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UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

December 20, 2017

Dan Mullen

Gainesville, Florida

DAN MULLEN: I'll tell you what, exciting day for us today. I'm really pleased with how today went. I thought our coaching staff did a great job. You know, usually you have a new staff coming in, you're kind of under crunch time, and that's when signing day is in February. For the December 20th signing day, I think our guys did a fabulous job working, getting to know these kids, getting out there, developing the relationships, finding out the things we needed to find out that the guys fit, what the expectations within our program are as we're bringing them in here, and I'm really proud of all our assistant coaches, how they worked.

I think one thing certainly that helped with this group is the fact that we have several coaches, including myself, that have been Gators before, so I think that certainly helped when you're going out there on the road recruiting and as parents go and kids start asking questions about the university, about the program, about the history. You've been a part of it. You know what's going on, so you're a lot more comfortable speaking about it.

The one thing you look at with this class is getting a couple offensive linemen helped. In recruiting, though, I will say this, and we're learning with this new signing period, you're about at the halfway point. What we do now is we'll reset. I imagine everybody around the country is going to do the same thing. You're going to reset, you're going to look at it, the next signing day now is about six weeks away, and going to look at the pool, look at our needs, look at the pool, see who fits, and really reset recruiting and get out there and start getting after it again.

But we had a couple offensive linemen that I'm excited about bringing in here. I think that's a big need position. It'll continue to be a big need position in recruiting. Some running backs. Really a couple of tight ends, I think that was a big need for us recruiting.

But when you look at the tight ends, you look at the DBs, you look at the running backs, the biggest thing to me, linebackers, is the position flexibility. What I want to do, and what we both offensively and defensively is create mismatches out there on the field, so the ability for guys to have position flexibility, where a guy can play corner, nickel, safety, even a dime linebacker and blitz off the edge on the defensive side of the football, that's a lot of flexibility and can create mismatches, tight ends that can go out and receive and running backs that can motion out of the backfield or motion into the backfield. It creates position flexibility and gives you the opportunity to create mismatches out there on the field.

I'm excited about the athleticism that we've brought in today and the flexibility those guys have, and then obviously it's huge to get a quarterback, is a guy that kind of ends up kind of being a big leader for the class, as everybody looks at it, a leader for the future of the program, and we couldn't be happier to have Emory coming in and being our quarterback for the future.

Any questions?

Q. With Emory, the back history with you guys, you offered him when you were at Mississippi State; how did you rekindle that relationship once you were here and how quickly did things progress?
DAN MULLEN: Well, I think one of the things that actually started right after I got here, kind of reached out, touched base, because I think there was some familiarity between the two of us. But he was trying to feel his way around because he was committed elsewhere, with his future being that way, and I had just been named here. We had a quarterback committed here, and there were other guys that I was becoming familiar with.

You know, it was kind of -- we kept in contact the whole time and said, hey, in the end it's going to be funny, I bet, how it works out, and it is funny. I mean, that it goes full circle, that we were the first ones to offer him. We were his first scholarship offer, and I told him, I was sitting in the house with he and his mom, and I said, God works in funny ways sometimes, that we were the first and we were the last. It kind of worked out that way, but I think the familiarity we had with each other really made it easy because he knew what he was getting with us and we knew what we were getting with him.

Q. He mentioned he talked to Brian Johnson even when Brian was at Houston. How much did that familiarity help, also having a quarterbacks coach who also had a relationship with him?
DAN MULLEN: Well, I think it's huge, because it is. He's not just coming to play quarterback, he's coming to play quarterback at the University of Florida, and there's a lot of responsibility that comes with that. You know, the history of the position here, and you have to find somebody that can handle the responsibilities of not just the quarterback position for the football team but the quarterback at the University of Florida, which is something special.

You know, I think his comfort with us and our comfort with him know that he is somebody that can handle that, that can handle that scrutiny, handle that pressure, handle those expectations and really not handle it but thrive on it, and that's what he was looking for is to be the quarterback at really the premier quarterback school in America.

