Boston College Athletics
Media Day: Addazio Transcript
August 11, 2016 | Football
Boston College Football
2016 Media Day | August 11, 2016
Head Coach Steve Addazio Transcript
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Steve Addazio: What Questions do you guys have?
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Reporter: It looked pretty intense out there today. Is that the theme of training camp?
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SA: Yeah. We put the shells on, shoulder pads on yesterday. Today is pretty hot. Pretty hot day. Good to get that going. We've got after it pretty good.
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Reporter: Steve when we last spoke to you a little while ago and put the wraps a very tough season, witnessing conference play, you vowed that this would be the toughest offseason program that this team can be put through. Now that you have been though that, and know that you are on the field, do you feel like they have been put through the test now and are preparing to rebound from that season.
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SA: I have said it several times. This is one of my favorite teams to be around right now. No matter what you through at them, they respond. They love football. They work really hard at football. They give you everything they have. It's a fun group to be around. Fun group to coach. And that hasn't changed.
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Reporter: Who in your estimation has had the greatest gains in the offseason, has it been the offensive line, the wide receivers?
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SA: A lot of guys have had gains. The offensive line will be much better than it was a year ago but not where it should be yet. Aaron Monteiro was a true freshman last year and is just getting ready to become a true sophomore. Really matured, good lines mature in their red shirt junior years. Our first two years we had a veteran older line, we implemented a couple of fifth-year guys, Ian Silberman and Matt Patchan who were really good football players, ended up being pro football players. We were strong, really strong. I have said it several times and don't really need to repeat myself, when you have nine guys who should be fourth- and fifth-year players in the front that's how you keep heal going. When you have to replace that from one extreme to the other, that's what happens. Well now we've got the right guys there. They got to mature. There's still a big difference between an 18-, 19-year old kid and 21-, 22-year old kid. Am I happy with who we have? Absolutely. Are we going to be better? Absolutely. Are we where we're going to be in another year or so? No. No were not because it takes a while to mature a veteran offensive line. The next position that is a lot like that is quarterback. We didn't have an older quarterback in this program. The oldest guy we had was Darius Wade, who took no snaps. So he gets hurt and now you're transporting in freshmen, red shirt freshmen and walk-ons. I just read an article from Jimbo (Fisher), a Florida State article, that's not going to happen. Your best hope with that is, maybe a redshirt freshman that came in early, Darius, then support him with a veteran offensive line and veteran players to hold full. But when the lines not that way and the quarterbacks not that way, you can't fix that quick. Now you've got to saturate. Patrick is here and Darius is back. They both have had a great offseason, a great spring, and a really good camp. So I am happy with that. And that's the only way we can plug that hole. And now we have Anthony Brown and Jon Fadule in there, and those guys can saturate the way you should. And grow and develop and then in a perfect world you have Patrick and Darius. Patrick has this seasons and Darius has this season plus two more. And then you have Anthony Brown who has been here in the winter, then has been here in the spring, going to be here for the summer camps, and be here for the and you've got another saturated guy, you've got John Fadule, who by fire got some playing experience, and now your starting to build some quarterbacks that you hope your will never be faced with that, of course barring injury which you can't predict, you hope you won't be faced with the two most critical positions for that to happen to again. And when your program's right, I remember coach (Frank) Beamer at Virginia Tech when I first got to Syracuse, when your program's right and you have been there and you have recruited and have recruited your classes properly, the only time it can get your again is if you have a bunch of guys leave early, so have a big senior class and a bunch of guys leave early, that's the only way it can get you again. Otherwise, you should be able to roll that thing over reasonably each year. And that's the goal. We will now be able to do that as we move forward. The only thing we have to do now, we have to mature this group up. This is heavy, heavy, filled with freshmen, redshirt freshmen, redshirt sophomores. But having said that, they love football and they compete, so that's fun and I really like being around that. They are going to win their share of games because of flat love of the game, toughness and everything that goes along with it. Exactly we are going to be better at each one of those position then we were one year ago. That will happen. It's got to be better enough. But it will be better. There's no doubt. The offensive line will be better, the quarterback play will be better, the kicker play will be better, even though I did not see that today. I have seen it all spring and I have seen it all camp, as short as we have been here at camp. So a lot of those areas are shored up, and I feel really good about where we are defensively, we have really good personnel, this is a personnel driven game. This is what it is. We have good personnel there. Because why? Because we started building it there first, because the whole emphasis of our program, my whole philosophy coming here was, you start by building a great defense and playing great defense building. Everything is done with a plan, not herky-jerky that sometimes I think people think it is. It's not. You recruit that way, put your best guys there and you filter then and build your system. The way our roster was built, here comes the offense now. Now we are going to have to do this with our offense and grow incrementally, which we are going to do.
