Chan Gailey Call-In Show

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Ok, I recorded the Chan Gailey call-in show from the internet, so I have a particularly detailed re-cap. In fact, this is as close to word-for-word as I have time for. Don't expect this often. Just worked out this week.
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PART I
WES: Jackets head to College Park MD to play #23 ranked MD. Only loss in OT to WV, and won their first ACC game against Duke…… Coach, 5 of your last 7 opponents have a week off before they play you. You only had one last year – Wake Forest
COACH: Yeah, that’s interesting and you’re exactly right. That’s just the way it fell this year and that’s just part of it. You always have surprises coming.

WES: Focus this week has been on your team. How have these young folks bounce back.
COACH: Well they hurt. If they didn’t, then something’s wrong. They have gone out with an attitude to practice on the field and get better. We had some injuries and have some other people working in there. So we’ve had a lot of work to get those new folks into the system. So it’s been a challenging week on the field in that respect.

WES: PJ Daniels looks like a game-time decision on Saturday
COACH: Right. He got closer yesterday, but was not 100% on the field, so we will see how he goes this coming Saturday. Andy Tidwell-Neal will be close. I’m not sure he can make it, but we’ll see. Gerris Wilkinson same thing. We’ll see if he can make it.

WES: The point of discussion since your press conference on Tuesday has been about QB and you mentioned that Taylor Bennett will be you back-up – the young freshman from Missouri.
COACH: Right, he was playing very well in pre-season and has continued to make progress. We were trying to red-shirt him, but I’m not sure you can do that just exactly like you wanted to every time you want to. We are fortunate this year that we are able to red-shirt some guys we would like to, but in any instance if the situation arises that you have to get a guy ready to play and he was our next best option to get ready to play.

WES: He showed you a good bit because he was here in the winter and able to go through the strength/conditioning programs. Then he was able to go through spring practice, and was a borderline guy in the mix when you decided to make a decision and hold him.
COACH: It was that close. As a matter of fact, when we got down to it, we said - what are we going to do – redshirt him, not redshirt him. And if it was close, let’s try to redshirt him. And then as he continued to get better we continued to evaluate and we thought we had an opportunity here to get him ready to play, and that he was a good fit for us as far as the future goes.

WES: This is a guy that has an interesting background. He played in a pass-happy program, for lack of a better term. He was a starter for a year and change and threw the ball very effectively as a senior in high school.
COACH: And he’s got a strong arm. He just wasn’t a 3-year starter in high school. He knows the game and he studies as hard as anyone I have seen at the college level. He is a guy that has a lot of potential. We’ll see. We’re going to go if he plays if that is what it comes down to – we’ll go through some growing pains with him somewhat as well. But that’s part of playing young players and having to introduce new people into the mix. I think we all hope that Reggie goes out and plays well. That’s what we all hope. But this is one of those situations that if he doesn’t, then what are you going to do? This is the plan that we’ve got.

WES: What kind of week has it been for Reggie?
COACH: He’s had a good week, and that’s what he needed. It’s been a decent practice for he and the receivers all-around, but we have to translate that into game-time experience.

CALLER: It seems that Reggie Ball is a lot more effective up under center when he’s got the play-action passes. Last year we threw a lot of passes to J.Smith, hitch routes, where he could use his athletic ability. I would like to see us throw more to the backs, tight ends, short passes, to build Reggie’s confidence, move the chains. Comments?
COACH: Well, we’d like the same thing – to move the chains. Every week and every situation is a different game-plan. We do what we think we have to do in order to use our assets to the best of our ability. Every time you throw it to a back, you gain something and you lose something. Everytime you look at a gameplan, you try to decide what are our strengths against their weaknesses and try to use those. We don’t throw to the backs a lot or the tight ends in those situations, but we do in other situations. So it’s a different animal every week as far as gameplans and who ends up with the ball in their hand. Last week it was Jimmy Dixon and our TE who had a catch for decent yardage. You never know how it’s going to turn out. We try to have something in there for everybody.

CALLER: The probability, even in the pro’s, of hitting these long passes is low. I don’t know the percentages but it’s low with a higher percentage of interceptions. Unless we can create some play-action and get the receivers open, this throwing it up for grabs, what Reggie is doing, is killing us. I just think we need to do more high percentage offense. Our defense I think is pretty strong, if we can just keep from turning the ball over.
COACH: I would agree, if we can keep from turning it over we’ll be in good shape. That’s the problem we’re having right now. I don’t care what league you’re in, pee-wee, high school, college or pro – you turn the ball over and normally you’re going to get beat.

