In his post-game news conference, Al Groh mentioned that oft-injured TB Michael Johnson was in street clothes today because he injured his ankle in practice this week. He also noted that NT Kevin Crawford (shoulder) has been practicing but wasn't ready for full-speed game action and termed ILB Rashawn Jackson (shoulder) "probably ahead of schedule" in his recovery.
[joined in progress]
On spring practice:
We got a lot done. We’re going down the right road. We’ve got a lot more to do. Obviously this is one of the most inexperienced teams we’ve had, as indicated by the fact that we only have one senior [CB Marcus Hamilton] in the whole defensive lineup. But we have a lot of talented young players, and so they just need a lot of days like this to come on. It’s going to be very important that we bring them on as fast as we can. The clock is running, whether they’re young or old.
Q: Did you have a full-fledged draft or assign players to each team?
Because of the depth situation, we kind of drafted units rather than individuals. One coach drafted the offensive line, and so therefore the other coach thought he should match the defensive line up against them. Then that coach thought he should put the first receivers with the first line, so then the other coach thought he better put the first secondary with that group. So that’s kind of how it went.
Q: Can you explain what TB Mikell Simpson, DE Jeffrey Fitzgerald and OLB Clint Sintim did to win the Rock Weir Award as the most improved players this spring?
Mikell Simpson, I think you could see a little bit of his quickness and kind of slitheriness out there. Mikell’s got a ways to go, but he’s come a long ways from the first day of spring practice – or for that matter, the first day of training camp last year. One of the things that has been involved with him, because he’s got, as you can see, a fairly elusive style, [is] that he didn’t get hit a lot in high school. And so just the contact level of the game – obviously the contact level in college football is higher for anybody, but [especially] for a player who kind of ran away from contact and made them all miss in high school. Now he’s in a situation where the briar patch is a little thicker in this league, so he really has had to get used to the contact element of it. Everything that he did in high school was based on getting him the ball – throwing it to him, handing to him, letting him return kicks – so every other aspect of the game, particularly the blocking on pass protection, has been a brand-new experience for him. You can tell he’s not a particularly stout guy [6-1, 187], but he’s shown a real willingness to step up and take ’em on – center ’em up, whatever the consequences might be. And he’s done a good job in learning his pass protection. So he’s really made big strides here. He’s still got a long ways to go from the player we think he’s going to be, but he’s made big strides.
Jeffrey Fitzgerald really has done a nice job. It kind of started back in December. You can certainly say about Jeffrey that he’s one of the players that shows the value of having those extra [bowl] practices in December. His move on this position started back during the course of those practice sessions when we would segment a certain part of the practice just for developmental purposes. It wasn’t bowl preparation; it was ‘coach the young players and kind of start their spring practice.’ And it was detailed to those guys: ‘Look, this is when you start making your move. Don’t wait ‘til March 29. This is when you start.’ And he really did. On a couple of those plays – one where he almost intercepted the ball, another one where he got the sack, another one where he pursued to the sideline – you can really see his athletic ability. He’s developed some mass and some more strength. There’s more of that to come. He’s been on top of business ever since he got here. He’s done real well academically. He manages his personal affairs well. He’s been intent in the weight room. Very good.
Clint Sintim – I recall saying about both Clint and Cedric Peerman during their first year when they were being redshirted and they weren’t playing due to the depth chart in front of them, that they were two of the best players in their class. Clint has continued to come on and prove that. And here’s a player who did start 12 games last year, compared to the other two players who didn’t play. It isn’t so much that he didn’t do well last year; it’s that he just is coming on strong and has a chance to be one of the better players that we’ve had since we’ve been here.
Q: Is Fitzgerald’s development important because of what you need at left end?
We lost a player there [Brennan Schmidt] who tied the ACC record for career starts, so we’ve been pretty well set for quite some time. Chris [Long] is well established in what his upside is on the other side, so that’s become a position of – it was a position of attention as we started the spring. He’s given us some positive feelings about that the way he’s performed, yes.
Q: WR Kevin Ogletree had a lot of balls thrown his way; has he shown you something this spring?
It just kind of came to him as the coverage determined and the reads; I don’t think there was necessarily an intent to feature him. But he’s got that kind of ability that he should be able to develop into that kind of player.
Q: How did QB Christian Olsen look?
