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PENN STATE UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 9, 2018

Juwan Johnson

University Park, Pennsylvania

Q. How are you doing?
JUWAN JOHNSON: Feeling great right now. Just had a bye week, so it's a good time, talk to the family, went to my friends house, enjoyed time with them. It was a good time to just relax and watch a couple games.

Q. Kind of want to, you know, flash back to the past a little bit. Last year, you guys fell to Ohio State by one point and then you headed into Michigan State. How are you using last year as a learning experience and why will this season be different this time around?
JUWAN JOHNSON: Just taking it as we always take it, one game at a time. Try not to flashback to last year or the years previous. We're just sort of trying to just focus on now. Focus on what we can do this game to do better and work from there.

Q. Teams have had a lot of success throwing the ball against Michigan State this year. What have you seen on film that is allowing that to happen?
JUWAN JOHNSON: They are a great team. They fell a couple times, which any other team has but they are a good team. Just fell to some great teams that they played.

Just watched the Northwestern game, but they played them well. One thing they didn't do, I don't know if it was offensively or what-have-you, I didn't watch the offensive side but defensively they played great. They played the best they could but they just fell short.

Q. What other games did you watch this weekend?
JUWAN JOHNSON: As you can imagine, I seen the LSU, Florida game. I seen the Mississippi State game also. I was just watching games like that. Just able to sit back and watch games and be an actual fan of the game was fun to do.

Q. Weird seeing JoMo on a different sideline?
JUWAN JOHNSON: It's definitely weird, but you know, I was here before he got here. I was able to obviously watch the game.

But it's definitely different seeing him in another color but it's fun to watch him because you know you're in that offense and seems funny, you're calling out plays of what they have done. He's done an awesome job.

Q. How big is it to have K.J. on Saturday, the game against Ohio State?
JUWAN JOHNSON: Well, we're not talking about that but when he's on the field, he's pretty electric. He gives you that confidence when you're next to him and you kind of feed off each other. When he's on the field he's a big part of the offense.

Q. It was such a weird scenario last year with you guys in that three and a half hour lightning delay. What do you remember about being in that cramped visiting locker room and what did you do for that amount of time?
JUWAN JOHNSON: To be optimistic about that day, it was a time where we kind of bonded and had our own little time together. You don't get too many times where you're in the game and you're just chilling with your teammates for three hours in the locker room. It was fun. We were listening to music. Some people were taking naps. Some people were watching Netflix. I don't remember what season I was watching, but I was definitely watching Netflix. We were just relaxing and just kind of getting our minds off the game but sort of having our minds on the game.

Q. Can you assess how your season has gone so far? You've made some spectacular plays, but then there's been some other plays that have gotten away from you. How do you see it?
JUWAN JOHNSON: I try to be optimistic about it. Being the bad plays that happened, you try to forget about them.

Obviously you don't want to reflect on what's bad. Think about the positive things that happen and feed off that, because the moment you start thinking about the negative things, you're going to start feeling a certain way and going to start getting into your head.

Only thing you can do is think about the positive things, like the big plays I made or the thing I do with my teammates or how we communicate and sort of work off of that, go back to the drawing board, whether it's film or things like that and work from there.

Q. You've played with Trace for a long time now. Is there a specific time when you just see him lock in where you're glad that he's not on the opposing team? When is he kind of at his best for you guys?
JUWAN JOHNSON: You can't really tell, just sort of when he steps on the field. He just never changes. I'm quite sure I've said that before, and when he steps on the field, he's just a different person. He's just always locked in. He's that word that we always talk about and he's always competitive.

When he steps on that field, I'm like, man, I'm glad he's on my team and we just sort of work on from there, whether it's communicating from wide receiver to quarterback or whether it's off the field with film and stuff. He's always that competitive person that everyone always talks about.

Q. What was maybe said within the last week to reiterate to you guys that it can't snowball like it did last year from Ohio State to Michigan State? Who was leading those conversations and how was that delivered?
JUWAN JOHNSON: I guess what you probably heard, like I said, Nick Scott and Trace were the ones in the locker room talking saying, things like this happen and it does suck that we lost, but sort of just moving forward. I always talk about bouncing back and resilient and us coming back, working on the little things and focusing on the details, getting back to the drawing board and doing what we do, and that's pretty much winning.

Once we focus on that and focus on the game-by-game, then we'll be all right.

Q. James Franklin just spoke about the need for you guys to find that 1 percent and whatever it may be. What is that for you what is that 1 percent you want to work on?
JUWAN JOHNSON: The 1 percent is just being the better me. Being better than I was yesterday. So whether that's stretching or whether that's watching or film, doing schoolwork, anything like that. It's just being a better me than what I was yesterday, and that's pretty much all I could do.

Q. When we talked after the game, you had not looked at your phone yet for your responses to the one-handed catch. What were some of the responses that you saw, maybe a memorable one or two?
JUWAN JOHNSON: Everyone was like, that was a crazy catch, or that was insane, what you think. It's sort of like I work on it every day. One hand, I work on catching every day. So it was nothing surprising to me. I know that I made the catch, but just sort of me just being me.

Q. Have you ever had a one-handed catch --
JUWAN JOHNSON: I've always either done it in practice or just playing around, catching the ball. So when I caught it -- I never done it in a game before, but in practice or you know just seven-on-seven in summer, things like that. Wasn't really a surprise.

Q. Pat Freiermuth had one -- he's now the outright starter on top of the depth chart. Can you talk about what you see from him working to get to that point and can you add to what James Franklin said: The stage is not too big for him.
JUWAN JOHNSON: I agree, the stage isn't too big for him. He was kind of nervous getting into it because freshmen have those jitters but he came in, and he came in confident. In the summertime I seen something in pat that you don't see from a freshman. He was very mature, very cool, calm and collected. I was very happy that he was a starter. I had complete confidence in him it, and it was good to be beside him and taking those snaps and doing the things that he did on this past Saturday.

Q. There's a few veterans as a result of his rise that are falling down the depth chart. Have you seen them maintain confidence? How do you make sure those guys are in the right place mentally? Because when you've been on campus for four years and you see a freshman come in and take that job, obviously there's some room for doubt.
JUWAN JOHNSON: Well, we have some guys, especially the players on our team, we don't -- we aren't jealous people. The only thing we are going to do is be more competitive. If we are falling off or if some people are calling off; say if I fall off or one of the other wide receivers fall off, we're going to build off each other and going to get better. We're not going to lose that guy. We're just bringing that person with us and bringing him and making him better.

Q. Mentally when you go through those first five games and you have the drops and stuff like that, how do you work through that in terms of trying to flush that and forget it, because I'm sure it's human nature and I'm guessing you look at Twitter on occasion and those sorts of things. How do you navigate all that? Who helps you through that?
JUWAN JOHNSON: Well, I sort of really don't care about people's opinions. Whatever they say, I kind of don't really pay attention to it. But for the most part, I sort of just go through it. I mean, life continues to move on. You sort of move with the clocks. You can't reflect on what happened. You have to move forward and keep on working.

Q. Do you hear from former players when you have a struggle here or there, because guys like DaeSean, Gesicki, everybody has had some issues. What do they tell you or do they talk to you at all?
JUWAN JOHNSON: Yeah, I mean, I talk to Mike a lot and I talk to DaeSean a ton. Those guys really helped me out, saying, like, man, how's it going, and they are pretty much saying, it's all good, it's all part of the process. You're going to have hiccups and you're going to have bumps.

That's pretty much all it is. It's not going to be perfect because if the world was perfect, we wouldn't be here right now. We'd be somewhere else. That's part of the process and I'm going to continue.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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