Michigan State University Athletics
Practice Update: Catching Up With Secchia Family Defensive Coordinator Scottie Hazelton
10/1/2020 4:58:00 PM | Football
EAST LANSING, Mich. – Michigan State Secchia Family Defensive Coordinator Scottie Hazelton answered questions from the media for 30 minutes on Thursday afternoon to give an update on the Spartans.
Michigan State is nearly complete with its second full week of practice following the resumption of the 2020 Big Ten season and practiced for the first time in full pads on Wednesday (Sept. 30).
A transcript from the press conference is below:
On implementing the defense over the last few months...
The staff really did a good job trying to come up with a plan to get them moving when we were on Zoom calls and stuff like that. And the guys bought into it too, which was a cool thing. We've all been in the Zoom world for so long. You're tired of just talking on it, so we tried to get the guys up, and you know, they can put down five socks and watch the tape from the end zone and see your key and move and do some of those things, or walk through defenses, the best we could. We really worked on communication, that was the biggest part that we thought we needed to get. So at least, they might not know how to do what they're trying to do. But they knew what they were going to talk about when they got out on the field. If we do this, we got to say this and you get the communication piece through. And that helped to transition when we actually got to start going. But the wonderful thing for us was those first four days of the first fall camp, for us to get some of that stuff on tape and just start working through those things really, really helped us when it came down to the second one.
On what the defensive schemes look like heading into practice...
We're trying to install as much as we can; I think it's a fine balance there. We have great minds all over the place on this, and everybody's run a different scheme. And we're trying to take the best from each defense and kind of put it in, but we've got to be able to make it all work together. So we're going figure that out. That's the first thing we started with was four down because that was our personnel. We're going see how we move or, who can play can play d-tackle, who's big enough to move inside, who's a good enough guy to stand up and do some dropping and stuff like that. So we're figuring that piece out as we continue to go. The start was good for us, and then we broke, but to come back, we're still implementing our defense right now. So what that'll look like it will be dependent on how the guys learn on the way through there.
On the difficulty on formulating practice plans with limited access to players...
The good news is Coach Tucker was around during the lockout years in the NFL, and so he did a good job kind of preparing us. 'Hey, let's go through and say we have four weeks, say we have three weeks, and we have eight weeks, say we have, you know, a normal week.' For us, as coaches, we dive into the X's and O's and do all those kinds of things, but we spent a lot more of our summertime just really working different plans. Like what if we do get this? What if we do get this? So when we got to the point where they said, 'Hey, you guys can go,' well, we just pulled out that plan and started working that plan, because it was kind of it was ready and prepared. And so, that helped us really get our minds, right, and then it's kind of we think we can do this plan, but when we actually started to get to it, now we're a few days in the camp, you know, really start over with again with pads. So we kind of went back to page one again to try to re-install it. But as we move forward, it's going to see how the guys really play in pads when it's real ball, not in pajamas and stuff like that and see how far we can progress. Because when you start to see guys start to slow down well, then we know okay, that that's probably it, right there. We need to go back and re-do it again, and that's kind of what we're doing now that we got pads on.
On how you decipher what the players are capable of in such little time...
Sure, you know those days (during the first fall camp) were really good, because we got some stuff on tape, so we stopped watching what other people do, we're watching the mistakes our guys made. Then we can pinpoint those and work those things and those techniques, when you're coming back to practice again. You have the chance to work those fundamentals, the ones we messed up the first time. As the other thing, you talked about the clues, the clues come like we talked about, communication is huge on defense and all of football, right. And when you start putting guys on the field, the offense does something and it's quiet, okay, there's a clue. Or if you get a guy or two that are, 'Ahh, I'm supposed to say something,' okay, that's another clue. Or you get a guy that, you see, generally he's set up so he can cover some ground and he can go, well, now he's kind of okay, that those are all clues, once the guys start playing slow, or they're not as loud, you know, the communication, all those things and say, Okay, we'll get the kind of take a step back. Wait, let us catch up to what we installed. Okay, now, we can go on to the next thing.
On if any guys have stood out thus far in practice...
I think when you go to someplace new, there's always some anxiety for us, you know, first of all, as coaches, just to see how the guys are gonna be. And one great thing about coming here is, we always, as an outsider, you know, we watch ball too, we kind of know what everybody does. Michigan State's always been great on defense, and for me, that's one of the things that drew me even to come up here and talk to these guys is to kind of see why. What's makes it so special? Well, when we got here, we started working with the guys even through Zoom, I'm not gonna say the whole group, there are still some young guys, but as a group, we're more mature than a lot of the teams that we've been around in the past. The teams that you go into, you start to talk through this, okay, they understand concepts, they understand the basics, they understand the universal things, you know, on this down and distance and this situation, this is what teams do, they understand those things, which makes it easier to coach them. And they can connect the dots, even though you're changing some defensive scheme stuff on them, or they can say, okay that makes sense, because I understand what the offense is trying to do, so this is what we're trying to, so it's been really good there.