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Reporter: Have you created your teams for Saturday's scrimmage and what are you looking for out of that first scrimmage?
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SA: Seeing guys compete with the coaches off the field. Create teams, sort of, they create themselves, everyone is going to pay. We are already dinged up. We already have got guys dinged up all over the place, we've got a bunch of guys down. Nothing serious but just enough to jumble you up. So that you go into Saturday, like today I think we had four receivers out today. So what happens is when you have four receivers and you get that dinged up injury bug, it puts the pressure on the rest of them and they take to many reps and you know what happens, you start losing them because the other guys are taking too much now and so then here comes the hamstrings and here comes the groins and it happens. Everyone's got that, it's the way it is. It hits the positions. And you notice when sometimes it hits a position in training camp and you get a run of it. You get a run of it because it puts the stress of the other guys to take more reps, and we are in it right now with the wide receivers, go figure. It's aggravating but it is what it is. Here's the good news, nothing serious. That's always good. But when you have a young team, if you have a veteran team, sometimes as a head coach you go great, get him out, now he won't get hurt. But we don't have a bunch of veterans so they need the work. A guy like Jeff Smith needs to work and Mike Walker needs to work. This is vital time to be missing.
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Reporter: After 3-9 last year is there a mark this year that will prove to you that you've got the program where you want it and heading in the direction you want?
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SA: I don't need to prove it to myself or anybody really. To be honest with you I know the program is going where it is supposed to be going.
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Reporter: I guess is there a goal?
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SA: Yes, the goal is to win the opener. And this is what I tell the team since I have been here. This is what I have been a part of everywhere in my career. Win the opener, get bowl eligible, then compete for a conference championship. That's what you do. You try to win the opener, and then you try to get bowl eligible. All those. Those first two things I just said are well within the reach of this football team. And then you've got from there. I would never short. I would never say nothing can be done. I say win the opener, get that done and from there, no matter what happens from there, you go to become bowl eligible, once your bowl eligible everything is still in front of you. That's the way I feel. I am not one of those guys, I never have been, and I have never been around a program that's broken it down, national championship on three. Let's take it one step at a time, even with veterans. One-game seasons. This team is very capable. If we stay healthy and continue to develop, it's a very capable football team. We will do some things that we will shake our heads at because we are young across the board but we will see great growth from that.
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Reporter: Steve last year was an interesting dichotomy and as the season went a long where you had a championship caliber defense but with an offense that didn't quite measure up because all the injuries and what not. Do you feel that the offense is putting some kind of inherent pressure to live up to that standard?
