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RUTGERS UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCEFebruary 4, 2015Kyle FloodCOACH FLOOD: This is always an exciting day, an opportunity to add a lot of new faces into our program, 11 players on offense, 13 players on defense, and a couple other guys who have also come to our program in some different ways. I think probably the signature of this recruiting class is going to be how they will add overall depth to our team. We have taken players at every position. I think with this recruiting class, every position group, every meeting room in this building gets stronger and I think it really holds true to the footprint that we have used for a long time, the State of Rutgers, starting in New Jersey. We are going to add seven players into our program from New Jersey, six from Pennsylvania, three from New York, four from Florida and two from Maryland, and that's a footprint that's worked really well around here for the last ten years. Questions. Q. When you identify a quarterback as early as you did with Mike Dare and get him on board, how much does that impact what you do in the 2015 class? COACH FLOOD: I think it helps. I think it definitely helps. When you have a quarterback who is helping to drive the recruiting process and the recruiting class, I think that's a positive. I think the quarterback, identifying that guy is one of the more important things you do every year because of the importance of the position, and we were fortunate in Michael to have a guy that we worked with in camp firsthand. We probably knew about him a little bit earlier than most people did, and we were able to figure out he was the right guy for us and he was able to figure out that this was the right place for him. It's been a good marriage between us and Michael and his family, and we expect him to do some really, really great things in our program. Q. It seemed like you finished strong, a lot of recruits committing this month. Do you attribute that to the season in the Big Ten or why would you think you gained some momentum late? COACH FLOOD: I think when you make a positive first impression, that certainly helps. I don't think there's any doubt about that. I think the recruits in our footprint and really nationally are getting to know us as a Big Ten football program and I think the more they got to know us, the more they liked it, and I think that's probably why we finished as strong as we did. Q. This is your first recruiting class as a member of the Big Ten. Did it affect anything, change anything in how you go about business? COACH FLOOD: I don't think it does. I don't think it affects how we go about business. I am certainly conscious of the guys up front. We took, I believe, nine linemen in total, four on offense, five on defense, and as coaches started to give me that advice, I listened and we tried to address it last year, we've addressed it again this year to continue to build depth up front. We were very fortunate this year. We started the same offensive line every game this season, and the reason I say we were fortunate is because we didn't have the depth up front we needed and fortunately we didn't have to go to it, but I don't think you can expect that every year. Continuing to build the depth up front offensively and defensively, I think that will be something you see continuously as we go forward with these recruiting classes. Q. I understand Jawuan is going to play baseball and football here. How is that going to work, and how much have you talked to Joe, and why are you allowing him to do that, if football is obviously as demanding as it is? COACH FLOOD: Sure, Jay Harris is a special football player, St. Thomas Aquinas, not just on offense but really on special teams. I know Coach Liaro (ph) is really, really excited about getting him as a baseball player, as well. Those are going to be things we're going to work out as we go forward. I was very honest with Jay about this. We have never had somebody to do; but, we are willing to do it. We think it could be a great fit. He's somebody who excels in football, and he's somebody who also excels in baseball. We met his baseball coaches while were down there in Florida, and he's somebody that also excels in the classroom. He has got very high expectations in the classroom.       All those things we will work through from a schedule standpoint as we go forward, but I have no doubt he'll be able to do it because it's something he's already been doing since he's been going to high school. Q. The number of recruits you got from Jersey, in years past it's been nine, ten; would you have liked that number to have been a little bit higher? COACH FLOOD: I don't think of it‑‑ I gave you the states because of the footprint. I don't look at it like that. Every year, I want to get the players that are right for our culture. That is the most important thing. And the reality is, the academic demands at Rutgers are significant, and that's not right for every player. Some players shy away from that and that's okay, because it's got to be the right fit for us and it's got to be the right fit for them. This year, five players that we signed, plus you add in there Kiy Hester who came to us last year; Kaiwan Lewis, is coming to us in the summer. Seven players from New Jersey; I think they are the right seven, and that's really where my focus is. Q. With Sidney Gopre, I guess two‑part question. How much improvement did you see from him when you went to see him play at Princeton this year and then, two, when do you hope that he's a part of this program? COACH FLOOD: We expect ey to be with us in the summer. The improvement I saw was another year