We have some great leaders out there, you got a guy like Antjuan Simmons running around the field. He's a different cat, when he starts talking out there, or Xavier (Henderson). Those guys bring great leadership and they can bring, the quality of practice up. And the third thing I'll say about these guys, they work hard, man. They've been trained for a long time. They just do. There's times we try to fluster him, there's times we try to work them even harder than it's gonna be in a game and they keep grinding through it. And it's a wonderful thing to have, you know, because that doesn't happen everywhere.
On getting extra time before the season starts after not having a normal spring...
Sure, that's been really good for us, getting to know the guys. It's about the connections is a lot of what it is, because the guys got to trust you and what they say. The actual little bit of time during fall camp has been really beneficial, and our strength coaches have done a good job. Because really, when they first showed up, we were very concerned with just a lack of time to get these guys in shape. That was the biggest thing. We started going out on the practice field and we were cutting reps and making some things walk through, and we couldn't even have a normal practice at that point. And when they shut it down for a little while, since we're all on campus, and we could work together finally, our strength guys did a great job at least starting to turn that corner. Football shape's a hard thing to do anyway. And we saw it for the first time yesterday really when you're actually hitting and it's pads. It's different than running around without pads on, but the guys were gassed yesterday, but if we would have tried that, you know, a few months ago when we were supposed to start you know it would have it would have been a really hard thing to do. It would have been a couple reps take a break a couple reps take a break. At least we got through a whole two-hour practice yesterday. It was fun.
What have you seen so far from redshirt freshman Michael Fletcher...
He's a really smart young man; I can tell you that. He does work hard. He's a guy that runs the ball, and he strives to win and learn and do all those things. His length is wonderful, as a coach, you love those guys that are long like that, and they can lean into all those things. When he was going through the stuff in the pajamas (non-pads), everybody can kind of look good there. I noticed pad levels a little high, and we got to keep working on that. As we get into these padded days, that'll tell the time and see how good he can get off the ball, what we can use him in and see what his length does all those things. Because it's kind of hard, especially up front, you can see some guys run around the back end, but it's hard to totally evaluate that guy, but we're excited about him.
On where reference "pajamas" (non-pads) came from...
I don't know. That's one of those things that, one of the coaches I used to work with used to say, and you pick up on it. It is one of this was one of those things that you call it for a while, it's not real ball. It's like fake, right.
On what was impressive initially after getting the pads on...
Really, it starts up front, you see the d-tackles, you got guys in there, young guys too like, Jalen Hunt. Guys scrapping around that haven't got a lot of playing time before, and we're a physical offense, those guys are pounding against them. They're holding the line of scrimmage and fighting and trying to use their technique. And that's one of those maturity things that we talked about, generally, the first day you put on the pads, everything you've learned up to this point is gets thrown out the window. Seriously, guys go back to whatever they could do. Those guys up front held the line of scrimmage, for the most part. You could tell at the end of practice, there starting to be some losing, or you starting to lose that just because we're getting tired, but they did a good job competing up front. And then to see the backers actually have a chance, like Chase Kline or Simmons or Noah Harvey, come back and actually hit a guy in front and stop him. Those are things that you'd like to see because you don't know. You're playing tag, it's like flag football. And, and to see guys be able to front guys up and put faces on them and stop contact. It starts to give you a feel of your personality. 'Hey, why is Michigan State always been good against the run,' Well, because we get good, big tough guys that can fall back, make tackles do things, stop people. And that was that was wonderful to see.
On whether or not the first day in pads felt more organized...
Sure. The guys had a chance to go through it and learn a little bit, which is what you hope. And if we would have done this the first time - first day in pads, new scheme, don't really know ... that would have caused issues, but now that we've had a little bit of time to practice, start, stop, then start again, and then go into pads, it helped the guys at least for the first day be a little bit cleaner than a lot of places.
