Table Scraps | by Jay
Just a reminder that UND is archiving each Charlie post-practice presser. Monday's is here and yesterday is here. Jerry Stabley over on IE is also doing transcripts. A few morsels from the last two days:
You hear a lot in the preseason that your defense and secondary was a weakness. As a coach, with all those guys back, do you look at that as a strength because of the experience they gained?
“That answer is two-fold; one is personnel-related and one is schematic and they are two separate issues. I think we will be better both personnel-wise from the guys having more experience and having a better clue of what to do, plus the influx of the young guys coming in. We have tweaked our system so I think we are far ahead of where we are schematically. Sometimes you are searching for answers and we feel pretty good about what the potential answers are. And now we have to find out if we can validate that or not.”
There was a time here where kickers were reluctantly given scholarships and there wasn’t much coaching going on with the kickers. How important is it to have someone like Brian Polian coaching the kickers?
“Brian does a really good job and goes the extra mile, research-wise, to get answers to both our schemes on special teams and help with the kickers. I have come from a string of head coaches who all have special teams backgrounds and so do I...there are a lot of programs where if you don’t have the backing of the head coach, if he doesn’t make it important, the players don’t perceive it as important. The guy I feel that has done the best job in college football, year-in and year-out, over the last decade is Frank Beamer. Frank Beamer’s special teams have always been great because of his emphasis. In Brian’s case, he knows he has my backing. And when you have the head coach’s backing, it’s no different than the strength coach, no matter how good they are, is only good if the head coach finds that important. I like to think that I find that important.”
How long does it take, like with the freshmen, to get an assessment of a guy and say this guy might be able to help us out?
“There are some guys out there today that you say, [whooosh]. The thing is, they don’t do it on every play. But once you see that they can do it once, you know they can do it. There’s a difference between someone who just can’t do it. Once somebody has done it once, you know they are capable of doing it. Now it’s our job and their job getting them to do that on a regular basis. There are other guys who will come along at a much slower pace and each guy is going to be different and evaluated based on what we see, not what we are hoping to see.”
Who made you say that today?
Munir Prince; I think if you asked any of the defensive guys what they saw out there. I’m not used to seeing that kind of speed at running back. When I’m talking speed, I’m talking, [whooosh]. I can’t describe [whooosh] but you kind of know what I’m talking about...I’m not used to seeing that type of speed.
