	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

PENN STATE UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

August 6, 2015

Charles Huff

University Park, Pennsylvania

CHARLES HUFF: How is everybody doing? Thank you all for being here. I want to thank our administration and Coach Franklin for allowing me to be here. Everybody left when Coach Franklin left. My job should be easy.

But no, we're excited to be here. I'm excited. I'm sure you guys are, as well, to get to continue to do your job. Like I say, we appreciate all you guys do.

Q. Some of the young running backs that you have, what do each of them add to the mix and what are you looking for from them during the preseason?
CHARLES HUFF: Well, the good part is we do have some youth in the room, and they're not all we try not to create a cookie cutter situation where we only recruit certain guys. Each one of those guys adds something a little bit different which gives him his own advantage. Mark Allen is a little bit smaller shifty guy, Nick Scott has got a little bit more power and strength, John Thomas is a little bit more of a tough runner, Saquon is a little more athletic, Andre is a little more kind of steady, stay above the chains type of guy, which allows them to be themselves without having to try and be somebody that's in front of them or, well, because I'm the same height as this guy I've got to try to do what he does, which to me allows them to play faster, be more confident and hopefully produce a lot more.

Q. Charles, how quickly do you want to find a placekicker? What are you looking for in the next few weeks? And same thing with the punting situation; that's open I take it?
CHARLES HUFF: Uh huh.

Q. Can you discuss that?
CHARLES HUFF: Well, I think we have options, which is all you can ask for as a coach. It's going to come down to who's the most consistent, and it's over the period the stretch of camp, not necessarily what they do today or tomorrow, but over time. Coach Franklin talked about we chart everything. In your mind you may say, well, he missed the last kick. Well, that may have been one out of 30 that he missed. Or he made the last two; well, that may have been only two out of ten. We use the data and let the data kind of speak for itself. That way it's not subjective and you're not, hey, well, I remember he hit the 55 yarder, I remember he missed the 32 yarder. We'll let the data decide.

And then it goes further than the data. It's not just pure, okay, because the numbers say. It's about who's doing the right things in the classroom, who's doing the right things to prepare themselves for the season. Tyler and Joey both are preparing themselves to be the starter. Same thing in the punting department. It's going to come down to consistency.

You guys probably don't remember, but at the start of the season, Chris Gulla was probably about as good as anybody could be through the first two, three games, and consistency showed up again. Danny Pasquariello, when he got in the UMass game, he was about as good as we could ask, and then consistency showed up. So both of those guys have the talent. Robby, who redshirted last year, has had an unbelievable summer, and probably if you go down to the pure numbers, he probably has the strongest leg, but when you get into consistency and being able to do the task consistently and helping the team move forward, that's what we're going to be looking for all camp.

Q. With your placekicker, can you truly know until the kid gets out there in front of 80,000, 90,000, 100,000 fans how he's going to handle that aspect of it? What's the process like of making sure he knows how to kick in that scenario as opposed to just practice?
CHARLES HUFF: I'm not sure it's any different than the left guard in front of 80,000 or 90,000. The guys are on the kicker a little bit more, but with any young player, you're never really sure how he's going to perform until he gets in the game. We do some things in practice and during the off season that you saw at the spring game, we did the kicking competition, to try and recreate as much as possible that game like stress or that game like pressure.

But the author of pressure is appreciation, and if you're prepared, then the situation is no different than going out on a Thursday afternoon in the summer, and yeah, there's 107,000 people around you, but it's the same kick, it's the same foot placement, it's the same focus if you've prepared. And if you prepare, then that way when that situation comes up, you are ready.

But to answer your question, you can't say, he is ready or isn't ready until he gets there. You can say he has prepared or he hasn't prepared, and that's what moving forward in this camp is what we're looking to do.

Q. Charles, who are some of the options at kick returner and punt returner that you guys are going to start at with camp looking at those guys?
CHARLES HUFF: Well, we've got a good thing. We've got options. Of course Grant Haley is still here. We've got some young guys. DeAndre Thompkins redshirted last year. Nick Scott has done it in high school; Koa Farmer has done it in high school. A lot of our options last year were redshirted. So this year it's a good group back there and a lot of guys that have done it in high school have obviously done it and have done it successfully. You look at some of their high school films, and that was a big part of their film, returning kicks and making explosive plays on special teams, but now some of those guys who are not redshirted are going to give us a chance to kind of move forward.