On the front seven…
You see guys like Naquan Jones, or Jacob Slade, or some of those guys; they were on tape last year too, they used to rotate in. The cool thing about defensive line is sure you lose a bunch of starters, but there's a lot of guys with a lot of game experience in there. If you go back and watch the tape, Drew Beesley has played football in the Big Ten, and to see him continue to go. Jack Camper is another guy, he's played a little bit, he needs to keep going, but he's doing pretty good. Having (Jacub) back, which is great, and everyone knows what he is. The inside guys pounding through, you know Naquan's tough, he can continue to battle inside, and he's got a little bit of juice to him. Jacob Slade is a super strong guy, holding point, it gives you the 'physicalness' that you want.
Really, what you're looking at is the next guys behind them though, guys like Maverick Hansen or Jalen Hunt. Your first team guys who are moving up, sure, they're always hungry because they replace three guys who have gone to the NFL. That's tough duty, right? But you're hoping the guys behind them have enough playing experience that they are ready to step up; it's the next group. Maverick has shown some flashes and strength and power, all those things. You know who is on the up climb right now is Jalen Hunt. He's doing some things and shown some flashes that you say, 'hey, I'm sure this is the reason they recruited him before.' The kid can turn into a really good player.
On managing expectations this season, given the different look of the offseason and preseason practice…
You put it into process. The easy part is when you look at it that way, you say look, it's about the process. We have to learn what we're doing, and then we have to learn how to do it. And if we can learn those things in each defense as we continue on…we're not going to move on until we get some of that down and we can do things efficiently. And it might be a deal where, yes, there are things you're not able to install this year, there's things that you'd like to work to, or there's things where if you had a bye week, you'd say let's save that; all that stuff is not going to happen.
So as we temper it, we'll say listen, we're going to play as hard as we can every snap, and that's going to eliminate a lot of the mistakes that you have, because even when you watch games now, there's some sloppiness out there, and I'm not going to say that we're going to be immune to that, I'm just going to say that we're going to try and limit that as much as we can by saying, 'hey, listen, everybody let's learn what we need to do,' and keep those guys who are in your bubble and be safe, let's try to train everybody, as many guys as we can; you just asked about the depth up front, well, we might be down to guy number five, eight, or nine, depending on what happens with COVID (testing) or any injuries or whatever. So we're trying to keep it clean and teach the guys, 'hey, this is what we do, this is how we do it,' ok now, we can get into the process of seeing keys on offense, and try to simplify it as much as you can, and keep them connected to the process. The results will handle themselves. And everybody was in the same boat as we were. We had a chance to start, everyone stopped, OK great, that stuff doesn't matter to us. We're going in there every day just saying what can I get better at, we do we need to learn, how can I get better fundamentally, and how much more can I run to try and work my effort to the ball. I don't know if I answered that question, because it's hard to say what expectations are. We're just going to put our nose to the grindstone and go.
On the back seven…
Dom Long is playing pretty good. A guy that I'm really impressed with is Kalon Gervin. He's the guy outside playing corner, he's doing some really good things. He's got really good feet, can stay over the top. Julian Barnett has come along, we're excited about him. He makes progress every single day. Davion (Williams) is a guy you can see, and Chris (Jackson). All those corners, Harlon has been doing a great job with those guys, just making them better and better and better. And we still have Shakur (Brown). There's some guys outside that, I know you lose a draft pick (Josiah Scott) and some of those guys, there's some guys that are developing and we're trying to figure out what the best mix of DBs are.
You'll see us sometimes too, guys are playing different positions just to learn different things, trying to learn their skill set. Now it's for real, because you want to be able to say, hey, we're going to play a third corner, who would that be, and who is the most physical guy that can play inside. If we're going to play a guy at safety, as you go through, everybody knows about Xavier (Henderson), Tre (Person), how much can you put him in the box, he's a little light, he's got really good range, but he's doing a good job; or Michael Dowell, or Emmanuel (Flowers), all those guys are in the mix, and we're just trying to find the right formula for them all. And they've been mixing around positions too. We're trying to find the right slot. Now that we have pads on, and you're banging around a little bit, and you're getting around big guys, and you're doing all that, it's good to see those guys, because the slots become clearer. You might have an idea, hey, this guy is really a corner, this guy is going to be a really good safety, some guys can be a box player a little bit more, how do we fit our pieces in, and now that we got the pads on, it's starting to clear up a little bit. And those are guys we think that are pretty good. They've shown some athleticism and we're excited about seeing them continue to grow.
