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PAC-12 CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA DAYSJuly 15, 2016Gary AndersenBurbank, California COACH ANDERSEN: First of all, it's great to be here. Excited for the season to get started. A little bit about where we sit. Our situation, obviously, we've got a lot of work to do as coaches, a lot of work to do as players. We're excited about the year that's in front of us. I think these kids have handled the ideas of the culture change, the ideas of what it takes in this league moving forward to show improvement, and to be competitive in this league, we need to show obviously major improvement. We have tremendous backing from our University, from the president to Beaver Nation and all the way through that's fantastic. You'll see that. You'll understand that. It's easy to understand or see the direction of the program from the top all the way through that we are very, very interested as a university to move our program forward and get ourselves in a position where we should be within the Pac‑12 Conference. Offensively, defensively and special teams, three new coordinators. I like the direction through spring ball, the way they've taught, the way they've handled their sides of the football, the way the kids have handled it. I like the strength room. We've dealt with a lot of adversity within the strength room, within the staff. Evan has done a tremendous job, Evan Simon, our head strength coach, of moving the kids forward, and we needed to move forward. We definitely had our problems last year in the trenches, and if you can't stand up in the trenches in any league, you're going to have a major problem. But I like the direction of the three new coordinators have handled it, we can talk more about that if you would like in the individual breakout sessions. Two quality young men here with us today that represent our program very well, socially, academically and athletically. Nick Porebski should be an elite punter. I expect him to be an elite punter this year in the country. He expects himself to be an elite punter. And we're excited about Jake Cookus being able to be involved with us now and helping with our special teams, should really help Nick, and Jake and Nick have done a good job of honing in on what we†‑‑ expectations is for him to be a great player. Victor Bolden, tremendous student‑athlete. Again, he needs to be a difference maker in this league. I believe he will be a difference maker in this league. He holds himself at a high regard of being a tremendous player within our league, and hopefully elite within the country, and that's his expectations if we can get him the ball the right way, he should do some fantastic things. He'll also be highly involved in the return game this year. That's something that Victor definitely wants. He'll be involved in the punt returns, the kickoff returns. He's shown what he can do last year in that setting. But two great student‑athletes that are with me here today, and I'm proud to say that I'm their coach. From there, I'll open it up to you guys and away we go. Q. Darell Garretson is ready to go, ready to take over? COACH ANDERSEN: I believe he is. I think Darell has done a tremendous job since he walked in as a transfer, went through the transfer year, did a great job of running the scout team. I guess the best thing I could say is is he ready to go, I think he's proved that on the field. But when you look at our leadership committee, our kids on the team vote for that leadership committee. They vote for our captains, and he has a dominant amount of votes to show that he should be a captain and he should be on that leadership committee. On the field, I think he handled spring well. He's progressed. How good a Pac‑12 quarterback is he going to be? We'll see. We're not real interested in talking about a lot of things, we're interested in getting out and executing and moving forward. But I like where Darell is. I like where Marcus is. I think Marcus competed very well in the spring, and it's going to be fun. But right now Darell is definitely our starter. Q. So the state of Arizona, you pulled like six or seven players just from this class. It's something you did at Utah State. What is it about recruiting down there that kids will come in and share your values as a coach? How were you able to do that at two different schools? COACH ANDERSEN: Well, there's some relationships there that definitely help us. The kids that we've had from Arizona have had great success at both programs, and I think that definitely helps us. And our coaches have done a good job and gone in there and shown the direction that we expect our program to move. The commitment, like I mentioned earlier, from the university as a whole is special, it's exciting, and kids know that Corvallis is a definite match. It's a college town. If that's what you're looking for, there's not a lot of places within our conference that you can go out and get that environment. There's a few, but there's just a few. So I think that where they're at, where they grew up, the city they grew up in, it's a big city. What we have is much different, and I think certain kids are attracted to that and that's what they want, it's an easy fit. Q. It's fairly unusual to see a punter at Media Day. What made you want to bring him today? COACH ANDERSEN: Personality, man. He brings juice. Nick deserves to be here, absolutely. And I think you deserve your†‑‑ you earn your way to Media Day, if you will, and I think he did that a year ago, and the way he's grown, the way he's developed his body, himself, his love for the game as he's gone through time with us has been impressive. You know, I looked at it, and I thought it would be†‑‑ I expect him to be not a good player, I expect him to be a great football player at