WES: Nothing we saw or talked about leading up to this would lead you to believe our offense was going to be predicated on deep ball looks for Calvin or Nate or Levon. It’s all about a manufacturing of your system.
COACH: That’s exactly right. Throwing the ball deep is part of any system. I don’t care what system you’re in. The problem we’ve had is that those balls have been picked off more times than we would like and when it happens, it looks bad. But we’ve got to keep throwing balls deep and get better at it. That’s what we’ve got to do. And we do have to have ball-control throws underneath like we do at times.

WES: Chris Woods got you right out of the gate with a great run. Good play for him and the offense. Once it got to the short-field what happened? Miami’s good defensively which is one issue.
COACH: You just don’t have any depth to work with to push the defense backs back. They’re playing close to the line. We were trying to see what they were playing down there in that situation, because you get down there the very first time and if you have an idea what they’re doing, the things you setup are to try and beat what you saw on film. We got down there and we ran it 3 times. We thought we could run the football. We had just run for 50, so we thought we could run it in. We didn’t execute very well.

WES: Also, C.Johnson has seen a potpourri of coverages since Clemson
COACH: He sure has. It’s been amazing. But if you had told me that Miami was going to change to try to handle what we were doing out there, I would have been shocked….. but they did. They put Rolle outside on Calvin and put a safety over the top in addition to that. They changed a lot of thought processes for us. We tried to make some adjustments and it just didn’t get done. We went back and got a few things that had been good no matter what they did, but we didn’t execute them.

WES: It just strikes you that he’s seeing a lot of things, and thusly he’s learning a lot in the 1st 4 games.
COACH: He’s seeing a ton, and that’s the thing that’s going to happen. He’s going to have to have a very fast learning curve in order to get on top of his game and to keep it at that top level.

WES: And with all due respect to the rest of the schedule, he’ll have to go away to see anyone else as good as A.Rolle.
COACH: Oh yeah, I hope.

QUESTION FROM TONY: At the end of the 1st half, Ball simply can’t take a sack there. But, it looked like there may have been some hesitation in bringing out the field goal team for that 59-yard attempt. What is the longest Belcher has attempted and what is the range you had him going into the game?
COACH: He is what we call our long field goal guy. He has the strongest leg of the two and I would try him inside of 60. In that situation what have you got to lose? We didn’t think we would get blocked and you just have to make sure you have a couple of guys covering in case they put somebody back.

TONY: I know the 24-hour rule. I think you and your staff are just the guys to get us back. Of course, MD will want to get your attention in a hurry with the bye week. But I think MD is the kind of team you need to be playing this week.
COACH: Well, they’re a very good football team. They’ve turned it over too, but have won in spite of the TO’s. I am shocked that their defense is playing so good. They lost 8 of 11 starters and they are playing really well, which has sort of surprised me. It will be a challenge for us to get up there and find a way to win this football game.

TONY: Take-aways are real critical
COACH: Turnover ratio is a key. If you don’t get a lot, you can’t give up a lot. That’s got to be on the plus side of the ledger and we are way below that right now.

DAVID: I saw Patrick Carter at the spring game. I thought he looked really good. I was hoping to see him last week when Reggie was having a hard time, then I hear in the paper today that he’s not even the 2nd string QB.
COACH: Right. We’ve decided to try and let Patrick get onto the field in other ways than at the QB position. He is certainly a good athlete, but we felt it was best to take a look at Taylor Bennett. If that was going to be the case, then we needed to try and get Patrick on the field in other ways. We’re going to look at him as a punt returner and maybe even some as kick-off returner this week, and see where he might help us on the field.

TRIPP: Knowing that we can’t really go toe-to-toe with other teams in the trenches, but we do have a tall TE and big WR’s and a senior FB, why don’t we get more complex with our offense?
COACH: Well, we have a plan that we go with on this trip. Our scheme dictates certain things and then you do what your players can do. We still have a young QB, we still have inexperience O-Lineman, and we still have some things that don’t allow us don’t allow us to do everything that we would like. Obviously, you would think that as long as we have been in the business, that we’ve seen all the different types of offenses, and I’ve run them all at one point in time or another. I’m certainly going to do what I think is best in order to move the football and do what our players are capable of. So that’s how we design what we do. We take our assets and try to use them and try to minimize our negatives.