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SA: I think so. I think that competitors, no one feels good about last year. The guys that were in it understand why, but you don't feel good about it. The year before we were pretty good on offense and we had a hard time stopping a number of teams, we could have had a nine-win year. But last year we were really good on defense but couldn't function on offense for all the reasons we have already ad nauseam gone through. And even with that, this team last year, in my opinion played really hard, all the way through the final game, played hard, both side. To say that the offense didn't play hard is not an accurate statement and as young as we were, we still had the ability to run the football and half way through the season we had a pretty high time of possession. And the offense, myself and the staff made a conscious decision that we were going to feature the defense for obvious reasons which I always do here. We could have went to a no huddle, an up-tempo, we worked on it really hard, we had it available but I said that is not going to help our defense. See that's the other thing people don't talk about. What we do offensively is to extenuate our defense because that is our number one goal, to be great on defense. A lot of teams don't do that. A lot of programs don't do that. Everyone looks at stats and all that stuff. Here is a stat that matters if you are wired right: winning and then what goes into that. If your philosophy is to play great defense first then everything else should support that. Everything. Then don't say that's your number one goal. Oh we want to play great defense, number one goal, and score 62 points. They usually don't goal hand in hand. Those high octane offenses usually don't play great defense, usually go through a lot of defensive coordinators, and don't win championships. You've got to be true to what you believe your philosophy is. Last year on top of everything else, instead of shifting which would have been the best thing we could have done offensively not team wise, would have been to say, we are not very good up front lets go as fast as we can and see if we can neutralize the line of scrimmage and make it a non-factor, just make it a fatigue game, and try to let Jeff Smith of someone get in space and make a couple of plays but I knew that would sacrifice the defense. So what do I tell you? Because I thought we played really hard last year, we were really not very good on offense, but we played hard. We gave ourselves, as inept as we were, we gave ourselves a chance to be in every game. We lost five games by three point or less. That speaks to where our program is. You want compare well this year, you won this and this year. Come on man. We played really hard, rally physically, we were in every, just about every single game we were in it to the bitter end. That speaks volumes to our players. That's why I don't look at it like some people look at it like. I know exactly what happen and now we have to fix it. What does that mean? Recruiting. What does that mean? Development. And you build. I didn't come here to build this thing; I came here to build this over time. I took this job knowing it would be a five-year deal. I knew that. Everyone knew that. But we jumped out to two bowl games in a row and yet I knew this blip was coming. I knew that blip was coming. It just got extenuated a little bit more because of the injuries and things like that. So the program is on the right track, moving in the right direction, its two thousand whatever moving on and I couldn't be more excited about the football team. And that's not a coaching up, that's how I really feel. I say that to be clear with everyone, not naïve there's not going to be still a lot of growing pains. There will be but it's exciting, very exciting. And I am excited about the quarterback play. Very excited about the quarterback play.
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Reporter: Steve, you said it's about personnel both sides of the ball and when you lose a Steven Daniels, what is your confidence level that this defense as it is currently constructed can do what it did or come close to what it did last year?
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SA: Let me answer that, two things, I am going to be really direct about it. First of all if you're measuring it off of statistics, I don't do that. Stats have a lot to do with who you play. And they are influenced heavily on a lot of factors of where you are in a game. For example, if you play a lot of poor offenses your stats are going to be skewed a little bit higher. If you are in games that the other team is ahead, like we played a lot of teams that were really close games, they were ahead and we were inept on offense. They didn't try to open the game up; they tried to end the game. Those things all skew stats. I say that because we were really good on defense last year. But we are not trying to beat our stats. They are not really relative that way. The biggest thing is winning. Now direction to your question. Can we be a real good defense based on who we lost? Yes. Why? I believe Connor Strachan replaces Steven Daniels. I think Connor Strachan is a phenomenal football player. Here is a guy that runs unbelievable. Steven was a thumper and he did a great job for us. Well Connor is a thumper but he can play man coverage. He is not going to get matched up in man, he's not going to be a match-up problem because he runs a 4.5. Will Harris, who is one of our safeties, who essentially take the place for Justin Simmons as is John Johnson. Those guys are playing safety now. John Johnson is an exceptional football player and Will Harris has the highest ceiling as any DB we have had here. So when you replace guys with equal