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PURDUE UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 6, 2011

Danny Hope

THE MODERATOR: Welcome to week two of Purdue football. The Boilermakers will be heading down to Houston to play Rice this Saturday. Game time is 3:30 Eastern time, 2:30 Central. Game will be broadcast on CBS Sports Network. We've got a couple of callers on the line here. We'll go ahead and start with Pete.

Q. Hey, Danny. First off, maybe if you could give an assessment of Rice. Obviously, they pushed Texas pretty hard for three quarters. The problems they present.
COACH HOPE: They're a very physical football team and an experienced football team. They have a lot of players back. They're similar to us in some ways, as far as last season goes. They thought they could have a good football team in the season last year possibly and had a lot of injuries. I think they had three or four starting quarterbacks last year as well.
They got a lot of good players back. They're an experienced football team, very physical on defense. They're a little more vanilla than what we just saw this past weekend, where Middle Tennessee State was a high pressure football team. Rice is a lot like Iowa. They'll line up in a couple of front and a couple of coverages and execute and play very physical, not making any mistakes. Good speed at the corner spots and very physical defensive football team.
Offensively, they return some weapons. They can get in the shotgun, and they can really give you some headaches passing the football, and they're very good at all the option run game, including the quarterback as a runner. They also bring in a very good football player and have a very good wildcat package.
So they pose some challenges to our football team. They are a good football team with a lot of weapons back, and it should be a heck of a game.

Q. Can you play a whole lot better than you did in terms of special teams than you did last week?
COACH HOPE: I think so. I think we can manufacture more return yardage. Obviously, we had a turnover on special teams. We didn't have many turnovers last year. We got hit one time on a kickoff when Joe Holland turned and ran, and there were a couple that we really couldn't avoid last year. But we had a turnover in special teams. So we could do a lot better with that obviously.
I thought our specialists really played well. I thought Carson Wiggs played to All-American standards on Saturday, and Cody Webster really punted the ball well. I thought all the support cast did well on Saturday.
We can do better. We can score more points with our special teams. We can secure the football better with our special teams. We have a lot more potential than what we demonstrated on Saturday. We played very well on Saturday. Special teams was an edge for our football team this past Saturday.

Q. The fourth quarter in particular, the game-winning drive, do you get a sense that maybe Terbush grew up quite a bit on that last drive?
COACH HOPE: I thought the whole second half our football team matured some. It was a defining moment in some ways to come out in the second half and come from behind on a really hot day against a very determined and talented football team and learn how to win, found a way to win. I thought it was a big second half for our entire football team, and I thought Caleb Terbush really played well in the second half.
I think we scored on all three of our possessions there at the end of the game to really impact the outcome of the football game. We had a 99-yard drive. There were a lot of things that we did well Saturday offensively that was taken away some by the amount of mistakes we made pre-snap. Once the ball was snapped, for the most part, we played really well offensively Saturday. I thought we blocked really well Saturday, picked up a lot of blitzes, really established the line of scrimmage for the run game. I thought our receivers caught the ball well for the most part.
I think Siller had an ugly drop, but I think we caught the ball well and ran tough at the wide receiver position. I thought our quarterback completed 60 percent of his throws and did very well for the most part.
We made some errors prior to the snap that made it look ugly offensively in the beginning, and it slowed us down some. We had about 100 yards of offense called back as a result of penalties, and we were penalized, I think, about 85 yards. That's a 200-yard difference in the game.
I thought we did really well offensively. The backs ran really hard. They blocked really well, protected Caleb really well. I thought we did some good things on Saturday.

Q. Hello, Coach. Just wanted to get your take, just what are some of the challenges and some of the benefits of an early road test?
COACH HOPE: Well, the way our schedule is this year, we have some -- we have tough competition throughout the course of this season. There are some really key road games against some very strong competition for our football team to be really successful this year and not to look too far into the future, but we're going to have to become road warriors in some ways.
This is a great test for our football team. It's a great opportunity for our football team. We'll have to play very well to be successful at Rice. There's a heat factor in some ways. I was really glad that it was as hot as it was this past Saturday. I think it was great training and great conditioning for our game this weekend in Houston, where it will be hot. It will be hot weather conditions.
So I thought the heat was a benefit for us Saturday. Obviously, going on the road is the big step for our football team. We have to play well on the road throughout the course of the season to have a great season. Might as well get started with that now.