TREY: Question on a guy like C.Johnson. He had such a great game against Clemson. Since then, it doesn’t seem like we are trying to get him the ball. Is that something not in the game-plan right now, or do you see him as a guy who needs to touch the ball – like a Peter Warrick from FSU a few years ago. Is he that quick or is he just not fast enough for that?
COACH: First of all, he’s still a true freshman and he’s learning all the ins and outs of playing. He’s seeing a lot of different looks and coverages. Our design is to try and get him the football. Sometimes they take that away, sometimes we just don’t get it to him, sometimes we don’t read it right. There are a lot of things like that preventing things coming out how we would like in the execution. The bottom-line is that we’re trying to get him the football and we haven’t done it since the Clemson game for different and varied reasons and we’re still working on the process to get that done. It’s not easy to take a guy only in his 5th game and move him around to a lot of different positions. and move him around to a lot of different positions. You can do that with a J.Smith or a L.Thomas, but here’s a guy in his 5th college game. You’re asking a guy like that to do things like motions, and he’s not ready to do that yet.

TREY: On the 1st drive of the game on the 12 yard line, was there any thought of throwing a jump-ball up. He’s got 3 inches on Rolle and a huge vertical.
COACH: That’s always an option, but it wasn’t the choice that time. Maybe the next time we were down there we would have done that, but that wasn’t one of the choices then. In retrospect, if I had known what was going to happen, I would have thrown it up. But if we run it in on the draw, we didn’t need to. That’s part of calling plays. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

PART II

SHANNON: About the secondary. In the Miami game, we went a lot of nickel. How much do we miss Dennis Davis? Nathan Burton seemed to do a great job with his responsibilities, but how much do you miss Dennis’s leadership?
COACH: Anytime you take an experienced player like Dennis out, with his speed, and a guy who’s played that spot the whole year, you lose something. I don’t care who comes in, you have not exactly replaced him by putting somebody else in the spot. Coach Tenuta will get the people in position to do the best job that they can, whatever that is. We moved Landry to nickel and put Nathan in as the safety where Landry was playing. Landry gives you some plusses. He’s a bigger, stronger guy for blitzing, but he’s not the man-to-man cover that Dennis Davis was. So what you gain, you lose in some respects.

CHRIS: I wanted to comment on the defense. I really thought last week we had a great defensive game-plan. We gave up a couple of big plays, but mainly this year I’ve been really impressed with the defensive line, especially the freshman from Louisiana. I think he’s really tough. Could you comment on that.
COACH: I would agree with you. Daryl Richard is playing well. He’s kind of like Mansfield (Wrotto). We kind of threw him in there. We threw Mansfield in there last year as a freshman and this year we’re throwing Daryl in there as a true freshman this year, and having Eric Henderson back makes all the rest of those guys better too. Even though we ended up not stopping the run at Carolina, I thought we came back this week and did a much better job of stopping the run. They got a few of them out there, but we kept it contained without them ever getting out for a big run. All we did bad in my opinion was let out 2 long TD passes. Really, there were a couple of quick-change situations, turnovers, where we held them, and did a great job keeping them from scoring points.

BRIAN: I’m a Maryland alum., but living here in GA. Are we looking for another defensive battle like last year? Also, Steve Sutter – are you going to punt to him this week? Is he going to get the 7 yards he needs to break the punt return record? Also, any concerns about Joel Statham?
COACH: Sutter, we will be happy for him to break the record NEXT week. I’m all for that. He is a terrific returner. He is one of the best in the league, if not the best. Are we going to try to keep it away from him? Yeah, we will. That’s part of the strategy of not letting great returners have their opportunities. But if it’s on the field of play, he’s going to try to catch it make yards with it. He has no fear. Statham has done some good things, but he’s thrown some pics too. I’m sure they’ve worked very hard with that this week, and he’ll be ready to go in this ballgame.
WES: We know how good Sutter is and how good he’s been. Then you turn and look at the ACC stats for punt return average and he’s 7th in the league. That’s because you have the freak show in D.Hester, who came in averaging 48.5 per return, and by the way, after you held him in check, he’s only averaging 33.7. Eddie Royal, a true frosh at VT is avg 14, AP at UVA, JM at CU, Willie Reed at FSU, RP at Miami. Sutter is really really good, yet you look at that list and you say – so are all these other guys.
COACH: Yeah, but if you look at the film, people are punting it to him. They are putting the ball on the sidelines and he’s having to work for every yard he gets, because people in the ACC KNOW how good he is. So we’d like for him not to touch it if we could.

