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TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 17, 2017

Jah'Shawn Johnson

Lubbock, Texas

Q. How much has the coaching staff talked to you guys about last year?
JAH'SHAWN JOHNSON: Just briefly. I mean, everyone knows what happened, even if you weren't here I'm sure you saw the game or saw it on some type of highlights, the way it went. But we're excited for a new opportunity, and hopefully the outcome changes.

Q. What frustrated you the most about that game last year?
JAH'SHAWN JOHNSON: Just how slow we started and just never picked it up. We lacked energy from the get-go, and they came out firing on all cylinders. I mean, they're a good team, so you know you can't get behind on them. They have a lot of playmakers, and yeah, they just jumped on us.

Q. How have y'all changed from then, because at least through half a season, it hasn't been a problem y'all coming out slow without energy. Even Kingsbury said last year I guess West Virginia and Iowa State, y'all didn't show up. How has that changed? How have you fixed that so far?
JAH'SHAWN JOHNSON: I mean, we just try to -- I mean, we just try to create our own energy. I mean, we've had a lot of 11:00 kickoffs this year, so you know, it's hard to kind of get up and get going early, but we've done a great job with it so far. The West Virginia game last year was an 11:00 kickoff and you saw we started slow and guys just didn't respond to anything. The Iowa State game, you can blame the weather and things, but at the end of the day, it's football, that's what you like to play. You've just got to find a way to bring your energy and try to do something, but we didn't.

Like I said, we're just hoping the outcome changes this year.

Q. Is there anything that the coaches are doing as far as preparation to get y'all ready or anything that y'all are doing as players to get ready for these early games and come out with all the energy?
JAH'SHAWN JOHNSON: Not much. I mean, we wake up at 6:30, 7:00 every day to come eat breakfast. So we've been going early for I don't know how long now. So we're fine. Just ready to go.

Q. Does having more competition for positions help or contribute to you guys playing -- getting more consistent?
JAH'SHAWN JOHNSON: Definitely.

Q. You guys were playing 22, 25 guys on defense, so if a couple guys aren't into it or fired up, you've got plenty of other guys?
JAH'SHAWN JOHNSON: Yeah, so you have to make sure you have a great week of practice. I know coming into last week, Coach Gibbs wasn't satisfied with the way I played, and I mean, he pressured me into making sure I had a great week of practice, as well. I mean, those guys behind me just pushed me to be better, picked me up when I'm not feeling excited and things. I mean, everyone has done a great job just pushing each other and preparing well, knowing that they're one play away if they're not starting.

Q. Speaking of the early-morning kickoffs, personally what's your favorite and least favorite part about having an early-morning kickoff?
JAH'SHAWN JOHNSON: Favorite part is you don't have to wait around as long to go out there and compete. But the least favorite part is probably like the early curfew. I'm not really a guy that goes to sleep early, so I mean, our curfew is normally around 9:00, 9:30, so it's kind of hard to get in bed and go to sleep, but I mean, it comes quick, so at least you're out there and ready to go.

Q. What do you think about what Lanning is doing, playing both sides of the ball, and how challenging that is, and would you have any interest in doing something like that?
JAH'SHAWN JOHNSON: That's impressive, especially going from quarterback to linebacker. It's a huge difference. But he's done a great job. He's top in the Big 12 in tackles or somewhere around there, and he comes on the offensive side and runs the ball hard and leads the offense in the right way. I mean, you don't see many people do it at the collegiate level, but I mean, high school it was fine, game is a lot slower. I mean, I don't think I would have any interest in doing it. Defense is enough, especially in the secondary it's pretty tough. But he's done a great job with it.

Q. On your team, who do you feel like on the defensive side would be a good offensive player?
JAH'SHAWN JOHNSON: Douglas Coleman was a good receiver in high school. Vaughnte Dorsey, he swears he's the best quarterback that's came out of high school. He thinks he can throw the ball 70, 75 yards, and he just said he just needs a moving target and he can prove it to us. I don't know, we'll see about him.

Q. Have you seen him do it?
JAH'SHAWN JOHNSON: I haven't.

Q. He was a quarterback in high school on a good team.
JAH'SHAWN JOHNSON: Really? Yeah, see? He says it just about every day when we're out there before practice starts.