or greater talent you feel decent about that. Up front we lost Connor Wujciak, but Ray Smith played a lot of football last year. We feel really feel strong about Ray Smith. Ray Smith is a really strong athletic guy in there and Truman Gutapfel looks elite to me right now. On the edge we have Harold (Landry) who is a little dinged up right now but he is going to be fine and got guys like Zach Allen and Wyatt Ray and of course got Kevin Kavalec. So we have some guys. If I had to answer you squarely and say Steve, I feel great about our defensive personnel; the only thing I would tell you is we have little depth. That's where we need a little good fortune. Last year, we had more depth because these guys I'm speaking about all played but yet we had those other guys, as well. We are not giving away talent this year but we are giving away a little bit of depth. So if were to take a run of injuries on the defensive side of the ball, it could skew off. Were as last year, we actually stayed pretty healthy on defense for the first time. But you know how it goes sometime. Where can we take this least amount of trauma last year? On the offensive line and quarterback. Where did we take the most amount of injury trauma. Right were you couldn't afford to take it. It's like Murphy's Law. It just happens. So that would be were my concern is: depth. That is a valid concern. The talent of our starting defense, I think it's pretty damn good now. It's pretty damn good. In fact we will run even better this year than we did a year ago, in terms of team speed, both sides of the ball. We can run. We've got guys that can flat run. On offense, Jeff Smith is an elite skilled athlete, he was 170 pounds last year, 171 pounds last year, he's 194 pounds now, and he's a sub 4.4 guy and he's not 17 anymore. He's an elite athlete. I'm just telling you. We are excited about that. Why wouldn't you be excited about that. Now he's got to mature as a receiver. And there's a maturation process there. But you can't be excited about that guy. You need to be. Last year when he got hit, he crumbled to the ground. There were several occasions that is we've got this much more we probably would have got some points and maybe would have won another game or two. He's a freshman, at 194 pounds right now, I have already seen it, all of a sudden he's got contact power, and he's got great speed. Mike Walker has elite speed. He has elite speed. He's 200 pounds, whatever he is. We haven't had that. We usually have one guy that can run. Alex Amidon could run. We have 2, 3, 5, 6 guys that can run. Our DBs, they can run with anyone in the conference. That's a pretty big statement, right? Think about who our conference is, but our DBs can run with anyone in the conference. They have speed. And they say, 'Oh what about recruiting?' You tell me, what about recruiting. You watched the recruiting. We are pretty athletic, we are pretty fast, we can run. We've got some pretty good players playing right now. Especially on the defensive side, and on the offensive side some really talented players that are ready to come into their own. They are going to start to come into their own. I think the recruiting speaks for itself. I don't measure it off of five stars, I measure it off of productivity when they get here; when they come and when they leave. Where are they at when they leave.
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Reporter: Steve, two parter here, in speaking about the defense, almost overlooked here is Matt Milano who wound up getting…
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SA: Not overlooked, best player on the team.
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Reporter: Can you speak to how he will remain a feature component of this defense?
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SA: Same way. We are running the same defense. Nothing has changed.
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Reporter: With the exception of the coordinator.
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SA: Yeah, but it is the Boston College defense. We formulated that all together here. That's not changing. How much pressure you have and how much you don't change is on your personnel. Is it 98%, is it 64%? Each year we have gotten better in the back end. We are getting to the point now that we will be able to play some zone coverage and take some heat off of the corners. I said that wrong. We will be able create a pass rush with a four man rush so that we will be able to take some pressure of the corners in man coverage, so we can play so zone, which we had talked about doing a year ago. Matt Milano is in the same structure he was in before. He will still be in the same capacity that he was. Now the percentage, we will wait and see based on who we are. If our pass rush is struggling, we are going to bring more heat, that's going to put more pressure on man, that puts Matt more into the blitz package. When I came here I wanted to go out and hire a defensive coordinator that had the same philosophy as me. That's what you do when you are a head coach. I wanted to hire a guy who was a pressure orientated guy that was an attack-style guy. I went to Donnie (Brown). I knew Donnie and I knew his package. I wanted that package to be Boston College's package. We soaked into that as a football program and we built it around that based on our talent and we will continue to do that. Coach (Paul) Pasqualoni, for example, was a part of that. He was the head coach at the University of Connecticut where Don worked for him there. Coach P is one of the brightest defensive minds I have ever been around in my life. He full understands the whole package. Coach (Jim) Reid has been around football longer than anything. He understands all. It's not rocket science