Q. What was your anxiety level, I guess, going on as he was making that decision? We saw the little video.
DAN MULLEN: Yeah, today is a very anxious day, you know. As a coach, today is one of those hard days. Usually when we're out there on the field, when we're in the Swamp, I kind of feel like I have a lot of control of everything going on for the most part. Boy, today you don't quite have the control. You send out the papers and then your control kind of ends at that point. You're recruiting, you're talking to them, you're hoping you feel good about it, but you know, there's so much that happens. I mean, you're talking about young people and their families, 17, 18 year olds making life-changing decisions, and you're not there, so you hope that all the conversations you've had, the trust that you've formed with them, that bond that you've formed with them, that it's going to hold true.

You know what, it did today for us in just about every case.

Q. In Emory's case, how big is it for this staff, program to win a recruiting battle of that size against some of the competition you were going against?
DAN MULLEN: Well, I mean, those are the expectations here. You know, and that's I guess maybe the first but certainly is not going to be the last, and I'm sure there's going to be a lot of them because we want to go and recruit the best players in America to come play for us. So the guys that we're going after, they're going to have a lot of different opportunities to go to great schools all around America.

For us and our coaching staff, those are the -- we're going to be in a lot of those recruiting battles in the future of getting the best players in America.

Q. You kind of touched on this earlier, but you had to get a coaching staff in order quickly and get parts interchanged. That must have gone well, but can you elaborate how well did that go, was that process smooth? And then you mentioned offensive line being an area of need in the system you run. Is there a particular type of lineman you're looking for?
DAN MULLEN: Well, the first one, the staff part, that's always hard. I'll be honest, you're taking over a program right now, in the last three weeks or however many days it's been that I've been the head coach now, you're looking at trying to manage a team, meet a team, get to know players, see where we're at within a group of players here, establish an identity to the program for the staff, not just the coaches, the staff, go out and hire a coaching staff and sign a recruiting class. You know, and still try to throw in being a husband and a father every once in a while as best as I could, too, with the transition of a family going through. There's a lot of things going on. A bunch of that is kind of -- it's been a crazy time.

So the staffing part of it is obviously a huge challenge. You know, very fortunate to have people I've worked with, I think, for quite a long time that have been with me, that have been loyal to me and our program and knowing what my standards or my expectations are of them, of John Hevesy and Billy Gonzales and Todd Grantham coming with me of not asking the questions, just, hey, do you want to come to Florida, let's go, bang, send me some gear, I'm ready to go out recruiting, and that's about the extent of the conversation of their role of coming to coach here.

But it has been. There's been turnover within our staff even since I've been here; bringing our new coaches in is always kind of a crazy time.

The offensive linemen, you know, the one is -- what we look for, you have an idea where guys play, but you also want position flexibility within the offensive line, you know, of guys that can play multiple positions. You talk with John, he wants to teach everybody to snap just so that everybody has an idea how to snap because if you can't snap the ball, you're going to look pretty silly in a hurry. We'll find out who's comfortable because a lot of these guys maybe are great centers and have never been in that position before. If I look at some of the great centers in the past that we've had, you know, whether it was at Mississippi State or here at Florida within our system, within our offense, most of the guys that played center weren't centers in high school, moved to that position. So the position flexibility across the offensive line is important.

Q. You mentioned the quarterback position, the history that you have here. You're a big part of that, obviously. There's no secret that Florida has been struggling at that position. How much more pressure was added to you to make a choice at this time which one of these quarterbacks you needed to have to run your system, to establish what you want to do? It seemed like this was one of the more critical decisions of a Gator coach about his quarterback.
DAN MULLEN: I think it is, but it is, it's always going to be every single year because that is one of the most important positions on the field. I think coming in, I think for our fan base, they're -- I think the lack of maybe that quarterback that they could -- they're used to identifying with, which is a lot of the guys that have played quarterback here and the Gator greats that come out of that position and the Gator Nation everywhere kind of expects who's that guy.

I've gotten to meet with some of the guys that are here, and there's some talented quarterbacks on campus. I think we just signed an extremely talented young man. You know, so I think really it's not just on signing the quarterback, but to me to get to work in developing those guys and developing. One of the things that's most important at the quarterback position is understanding as a coach what they do well and try to put them in a position to do things that they do well. If I walked up and lined up all of my quarterbacks throughout the years and they all stood in a line up here, it would be a pretty good-looking line, I think, an impressive line, but you would say there's no way those guys all had success running the same offense for the same coach. And you'd probably be true in one part of it, because even though they didn't all run the identical offense, the flexibility within the offense to build around the strength of the quarterback is really important, and you're not going to ask guys to do things they don't do well. That's one thing. Even in recruiting, in talking with Emory, okay, how are we going to change and do things that he does well, and we went back and explained and looked at the difference of the different quarterbacks from what a Nick Fitzgerald was doing well was different than what Dak Prescott did well, which was different than Chris Relf did well, which was different than what a Tebow did well, which was different than what Chris Leak did well, which was different than what Alex Smith did well, and you kind of put them -- the key is putting them in a position to be successful, not have the quarterback have to fit your system. You have to have the flexibility that your system fits around the strengths of that quarterback, and that's the most important thing for us, identifying these strengths for all the guys that we have and put them in the right position to be successful.