his position. So it was natural to bring a kid that I think will be great and he expects to be great. Q. Your connection with Coach Clune from the past, and the protocols involved in hiring a coach, especially from a coach you know, Coach Wells, what are some protocols involved with that? COACH ANDERSEN: You know, Kevin and I go way back to him as a graduate assistant at Utah, then hiring him at Southern Utah as a very, very young coach, watching him grow and develop. The best thing I would say about Kevin is he started up a defense. He's grown from the four‑down, three‑deep, middle close safety coordinator to now he's really developed to the odd front, and he was with us when we went through all those discussions four or five years ago when we sat down and started saying we need to move from the even front to the odd front. He grew. He developed. He's taken his own identity, his own ideas, his own way he teaches kids, and it really showed. And it was impressive to me as I went through January into spring ball coaching the defensive line. Sitting in those meetings and watching him handle those has been very impressive for me. As far as going through Coach Wells, any time you have an opportunity to give a coach a major bump up as far as where he is and the level that he's coaching, what a great opportunity. If that's that coach's goal. So I just presented the opportunity to Coach Clune as something he wanted to do. He was going to do it here or he was going to do it somewhere else pretty quick in my opinion if that was his goal was to move up and be involved in the Power Five, and it was. Our connection is there. It's very clean. He knows that I'm going to give him the defense, and it's going to be his defense. It's not my defense in any way, shape and form. It's his and the kids'. I'm lucky to be able to coach a little bit on it, and I'm excited about that. But Coach Wells understands that. Matt and I had a conversation, and it's opportunity, and you always want your assistants to be happy and be successful and move forward. I take great pride in the coaches that I've coached over the years that have moved on in this profession in a positive way, whether that's as a high school coach, a junior college coach or coaching a coordinator in a Power Five conference. Q. What's been your biggest challenges around being with a program that's been torn down and you build it back up? COACH ANDERSEN: There's numerous challenges. I think the biggest thing is continually letting the kids understand our expectations, building that foundation in the first year for them to understand that there's certain things that they have to live by. Our core values are important. If you cannot live by those core values, you will not be part of our program as we move forward, and then also giving the kids the opportunity to truly walk out of that tunnel and expect to win, not talk about it, not, you know, flap their lips and run up and down and yell and scream about it, but really deep inside their heart when they jog out of there or it's deep in a game that's close or wherever it may be, they believe that they can stand up and compete in this league. When you don't have success over the last few years, which has taken place, you always look at yourself as a head coach and say, if we don't believe, we really don't have a chance. And how do you continue to force them or get them to continue to believe as you go through time. I think our kids are doing a good job in that area, but again, you never know until you scrap them up and put them on and go play. Q. What do you expect from Chuckie in that relationship with Darell there? COACH ANDERSEN: It'll be interesting to see. You know, you sit back, you watch those two go on virtual media and the way we teach our kids and those quarterbacks, and it's fun to listen to them. I had an opportunity†‑‑ right now we don't have offices, so until they finish the new facility we're all crammed in one room together, and it was fun for me, I don't know what they're saying, their lingo and the quarterback stuff they talk about, but there's a special relationship between those two. Even though Chuckie is so involved with the recruiting cycle and the recruiting side of things right now, still, it's fun for them to sit down and watch film together, and that's going to be part of the development, I believe, that'll help Darell be better and better, and Chuckie is so knowledgeable. He's been through so many ups and downs and those emotional swings in his career that he'll bring a good, steady, solid person that he may go to. Darell may lean on Chuckie in certain situations, and I hope he does. Q. Is Chuckie a pretty special person in your history, given the transformation you guys went through? COACH ANDERSEN: Yeah, I think if you look at any program that flipped, drastically flipped the way we were able to get it done and the kids were able to get it done at Utah State, a big part of it, the cornerstone of it is the quarterback, and Chuckie was a huge part of that. And so was Adam Kennedy. You could argue that Adam Kennedy came in and did it before Chuckie did, which he did. He got us that first year to the bowl game. But it was centered by some really good players and a quarterback, and we're excited to hopefully get to that point. Q. Does Darell have that kind of impact? COACH ANDERSEN: I hope so. He brings so much competitiveness and his will and his fight, we'll see. He's done it. He's gone to BYU and won. That's hard. Not many quarterbacks can say I've gone into Cougar Stadium and won. He had a very good team with him when he did that, but he still did it as the quarterback. So there's a lot of those things I think he's done. He's walked into a team and he's taken them over halfway through the year when Chuckie had an unfortunate injury, and that's