now. It comes down to are you committed to the pressure. You've got to be committed to the pressure. Then you've got to live with the results. You have to understand. Our goal is, when you bring the house, what happens to offenses, you will stymie a lot of offenses, but then you have to pay attention to the amount of big hits that happen to you. Because what you can't do is say, 'OK, we shut this down, we shut this down, it's just these six plays.' Yeah but if those six plays cost you the game then it cost you the game. Our philosophy isn't going to change. Our philosophy is not going to change. If I wanted to run less pressure last year I would have done it. I have that ability to do that. Don and I were wired at the hip together real good. It was really good alignment. With Jim Reid it's really good alignment. I think that we had an outstanding football coach in Don Brown and I love him and we had a bunch of great coaches and I loved those guys. Why wouldn't I love them? I hired them. It's a compliment to your program when you have really good coaches and people hire them away. That means you hired the right guys. And now I have gone out and hired these guys and I loved these guys and my next biggest job is to hang onto all of them. That's the struggle you get into. And when people aren't poaching your staff you get nervous. No one wants them. That's just the way it is. I hope I am answering that for you. We are going to be in the same system of defense, the same calls. It will just come down to what we perceive as the percentages of what we do. That will shift. But the last time I checked, Steve Addazio didn't go out and block anybody. Don Brown did not tackle anybody and blitz anybody. It's a players game and we have some great players and those players made some hellacious plays and with all due respect to all coaches myself included, it is a little overrated. It is shocking how that works. I look at New England (Patriots). It's an amazing thing. They win a lot of football games. Tom Brady is a hell of a player. He's a great player. I was at Florida, won a national championship. Tim Tebow was a hell of a player. When I was at Syracuse, we won a lot of games. That Donovan McNabb was somebody. I like to tell you, I remember one time we were talking at Florida about our third-down percentages. Stat wise the third down was really cool, third and long, most difficult down. Man we were really good at third down. Yeah but Tebow pulled the ball down and ran half the time for those. So how good was that third-down passing attack? Not very but the stats on it were phenomenal, weren't they. Because we had a dude that put the team on his back and made it happen. Tyler Murphy, you think he could put the team on his back a little bit. All of a sudden we beat USC, number nine team in the country at home. That guy put the team on his back. He did. Virginia Tech on the road. Boom. It's all on the line. He hits a QB draw. There's an unblocked defender right there (*juke noises*). Boom. Touchdown! Man what a hell of a call that was huh? That was a hell of a call. God, look at that call! There's an unblocked defender right there, but that athlete, that freaky athlete. That's football. That's college football, that's pro football. I view our job is you've got to recruit, you've got to develop. The development is important, the fundamental development and the organization of your practice, and the aura of your team. You want to have a tough team? That's your shtick. Whatever your shtick is. Don't care about defense? Just score 60? Great. If it works, that's tremendous. So that's what's really important. And I'm going to tell you: recruit, recruit, recruit, recruit, recruit! There was a guy here by the name of, what was it? Matt Ryan? You're going to retire his jersey. Pretty good player, right? They make you right, guys like that. They make you really right. And then when you've got a bunch of those guys, like you've got a guy like him and you surround him with some talented guys, you're getting real right. We've been in the top whatever forever for rushing. Not so much last year. I forgot how to block the run game.
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Reporter: Steve you spoke that you're excited about the quarterback play right now. What is it that excites you about Patrick Towles and some of the other guys?
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SA: Well, it's that they're really developing as passers. It's fun to watch. It's not like dealing with amateurs right now. These guys are learning how to throw the football. I'm a little bit concerned that the core of our receiving group is sitting on the bench right now, but they can throw the football. They can spin it. You know what I love? The leadership, the love of ball. It kind of lifts you up a little bit. Pat's an older guy. He's 6'5", 250 pounds running sub 4.6 and he's got a rocket arm. Darius Wade's been around a long time now, and he spins it now. He can play. Last year, what'd he throw six passes, the poor guy? He's got ability. He hasn't gotten an opportunity. He comes in against Maine opening day, then we play the other team we play, Howard or somebody, and he's off the field in two seconds. Then zippidy-doo-da here you go man: Florida State is in town. That was a great learning experience for him until he snapped his ankle. And here is right now. This guy is talented; he's really talented. That's a good thing. You feel like you've got two guys. I'm not discounting the other guys, but you've got two guys, one who has experience at a very high level, and the other who has a bunch of experience through some hard knocks so to speak. Yeah, I'm excited about the quarterback play. I hope you can understand that. That was a horror show last year. It was tough.