Well, Chris did a real good job. You know, one of the reasons I like to stand out there [on the field] is I like to see how certain players handle themselves under certain circumstances. That’s where they’re going to be next fall when they’re going to be out there without us. You get as complete and full an understanding about the player [as possible]. I want to see what the communication is. I know what the communication should be on a number of calls, whether it be by the offensive linemen or the defensive linemen. I want to see if that’s being made. I want to see who’s talking about situations and alert to the game situations, not just the play that’s called. And I really kind of want to see what the quarterback is seeing as he has to make some of his decisions. I thought Chris managed his team well. He was on top of a lot of situations. He interjected a lot of points about the situation or the play to his offensive huddle – ‘Be alert to this circumstance’ or ‘This is where they like to blitz,’ ‘We’ve got to hurry up now; we don’t have too much time left on the clock.’ And then the throw that he made to Deyon [Williams] there that was necessary to get his team into field-goal range was a real positive play. That’s a throw that has to be made if you’re going to move your team down there at the end of the game, and he stepped up and pulled the string very well. I think it’s been a positive spring for Chris – mostly because he’s had an increased opportunity to demonstrate his skills now that he’s taken the majority of the turns. Today I think would go on the positive side of the ledger for him.
Q: ILB Jon Copper (Northside) has been described as a guy who doesn’t make mistakes, but it seemed he did more than just avoid mistakes today.
That’s accurate to part of his profile as a player, but I certainly have not said that. You know, whoever said that all he is is a don’t-make-mistakes guy is underselling him. This is a kid who just seems to understand the game very well. The game comes easily to him. He studies it very hard and when he’s on the field, he’s got a good sense of where the ball’s going. He did that on a number of occasions today, I thought. From where I’m standing [behind the offense] I can look right in his eyes. I knew what he was looking at, as with all of those linebackers.
Q: Was OLB Aaron Clark (Rockbridge County) also fairly active?
This was probably his best day of the spring. Perhaps the progress wasn’t as fast here sometimes during the spring as we might have hoped. But this is like the final exam. They’re out there on their own. He made some real good plays today.
Q: Could this be a special year for RB Jason Snelling?
Well, we would certainly hope so, in that, to a large extent, his dreams and aspirations of his college career are going to be packed into one season. And from a team standpoint, it’s going to be important that we get a real big season out of him. He’s going to certainly be one of the featured performers this year. There’s going to have to be some things happen when he gets the ball, and he did a good job with that today. As you can see, he’s not fun to tackle. He packs a pretty good punch.
Q: How is QB Jameel Sewell learning the game to go along with his physical skills?
There were a couple of situations that got away from him today. One was the fourth-down play where I think he misunderstood what was instructed to him from the sideline. We had a little bit of a clock management situation there. Got the delay-of-the-game penalty when his team was in field-goal range. Those are things that come from playing, and that’s kind of the value of one of these games, particularly at that position. Players who haven’t been out there before have to go out there and deal with those circumstances that aren’t part of most of your normal practices, but from a physical execution standpoint, he had some positive plays today.
Q: What’s it like coaching such a young team where they’re all growing up together?
I hear the word ‘young’ being associated with teams so much that it almost sounds like an excuse, so I’d rather really not use that word, although maybe in fact that’s what it is. I’d rather just say ‘inexperienced,’ because there are some players who have been with us for a while who are now moving into more significant roles. I wouldn’t put them in the ‘young’ category; I’d just put them in the ‘inexperienced’ category. But to some degree that’s the nature of college football. We had a very unusual situation I think during the course of the last two years to have players like Schmidt, [D’Brickashaw] Ferguson, [Brad] Butler, [Brian] Barthelmes, [Alvin] Pearman, [Wali] Lundy, [Heath] Miller – these are all players who started playing a great deal very early in their career, out of necessity in some degree and out of the talent that they brought for another. So that meant that we played with those players for a long time, and we were the beneficiary of that. But usually you don’t play with that many players for that many games. I think there are probably a lot of other teams that’ve got to plug some guys in there, but that’s what we’re supposed to do, so we’ll find out how good we are at doing that.
Q: It seemed like the quarterbacks were looking for WR Andrew Pearman a lot; is he a guy that, no matter what role he has, will be on the field in some capacity this fall?