Q. Was there a big advantage for you not playing in a bowl game? That gave you the opportunity to go out there and recruit harder.
DAN MULLEN: Sure. I don't know, it's going to be kind of weird the next two weeks. I mean, we hit a dead period in recruiting right now, so you can call and text every once in a while, and a lot of people are playing football and I'm really not used to not playing football this time of year. I don't know, it'll be an interesting deal at home. I've got to hang out with the wife and kids, which I'm really looking forward to. I don't want to make that sound like a negative. But I can promise you this: I hope this is the last time that we're not preparing for a bowl game.

Q. One of the interesting dynamics of Emory's recruitment was that he was committed to Urban, and he said going from him to you was kind of weird. He said he feels like Urban would feel like he's in good hands now. Was that dynamic weird for you at all?
DAN MULLEN: No. I mean, we were going out and trying to get the best recruit, the best players possible. I think especially it's not weird because I think in a lot of ways we're probably looking for similar traits in quarterbacks, not just the athleticism or the style of play but traits as far as the intangibles that they have. You know, I mean, that stuff that when you put on the film and you watch them play, the other things. I mean, everybody says, boy, this guy can really throw and this guy can really run. Everybody is going to be kind of looking at that guy then. But it's digging deeper than that and finding the intangibles, and I think Urban and I probably have very similar philosophies in the intangibles we're looking for in our quarterbacks.

Q. One of those intangibles is leadership, and you guys have a lot of things to attract recruits to Florida, but having a quarterback committed and signed now to go out on the trail the last month and kind of hype up, how much do you think that'll help?
DAN MULLEN: I think it's huge because the one thing you looked at, when you touched on leadership, one, we want quarterbacks that have great leadership, but even if they don't, I'm going to tell you if you walked an entire freshman class into a room and I said, okay, everybody, here's a pen and paper, vote who's going to be our one leader in this group, who's the leader, nominate the leader, hand them to us, without them knowing each other; they're all going to vote for the quarterback. That's usually how it works, that they just assume that that guy is the leader. So now having him in place, I think over the next six weeks, and as other guys that we're recruiting as it gets heated up here, they're going to look and say, hey, the leader is already in place, and it's a big-time leader at Florida.

Q. Just to talk about this a little bit more with this crunched time period for recruiting, how did you guys go about deciding who you were going to target, how you were going to target them, and the game plan for what you needed to do when you only had a few weeks to do it?
DAN MULLEN: Well, obviously it was crunch time. I think we missed a couple of opportunities that if we had more time we would have been able to get some players that we just maybe ran out of time, some guys that would have fit what we do and maybe would have loved to have been Gators, we just didn't have time to have the relationship with them with a short window.

But what we did is came in and worked with what we had and went out there and hit the ground running as hard as we could and trying to get guys that -- there were guys that were committed here. We kept several of them. We didn't keep some of them. You know, and maybe they changed their minds with the staff or maybe they didn't fit really what we were doing or didn't fit what our program was going to stand and represent, what it was going to represent in the future. You know, and then there's other guys that were excited about what our program is going to represent in the future that were looking at other places.

We just tried to as much as we could identify players, swarm players that are going to fit what we want. With only where we signed the number of guys now, there's still a lot of -- there's spots open for us that we'd like to fill on the next signing day, but we wanted to come in and fill the slots of guys that we felt comfortable with. We'll move on from that now and find where our needs are and try as hard as we can to go fill those spots in the next signing day.