not easy to do, getting his team to believe in him in that situation, win games, go to bowl games, win. So there's so many of those things that I think that he's done that are impressive. He's played in championships. He was part of a high school football team that grew and developed and got better and better and better while he was there, and that's what we brought him to do. So that's our expectation is that he's a very good quarterback in the Pac‑12. I believe you need two of them, and if you're going to have a good quarterback in the Pac‑12 or a great quarterback or a good football, you'd better have some people around him to give him a chance to do some things. Q. What's the status of Seth Collins? COACH ANDERSEN: Seth is with us. He's done a great job. When he came back, it was†‑‑ he was very excited to get back into the mix. He went through the procedures that we laid out for him as a team to get him back into the mainstream. He accomplished those goals very quickly, in a timely manner, worked with the strength coaches. Wanted to make sure he was, number one, healthy. Wanted to make sure he was in a position to stay healthy. And, number two, he needed to put in the work that his teammates had put in up to that point. He did that, has had a great off‑season. We expect Seth to be a big part of our offense, and he will be an inside receiver, he will be an outside receiver. He'll line up at running back. He'll come in as a fly sweep guy at times, and there's a really good chance that he'll line up there sometimes as not a wildcat quarterback because we all know Seth can throw the ball as needed, but he will catch the snaps at times could give it another part of our offense where his run, his throw as a change‑up similar to the way people used or still do use what we all call, I guess†‑‑ not all, but we called a wildcat quarterback situation. Q. Is there anything in particular you can pinpoint that's going to be improved this year as compared to last year? COACH ANDERSEN: Well, that's something†‑‑ maybe the most important part for us is our physicality. If it does not, then we'll be right where we were a year ago because we could not hang in there physically with people in our league week in and week out. And if you cannot do that, the way we want to play football and the way you have to play football to win at this level, you will not be successful. I want that to happen. I believe we're in a position to make that happen. But again, it's all talk until we get out there and see on 3rd and short can we line up and run power and get a 1st down instead of getting knocked backwards and moving on to the next snap. Again, it starts with me. I've got to be a better coach to get those kids in position to do that. It starts with the position coaches and then it trickles down to the responsibility of the kids. They put in a lot of hard work. There's about 100 other things I could mention to you down those lines, but we don't have time for that, but if we can't do that, nothing else matters. Q. Do you feel more comfortable entering this fall in terms of your individual kids? COACH ANDERSEN: Yeah, I think so, just knowledge of kids, understanding their personalities, understanding what they had to do, what they had to work on, what their deficiencies are, what positive things they bring to the table, their skill set, if you will, how they learn, all those things that come with it. So it's much more comfortable as a head coach. It's much more comfortable as a position coach, and I believe our kids are more comfortable with us as a whole and within the scheme. We want to be multiple. That's why our depth chart lists 14 guys on offense and 14 positions on offense and 14 positions on defense. We feel where we are at this time if we are not multiple, we will not be a very productive football team. A lot of teams in this league are like that, also. Q. How did you like how you were portrayed on The Drive personally and as a program? COACH ANDERSEN: I loved it. You know, I tried to be me. My mom scolded me a little bit sometimes for my language and the bleeps that were in there sometimes. But I didn't†‑‑ I tried to be who I was, and I would hope that when I've watched the episodes that I watched and I went through time and I've watched them all now, I feel like we were ourselves as a program, and we didn't hide from our deficiencies and we didn't hide from the struggles and the problems that we were going through. I was very proud of the way our kids carried themselves watching it again in the off‑season. They fought, and it was obvious that if you were an outsider that they didn't cave in, they didn't quit, they didn't walk away. They kept on battling all the way to the end, and that's something, that situation, that's one of the things that you have to hope happens and you ask it to happen. But the kids make that happen, not any coach. Their ability to want to continue to fight was impressive. The Drive was awesome for us. I wish they were coming back this year. Hopefully we play good enough that they will. Q. How would you characterize a show like The Drive and its impact in your relationship with the Pac‑12 Networks and recruiting? COACH ANDERSEN: The Drive has a huge impact on recruiting. It gets you out there. We share the message clearly to when you should watch it, when it's on, when our recruits need to sit back and understand what it's about for that week. But it just shows the personalities. It reflects your program. If you just look back to last year and you see Utah program, you see our program, a lot of people have said you can see similarities between Kyle and I, but you can also see how very different we are as head coaches and their assistant coaches and their program and where they're going. We've got an ability to let people understand, hey, this is new