay, he’s on these two kicking teams, let’s take him off and limit his plays because his participation on the punt team may be more important than some of the plays he may play early.’ The other thing is philosophy of substitution. How and when you substitute and trying to make sure all the guys buy into the philosophy.

On motivating a team: The chip on the shoulder thing is really interesting because you’ve got 130 of them, 70 of them are going to play at some time or another, and everybody approaches things differently. Some may take it as, ‘I’ve got to prove to them,’ some may feel like they’ve got to prove to us, their high school coach, their families. Some might just think all of them are fools, they’re confident enough they think we’re better than that. You have to be careful when you’re trying to motivate a team, that you understand that many people are motivated, especially kids, are motivated in different ways. You can’t think, in my estimation, you motivate all of them with one thing. You have to throw a bunch of them on the wall and hope some of it sticks.

On being multiple on both sides of the ball: The program would like to stay multiple on both sides of the ball. And then if you lose a coach, and we’ve lost some in the last few years, more on defense than we have on offense, you can go back to a package and use parts of that package. That’s what we’d like to be, so a guy doesn’t bring a total offense, and he leaves and we’ve got to bring another guy in with his offense. We’d like to have a defense that we can work with, and we’re fortunate that really the defense that’s been built on over the past four defensive coordinators is very, very similar. It’s just where you put the emphasis, but it’s multiple stuff. Where you start looking at the offensive package is it really starts with Colt and John to see what part of that John would play outside of the known part that he will be as the quarterback. So where do we go with that direction? And that’s something that we’ve got to figure out with both of those guys. Then, you’d like to know who your feature back is going to be. We know two of the receivers, we’d like to figure out who the other one’s going to be, and will it be John some in that package and how much will some of the young ones will step in there and go? Defensively, we really have to figure out how to get more pressure on the passer and knock more balls loose. Will has talked so much about specializing on defense and getting a package on the field that’s faster when we know that they’re in a position where they have to throw it, and getting better pass rushers and not having a guy that can’t pass rush out there in a pass rushing situation, and trying to get cover guys out there and get more pressure on a passer. Trying to be able to disguise more, which is more difficult with spread defenses, but at the same time trying to get a quarterback to hold it a little longer and not have to blitz to get there. One of my pet peeves is if you’re blitzing and not getting there, you’re just getting beaten to death because all you’re doing is taking people out of the secondary and making it harder to cover. If we’re going to blitz, we ought to have too many for them to block and get there, and get to the quarterback and not blitz.

On Colt McCoy running the ball: We’d like to do whatever we need to do to move the ball. If we’re a spread offense, the zone-read play is really important to us, and we’d like for him to continue to build on it. He did a better job in the spring. He’s healthy now, he’s much stronger, he’s continued at the same level of speed, so we’d really like to see him do that and be a factor running the ball. He was a big factor in the bowl game. We need his feet, we need him to get off scheduled plays, and we need to be able to run the zone read to be successful at what we want to do.

On Quan Cosby and Jordan Shipley: They’re both interesting studies because Quan signed, went to play pro (baseball), now he’s married, he has two children, they say he’s as old as Aaron Ross now. Quan’s been great for us with the younger kids and his maturity level, and when Limas (Sweed) got hurt last year, he played all three places. As we were walking in today, somebody asked Jordan, ‘Is this the first camp you’ve ever been to where you were 100 percent?’ And it really is. Last year he even pulled his hamstring in the summer and was limited. He couldn’t do anything until about the third game really. He looks good, he’s strong, he’s more confident. Those two guys are the stabilizing forces in our wide receiver group. They can play any position. We feel like they can go all day, they can both return kicks, they both hold for the kicker, and they’re really, really good leaders on this team. Obviously, at the end of the year you would hope that Quan, who I think can graduate in December, would go to the NFL if he wants to. We’d like, and he would like, if the NCAA would approve it, to get an appeal for Jordan so he can come back for his sixth year.

On the adjustment freshmen have to make into college football: You try to get that through that 10-day period before the opening ball game, that last scrimmage. Then after that, you have to start making some decisions with the older ones. You still might not be able to make some decisions with the younger ones. You really can’t tell about the younger ones until they get out in the middle of the stadium. You think you can, but they’re just so different. There are phases. You go shorts to teach, you don’t know anything in shorts except who’s fast and who can catch and who can run and who can jump and you knew that anyway, and then all of a sudden you go shells and you see the eyes get a little bit bigger. By the time you get to Friday and those pads get on, some of those young ones step back and say, ‘I’m not sure I’m ready for this.’ Then they get really tired about 10 days in, and some of them pull up, they’re just not ready for it emotionally. They’re not mature enough. You have to figure out then, you don’t want to panic with one that’s worn out, but (the media) may be talking about how someone looked and he may be talking to me about quitting and going home and I can’t talk to tell you. Then when you get through that first ball game, and you’re into the season, it’s usually the first three or four weeks you get a pretty good feel of who’s going to be a factor this year.

On Duane Akina returning to coaching kick blocking: I think Duane’s the best at that in the country and we overloaded him last year. We took him out of the positions he’s helped us so much at, and it really hurt us last year. He’s so excited about having it back, so it will be a factor early. We’ve got Quan who can return them, so we’ve got a really good package there we think again. We lost our stinger there.

On the impact Ken Rucker’s new position had this summer: I give a lot to the kids, because they took it on themselves and they were embarrassed. That’s not us. They wanted to do better, and they policed each other to a degree. But I do think the message of Ken, of establishing a position from DeLoss (Dodds) and Bill Powers and our office. Ken checking rooms every night, texting them, calling them, him being the extended father in the dorm and across the team, and Nancy, his wife, is a nurse on campus and she’s over there all the time. They’re eating lunch with them. I do think that position had a really huge impact.

On D.J. Monroe and Ryan Roberson’s position choices: (Monroe) played offense all last year. He’s really a tailback, slotback, wide receiver anyway, and he likes to return kicks. He’s kin to Quentin Jammer, so he really got excited about defensive back, but I think anybody that saw the (THSCA) All-Star Game the other night knows where his heart is. His heart’s getting that ball in his hands. He was excited that we didn’t care. We let all freshmen do what they want to. They ask us our opinion and we tell them. We even told Ryan (Roberson) if you want to do both of them (running back and linebacker) for a couple of days until you get settled, that’s fine with us. Bobby Kennedy’s probably been recruiting D.J. the last couple of days, and Will’s probably been recruiting Ryan because they were both excited about their choices this morning, so that’s probably what happened.

On finding kickoff and punt returners: There’s seven of them, all the fast ones that can catch. One of the problems is you’ve got too many on a team like ours. I look at the list and there are 12 that we sit there and look at. You’ve got to get it down to three, probably, that you can use and if you have some tough luck and have more injuries, that list grows. One of the real problems of early practice, as we talk about what to get accomplished, is you want to see who can snap, and we’re in better shape with our snappers right now. You want to see who can catch punts and who can catch kickoffs, and you can only have so much time, and at the same time, their coaches are constantly pulling them to get them back to their drills, so it’s really a tough thing to make sure that you get to watch the guys because you’ve got to watch the guy catch it in live snaps.