Q. I asked Kliff what offensive player could help y'all on defense, and he said he thought Cam had a toughness. Who do you think from an offensive standpoint could play defense?
JAH'SHAWN JOHNSON: Well, Cam is just like Dorsey. He thinks he can play corner. He says he's a physical guy, so he thinks he can get his hands on guys and press them out of bounds. So I was like, well, if you think you can do it, come over there and do it. But he's done a great job on the offensive end. I wouldn't put it past him. He's actually a scrappy guy, so he probably could play defense.

Q. You said earlier in the season you don't want to play offense, right, because you'd rather be the guy hitting somebody?
JAH'SHAWN JOHNSON: Yeah, definitely. That was a bad experience. Hope to never go back to that.

Q. So before the West Virginia game, there was a bit of an incident. Did anybody present there, any players, use that to kind of rally the troops, so to speak, and kind of get everybody more pumped and fired up to start the game really early?
JAH'SHAWN JOHNSON: I think we were rallied up from the beginning of the week. The game last year didn't go well, like I said, so everyone was just fired up to get a new opportunity to play them. I mean, that just kind of sparked it, and you know, showed us what they felt -- how they felt about us, so yeah, we were just ready to go. Emotions were high.

Q. When they had all those (indiscernible) down there on the 30-yard line, since you're kind of a team leader and an emotional guy, is your thought process there we've got to keep our cool, or is your thought process we can't back down from these guys?
JAH'SHAWN JOHNSON: I mean, just keep our cool, but I mean, there's a lot of guys on the team, you can't get everyone back at the same time. I mean, it happened, and at the end of the day, you've got to have your brother's back, just don't do anything dumb because you can still get ejected from something like that. I think it was just more of some verbal stuff than anything physical. I mean, we came out clean with it and just got the game on.

Q. Did the missed field goals affect the defense?
JAH'SHAWN JOHNSON: Not at all. Our job is just to get the offense back the ball and put them in position to score if we can by taking the ball away and creating a short field. Whether they make it or miss it, we've still got to go out and do our job.

Q. What happened in the fourth quarter? You had done a good job the first three quarters keeping West Virginia at bay, and they were able to get whatever they wanted in the fourth?
JAH'SHAWN JOHNSON: Quarterback just started taking more shots. We knew they were an explosive team, kind of got -- we had too many 15-yard penalties. When you do that, that's just shortening the field easily. Yeah, I mean, we knew once they got down by a couple scores that that's what he was going to do, but our game plan didn't change, we were still making the same calls and things, and just a couple calls didn't go our way. I mean, the pass interference calls, we were just doing what we were coached, and I mean, we can't apologize for the way we compete. They made a call, we've just got to live with it and play the next play.

Q. How hard is it to play defensive back from a pass coverage standpoint? You had a play a couple weeks ago where you got flagged and were pleading your case to the official. Seemed like on Saturdays you had guys in positions (indiscernible) about just the difficulty of playing cornerback in the Big 12.
JAH'SHAWN JOHNSON: Yeah, it is hard. I mean, you've got tremendous receivers week in and week out. They can run by you, they can make moves, and I mean, you can catch a hitch pass and go for 80 yards. It's just hard to figure someone out in such little time.

Q. The flag for interference, how frustrating is it that you play physical when you're out there and it's easy to get flagged even if you're trying to make a play on the ball?
JAH'SHAWN JOHNSON: Yeah, I mean, that's not in our control. The referees see one thing, and they stick with it. But we can say whatever we want to them. Their call is the only thing that matters. You just can't let it get down on you. You've just got to respond. I know I talk to them a lot about it and try to see what we done wrong, but the majority of the time that's what we're coached to do, and they just see something different.

Q. What have you seen from Iowa State's offense, especially with the new quarterback in there?
JAH'SHAWN JOHNSON: Oh, they've been running the ball well. Their running back is a physical guy. He can make a few cuts and take it to the house. And the receivers, they do a great job of blocking. They've been just throwing short passes and creating them into explosive plays. We've just got to do a great job of tackling and rallying to the ball.

Q. What do you guys have to do as far as force turnovers because Iowa State is a team that doesn't turn the ball over at all?
JAH'SHAWN JOHNSON: Yeah, they protect it very well. I mean, you've just got to keep punching and stripping at it and try to force the quarterback to throw some balls up that he normally wouldn't do. I think our D-line does a great job of getting pressure, as we've seen in the past weeks, so we've just got to be tight to coverage and hopefully we can get a couple PBUs or something, pop the ball in the air and get us an easy one. It's going to be a challenge, though.

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