Q. And you mentioned some of the penalties. Just what are some of the keys to kind of cutting down on some of those mistakes there?
COACH HOPE: We came out early in the game with a brand new quarterback, who hasn't played a college football game or taken many snaps since he got out of high school. That will slow your start down a little bit. He'll do a lot better.
I thought he played really well Saturday. I thought he had a heck of a day. But that will clean up a bit just as he gets used to it.
And I thought we did a lot of no huddle offenses early. We didn't want them to blitz every time. Sometimes if you go no huddle and line up quick, the defense will have to line up and run some of their base defense and not blitz quite as often. So we came out and ran some no huddle early to try to slow down the blitz calls a little bit. So hurry up and line it up a little bit, first time with a new quarterback, shakiness and all that, we didn't take care of business prior to the snap.
We were offsides a little bit, had five in the backfield some, and got our formations mixed up a little bit. That made a difference with the quarterback's reads, not knowing where certain players were at.
There are some things to clean up, obviously. We'll do a lot better with that. It will be a huge jump from the first game to the second game, just naturally that will happen. The part that I'm excited about was what happened after the ball was snapped. I thought we really played well offensively after the ball was snapped.

Q. Thanks, Coach.
COACH HOPE: Thank you.

Q. Rice's offense, it's my understanding they're also a spread team kind of like Middle Tennessee was. Do they do it the exact opposite like Middle Tennessee was, in that Tennessee was a drop-back team?
COACH HOPE: Again, they're kind of like us in some ways where it's really hard to get a handle on exactly what they're going to do offensively because they've been through so many quarterbacks in their last 13 or 14 football games. If you look at what they were doing at the end of the season last year, they were, you know, in the shotgun quite a bit with two backs, open formation, open grouping. And did a lot of the zone read and stuff with two backs in the backfield and brought a wildcat player in and manufactured a lot of their offense that way.
This year they have a new coordinator, some new coaches on offense, and they haven't done some of the things they were doing last year. But maybe some of the reasons they did the things they did last year was they had some injuries at the quarterback spot.
Really knowing exactly what they're going to do is a challenge for us in some ways because they've only played one game with this quarterback in this offense. They get in the shotgun, I would say they're probably a run it first, where Middle Tennessee would get in the shotgun, and they're probably a throw it first football team. They're different schematically from what they try to feature from a running back standpoint.
They have a couple of good players to surround the quarterback with. They like to keep the defense off balance with a lot of the zone read stuff and some of the shotgun run games, where Middle Tennessee only tried to feature one back and their quarterback was really their feature player offensively.

Q. From a defensive standpoint, I think I read something in the off-season that one of their priorities was to really play up on wide receivers more than maybe they had last year. Is that something you guys saw when you watched the Texas film?
COACH HOPE: I think how you format them will dictate what kind of personnel grouping you have in the ball game and will dictate their press coverage from that standpoint. Some of the things that Texas did Saturday are not things we're going to do. Whether they're going to play that close up to the receivers or not, I couldn't tell you because our formations and groupings are different than what Texas ran.
They're similar to what they've done last year. They retain a lot of the same coaches on that side of the ball. It looks like they're hanging their hat on the same things defensively as they did a year ago. That's been my guess looking at them so far.

Q. I just had one other question for you. Justin Siller, I know he talked during the Spring and off-season -- obviously, he's 6'5", and one of his emphases was to play more his size, be a little more physical. It seems like Saturday was a step in that direction. Is that something that you and your staff were particularly pleased to see, I guess?
COACH HOPE: I was pleased with Justin's performance. Stamina and familiarity with the position and confidence at his new position, I think, are the biggest difference makers in Justin's play right now. Last year he really couldn't play up to his potential. He was new to the position. The conditioning part of it was a struggle for him, and then he got injured.
He's had a chance to grow and develop in the position, and he can be a standout player as a receiver for us. He ran good routes. He caught the ball. He was where he was supposed to be. He was a big target. I thought he made some very athletic catches with his hands. He did a good job blocking on the perimeter. He obviously can and will be a feature player in our offense throughout the course of the season.
I think Justin's going to have a great year, absolutely. Very much improved football player from a year ago.

Q. Is there any update you can give us at this point on Gabe and his availability for Saturday?
COACH HOPE: We'll know more the next couple of days, but I would say, you know, possibly doubtful. It's a collision to his knee, a kneecap thing. I don't think it's going to be anything serious, but he still has some swelling and is still tender right now. It may be doubtful, but you never know. He's young, and they heal fast.