facilities, this is the commitment, this is beyond football program. People would have no idea what the beyond football program was unless they watched the drive, a lot of people, unless they've come on campus and seen us personally. It's a powerful, powerful tool, something that, again, we look forward to, and will never say no to having an opportunity to be on The Drive. Q. You mentioned the chaotic sense of office space and all that. What's the timeline to get all that done? COACH ANDERSEN: We are hopeful to move into our offices the first week in August, and we're hopeful to get into our†‑‑ well, not hopeful, we have to get into our locker room when we return. We're going to Bend for the first eight days of camp and then we'll come home and we'll move in. So August 10, 11, 12, we should be moving into our new facility. The kids are going to walk into a fabulous facility like there's so many teams in this league that have, and kids that play at this level, they deserve to have the best of the best, and now fortunately thanks to a lot of very generous people and a University that believes in the football program, we'll have that. Q. Does the Utah State experience kind of convince you that it can happen, it will happen? COACH ANDERSEN: Yeah, absolutely. You know, you know me good enough, what I like to do. I love to be involved in a big‑boy fight. Our coaches love that. Our kids are learning to love that. I believe it. And it's†‑‑ every day I wake up with a smile on my face and understanding that we have a tremendous challenge in front of us, but so does Stanford, right? They've got a tremendous challenge in front of them, too. It's hard everywhere. This is a big‑time league, and it's a big‑time environment, and there's a big gap that we have to close down, a fight every day to do it, but I have great kids. I'm in the environment that I love to be in, and I'm blessed to be able to be in this spot. Do I look back and reflect on where we were and how we grew through our time at Utah State as a staff and as a group of kids? Absolutely. There is a lot of†‑‑ there's a lot of similarities, but then there's also a lot of differences as we go through time, and football changes every year. Hey, I'm a Beaver believer. Q. Last season Ryan Nall kind of came out of nowhere. Is there a kid this year that's kind of flying under the radar and may take the lead by surprise? COACH ANDERSEN: Yeah, you know what, I would just say the one young men that did a tremendous job in spring ball, Trevon Bradford came in, a kid that walked in out of high school. We asked him to graduate early about three weeks before he had to graduate early and was able to knock it out and get it done, but he came in, and his ability to compete from the first day he walked in there, January 4th or whatever it was, in the weight room, all the way through to spring ball, catching punts in front of people in the spring was a first step. He basically laughed at me when I said, hey, spring ball today, you're going to go out there in the spring scrimmage and I want you to get in front of all of these people and catch punts, and he was like, okay, no big deal, and it continued on I want to beat this guy out, I want to beat that guy out. I'm excited to see what he can do as a true freshman and a wide receiver in this league. Those are big words, and there's a number of other kids I expect to play at a very high level. I'm blessed to coach two very talented young guys on the defensive front in Elu and Kalani. I expect them to be great players in this league. So there's a number, but Mr.†Bradford pops out as me as a player who is a great story. Q. Minnesota is your opener. Coach Claeys just came up from Stanford. How does that help you prepare? And when do you sort of switch over where you now are focusing on the opener? COACH ANDERSEN: Well, first of all, Minnesota is a tremendous challenge. They are going to be very physical. They're very tough. They're talented. They're a good team, and I know that firsthand. I was in†‑‑ two years in a row, we were in big‑boy games with them that were very meaningful games, in a rivalry game. Fortunate to win those games, but they play the game the right way. So it will be a test of what I said earlier. Our toughness and our ability to play in the trenches will be tested for three hours and change that first game of the year. When do we transfer over and start talking about Minnesota? Obviously the coaches have spent the time that they've needed. We have a spring game on a new coordinator and an idea what the coordinator wants to do. Coach Claeys is going to do what he does. He wants to be physical, tough‑minded, run the ball. They can say they're going to be spread and all this, and they probably will, there will be a little bit of things, but they're still going to want to line up and say, here we come. Our fall camp is broken down and our first part is in Bend. That is offense versus defense, traditional camp. We'll come back, we'll move to PM practices for five days. That's still a traditional camp, and then we'll have a scrimmage after that five‑day period, and from that point on we'll transfer over to move to opponents. Not always Minnesota, but we'll transfer toward our opponents that we're preparing to play or the type of style of offenses that we need to be prepared to play within our conference. Q. Wagner was the quarterback when you played them the last time. COACH ANDERSEN: Yes. Yeah, tough guys. Q. You said you're going to run fly sweep to try to get all Lucas's speed on the field. A lot of work before he'd be ready to contribute as a freshman. How has he developed, and is he ready and have the athletic ability†‑‑ COACH ANDERSEN: I hope so. Paul can be a big part of our offense. There are four or five kids that are difference makers. Paul needs to stay