On the weights of the defensive ends and the defensive tackles…
We're getting closer with a lot of those guys. You always have those guys who have trouble gaining weight because they're young and their metabolism is going crazy, but it's getting closer. The strength staff does a great job. We meet with them, it seems like all the time. But to sit down with them, and we go through each and every guy, and say, here's where we are. Then they check in with us and keep us updated, and we try to stay there. Whether it's getting them with a nutritionist, whatever we got to do, but they've been working that way. It's been a little hectic this year, to tell you the truth, because of all the COVID stuff; there's times where these guys weren't even here, and we had no way to get them food or provide for them, so that was kind of hard, so just to have those guys back where we want them to be, we're working on that still; it's a work in progress, but it's getting closer.
On Jalen Hunt…
He's going to be a good one. He's going to be able to make some plays.
On Julian Barnett…
It's getting back to being a full-time defensive guy. In that position, when you're on the edge, there's a lot of times where you're Gilligan out there, you're on that island and you're all alone, and to really sit down and be able to learn the techniques, they got a great one over there with Harlon Barnett coaching them over there, and saying hey, you're footwork, here's what you need to do, here's your mentality, here's the things that people are going to try and do, and that's what you like to see. He started off and thought I'm a really good athlete, because he is, he's a really physical, strong kid, his feet are good, he can run, he can do all those things, he's got a lot of the things that you like to see, but just to put those into use, in the offseason, it's hard, because you haven't been able to work with the guys, so for him, he's trying to learn what we're trying to do via video, and a lot of times if you're a defensive tackle or a corner, well, sure, 'I got that guy in man,' but it's hard to physically do that and learn the technique. And now that we're together with them and we can work with them, those are the guys, the defensive tackles and the corners, those are the guys that really need technique, technique, technique, because the smallest thing that they do wrong can be a big problem for you. And those are the guys that we're excited to see because, hey, you step on the field, I'm wrong, I'm just going to go on the field and ball, now the technique is starting to come around and he's doing better and better, so that's where we're excited to see him grow.
On the mental aspect of getting ready for college football…
A couple of things. First of all, you have to take care of your grades first. That's the number one thing at any level. But make sure they take care of their grades so they have the availability to go there.
The second thing that I think gets missed a lot is…your body. Your body is your business. Your body is what gets you an opportunity to get in the NFL or go to college, or whatever the case is. And I don't know that young people are mature enough to understand, hey, my ice bath, nutrition, what I put into my body, the sleep I get, all of those little things, they add up to whether…if you have two guys who are working equally as hard, and one (kid) is making better gains than the other, well, why is that? It's not because they're doing anything different. Well, OK, let's look at their outside. This guy's not sleeping, he's doing the wrong thing off the field, he's not putting the right nutrients in his body, he's running to McDonald's instead of grilling some chicken or whatever, all of those little things, they matter. And this guy, generally if he's ice bathing, he's taking care of his body and doing all those things, he's able to stay on the field, which means he can learn and improve more.
The first rule of getting better is to show up. If this guy gets nicked up because he's not taking care of his body, he can't show up, he can't get better. So those are the things that for us, we're really trying to preach to our young guys too. We have to learn how to do that to stay on the field and get the technique so we can get better.
On playing the 4-3 vs. the 3-4, and finding a middle linebacker…
There's some of that, no doubt. Chase (Kline) is running around, Noah (Harvey) is doing pretty good, you got some guys that are there, and the young guys, just mixing them through to see how they pick it up. The 3-4, 4-3 thing, there's some common things in both schemes, and as long as it's a deal where you can line here, and play this coverage, you might be rolling your coverage or whatever, and you can also take those same dudes and move them over a little bit, just changes the gaps and makes it a little bit different front. And you can run the same coverage. So a little bit of that is, as we work through it, how do you work the front and the coverage together, what can you do out of each? And that's not as complicated as it may seem sometimes, but it's definitely hard when you get into the finite parts of going down the road into these, and you might be a little bit more vanilla as you move forward, rather than all of the different things that you see out of each package, that's the hard part about the time.
On Jacub Panasiuk returning…
I know this, it made us better coaches when he came back. I mean, that's what you want, a guy who can rush the passer and do some things, and provide a little leadership. It's just the amount of plays and the experience that he's got, just made us better by him coming back.
He's a great dude. He's a guy that has a 'want' to get better, and want to be really good, so when you work with him, he's fun to work with, because he's always searching. You talk about those guys that say, 'Coach me coach,' well, he's one of those guys. Give him this, give him this nugget. And you can be hard on him and keep giving him more, because he has the same expectations.
What it does, when you get guys like him, or Drew Beesley, or some of those guys, they up the level of want to and intensity in the room, and when young guys see this is where this guy wants to be coached all the time, then they understand that that's acceptable. They don't get down on themselves, they don't get their feelings hurt. They start to see that too, and they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's great to have a guy that has experience back, first of all, and a guy that you can coach, and he provides an example of how to take coaching for everybody else. That's a leadership thing you miss sometimes.