Well, I’d say it’s not so much a case of the quarterbacks looking for them as that they see him. By that I mean they may not start out looking for him, but he gets himself open, and quarterbacks tend to see the guys who get open. They’re back there and they’re trying to make the reads or see who darts into different windows and openings and he gets open. So as a result, they see him and when they see him, they fire the ball to him. Ogletree has a little bit of that ability to do that. Both of them, however you would want to call it – erratic, mercurial – both of them have pretty decent skills, some of the better skills that we have. I’d say both of them had one of those days where they had plays of significance. They each had a couple plays they could have made [and didn’t]. Maybe that’s the experience factor, but we’ll have to coach that out of them. They’ll have to get it out of their system.
Q: After missing his senior year of high school because of a knee injury and redshirting last season, was Fitzgerald particularly excited today to play in front of a crowd again?
Very early in the afternoon, just standing where I was – which was pretty close to where he was lining up – he was showing that he was pretty enthused about being out there – most likely for the same circumstances that you cite. Of all the players on our team, he’s one of the players – perhaps the player who’s gone the longest stretch without playing in a game. He’s gone two full football seasons, didn’t play in a game. So that he had the spring that he did and played the way that he did today probably adds another exclamation point to the encouragement that that gives us.
Q: Did the weather make it tough to reach your goal of 20,000 fans here today?
I think we made a move forward towards that number. Just like with a lot of things, we may not have hit the target right away, but we’ll keep working to climb ‘til we get to the ceiling of what we want to do. We made a good move. The fans were very involved and into the game. We appreciated those [7,869] who came. Perhaps if we’d had a little bit less dire forecast, some of the people who thought that maybe they would have encountered the rain and hail and lightning that the doomsayers said was going to occur here may have made the drive.
Q: How were Olsen, Hamilton, Long and Williams chosen as captains?
The team voted on it. And actually, it was an interesting vote. We just set out to vote for one on each side, and on each side of the ball, the two players voted as the co-captains – the two on offense and the two on defense – each got the same amount of votes. Sometimes when we’ve had two leading vote-getters, we’ve had a captain and a co-captain. One guy was clearly in the lead. In this case, on each side they both got the exact same amount of votes. They clearly are co-captains of each side and co-captains of the team.
Q: What does it say that Olsen was selected without having proven himself on the field in games?
Yeah, it’s a good thing. I think it’s certainly a positive indicator of confidence that his teammates have in him.
Q: What has the spring been like for TEs Tom Santi, Jon Stupar and John Phillips (Bath County)?
Very competitive. That position is the focal point of how we operate, as has certainly been the case over the previous five seasons. It’s got to be a very productive position for us. It’s one of the key positions on our team. We think we always ought to have a lot of good players there for that reason. We do now. There’s a lot of competition for playing time there now. We had two of them in the game a lot for each side today. We had sessions during the course of the spring where we had more than two of them in there. So they’re going to play a very prominent role for us and they’ve got to step forward. By the same token, it’s not just ‘Hey, we got you; we’re going to use you.’ It’s competitive for the playing time, and it should remain that way for quite some time around here.
Q: Why was TB Michael Johnson out?
He got his ankle rolled up on in practice on Wednesday. Really I didn’t know that anything occurred during that practice but found out Thursday morning that somebody rolled on his ankle and that he probably wouldn’t be able to go today.
Q: What do you think of these ‘Joe’ shirts the players got over the offseason?
That was Evan’s idea [strength and conditioning coach Evan Marcus]. It’s a real good idea. It’s interesting; I’ve gotten a lot of remarks on them. Chris Slade, for example, today told me, ‘Coach, I really like the “Joe” shirt.’ You know, this is kind of a ‘Joe’ team. There really are not very many ‘name’ players on the team. That doesn’t mean that there’re not some talented players on the team, but there certainly are no real big-name players on the team. It’s indicative of the fact that, hey, we’re all the same. We’re just coming in every day to grind it out. That’s what they’ve done since January. That’s what they did all spring long. That’s been the personality for a long time, but it’s highlighted in this particular fact. Every day in the offseason training program, we had 65-plus Joes in there. Of course, you can imagine, you know, when somebody said, ‘Hey, Joe,’ a lot of people jumped. … That’s who they are. That’s kind of who they like to be. We try to have something, if possible, that ties into what the overall team theme for the offseason program is. We talked about it at the end of December or early January when we could kind of see what the makeup of the team was going to be. [Marcus] made the suggestion and it sounded like an excellent one.
Q: It sounds like you’re not afraid to start Copper at inside linebacker.
I’m planning on it right now. He’s done a real good job.
Stay tuned for interviews with QB Christian Olsen, OLB Clint Sintim, CB Mike Brown and OL Ian-Yates Cunningham ...
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