Q. What are some of the needs you think you need to fill here to close out the class?
DAN MULLEN: You know, certainly corner is going to be a big need for us, defensive line, outside linebacker, offensive line and wide receiver are going to be really the emphasis moving forward. You know, but I do think -- when you look at some of the -- those are the main needs. We'll still look at -- we'll be recruiting everybody. But I think you check the box at quarterback, you check the box at placekicker. With Eddie entering the draft and announcing he was going to do that, to get Evan MacPherson who's probably the best high school kicker in America to come in and know that there's a good chance you might be starting day one, and I think that chance really increased yesterday. To check those boxes I think certainly adds some security moving forward for the program.

Q. Eight early enrollees including your quarterback, how big is that?
DAN MULLEN: Yeah, any time guys enroll early -- I think any time -- just the general philosophy of enrolling early I think gives you a jump start in your college career. They also get to go through an off-season conditioning program and to get to go through spring ball. I do think it helps them with the foundation of building for their future, and certainly with the opportunity to get on the field early in their career.

Q. How do you continue to build on this momentum from a day like this right here, being back here? What do you do going forward now?
DAN MULLEN: Well, I think there's a lot that we can embrace moving forward. We want to build -- I think everybody understands, especially every time you come in this room, and even when I stand here and you look at the bowl appearances, you look at the SEC Championships, you know, in my office there's three crystal balls of the standards and expectations of what this program is and what it represents. I think the quality of young men coming in are certainly going to help put us back on that path to having that type of program. Everything we're doing, I think momentum from this day, the guy that we've got coming into us is going to help continue to build that foundation for us to get back to where we need to be as a football program.

Q. Obviously this was the first time this was the early signing period. What did you like about it and not like about it?
DAN MULLEN: You know, I like it. Obviously we were put in a tough situation this year, but I do like having the opportunity to have an early signing period. These are guys that knew they wanted to be Gators, and so why extend it out for another six weeks, why all these visits and the craziness in their life and having to get out of class and that deal. I do, I'm in favor. I wouldn't have minded another week or two maybe of work with the time frame that I had to work with, but I think moving forward into the future, there's some benefits to having the early signing day, and we'll see this time next year when we have a year, a whole year to work on it, a whole year to work on the 2019 class before that next early signing day, how that plays out.

I think you'll see this year is a test. I think next year is going to give a little bit more consistency to what it's going to be, and within two to three years, you're going to kind of know how the signing days are going to play out for the long-term, for the future.

Q. What's your kind of overall philosophy on this class?
DAN MULLEN: Well, what we're doing is finding guys that we think fit our program, both with their character, their work ethic and their talent, and so if you check those boxes and we have the position need, we're not going to hold back. But we're not going to fill spots just to fill a spot. Just if we have a rush spot available, doesn't mean we'll fill it. We're going to go find guys that we feel are going to help us take the program to the championship level.

Q. The offense has been kind of the bugaboo for this program for a while. What can you tell us about the other guys -- as we've been talking about the quarterback the whole time, the two running backs and tight ends?
DAN MULLEN: Yeah, people like offense here, don't they?

Q. Well, there hasn't been any for a while.
DAN MULLEN: I remember it was a rough walk to my car after the game if we didn't score 40 when I was here before. You'd kind of put the head down and try to run in and sneak out of the back of the stadium. But I loved that. I love scoring points. It's not going to get me upset. I love scoring points.

Really excited. I think the running backs, one thing I will say, you have an Iverson Clement who gives you -- he's a guy who is a playmaker in and out of the backfield, open space runner, can get him the ball in the open field. Dameon goes down to me, and I know -- I think Chris Bleich signed his first, but the first one to come in on the phone, the picture, even though I think his time was ahead of when I signed was Dameon Pierce, so for me I texted him that. I said, you're always going to have a special place in my heart because you are the first signee for me as the head coach at the University of Florida, so that's not something I'm ever going to forget. That's the first person that officially bought in to what we're doing and got his papers in.

But he's a physical back that can -- I mean, that I love. Has the ability to make you miss and make the plays on the perimeter outside but really can also run the ball between the tackles and wear down a defense through the course of a game.

Q. Kind of housekeeping, any decisions on staffing? Brian is going to coach quarterbacks I assume?
DAN MULLEN: Yeah, Brian will coach the quarterbacks. You know, it's a work in progress that I've loved to have the staff in place by the time we get on the road recruiting again in January. But it's going to be a fluid situation still for the next two weeks until we get everything in place, both on and off the field.