of physical maturity and I think he had a good season up there at Milford for Coach Chaplick. It's exciting to bring the Defensive Player of the Year from New Jersey into our program. When he gets here, again, somebody that we expect not only to contribute on defense but to contribute on special teams. Q. Getting a player like Ford that late in the process is probably a little unusual. Could you take us through how that came about? COACH FLOOD: You have to speak to Marques directly in terms of what happened at the other school. But I know this; Coach Panagos did a tremendous job throughout the process of continuing to build his relationship with Marques. When you recruit a player over time, I think you have an opportunity for that to happen. Jim had a great relationship with the high school coach. He had a great relationship with Marques. It was a real relationship. It was a mature relationship. And then when Marques re‑opened his recruiting, Jim was in the right place at the right time, but it wasn't by chance. He had put himself in that position. And then I was able to get down there and see Marques and see his family and there's no doubt that he's the right fit for Rutgers, when you meet him, somebody that achieves very highly on the field but somebody who also achieves very highly in the classroom; I think a 3.8 GPA in the classroom. He's somebody who is going to come here and he's already got the skill set to rush the passer and as he grows and gets bigger, there's no doubt he'll be a complete player. Q. Plans to get on a plane‑‑ when do you get word, do you feel like that's available‑‑ COACH FLOOD: I think there's a lot of that in recruiting in general. There's a lot of‑‑ recruiting is always a fluid situation. So you had better be ready to get on a plane at any second when it comes to recruiting. Q. With Mike Dare, what did you identify in him early on? Was it the physical skills, the character? What specifically? COACH FLOOD: All the physical skills we were able to really identify in one day. We had him in camp and I remember getting the call, I was in the office and they said, hey, coach, you need to come down to the quarterback field. And we actually had a player there in the class prior to that was committed to us, thought I was going down to see him, but I was going down to see Michael. He's really got a big arm. And he's a tall guy, he's lean right now, but he'll grow into his body. But he's got a big arm. Then as you watch him move around and play basketball, he's got a nice, athletic skill set to do all the other things that a quarterback needs to do. So it was pretty quick on the athletic evaluation. And then we took the time to get to know him. And the more we got to know him, the better we felt about him as a leader. Q. We ask you every year, but how many of these kids do you expect to be able to come in and compete and play right away? COACH FLOOD: I don't ever‑‑ I don't ever put that on them, and I believe this; as many are ready to play, will play. What I tell the families when I'm in the houses is when we commit to playing a freshman, we are going to play them and we are going to live with some of the mistakes they might make because young players make mistakes. As a general rule, it's not an absolute, there's no absolutes in this. But as a general rule, the further away from the ball you are, it's a little friendlier in terms of playing, because your speed, your athletic skill set can help make up for time. Whereas up front, there is very little reaction time; you're either right or you're wrong, and it's immediate. Q. In talking to a lot of recruits and then you mentioned it with Marques Ford, Coach Panagos's name comes up a lot. What is it about him that you think recruits like? COACH FLOOD: I don't think he's the only one they like, but I do think they like Jim and I hope they like our staff, because we try to build real relationships with them. And it's important that the relationships we build in recruiting, we're able to carry those relationships forward as we coach them. I don't ever want a player to come into our program and say, hey, this isn't what it felt like when they recruited me. When they come into our program, it should feel exactly like how it felt when we were recruiting them. Q. Obviously without naming any specific names, how quickly does the focus now turn to the 2016 class, and how important is that class for this program? COACH FLOOD: The way the calendar is right now, it's already done that. You really start recruiting the players that you identify as people that can help you when they are freshmen and sophomores, and the access to them is limited. But we are fortunate that because of the recruiting footprint we use, we are able to get a lot of those players on our campus and when they are on our campus, then we can really spend time with them and get to know them. I can tell you that that process has been ongoing for about a year already. Q. I guess the second part, how important is it, and talking about momentum to kind of close this class, is it important to keep riding the momentum into 2016? COACH FLOOD: You're not going to like this. I'm going to answer this the way I answered it when you talked to me about momentum within a football season. I think now what's important is that we continue to build our relationships with the 2016 class. It will be a different group of players. So I'm excited about these players and this really is a day for this 2015 class. We are excited to bring all these players into our program, some that are with us right now and some that will be coming in the summer. But when it comes to the future, that's something that you have to build on every