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Reporter: Do you expect to name a starter before the season? What's your timeline?
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SA: I'll know what that is. I just have to decide whether or not there's some kind of advantage to keeping it down a little bit until we go play the game. It won't be the great mystery for us; we'll name the starter. They're not that different in their skill sets, so it probably doesn't make much difference. That's something I'll probably just roll with.
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Reporter: Will they both see a lot of time?
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SA: I'm not rotating quarterbacks.
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Reporter: So it will be one guy and that's it?
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SA: Yes, unless he can't perform. It's not one of those deals where I'm like 'Hey let's go play a series with this guy." I told you that a long time ago. It's not anything I ever wanted; it just ended up that way for a host of reasons.
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Reporter: Has either one of them made more of an impression so far?
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SA: Not yet. Honestly, they've both looked good. They've had their high moments and their low moments just like everyone does. You really want to see them operate the team without coaches on the field. That's why Saturdays are good because I make the coaches get off the field. I did a little bit today, but I mean get them off the field, man. Coaches are overbearing. It really wears you down. I get mad about that, and I did the same thing as an assistant coach. But you've got to let them develop their own personality. You can't enable them. Let the quarterback develop that skill set. Let him get after the receiver, get after the tackle. Let him do that. Dan Koppen came and spoke to our team the other day, which was phenomenal. And he spoke about Tom Brady. It was unbelievable. He runs the whole thing. He's on everybody, on their effort; he's on everything! Here's a 15-year veteran! That's why they're the best franchise in professional football. They've got that guy, and he's phenomenal, and Dan talked about that. Dan was saying that you wanted to play for him. He brought everything up around him. Pretty cool. Really, pretty cool. Dan said they fought for him to protect him because he worked harder than anybody in that organization. It's really cool to hear all of that. It's what you know, but it reinforces what you think.
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Reporter: When those kind of visits happen, do you see your guys, your quarterbacks especially, trying to soak it all in?
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SA: I hope so; that's why we do it. The whole idea is not to hear the same voice. To get another voice in, and let the guys hear from Dan Koppen, 11-year NFL veteran, Super Bowl champion. It's impactful. We try to bring a bunch of our alumni back in here. Every preseason camp we probably have five or six different alums come in and talk to our guys about their experiences and it's really cool. And I think our guys really enjoy it. They really absorb it, and I absorb it. I love it. You get a window into the guy's soul. It really reinforces how proud you are to be at Boston College and to be a part of this great tradition and university when guys come in and they talk about what it meant for them to be a student-athlete. It's not just some cheap talk. They take pride in the fact that you went to class and embraced your academics, but you played like a champion and wanted to play at the highest level of football. It's really cool.
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Reporter: How difficult do you imagine it's going to be to decide on a starting quarterback?
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SA: I hope it's going to be really, really difficult. That's the greatest thing that could possibly happen honestly. Because that means you've got two dudes in here, and you've got a comfort level that if someone goes down, you're not like 'Uh oh, here we go.' But I don't even want to say that because then next thing you know we have two guys go down. But I'm happy we have who we have. I love the young guys too. Big Anthony Brown is going to be a hell of a player. John Fadule is working really, really hard, so we've got some guys. It gives you a comfort level. Now you've got to go make plays. We know who's in there, now you've still got to go in there and play. That's an unknown commodity, the winning part. The most important part: winning. I don't care how we get there. Just win.
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Reporter: How's Colton Lichtenberg been? How's the confidence?