Q. Injuries, Malik Davis and Brett Heggie --
DAN MULLEN: Malik had a surgery. They said it went really well. You know, yeah, had a surgery. We'll know more when they get back. You know, this is always a tricky time. I know Malik is still here doing some rehab because this is a time where they're off, they have a break, so they've got to make sure they're maintaining, doing what they're going to do for the next couple of weeks until they get back. We'll have a better idea once mid-January, once they're into the heart of their rehab where they're at.

Q. How are you on injuries? Can you tell us what the injuries were or do you not doing that?
DAN MULLEN: I'm not a big injury guy.

Q. Going back to the quarterbacks, you mentioned building offense around QB strengths. Can you expound on what you see as Emory's strengths and the kind of player you think he can become over time?
DAN MULLEN: Well, number one, I think he's a winner, and that's the first thing you look for is a guy that has an "it" factor about him and can go win football games for you. I told him the first thing after all my film evaluation on him, I asked him a question, I said, and this is what I loved about him because he gets it. I said, what was the most impressive thing I watched about your film. He said, me playing free safety. I said, you're right. I said, I started with that. I wouldn't be sitting here recruiting you if you couldn't throw and run, but how he played the physicalness of going in there, the unselfishness to go there and be a quarterback and say, hey, the team needs me, I'm going to go do whatever I need to help my team win football games. That attitude of being a winner, to me that -- having the "it," it's all the intangibles, being a winner, that's it. He's a winner. It starts there, of somebody that has that mindset. You know, he even sent me a text about 10 days ago. He said, hey, you know what, when all is said and done, I'm your man, I'm going to help you win championships at Florida. You know, just when you see a text like that, that's what I want to see out of my quarterback, someone that has that confidence and that expectation, not worried about what jersey number or worried about all -- a lot of the other stuff that goes on in recruiting, someone who's worried about coming in and doing what it takes to win.

So he checks all of those boxes. Obviously he's got a strong arm. I mean, he's got the size and the athletic ability to improvise. He can run but he can also run the football but he can also improvise and extend plays, and he does have a cannon for an arm.

Q. So did that give you a sense that he was coming here?
DAN MULLEN: No, I had a sense at that point that, hey, we were probably going to merge into the direction that there was interest on both our parts to make this happen in the end, I think. It wasn't that that was it. It was -- I think it was him reaching out to me saying, you know -- I think we were both kind of looking and feeling everybody, and he was feeling out his situation and we were feeling out our situation. I think that was his word to me of, hey, I can't wait to get you in the house and sit down and let's see if this works for both of us.

Q. And we will kind of expect him to be the guy as a freshman. What do you expect the competition to be?
DAN MULLEN: Well, that's hard to say as you're going to come in to be a true freshman and be the guy in the Southeastern Conference. I think the opportunity for him graduating early and going through spring practice will give him a chance, but I'll be honest with you, there are a couple quarterbacks on campus that are going to have something to say about that because they're going to have a competitive edge to them, as well. But I think that that mindset, the competitiveness at the position is certainly going to elevate the play of all of the quarterbacks.

Q. Allegedly you had dinner with Emory; how did that go?
DAN MULLEN: Have dinner with him here? Yeah, we had dinner.

Q. At the house --
DAN MULLEN: I don't have a house here. If I would have had dinner at my house it would have been interesting because it wouldn't have been in the state of Florida yet. But I had dinner at his house. I think there was another school outside; I made sure we ate all the food so there was nothing left for them to sit down and eat before they got in there. I said, we had some wings, we had some wings and other stuff. Fortunately it was me and Brian Johnson and John Hevesy, so I'm like, yeah, keep eating the chicken. Mom got us some wings and some fried chicken. I'm like, there's another school outside, let's make sure there's no food left for them to sit down and eat. I did say it was Thursday night, I was going to put my feet up and go watch the Thursday night game and make them sit in the parking lot because it was going to be a good game on Thursday night. But no, we did. You know what, and had a great visit with him and had a great visit with his mom, because it is, because you know what -- and this is what was important for him and his mom and for me, and Megan was here, Megan was here for the visit to spend time with him and his mom, to know that, I mean, like you said, he's coming to be the quarterback at the University of Florida. You'd better make sure that we are -- we're family now. You know, and I think his mom understood that and understood the relationship, and not just at the quarterback position, at every position. But at that position, there's a lot of mentoring because it goes a lot of times beyond football with the pressure and the expectations that come with playing that position of how involved we are in every aspect of his life and helping him grow and helping him develop and how he'll be part of our family.