GARY: The last two games, the start of the 3rd quarter, we have not been as ready to go as our opponents have. Second, a minute ago you said you had nothing to lose by going for the long field goal at the end of the half. Did you have anything more to lose by just throwing the ball in the endzone?
COACH: The decision is you try to get points one way or another and I thought Kyle had a legitimate chance to put points on the board from there. And the odds of making a FG are better than the odds of throwing a pass and scoring a TD.
WES: He’s kicked a 57 yarder. He kicked 5 FG’s at Deerfield Windsor in Albany over 50 yards his senior year. He had a 57 and a 56 yarder if I recall. That’s his neighborhood.
COACH: He’s has an extremely strong leg and that’s why we gave it that shot.
WES: Does the start of the 3rd quarter concern you?
COACH: Yeah, we did a pretty good job of that in the 1st two ball-games and we didn’t do it in the last two. I talked to our team about that, because talk about dominating the first 5 minutes of each half. If you don’t, it costs you. At Clemson, even though we took it down and didn’t get the points, we took it to them and put them on their heels. At UNC we didn’t and at Miami we didn’t, and that’s a point of concern.

LUKE: Question on the O-Line, particularly concern with Tidwell-Neal and Brezina when they went out. Also, we have questioned how much depth we have. Can you expand on McManus and Lonowski, how are they developing? Are they getting bigger, stronger like you wanted? As you know, with the smash-mouth that we want to do with PJ, it’s important for us to have those good size lineman. And we know with you NFL experience, we are trying to mimick that prototypical player in all positions.
COACH: Right. We signed a good group of freshman this year – four freshman. Two of them were from locally, Andrew Garner and Nathan McManus was from Birmingham. Two of them are more ready to play than the other two. One, Jacobs, is from Nebraska, Delaney is from CT, and their development is not quite where the guys who played in the Southeast are. They are going to be fine football players, but they’re just not there yet. They are getting stronger. We are lifting with them 3 days a week to get them bigger and stronger. They’re freshman though and they have a hard time. McManus is the closest of the four getting ready to play, but we’ve got to continue to do a good job of recruiting lineman – and big ones. And that’s one of goals. If you look at our recruiting board right now, that is one of the goals that we have. There are some guys – obviously I cannot mention names, but there are guys within a 100 mile radius of here that could really help us and play early because of their abilities.

WES: Chan, you talked about AJ Smith, the young man from down in FL. You still plan to move him to offense as well?
COACH: We’ll see about that. We want to make sure that is the smartest thing to do with him. We have not made that move yet, but that is one of the things under discussion. Just like we have discussions about all of our players in that category almost weekly, we sit down and say – what should we do with this guy, where does it look like he’s headed. The sooner you can make decisions like that, it helps him and it helps us.
WES: Yeah, he is a huge freshman, what 6’7”??
COACH: Yeah, 6’7” and about 250+ lbs right now. So he has a chance to be a big man for us before it’s over with.

WES: Week 6 slate starts tonight with Clemson / UVA. VT and WF play this weekend it an expected sellout. J.Grobe is 0-2 in the ACC, both losses coming in OT.
COACH: Yeah, WF is awful good to be 0-2 in the ACC.

JEREMY: That play with Bilbo designed in the Miami game. He did it a couple of times and it didn’t work. Why did you keep calling that play?
COACH: Well, actually it was a different play. One was designed to go inside, one outside, and another designed to go weakside. Without PJ, it was another way to get the ball into the hands of a guy that’s a big 220lb athlete and let him push the pile and try to find a crease to try to run the football. That was the theory behind what we were trying to do and I think as time goes on, that will be productive. I’ve said before, all that stuff you do with guys like that – when you win, it’s called innovative. When you lose, it’s called a grab-bag. That’s kind of the way it is. So we’re going to continue to use Bilbo in that manner to try to put his hands on the ball. We’re not able to get him the ball as much as we’d like in the receiver slot – not as much as we thought we’d be able to, so it’s a way for him to touch the football.

JOHN: Question about recruiting. Over the last 7-8 years as a Tech fan, we seem to have recruited awesomely. Where do you think you are with recruiting and the relationship with the schools in the south?
COACH: Well, it’s been a positive in my opinion, but I probably look at through rose-colored glasses. I think our relationships have been VERY good in the southeast. We have made some great inroads in Texas as well, so our response from the high school coaches in the state has been good. Florida, in particular has been very good. We think we have a good thing going right now with our recruiting process. We have our eyes on some great players both in-state and out, but we’ll always try to recruit GA first.
JOHN: With Bilbo and Carter, were they just having problems with the plays at QB, turnovers, etc??
COACH: When we looked at what they brought to the QB position, we thought it would best if they moved their talents into another position. It’s not easy to play QB, and some guys are suited for it and some aren’t. So we thought we could use their talents better at another position. And I always talk to them. I don’t just put another jersey in their locker. I always talk to them up-front to let them know exactly what our plans are. To be honest, the more QB’s you recruit, probably the better your football team will be in the longrun. You move a D.Landry and M.Logan helps you, and different people help you at different positions.