Michigan State is nearly complete with its second full week of practice following the resumption of the 2020 Big Ten season and practiced for the first time in full pads on Wednesday (Sept. 30).
A transcript from the press conference is below:
On implementing the defense over the last few months...
The staff really did a good job trying to come up with a plan to get them moving when we were on Zoom calls and stuff like that. And the guys bought into it too, which was a cool thing. We've all been in the Zoom world for so long. You're tired of just talking on it, so we tried to get the guys up, and you know, they can put down five socks and watch the tape from the end zone and see your key and move and do some of those things, or walk through defenses, the best we could. We really worked on communication, that was the biggest part that we thought we needed to get. So at least, they might not know how to do what they're trying to do. But they knew what they were going to talk about when they got out on the field. If we do this, we got to say this and you get the communication piece through. And that helped to transition when we actually got to start going. But the wonderful thing for us was those first four days of the first fall camp, for us to get some of that stuff on tape and just start working through those things really, really helped us when it came down to the second one.
On what the defensive schemes look like heading into practice...
We're trying to install as much as we can; I think it's a fine balance there. We have great minds all over the place on this, and everybody's run a different scheme. And we're trying to take the best from each defense and kind of put it in, but we've got to be able to make it all work together. So we're going figure that out. That's the first thing we started with was four down because that was our personnel. We're going see how we move or, who can play can play d-tackle, who's big enough to move inside, who's a good enough guy to stand up and do some dropping and stuff like that. So we're figuring that piece out as we continue to go. The start was good for us, and then we broke, but to come back, we're still implementing our defense right now. So what that'll look like it will be dependent on how the guys learn on the way through there.
On the difficulty on formulating practice plans with limited access to players...
The good news is Coach Tucker was around during the lockout years in the NFL, and so he did a good job kind of preparing us. 'Hey, let's go through and say we have four weeks, say we have three weeks, and we have eight weeks, say we have, you know, a normal week.' For us, as coaches, we dive into the X's and O's and do all those kinds of things, but we spent a lot more of our summertime just really working different plans. Like what if we do get this? What if we do get this? So when we got to the point where they said, 'Hey, you guys can go,' well, we just pulled out that plan and started working that plan, because it was kind of it was ready and prepared. And so, that helped us really get our minds, right, and then it's kind of we think we can do this plan, but when we actually started to get to it, now we're a few days in the camp, you know, really start over with again with pads. So we kind of went back to page one again to try to re-install it. But as we move forward, it's going to see how the guys really play in pads when it's real ball, not in pajamas and stuff like that and see how far we can progress. Because when you start to see guys start to slow down well, then we know okay, that that's probably it, right there. We need to go back and re-do it again, and that's kind of what we're doing now that we got pads on.
On how you decipher what the players are capable of in such little time...
Sure, you know those days (during the first fall camp) were really good, because we got some stuff on tape, so we stopped watching what other people do, we're watching the mistakes our guys made. Then we can pinpoint those and work those things and those techniques, when you're coming back to practice again. You have the chance to work those fundamentals, the ones we messed up the first time. As the other thing, you talked about the clues, the clues come like we talked about, communication is huge on defense and all of football, right. And when you start putting guys on the field, the offense does something and it's quiet, okay, there's a clue. Or if you get a guy or two that are, 'Ahh, I'm supposed to say something,' okay, that's another clue. Or you get a guy that, you see, generally he's set up so he can cover some ground and he can go, well, now he's kind of okay, that those are all clues, once the guys start playing slow, or they're not as loud, you know, the communication, all those things and say, Okay, we'll get the kind of take a step back. Wait, let us catch up to what we installed. Okay, now, we can go on to the next thing.
On if any guys have stood out thus far in practice...
I think when you go to someplace new, there's always some anxiety for us, you know, first of all, as coaches, just to see how the guys are gonna be. And one great thing about coming here is, we always, as an outsider, you know, we watch ball too, we kind of know what everybody does. Michigan State's always been great on defense, and for me, that's one of the things that drew me even to come up here and talk to these guys is to kind of see why. What's makes it so special? Well, when we got here, we started working with the guys even through Zoom, I'm not gonna say the whole group, there are still some young guys, but as a group, we're more mature than a lot of the teams that we've been around in the past. The teams that you go into, you start to talk through this, okay, they understand concepts, they understand the basics, they understand the universal things, you know, on this down and distance and this situation, this is what teams do, they understand those things, which makes it easier to coach them. And they can connect the dots, even though you're changing some defensive scheme stuff on them, or they can say, okay that makes sense, because I understand what the offense is trying to do, so this is what we're trying to, so it's been really good there.