I think it was really important for -- when I went to his house and we sat down and had dinner that they felt comfortable, and when they came down on the visit that they not only just felt comfortable with me but with Megan and everybody in our family.

Q. You left there feeling very good, thinking that --
DAN MULLEN: Well, I felt good, but I didn't feel -- I felt great when I watched TV and he committed to Florida today. You know, I haven't done this -- this is my first time doing this, so I haven't done it in a long time. You can feel great. I felt great that we would have that relationship here. I did feel great if he made the decision to come to Florida that he would make the decision for all the right reasons and that he'd be comfortable being part of the family.

Q. Were you 80 percent, 90 percent at that point --
DAN MULLEN: I don't know. I felt good. The thing that made me feel good, we had constant communication with him all the way to signing today, so there was never a break in communication. During the recruiting process if there's never a break in communication you feel good. I don't know that I ever put a percent on anything, but I think you feel good that there was never a break in the communication, and really in the last 10 days.

Q. Going to a 3-4 with Todd, how do you feel about the personnel you have, and how much do you still need to fill some needs at linebacker?
DAN MULLEN: Well, you do. Obviously outside linebacker within the 3-4 is a key spot to that, so we've got to make sure we get the right guys to be able to play that position. But I'll say this about Todd: We're going to be flexible. You'll see us be in the 3-4, you'll see us be in the 4-3. We're not going to sit in one defense. We're going to move in and out of defenses and use different personnel groupings.

Very similar to what we are offensively is Todd is going to have the flexibility to build the defense around the personnel that we have now and around the personnel -- and as we continue to build and recruit and get guys that fit the specific needs of what we want, that defense will transition long-term into what we want to be.

Q. And then David Reese was listed as a linebacker on most of the recruiting sites. He's a DB --
DAN MULLEN: Yeah, or corner. He told me, I just said -- he's a dude now. I mean, he is -- he can go. I just said to him, I said, David, here's the interesting thing, I'm going to have the first team meeting, I'm going to say break up into your position groups, where are you going to go. He said, wherever you tell me to go, Coach. I said, I'm not going to tell you to do anything, I'm just going to tell you to go to your position meeting. Where are you going to go? He's like, I might even go to D-line because I really want to hit the quarterback and go rush the passer or something. I said, all right, well, then go to the D-line. I mean, physically there's a lot of things he can do.

No, I do see him being somebody that can fit, whether it is as a nickel, whether it's as a linebacker, playing potentially the money backer for us, even in a passing situation playing an outside backer coming off the edge. I think he has the ability to do a lot of different things for us.

Q. You also have Amari, John and Trey that can move around in the secondary. How key is that to get guys that have that flexibility, especially with your defense?
DAN MULLEN: Well, it is, because you look at the size, you look at a Trey, 6'2", 180 as a corner, can play safety, could go to nickel. Amari is that guy that's already 6'1", 220, that very much -- very similar to David Reese that way where those are guys that are going to be bigger guys that have the athletic ability, are going to run like DBs but are going to have the size of linebackers, and that's going to be able to let them move around a lot. John the same way, corner, safety. That's what we want is guys that can do that, have the length on the outside and the speed of a corner but also the physicality of a safety to be able to move around.

And to fit, you know, because recruiting is an inexact science. Until we get them on the field and put them through doing what we want them to do, we're not going to know what position maybe is best for them, but when they have flexibility to be able to do multiple things, usually you're going to find one that fits best.

Q. And can you just discuss the addition of Van Jefferson and his chances of playing in 2018?
DAN MULLEN: I can't talk about him yet.

Q. You guys were able to keep a lot of the class or the guys you wanted intact. What role did Drew Hughes have in doing that and getting you and the new coaches familiarized with the guys that he had the previous relationship with?
DAN MULLEN: Yeah, Drew has done a really good job working, I guess maybe even adjusting to what we're looking for. In the change of recruiting style, the change of possible personnel and what we're looking for out of the players, but also change in the character and the makeup of the players that we're looking for. So I think he's done a really good job for us, helping transition through the staff, trying to be as organized as he can and trying to get us after his many players as he can of kind of being that link. He and Ja'Juan really to me did a tremendous job of trying to link some of the past to where we are today.

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