Q. You might have a similar answer for Marve. As we stand now, where do you think he is with his possibility to play on Saturday?
COACH HOPE: He probably has a better chance physically of playing than Gabe. I think Marve probably felt good enough, his knee felt good enough for him to go in the game and play Saturday, but he had not had that many reps in practice. The reps he did have in practice, he's done very well with for the most part.
Again, it was a safety issue and not knowing exactly where he was at and kind of putting him in there on the spur of the moment we didn't think was in his best interests. I believe he'll come out today and get a lot of reps and start getting ready to play and be a contributor this coming Saturday. Absolutely.

Q. Has Logan Link been nicked up a bit for you guys? Do you hope he's getting better, if he has been?
COACH HOPE: He did get nicked up Saturday, but it's a small thing. They were a football team that was throwing the ball quite a bit, and we have a lot of good defensive backs. Sometimes you get certain guys in there in certain situations, down and distance-wise, and certain personnel and groupings from a pass defense standpoint. So Logan did get nicked some on Saturday, but he's okay. We had him out of the game some with some other defenders in the game as well.

Q. Just you talked before about Crosby Wright and how great a blocker he is. Just were you pleasantly surprised with how well he caught the ball in key situations on Saturday?
COACH HOPE: I think he's always caught the ball well. With Gabe Holmes you're always so excited about his size and speed and athleticism, that most of our thoughts and conversations have been about Gabe Holmes and his potential to be a great receiving tight end. But Crosby Wright catches the ball really well. He's very strong.
I'm surprised how much he's developed in a year. He's a lot more big and strong than he was a year ago. He's very smart. He has a lot of suddenness about him on the line of scrimmage. Sometimes guys will have a better knack for seeing what's in front of them better than others. He does a good job of seeing what's in front of him and being able to react versus movement and blitzes and people changing directions in front of him in the game. He has really long arms and strong hands.
I think he's a good receiving tight end. He's not as big as Gabe from a vertical standpoint, but he's a good receiving tight end. I really like him on the line of scrimmage. He's a very good football player.

Q. What does Landon Feichter -- I'm not sure I got that right.
COACH HOPE: You're pronouncing that right. That's important.

Q. What can you do to get him to play well on Saturday?
COACH HOPE: He runs fast and hits hard. I don't know where he'd rank as the biggest players on our football team. He's a little undersized at the safety position, but he packs a lot of wallop. He's fearless as a hitter. He runs fast and hits hard. He caught our eyes many times.
A year ago on the scout team, he made a ton of plays. He's one of the better players on our scout team, and he certainly has surfaced as one of the better players on our football team. Worked hard and done very well.

Q. Just a followup question on Robert Marve. If he's ready to go and gets the number of reps that you want him to get, will you play two quarterbacks with Caleb and him, or is he just there in case you need him?
COACH HOPE: We'll make a decision as far as who the next quarterback to go in the game would be, but I still want to continue to try to play two quarterbacks. Saturday was tough. We're behind some. And then we had a point in time we wanted to put Sean in the game, and we had an interception and opted not to pull Caleb at that point in the game.
We weren't taking him out of the game because he threw an interception. We wanted to get Sean in the game, but the timing was off. We will play two quarterbacks. We'll make a decision, as the week goes on, who the No. 2 quarterback will be in the game. Right now there's no question who the No. 1 is. It's Caleb Terbush.

Q. What improvements do you need to see physically this week?
COACH HOPE: We need to play more physical across the line of scrimmage. It was really hot on Saturday. How Middle Tennessee had their passing game structured, the quarterback was aligned really deep in the shotgun and took a very, very deep drop. His launch point, as far as where the football was being launched from, was a long ways away from the line of scrimmage.
They do a great job with short and intermediate routes, getting people open. He was very accurate getting the ball out of his hand. And I don't think we did enough as far as disrupting the front and manufacturing a pass rush to slow him down. I'd like to play a lot harder across the line of scrimmage with the defensive line, disrupt the offensive front, the line of scrimmage where the offense is lined up at, on a more consistent basis than we did this past Saturday.
Then when we brought some of our pressures. We made some hay when we brought some pressure and we blitzed some, but we weren't always in the right gap. They did a lot of things formation-wise, and you had to really be sound to bring a pressure package against Middle Tennessee. We didn't make many mistakes in practice. We didn't make hardly any mistakes in practice on the defensive side of the ball as far as the pressure package, and we made a few on Saturday.
I'd like to be a bit more consistent and bring pressure. Sometimes you can get burned that way. I'd like to bring more across the line of scrimmage with our defensive line and disrupt the pass rush more than we did this past Saturday.