We have some great leaders out there, you got a guy like Antjuan Simmons running around the field. He's a different cat, when he starts talking out there, or Xavier (Henderson). Those guys bring great leadership and they can bring, the quality of practice up. And the third thing I'll say about these guys, they work hard, man. They've been trained for a long time. They just do. There's times we try to fluster him, there's times we try to work them even harder than it's gonna be in a game and they keep grinding through it. And it's a wonderful thing to have, you know, because that doesn't happen everywhere.
On getting extra time before the season starts after not having a normal spring...
Sure, that's been really good for us, getting to know the guys. It's about the connections is a lot of what it is, because the guys got to trust you and what they say. The actual little bit of time during fall camp has been really beneficial, and our strength coaches have done a good job. Because really, when they first showed up, we were very concerned with just a lack of time to get these guys in shape. That was the biggest thing. We started going out on the practice field and we were cutting reps and making some things walk through, and we couldn't even have a normal practice at that point. And when they shut it down for a little while, since we're all on campus, and we could work together finally, our strength guys did a great job at least starting to turn that corner. Football shape's a hard thing to do anyway. And we saw it for the first time yesterday really when you're actually hitting and it's pads. It's different than running around without pads on, but the guys were gassed yesterday, but if we would have tried that, you know, a few months ago when we were supposed to start you know it would have it would have been a really hard thing to do. It would have been a couple reps take a break a couple reps take a break. At least we got through a whole two-hour practice yesterday. It was fun.
What have you seen so far from redshirt freshman Michael Fletcher...
He's a really smart young man; I can tell you that. He does work hard. He's a guy that runs the ball, and he strives to win and learn and do all those things. His length is wonderful, as a coach, you love those guys that are long like that, and they can lean into all those things. When he was going through the stuff in the pajamas (non-pads), everybody can kind of look good there. I noticed pad levels a little high, and we got to keep working on that. As we get into these padded days, that'll tell the time and see how good he can get off the ball, what we can use him in and see what his length does all those things. Because it's kind of hard, especially up front, you can see some guys run around the back end, but it's hard to totally evaluate that guy, but we're excited about him.
On where reference "pajamas" (non-pads) came from...
I don't know. That's one of those things that, one of the coaches I used to work with used to say, and you pick up on it. It is one of this was one of those things that you call it for a while, it's not real ball. It's like fake, right.
On what was impressive initially after getting the pads on...
Really, it starts up front, you see the d-tackles, you got guys in there, young guys too like, Jalen Hunt. Guys scrapping around that haven't got a lot of playing time before, and we're a physical offense, those guys are pounding against them. They're holding the line of scrimmage and fighting and trying to use their technique. And that's one of those maturity things that we talked about, generally, the first day you put on the pads, everything you've learned up to this point is gets thrown out the window. Seriously, guys go back to whatever they could do. Those guys up front held the line of scrimmage, for the most part. You could tell at the end of practice, there starting to be some losing, or you starting to lose that just because we're getting tired, but they did a good job competing up front. And then to see the backers actually have a chance, like Chase Kline or Simmons or Noah Harvey, come back and actually hit a guy in front and stop him. Those are things that you'd like to see because you don't know. You're playing tag, it's like flag football. And, and to see guys be able to front guys up and put faces on them and stop contact. It starts to give you a feel of your personality. 'Hey, why is Michigan State always been good against the run,' Well, because we get good, big tough guys that can fall back, make tackles do things, stop people. And that was that was wonderful to see.
On whether or not the first day in pads felt more organized...
Sure. The guys had a chance to go through it and learn a little bit, which is what you hope. And if we would have done this the first time - first day in pads, new scheme, don't really know ... that would have caused issues, but now that we've had a little bit of time to practice, start, stop, then start again, and then go into pads, it helped the guys at least for the first day be a little bit cleaner than a lot of places.
On the front seven…
You see guys like Naquan Jones, or Jacob Slade, or some of those guys; they were on tape last year too, they used to rotate in. The cool thing about defensive line is sure you lose a bunch of starters, but there's a lot of guys with a lot of game experience in there. If you go back and watch the tape, Drew Beesley has played football in the Big Ten, and to see him continue to go. Jack Camper is another guy, he's played a little bit, he needs to keep going, but he's doing pretty good. Having (Jacub) back, which is great, and everyone knows what he is. The inside guys pounding through, you know Naquan's tough, he can continue to battle inside, and he's got a little bit of juice to him. Jacob Slade is a super strong guy, holding point, it gives you the 'physicalness' that you want.