WES: Last year’s game was a flat slap-in-the-mouth game.
COACH: If you like great defense, last year was a great game.
WES: Do you anticipate the same kind of game? Ralph Friedgen said this week that it’s liable to be that type of game.
COACH: I have no idea what to expect. I’ve never been able to do that. To say this one’s going to be a 7-3 or 28-24 game. I don’t really know that going in. A lot of it depends on plays, getting a TO here, a TO there. Last year, neither team really turned it over until the last quarter. You could end up with a game like that easily. And the kicking game will be a vital part of this thing.

WES: Let’s spend a minute on Travis Bell and Ben Arndt. Travis, outside of his first attempt, has been very consistent.
COACH: He has. He’s kicked the extra points, FG’s, and I have a great deal of confidence, as does the team, in Travis, to walk out there and make whatever he needs to make.
WES: You asked Ben to do something last week that’s not easy.
COACH: We did. We asked him to kick it away from that guy, and try to kick it out-of-bounds. Sometimes he kicked it 28 yards, and I walked over and patted him on the back. Because one time he kicked it 64, right there on the sideline. With a young punter, you’re going to have that kind of variation, between 64 and 28, and you just have to live with that. But I thought he did a great job of keeping it away from Hester last week.
WES: People have to remember, that up until this year, Ben Arndt punted the ball 9 times at Tusculum to crowds about as big as this room.
COACH: And when he walked on here, he tried out for place kicker. He was a place kicker all spring, and in pre-season, and saw the problems we were having at punter and walked up to me about 3 weeks before the season and said – coach, how about if I try punter too.
WES: He and Travis Bell joined me on a piece for Saturday’s pre-game. He indicates that the reason he started punting the ball, is that in his transition year from NAIA to I-A – of course he had to sit out academic / athletic year – he said that he’d end up over on the SAC field working out. You can kick off a tee and off the rod-tee. But he said #1, there are no goalposts there, and #2, if you kick off all the time, you get leg-weary. So he said – I just started punting the ball. So heck yeah, now he’s punting it in the show. It’s a great story. He and Travis Bell turned down major I-A soccer offers, most notably Clemson – had committed to Clemson, then called them to tell them he wasn’t coming to play soccer, and low-and-behold, ends up kicking a PAT to clinch it against them.
COACH: You know, the amazing thing about that – Ben Arndt came here as a place-kicker and is now our punter. Travis Bell came here as a punter, and is now our place kicker. Who knows???

WES: How big is atmosphere Saturday, and tempering the atmosphere?
COACH: That’s all part of it, but normally good crowds – you can’t keep them out of it. Whereever you go there are good stadiums to play, which most places are….
WES: Despite what you said the week of the Clemson game, which you’ve been reminded of consistently.
COACH: Yeah, I do get reminded of that. They’re all tough.
WES: (laughing bigtime): When you saw the message on the Clemson board at the game, did you kind of go….ok.
COACH: What you are assuming is that I paid attention, which I did not. Someone told me after the game it got up there. But they’re all tough places to play. This is no exception. If we go out and play good, we’ll keep the crowd quiet. If we don’t play good, then they’ll be in it, then you have to fight that too. It’s loud at NCST, it’s loud at MD, Clemson, Virginia, everywhere you go. You just deal with it and go on.

WES: As this game sets up, and all the things you have focused on offensively, and to a degree defensively. I know the big play concern, because of a handful of plays that went too many yards, yet otherwise they played well last Saturday. When you start to look at the early stages of this game, is one side more important than the other with MD?
COACH: Honestly, if I had to pick one, I would say special teams might be the biggest factor early in the ballgame – that nobody gives up a big play, or maybe you can get a big play. If that is a factor in the ballgame early, if we can keep them from making one, and we can find a way to get an edge on special teams, whatever that might be, then I think you might get the upper hand. I think both offenses will go out there, they have both turned the ball over a little bit. They’ll both go out there and say let’s be smart about this.

WES: You have D.Jackson at LB, S.Merriman DE, D.Fox?? at corner, all 3 key pieces to what they do defensively.
COACH: All 3 of those guys are very good football players. I’ve said it before. I think Merriman is one of the best in the conference. He anchors that one side, so you have to make sure you get to the other side and run some away from him. But they do a good job of flipping him back and forth and you don’t know where he’s going to line up all the time. But those are 3 good players, and you’ve got to make sure you don’t allow them free run.