Q. How important is it to play a game in Texas? That's kind of a big state with a lot of football players. Is it kind of a sidebar to this game, exposing your program down there?
COACH HOPE: I certainly hope so. When I was here before with Coach Tiller, and we drew on the team and had a lot of publicity in the State of Texas. We did really well recruiting in Texas. A lot of our top players were from Texas. We were really strong in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area and the Houston area. We went back to Texas this past spring and rallied up a lot of football advocates, Purdue football advocates, that are located in the State of Texas.
We had one rally in Dallas, and we had a couple hundred people show up. We had about a hundred in Houston. We had a lot of fans, a lot of alum, a lot of support in the State of Texas. There's great football down there.
We, I think, strengthened our commitment to recruiting in the State of Texas the past couple of years. Carson Wiggs, Reggie Pegram, Akeem Shavers -- absolutely great players. We're glad to be playing in the State of Texas, and it was part of the plan.

Q. Obviously, Carson's got a cannon for a leg, but as you sit there and watch, just what impresses you? What goes through your mind when he's kicking field goals, whether they're long, short, medium, what have you?
COACH HOPE: Confidence. He's unbelievably confident. He's taken his skill and transformed it into an art. He's gotten it to that level. It's not perfect. It's never going to be, but it's certainly excellent.
We go out there and practice and work on certain types of kicks. And we can tell Carson where we want him to kick it to and where at and how long. It's amazing how accurate he can be. He's a very, very special specialist. He really is.

Q. What's his ceiling?
COACH HOPE: He keeps getting better. His kickoff is a lot better. He had touchbacks on Saturday. It would be hard to kick a whole lot longer field goals than he does. Just to continue the consistency part of it. You know, you start getting close to excellence in some ways, it's a fine margin. But you keep inching your way up.
You know, I think 3 of his 6 kickoffs were touchbacks Saturday. So maybe 4 out of the 6 this week or 5 out of the 6. He can still improve. He sure does a great job with it. More excellence is, I guess, where his ceiling would be. More of it.

Q. I think you had mentioned last week the offensive line -- the communication on the offensive line maybe isn't as important as people say it is. Or how you want to phrase that.
COACH HOPE: Not as frequent as it used to be.

Q. So what are the pre-snap responsibilities? Is it mostly on the quarterback?
COACH HOPE: I'm not sure what you're asking. The pre-snap responsibilities, they have a rule attached to every play. Every football player does. You should be able to tell him the play, close his eyes, spin around in the dark and walk to the line of scrimmage, and apply the rule with exactly what he needs to do with regard to the position on the football team.

Q. I didn't know if they had to point out where somebody was on the defense or something, in terms of helping with the blitz.
COACH HOPE: Sometimes they have to make adjustments, but the biggest difference now compared to 10 or 15 years ago is the type of blitzing has changed. Years ago, most people blitzed, and they only did man blitzes, and they had to show their hand a little bit and had to do man coverage behind it and roll people. You could see it was a blitz coverage and it was man. Now people blitz, and they play zone coverage behind it, and you can't see it as often.
Sometimes you just block certain directions assuming the blitz might be coming from that direction. And because of the number of zone blitzes that you have nowadays and the amount of slide protections that you have, you don't have to communicate as much. They still have to make adjustments as people walk up. I say it's at least 50 percent less or more than ten years ago.

Q. Who graded out the highest on the line, on the offense?
COACH HOPE: I'd say probably Dennis Kelly and Peters Drey. I thought they all played really well. I was really surprised how Justin Kitchens played. He is cat quick for an offensive lineman, and Middle Tennessee is a fast football team. They brought a lot of different guys that can run and a lot of blitzes and a lot of movement. I thought Justin Kitchens did a good job for his first time playing in a football game as an offensive lineman.
I thought Nick Mondek played like a big time guard. I think he has the potential to be an NFL offensive lineman from the size and strength and foot speed standpoint. He certainly does. Experience at the position is what he is lacking. He's a very good player, and if he can be an outstanding offensive guard this year.

Q. With the athleticism you have up front, do you tend to maybe pull guys more? Does that -- you know what I mean? Depending on what the characteristics are of the line, can you do different things?
COACH HOPE: Absolutely. If they didn't run very well, we wouldn't pull them very often. We like to pull them all the time. But when you can't run, you don't pull them very often. We can run, and we will pull any one of ours any time we want to. Our tackles can pull, guards can pull, our centers can pull as well.
I don't know if it makes us do it more, it allows us to do it as much as we want. If we didn't run so well, we wouldn't pull them very often, that's for sure.