Q. Coach Huff, to kind of segue off of that, what does DeAndre Thompkins bring? What kind of element does he bring back there as a returner and also as a special team coordinator, how do you feel having so many options instead of like one or two guys?
CHARLES HUFF: Well, to answer your first question, DeAndre brings something that as we move forward in this program is going to make us get to the level we want to get, and that's competition. Competition creates depth. With depth creates options. DeAndre is an unbelievable athlete. He was one of the faster players on the team when he came in. He's going to give us the ability to have him and Grant and Koa, Nick, those guys compete for the job rather than just saying, hey, we've got to go with this guy because other guys don't fit the position.

And having options is what you want, because in college football we can't pay guys or we can't say if you don't get this done you're cut and we'll bring another guy. So the only way to motivate truly is with playing time, and everybody in that locker room wants to play, and they know that if I don't do what I've got to do, the guy behind me is going to step up in front of me. That's when you start getting to the level of depth and competition that you want. When the practices are harder than the games, you're doing pretty good.

Q. Charles, you talked a lot about being aggressive last year when you met with us. Did you see as many explosion plays as you thought you would, big returns, maybe blocked punts, things like that? Do you think you'll have more this year?
CHARLES HUFF: Well, my interpretation of being aggressive is a process. I think we did a very good job of establishing the mindset and the pace we wanted to play at last year. With the limitations of scholarships and the limitations of depth, there wasn't the flash or the plays that people go back and say, hey, we did this. But at the end of the year, we go back and we pick out 20 or 30 plays of guys making big plays. A big play to the public eye may be a touchdown return, but a big play to me is a guy going down and doing exactly what he's supposed to do so the ball spills to the next guy. When you get 11 of those, that's when you get a touchdown. When you get 11 guys blocking their guy, that's when you get the touchdown. That's part of the process.

I think in year one we did a great job of establishing the mindset and the pace and kind of who we are, everybody is on board with special teams. This year it's about putting guys in places so now we can see those results or so you guys can say, oh, well, they had this many kickoff returns or this many yards in returns, going back and looking at the stats, we made improvements in every category statistically.

Now, was that improvement from zero touchdowns to eight? No. Or was that improvement from 60th to 50th? It was small improvements but we made improvements. Moving forward now we're in a position now where with consistency, the production from the guys in that locker room, we should be able to see some true big plays, explosive plays that the public eye will be looking for.

Q. You mentioned big, and Joe Julius is up 20 pounds from the spring, which puts him at 5'10" and 261 pounds. I was curious if that means he's not going to be doing kickoffs, or how did that come to pass exactly?
CHARLES HUFF: I don't know the exact weights. If you've weighed him then you're ahead of me. Joey is a big individual, but Joey has always been a bigger individual. Even coming out of high school he was a bigger framed guy. The one thing that you will see, he is bigger, but Joey moves pretty well. He's not big and slow. He is pretty athletic.

Of course we are getting him to kind of put the weight in good places, but it's a process. You've got to remember, Joey redshirted last year, and part of redshirting with all players is developing the mindset of learning how to go out every day and prepare as if you're going to play knowing you're not going to play, if that makes sense, and that's something that all players have to learn how to do, and I think Joey learned that towards the end of the year about getting ready. Sam did an unbelievable job of kind of trying to instill knowledge into those guys about how to prepare, how to be ready when your number is called based on his experiences, and he's probably been the biggest help to Joey in that aspect of kind of getting ready for the show.

The one thing that we can't deny is that he's big, but he's got a big leg, and as long as he's able to do the things that we're asking him to do, he'll be the guy. If it's not, then we'll go with another guy. I think the biggest thing right now for that entire group, and when I say the entire group, specialists and special teams, consistency. We've got to eliminate the almost, close, got there, and we've got to get it to, hey, great job, we did it, and we've got to do that on a consistent basis.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297