Really, what you're looking at is the next guys behind them though, guys like Maverick Hansen or Jalen Hunt. Your first team guys who are moving up, sure, they're always hungry because they replace three guys who have gone to the NFL. That's tough duty, right? But you're hoping the guys behind them have enough playing experience that they are ready to step up; it's the next group. Maverick has shown some flashes and strength and power, all those things. You know who is on the up climb right now is Jalen Hunt. He's doing some things and shown some flashes that you say, 'hey, I'm sure this is the reason they recruited him before.' The kid can turn into a really good player.
On managing expectations this season, given the different look of the offseason and preseason practice…
You put it into process. The easy part is when you look at it that way, you say look, it's about the process. We have to learn what we're doing, and then we have to learn how to do it. And if we can learn those things in each defense as we continue on…we're not going to move on until we get some of that down and we can do things efficiently. And it might be a deal where, yes, there are things you're not able to install this year, there's things that you'd like to work to, or there's things where if you had a bye week, you'd say let's save that; all that stuff is not going to happen.
So as we temper it, we'll say listen, we're going to play as hard as we can every snap, and that's going to eliminate a lot of the mistakes that you have, because even when you watch games now, there's some sloppiness out there, and I'm not going to say that we're going to be immune to that, I'm just going to say that we're going to try and limit that as much as we can by saying, 'hey, listen, everybody let's learn what we need to do,' and keep those guys who are in your bubble and be safe, let's try to train everybody, as many guys as we can; you just asked about the depth up front, well, we might be down to guy number five, eight, or nine, depending on what happens with COVID (testing) or any injuries or whatever. So we're trying to keep it clean and teach the guys, 'hey, this is what we do, this is how we do it,' ok now, we can get into the process of seeing keys on offense, and try to simplify it as much as you can, and keep them connected to the process. The results will handle themselves. And everybody was in the same boat as we were. We had a chance to start, everyone stopped, OK great, that stuff doesn't matter to us. We're going in there every day just saying what can I get better at, we do we need to learn, how can I get better fundamentally, and how much more can I run to try and work my effort to the ball. I don't know if I answered that question, because it's hard to say what expectations are. We're just going to put our nose to the grindstone and go.
On the back seven…
Dom Long is playing pretty good. A guy that I'm really impressed with is Kalon Gervin. He's the guy outside playing corner, he's doing some really good things. He's got really good feet, can stay over the top. Julian Barnett has come along, we're excited about him. He makes progress every single day. Davion (Williams) is a guy you can see, and Chris (Jackson). All those corners, Harlon has been doing a great job with those guys, just making them better and better and better. And we still have Shakur (Brown). There's some guys outside that, I know you lose a draft pick (Josiah Scott) and some of those guys, there's some guys that are developing and we're trying to figure out what the best mix of DBs are.
You'll see us sometimes too, guys are playing different positions just to learn different things, trying to learn their skill set. Now it's for real, because you want to be able to say, hey, we're going to play a third corner, who would that be, and who is the most physical guy that can play inside. If we're going to play a guy at safety, as you go through, everybody knows about Xavier (Henderson), Tre (Person), how much can you put him in the box, he's a little light, he's got really good range, but he's doing a good job; or Michael Dowell, or Emmanuel (Flowers), all those guys are in the mix, and we're just trying to find the right formula for them all. And they've been mixing around positions too. We're trying to find the right slot. Now that we have pads on, and you're banging around a little bit, and you're getting around big guys, and you're doing all that, it's good to see those guys, because the slots become clearer. You might have an idea, hey, this guy is really a corner, this guy is going to be a really good safety, some guys can be a box player a little bit more, how do we fit our pieces in, and now that we got the pads on, it's starting to clear up a little bit. And those are guys we think that are pretty good. They've shown some athleticism and we're excited about seeing them continue to grow.
On the weights of the defensive ends and the defensive tackles…
We're getting closer with a lot of those guys. You always have those guys who have trouble gaining weight because they're young and their metabolism is going crazy, but it's getting closer. The strength staff does a great job. We meet with them, it seems like all the time. But to sit down with them, and we go through each and every guy, and say, here's where we are. Then they check in with us and keep us updated, and we try to stay there. Whether it's getting them with a nutritionist, whatever we got to do, but they've been working that way. It's been a little hectic this year, to tell you the truth, because of all the COVID stuff; there's times where these guys weren't even here, and we had no way to get them food or provide for them, so that was kind of hard, so just to have those guys back where we want them to be, we're working on that still; it's a work in progress, but it's getting closer.