Q. I had read that Rice will do stunting and twisting up front. You had said they're kind of vanilla.
COACH HOPE: Compared to last week, they're very vanilla. They won't stay in the same place the entire time, but they're like Iowa. They're going to line up and do what they do and execute very hard. They're very sound. They've got a good plan. They stick right to it. They've got it figured out for what they want to do and how they want to attack you. No question about that.

Q. How have you seen Kawann develop over the years? You said earlier he's one of the best defensive tackles in the country. What's he done to get better?
COACH HOPE: He's gotten himself in a lot better shape from a conditioning standpoint. He's changed his body around a lot. He still has a lot of work to do. He's shifted that weight around. When he came to Purdue, he probably weighed 330, 340 pounds. He's a big man, very athletic. I think he's down to 320 pounds now, but he carries a lot more of it up top. He's a lot stronger. He's got a lot better stamina right now.
He still has to learn to go wide open every snap. That's one of the hardest things to condition and train a big man to do it. You talk about Mike Neil, what a difference between his junior and senior year. That's because he made big progress, and when he put his hand on the ground, he was going wide open on the snap of the football. Kawann has made great progress in that area, but there's certainly room for improvement.

Q. He had said he got double-teamed quite a bit, which he expected. So when that happens, your other players need to take more advantage of that, correct? How do you think the rest of the line can react if that's the case?
COACH HOPE: Well, I don't know how much more he got double-teamed than any others. Sometimes, when the center's uncovered, he has a chance to work towards either defensive tackle, and if he had to pick one to work towards in double-team, it would probably be Kawann, sure. So he may have been double-teamed a little bit more.
It should free up opportunities for others. But really when you're double-teamed as a defensive lineman, you're really not whipping two people, you're whipping one. You whip the one guy you're lined up on, and the other guy won't matter. He'll be a good player with a double-team. He has the potential to line up and defeat the double-team, absolutely.

Q. Coach, with this being the ten-year anniversary of September 11th, can you take us through the events that transpired after September 11th, 2001. I think there was a game rescheduled. Just what you guys kind of went through. Just explain those couple weeks.
COACH HOPE: Well, I won't explain a couple of weeks because that's a lot of explaining. But we were in the office preparing for the Notre Dame game when it happened, myself and the staff. It was a real shock to us. And then obviously they cancelled the game. Our country was in mourning, and it was a very solemn time.
For our young people who spent most of their lives in the United States and peace has always been available, it was probably the first time in their lives that they had been threatened by anyone outside of our country. So it was a trying time in a lot of ways. It really was.
You know, we opted to go out and recruit instead of playing the game that Saturday. So it was odd to be the first one to get back on an airplane, you know, a couple days right after the event. There were plenty of seats available. We hit the road recruiting.

Q. Coach, now a couple of days later, looking back, how is Ralph Bolden doing after having played a full game?
COACH HOPE: He's doing great. Our whole football team is doing better because he's back. He's a heck of a football player. I like our running backs. We have tough running backs. Our backs ran physical on Saturday. They held on to the football, really squeezed it tight. They blocked it really well. I like our backs. They're tough guys.
You can go forward with the football if you have tough running backs. Ralph is a tough running back. I thought he finished runs. He really did a great job matching up with some of their blitzers. He made people miss. Great second effort.
There was a couple times in the game where I thought he was a little winded for the first time. Playing in a football game is a lot like being in a fight. You get a lot more tired than you think. It's hard to duplicate the exact same challenge in practice. It catches you off guard a little bit. It was the first time he'd been in a football game in a while, a real one. I thought he got winded a couple times, and it was good for him to go out and get the game conditions.
A good day for Ralph. We're happy he's back. And we're really strong at the running back position. Those top four running backs, every one of those guys contributed to the win. Ralph certainly did. Akeem Shavers certainly did. Jared Crank certainly did. Reggie Pegram certainly did. And I don't have any reservations to have any one of those four running backs as a ball carrier or receiver or blocker. Did that situation many times. Pretty stout in the backfield right now.