healthy. Paul needs to completely understand at this level you have to work daily to keep yourself healthy, and I tell the kids all the time, you have to pre has been to prevent rehab, and our kids are getting a lot better at that. Paul as a freshman, the workload at the position he played last year, what Victor does at practice, Paul flat had a hard time hanging in there with that workload because he hasn't been in a program for two or three years to understand that. I think he gets it better now. We're going to ask him to do a lot of those things. We're also going to line him up in the backfield, and you see it on the depth chart, he's right there as a rotator at the running back position. So he has good vision as his own player. He's much different than Ryan. Ryan is who he is, Paul is who he is, but it's kind of a one‑two punch. I kind of like that they can both do things. But he is going to control how much he's involved in the offense. We want him to be highly involved. Q. (Inaudible.) COACH ANDERSEN: Yeah, I've never seen that with Paul. He's tough, and not that the track guys aren't tough. There's a lot of track guys around, but coaches use that all the time, he's a track guy. I don't know what that means exactly, but it seems to be negative a lot of times when people talk about that, which I don't agree with that statement. Paul has come in, he's a tough kid now. Yeah, he ran track, and he's tough. There's a couple guys in this league that are pretty damned good football players that are track guys, too. We all know who those guys are. If that means you're a track guy, too, then that's good, I'll take all those guys I can get. Q. What are the advantages of having an Aussie rules punter as opposed to a more traditional style punter? COACH ANDERSEN: Yeah, it just causes some issues, departure angles, having an idea of the consistency, where is the ball going. Is the ball going left, right, middle, is it going to a hash mark, is it going to be rolling on the ground 10 yards in front of me, is he going to pop it up. There's so many different shots, if you will, that he can take instead of just being traditional, we're going to kick it to the right side and try to get it in between the numbers and the end line and go from there. They're athletes. Nick is a position where he can go out and at any moment he can tuck the ball and run. He thinks he can do it all the time. He's proven that he can't do it all the time, and we've proven to make some bad decisions on asking him to do that sometimes. So we need to all be careful as coaches and so does he about when we take advantage of those opportunities. Q. We've seen this wave of Aussies come over and have success, now starting to filter into the NFL. When did you sort of take notice of the trend? COACH ANDERSEN: Geez, you know, probably four or five years ago, just seeing those kids come in and defending them. That was the hardest part. When you got in there, it was like, this kid may be able to kick to the left and to the right, he kicks across his body, and it just became very interesting to us. We just kind of walked into Nick at Snow College and there he was, and it was a tremendous opportunity for us to†‑‑ said absolutely, yes, we want him right now. But it's just another weapon that's come out there, and I think it's a very good weapon. Q. Obviously Cal is opening the season down there in Sydney. What sort of opportunity or growth do you maybe get the sense Australia might represent? COACH ANDERSEN: We were there this year in recruiting, and it's not just kickers. There's some very talented young men over there. We sent Coach Chad to go over there and recruit for a few days. Long trip. Takes a while to get there for sure. But it's another area that we believe we can go in and look at recruiting, and there are some quality people over there that are helping these kids get better. And Coach Chad was very quick to share that with me when he came back, and he's like, there's good people over there trying to help these kids get better at kicking, playing different positions, so we'll continue to look into that. Q. (Inaudible)? COACH ANDERSEN: You know, for me as a young head coach, we had some opportunities to see kids graduate, and we did a great job as a staff and a great job with a group of kids of graduating kids. But what was next? There was so many of those kids that looked at it, and it was like, I heard it so many times: Coach, I don't know where to go. I've got my degree. Where do I go next? I believe that's our responsibility. At our level, we have the opportunity and the funding we can go out and get people that will help us build a beyond football program, and that's the driving force of beyond football, is when it's over with, and you have that degree, which we don't even talk about getting degrees, that's just what we do, you get degrees. But having that degree that's going to allow you to get a job, wake up in the morning with a smile on your face and allow you to be able to take care of whatever you've created, whether that's children, whether that's a wife, whether that's taking care of family, that's the nuts and the bolts of Beyond Football. So we took it, we grew it from there, starts as a freshman. Jason Thomas does a fantastic job of helping us run that program. Again, we have an administration that's all in behind us as far as building that, and it just†‑‑ it's grown into its own little world, and it's really not a little world anymore, and our kids have bought into it. It's all fine and dandy to present kids anything as coaches. Coaching is way overrated. J.T. has presented it to them. The kids understand it can affect their life in such a positive way, and they bought into it. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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