Greg Schiano Spring Football Press Conference Quotes
Mar 21 | Football
Opening: Thanks for coming out. It's good to be almost getting back to practice. It's been a hectic off-season up until this point for a lot of reasons, but it's always nice to get settled back and do what we're here to do.
On Staff: We've made some changes to the coaching staff. On the offensive side of the ball, John McNulty will coach the quarterbacks and serve as the offensive coordinator. Kyle Flood will coach the offensive line as he did last year and be the running game coordinator. Craig Ver Steeg will coach the running backs. Robert Jackson will coach the wide receivers and Joe Susan will coach the tight ends and continue to coordinate recruiting. On the defensive side of the ball, Darren Rizzi will coach the outside linebackers and still the be special teams coordinator and will take on the role of Associate Head Coach. Cary Godette will coach the defensive line. We've hired Bob Fraser, who was my assistant last year, he'll coach the inside linebackers. Chris Demarest will coach the secondary defense and take on the added responsibility of assistant head coach. We've added Todd Greineder as the Assistant to the Head Coach which is my guy. Every year I try to evaluate myself first at the end of the season and through the recruiting period and into the spring and then work right through the staff. Each year is different. Each year you have to figure out what gives you the best chance to be successful. There's never any guarantees, but hopefully, this will do that for our program.
On off-season surgeries: "These following guys will not go participate in spring practice. You'll see them out there and they'll be doing some things, but they will not practice. Mike Gilmartin, Corey Hyman, Chazz Lynn, Dan Mazan and Keith Taylor all had shoulder repair. Leslie Jackman, as you know, had knee surgery, Zaire Kitchen had knee surgery. Glen Lee and Jonathan Pierre-Etienne had shoulder surgery. Gary Watts had shoulder surgery. Jamaal Westerman and Mike Ziarnowski had shoulder surgery. Those guys will not participate in spring practice.
George Johnson is having some issues with his lower back so he's going to be limited. Dimitri Linton had groin surgery, but should be back during the spring. Robert Baham is going to have to give up playing, he's going to stay involved with the program, but a hip injury has forced him to go on medical scholarship. Nate Nurse has left the program, but is still in school at Rutgers. I hope I didn't forget anything. For me, it's been things that have happened over time, but I think I've touched on everything."
On position by position changes: "We've moved Shamar Graves to tight end. This spring you'll see Chris Dirksz on the offensive line, I'm not sure if that's a permanent move. We need, as you noticed, a lot of our offensive guys have had shoulder problems, so we need to have some depth in the spring, we'll see how he does.
Defensively, we're going to take a look at Andrews Morales at defensive end, moving him from linebacker. Peter Tverdov will be strictly an inside player now, he was flip-flopping a little bit before. Dimitri Linton will move to cornerback. I think that's the majority of it. Andrew DePaola will be working as a long snapper, along with Jeremy Branch and Pete Tverdov. Going into the spring there's depth missing from there. I don't put a lot into that.
You guys have been around this program long enough to know that there's some guys who are pretty well entrenched in a position that they've been playing for two or three years, but there's always competition. I think we've proven that over the years. If we think there's someone who will put us in a better position to win, it doesn't matter what position, we're going to make a change. You can look at that depth and make with it what you may. There's definitely going to be intense competition. There are certain areas that jumped out of you.
Offensively, the tight end position, we graduate two seniors and the center position. I think with Brian Leonard leaving there certainly is a void of a guy that we've had here for a lot of years who has been very productive. But we feel we have guys here in the program who are going to be able to step in, and I don't know that we'll ever have another Brian Leonard, but we'll adjust our offense accordingly. I think Jack Corcoran and Jean Beljour are very talented guys and then we have some people coming in, as well, that we think are very talented.
Defensively, we lose a big, big force inside in Ramel Meekins graduating. For two years, we've been spoiled. The guy made a lot of plays at the nose guard position. I think when we hit next season and Jamaal Westerman is back, we'll have some experience in the line-up, but we won't have a lot of depth. That's going to be one of the keys'developing defensive line depth during the spring with the young guys who are participating. Unfortunately, there are going to be some of them who don't participate because of off-season surgery.
At the linebacker position, I think is the one where we really have to make a huge growth. We graduated two of our three starting linebackers and one thing that is evident as you study last season as coaches are that Devraun Thompson and Quintero Frierson played the best football of their careers as seniors. We're going to miss those two guys a great deal from understanding the scheme to the number of plays they made. But we have good, young, talented guys that we've recruited and now it's a matter of that they've waited their turn and it's time to step up. It's going to be intense competition at the linebacker position. The only returning starter is Brandon Renkart and he really became a very steady, rock-like player for us in that position. He was very productive and is really working hard this off-season. He did have a shoulder repair and he's ready to go already."
On the primary focuses for the spring: "As a staff we have to look at three things, we never go more than three things because it's too hard to focus on more than that. Number one, we have to continue developing our new leaders. Last year we had a senior class that had some strong leaders. We don't have a big senior class this year, but leadership isn't always from your senior class, either. I think some of it will come from the senior class and I think some of it will come from the juniors. Developing our new leaders, and I think we're well on schedule to do that, is very important. Some things have happened in our off-season program that would lead me to believe that that's happening. But now, it's spring football where you're playing the game, there's a new, different variable added. It's not just lifting, training and going to class. We have to number one make sure that happens, number one.
Number two: developing a young defense. I think we have three seniors returning to the defense. We have some very talented young guys, but they're young and inexperienced. We need to develop the defense as a whole, an understanding of what we do. I don't expect us to be great right out of the chute, but we need to keep getting better and better and understand what we're doing. One good thing about spring football is you go a day and then you have a day off. So, you have more opportunity to absorb what you've done, but you have less opportunity to rep it. That's why sometimes guys don't truly make the biggest improvements until you get to training camp and you're going practice, practice, practice, practice, when they get those continuous and cumulative reps. It's important that we walk away as a defensive unit with an understanding of how we do things and where we fit. The secondary should be a steadying influence and the defensive line, once it's healthy, should be a steadying influence, but the linebackers is something we really have to make sure we come out of spring with a little bit of a better picture of who those guys are going to be.
And the third thing is fundamental improvement at all positions. Spring time is the time you can really slow it down and get fundamental improvement because there is no opponent to get ready for on Saturday."
On the expectation level of the spring: "I think just the fact that we're physically more mature and I think we have the best talent top to bottom that we've had in the program. The thing that puts a little bit of a damper on that is the off-season injuries and the number of guys who won't be able to participate in spring practice. It's not uncommon in college football, it seems like every coach I've talked to is having the same issues, maybe not quite as many as we do. Last season was a very long, physically-grueling season. From August 6th, we played our last game December 2nd and then we played the bowl game.
Two years in a row, we've had a month longer season and I think that does have an impact on your program, but I think some of the things we took care of are a testament to how tough our kids are. A lot of these kids who have had off-season injuries played half of a season or three quarters of the season in pain, but it wasn't going to get any worse and it needed to be repaired at the end of the year. They played through it. That's all part of the development of the program. I always keep our expectation that we need to be the best we can be, wherever that is. And I don't mean, with Westerman out, I mean with the guy who's in there playing today. We need to do everything we can to be the best we can be today. That's our challenge this year and this spring."