Q. Looked like you guys were flying around to the football pretty well on Saturday. Maybe not able to finish the play. Are you concerned about missed tackles? If so, what do you do about that in a week of practice?
COACH HOPE: We missed some tackles because they had really good skill players, and they got really hot. It was probably about 110 degrees or so out on the field. Looking at a lot of highlights of other college games throughout the country, I saw a lot of highlights, but there were some players who looked like they were really tired chasing the football.
We got tired some early. Right before the half, we did a poor job of pursuing to the football and it a poor job of tackling in the open field. I think we did a better job on more snaps throughout the course of the game than they did possibly, and that's why we won. At the end of the game, they were having a tough time, when our offense was on the field, chasing the football and tackling in open field and making plays because it was unbelievably hot. It was almost a four-hour game.
You're out there for an hour in pregame and four hours in the game, and you've been out in the sun for five hours with pads on. There were people getting wore down, no doubt about it.

Q. Caleb Terbush, you talked about how he improved. What did you see differently from him from the first quarter to the fourth quarter? Even looking back, what did you see?
COACH HOPE: He seemed a lot more sure in the second half. Obviously, we were backed into a corner and had to come out swinging so you didn't have time to do a whole lot of second guessing or thinking. When it was on the line, I thought he played like a champion, he really did. He got the signals, and he engineered the offense. He never wavered under the pressure.
I think Caleb has a great upside. I think the more he plays, the better he's going to get. I think he's going to do a heck of a job this year. I was really pleased with Caleb Terbush. I felt that way on the sidelines. There was a couple of times we didn't check the right play according to the blitz, and he ran away from it or into it, but nothing that was really a difference maker in the course of the game. I thought he did a heck of a job.
He'll take a big step this week just based on the experience that he got last Saturday.

Q. Coach, how difficult a decision is it to put in a second quarterback when you have a guy like Terbush that has been there that obviously needs every snap because he didn't play last year and hasn't played that much in his career?
COACH HOPE: It's a very tough call, and Saturday made it even tougher. We needed to stay on the field, and their offense was having some success, you know. We want to keep our best guys out there, but you still have to get them in the game some.
If it was a different position, then maybe it wouldn't be quite so significant if you ever had to replace it. It's really tough to replace a quarterback position with someone who hasn't played in the games. We've been through a lot of that the last couple years. If we can get someone else ready with some game experience, it's going to be the best thing for our football team. So we don't have to split it 50-50, but we've got to get someone else in there and get game experience again and get another quarterback ready as well.
We're still committed to that plan and hope the circumstances cooperate with us and make it a little bit easier for us than it was last weekend.

Q. Danny, after the game Saturday, you kind of compared in a way Crosby Wright to one of your former tight ends, Kyle Adams. Kyle has made the Chicago Bears as an undrafted free agent. When you learned of that, what was your reaction?
COACH HOPE: I was really happy for Kyle and really excited. He and I have communicated a lot in the last couple of years. There's a lot of things that Kyle has a real passion for. His faith is one. You know, academics is another. His work over in Haiti. He's really made a difference to just hundreds of lives. And also football. He loves all those, has a great passion for all those things. He's outstanding at all those things commitment-wise.
The last year of his life, he really focused more on football, really tried to play the best that he could and really took his coaching to heart, little things that we've told him he needed to do to step his game up. He really went out there and accented on areas of his game and ended up being a blocking tight end.
A couple months back, he was in a position to decide what he wanted to do. Do I pursue my NFL football? Do I take the great degree I had? He opted to pursue NFL football, and I'm happy for him because the odds of making it aren't very good, and he's a good football player. The intangibles he has has a lot to do with him getting these opportunities and has a whole lot to do with him making it. I'm not surprised to see him make it. I'm really happy for him.
It's great to see the Kyle Adamses of the world have success in football at the next level. Very happy for Kyle.

Q. You referred to his intangibles. Is the primary example not only that he made the team but he made it converting from tight end to fullback? I cannot imagine how hard that had to be to convert.
COACH HOPE: Depending on the style of offense, the two positions might be a whole lot alike. I can see what they do offensively where Kyle could go in and play a fullback for them. There's some offenses where Kyle wouldn't be your first pick at fullback, and some people use the tight end or the H-back or the wing or the U in the fullback interchangeably. We like to do that some as well. In the recruiting process, we're always looking for a guy that can do that.
So I'm not surprised to see him play in that spot based on what they do offensively. He's a smart guy and a tough guy, and you can count on him. You can bet on that. They're looking for those kinds of guys at the next level.
THE MODERATOR: All right, Coach. We're all set.
COACH HOPE: All right, you guys. Thanks a lot.

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