On Jalen Hunt…
He's going to be a good one. He's going to be able to make some plays.
On Julian Barnett…
It's getting back to being a full-time defensive guy. In that position, when you're on the edge, there's a lot of times where you're Gilligan out there, you're on that island and you're all alone, and to really sit down and be able to learn the techniques, they got a great one over there with Harlon Barnett coaching them over there, and saying hey, you're footwork, here's what you need to do, here's your mentality, here's the things that people are going to try and do, and that's what you like to see. He started off and thought I'm a really good athlete, because he is, he's a really physical, strong kid, his feet are good, he can run, he can do all those things, he's got a lot of the things that you like to see, but just to put those into use, in the offseason, it's hard, because you haven't been able to work with the guys, so for him, he's trying to learn what we're trying to do via video, and a lot of times if you're a defensive tackle or a corner, well, sure, 'I got that guy in man,' but it's hard to physically do that and learn the technique. And now that we're together with them and we can work with them, those are the guys, the defensive tackles and the corners, those are the guys that really need technique, technique, technique, because the smallest thing that they do wrong can be a big problem for you. And those are the guys that we're excited to see because, hey, you step on the field, I'm wrong, I'm just going to go on the field and ball, now the technique is starting to come around and he's doing better and better, so that's where we're excited to see him grow.
On the mental aspect of getting ready for college football…
A couple of things. First of all, you have to take care of your grades first. That's the number one thing at any level. But make sure they take care of their grades so they have the availability to go there.
The second thing that I think gets missed a lot is…your body. Your body is your business. Your body is what gets you an opportunity to get in the NFL or go to college, or whatever the case is. And I don't know that young people are mature enough to understand, hey, my ice bath, nutrition, what I put into my body, the sleep I get, all of those little things, they add up to whether…if you have two guys who are working equally as hard, and one (kid) is making better gains than the other, well, why is that? It's not because they're doing anything different. Well, OK, let's look at their outside. This guy's not sleeping, he's doing the wrong thing off the field, he's not putting the right nutrients in his body, he's running to McDonald's instead of grilling some chicken or whatever, all of those little things, they matter. And this guy, generally if he's ice bathing, he's taking care of his body and doing all those things, he's able to stay on the field, which means he can learn and improve more.
The first rule of getting better is to show up. If this guy gets nicked up because he's not taking care of his body, he can't show up, he can't get better. So those are the things that for us, we're really trying to preach to our young guys too. We have to learn how to do that to stay on the field and get the technique so we can get better.
On playing the 4-3 vs. the 3-4, and finding a middle linebacker…
There's some of that, no doubt. Chase (Kline) is running around, Noah (Harvey) is doing pretty good, you got some guys that are there, and the young guys, just mixing them through to see how they pick it up. The 3-4, 4-3 thing, there's some common things in both schemes, and as long as it's a deal where you can line here, and play this coverage, you might be rolling your coverage or whatever, and you can also take those same dudes and move them over a little bit, just changes the gaps and makes it a little bit different front. And you can run the same coverage. So a little bit of that is, as we work through it, how do you work the front and the coverage together, what can you do out of each? And that's not as complicated as it may seem sometimes, but it's definitely hard when you get into the finite parts of going down the road into these, and you might be a little bit more vanilla as you move forward, rather than all of the different things that you see out of each package, that's the hard part about the time.
On Jacub Panasiuk returning…
I know this, it made us better coaches when he came back. I mean, that's what you want, a guy who can rush the passer and do some things, and provide a little leadership. It's just the amount of plays and the experience that he's got, just made us better by him coming back.
He's a great dude. He's a guy that has a 'want' to get better, and want to be really good, so when you work with him, he's fun to work with, because he's always searching. You talk about those guys that say, 'Coach me coach,' well, he's one of those guys. Give him this, give him this nugget. And you can be hard on him and keep giving him more, because he has the same expectations.
What it does, when you get guys like him, or Drew Beesley, or some of those guys, they up the level of want to and intensity in the room, and when young guys see this is where this guy wants to be coached all the time, then they understand that that's acceptable. They don't get down on themselves, they don't get their feelings hurt. They start to see that too, and they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's great to have a guy that has experience back, first of all, and a guy that you can coach, and he provides an example of how to take coaching for everybody else. That's a leadership thing you miss sometimes.
Players Mentioned
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