day. Q. When you see Ohio State win the National Championship and Urban Meyer is in New Jersey the next day; Michigan hires Jim Harbaugh and he's active in New Jersey already. Has it gotten that much harder even within your division with things that are happening? COACH FLOOD: It's very competitive. Yeah, it's very competitive. Other schools, traditional powers, however you want to refer to them, they have recruited New Jersey for a long time. I think it's a great compliment to the quality of players that we have in our state and the quality of coaching that we have in our state. And we have always had, right around half of our scholarship players, I think we are a little less than that right now, but we have always been give or take right around 50 percent of our scholarship players from the state of New Jersey and I don't see that changing any time soon. As long as we are targeting the ones that are right for our culture, they are going to help us win a lot of games like they have the last ten years. Q. Looking at the list, you have a player from California, Georgia, Illinois; is the State of Rutgers expanding in any way? COACH FLOOD: I don't think the State of Rutgers is expanding. I think that footprint has been established, but I think what you are seeing is a little bit of the effect of the Big Ten brand, the Big Ten Network, the visibility of the program now in the premiere athletic academic conference in the country. Maybe when there's not a pool of offensive linemen that are ‑‑ that is big enough for us to satisfy our needs, we are able to go to Illinois and get a player like Jack Shutack, that's possible. When we have a need for maybe a linebacker with some experience, we are able to go to California and get Isaiah Johnson. I think the visibility of the program has increased with the conference affiliation, with the network, with the TV deal; and that helps us go when our traditional footprint doesn't have the pool of players that we need. Q. The James name is obviously familiar to Rutgers fans. What can you tell us about him? COACH FLOOD: The first thing I would tell you is that we recruited Ronnie because of Ronnie and I love Paul James and he's been a tremendous player for us and we are looking forward to having him back next year. But recruiting Ronnie was about him and somebody who does a lot of things for his football team down there at Glassboro, from offensive football playing quarterback to receiving yards to rushing touchdowns to returning punts and kicks, and then playing defense as a corner. We had a chance to work with him in camp and we have recruited him as a corner, he knows that. But I wouldn't be surprised to seem him back there returning kicks at some point or with his hands on the ball because he's a really dynamic football player who continuously makes plays in whatever fashion his team needs him to make them. Q. Griffin came out on Twitter and pledged his allegiance to this program saying this class was underappreciated. What leadership qualities do you see in him? COACH FLOOD: Every class seems to have some that are more vocal than others, and he has been that guy in this class. I think that speaks to his desire to lead, which is a good thing. Underappreciated‑‑ they are not underappreciated by me. I have very high expectations for this recruiting class and that's really the only thing that matters to me is the evaluation that we have on them and that our staff has on them. So I'm excited that he wants to lead. I'm excited that he was as loyal as he was in the process, because he is somebody who, if he wanted to, could have attracted a lot more attention in recruiting than he did by staying as committed as he was and not visiting other players. That's exciting to me because that means he's invested in our program. When you have players and people that are invested in your program, they generally achieve at a very high level. Q. From a financial and a resource perspective, why is it so important to invest in recruiting, and is it the most important aspect to invest in? COACH FLOOD: It's most important aspect because it's about the people. Everything is about the people. We're very proud of our facilities, this team room that we are in right now is one of the best in the country. But organizations are ultimately about people, and the better job you do of screening people on the way in, the better chance you have of creating a high‑performance culture while they are here and while they are in your organization. So that's going to take some resources, there's no doubt. I've been very fortunate here in my tenure as head coach we have been able to add resources to recruiting to allow us to continue to do that, because it is competitive. And it's competitive‑‑ forget about our conference. It's competitive within our division of our conference, before you even look at it nationally. So every organization is only as good as the people in it, and making sure you get the right people on the way in, that's the most important thing. Q. If you would rank last year's recruiting class as a ten, where would you rate this year's? COACH FLOOD: I wouldn't rate it. I'm not in the ratings business. I'm in the performance business. Last year's recruiting class will ultimately be judged over time and I don't know that you would want to do that after one year. I couldn't even tell you exactly how many of them redshirted and how many of them didn't standing here right now. I think you can only judge those things over time. Q. Academically, are most of these kids in good academic standing? COACH FLOOD: They are. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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