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SA: Great, he's grown up. He's a lot like Nate Freese a fair amount. He's growing up. You can see him growing up. He still looks like he's six, but his mentality is changing. He's growing up. Mike Knoll is growing up. I'm proud of what Mike Knoll has done. He's gone through a lot of stuff, but he's hung in there, and you know what? He's getting better. Those guys are getting better. You've got to win. We're going to measure it as ball going through the uprights or not going through the uprights, enough wins, not enough wins. But do I think that Colton Lichtenberg will have a good career here when it's all said and done? Yes, I think that. It's got to happen, but I believe that.
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Reporter: What kind of development have you seen from Chris Lindstrom from this year to last year?
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SA: I mean, 265 pounds, 17-years old, 300 pounds. That's all the difference in the world when you play that position. He's a bigger man. He was forced into the fire and he got his tail whipped around a fair amount. He whipped some tail every once in a while, but he got whipped a lot. It's a harsh lesson, but it made him a better player. He's very ready to play. He's very ready to play. He's one of our very best offensive linemen. You'd like 10 of him now. He's aggressive and he's a 'get after it' guy. And he's got some size now to match up with these 310-pound inside guys that we've got to play against. We're having this conversation like all of a sudden he's John Hannah, but can you imagine him in his third year? He'll probably be 310 pounds and that much more skilled. Imagine him in his fourth year. I'd like to see this offensive line in their fourth year. If we can keep them all together it might be one of the most dominant offensive lines out there. But we're in year two right now, so we've just got to get a little better and that's what we're going to do.
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2016 Media Day | August 11, 2016
Head Coach Steve Addazio Transcript
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Steve Addazio: What Questions do you guys have?
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Reporter: It looked pretty intense out there today. Is that the theme of training camp?
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SA: Yeah. We put the shells on, shoulder pads on yesterday. Today is pretty hot. Pretty hot day. Good to get that going. We've got after it pretty good.
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Reporter: Steve when we last spoke to you a little while ago and put the wraps a very tough season, witnessing conference play, you vowed that this would be the toughest offseason program that this team can be put through. Now that you have been though that, and know that you are on the field, do you feel like they have been put through the test now and are preparing to rebound from that season.
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SA: I have said it several times. This is one of my favorite teams to be around right now. No matter what you through at them, they respond. They love football. They work really hard at football. They give you everything they have. It's a fun group to be around. Fun group to coach. And that hasn't changed.
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Reporter: Who in your estimation has had the greatest gains in the offseason, has it been the offensive line, the wide receivers?
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SA: A lot of guys have had gains. The offensive line will be much better than it was a year ago but not where it should be yet. Aaron Monteiro was a true freshman last year and is just getting ready to become a true sophomore. Really matured, good lines mature in their red shirt junior years. Our first two years we had a veteran older line, we implemented a couple of fifth-year guys, Ian Silberman and Matt Patchan who were really good football players, ended up being pro football players. We were strong, really strong. I have said it several times and don't really need to repeat myself, when you have nine guys who should be fourth- and fifth-year players in the front that's how you keep heal going. When you have to replace that from one extreme to the other, that's what happens. Well now we've got the right guys there. They got to mature. There's still a big difference between an 18-, 19-year old kid and 21-, 22-year old kid. Am I happy with who we have? Absolutely. Are we going to be better? Absolutely. Are we where we're going to be in another year or so? No. No were not because it takes a while to mature a veteran offensive line. The next position that is a lot like that is quarterback. We didn't have an older quarterback in this program. The oldest guy we had was Darius Wade, who took no snaps. So he gets hurt and now you're transporting in freshmen, red shirt freshmen and walk-ons. I just read an article from Jimbo (Fisher), a Florida State article, that's not going to happen. Your best hope with that is, maybe a redshirt freshman that came in early, Darius, then support him with a veteran offensive line and veteran players to hold full. But when the lines not that way and the quarterbacks not that way, you can't fix that quick. Now you've got to saturate. Patrick is here and Darius is back. They both have had a great offseason, a great spring, and a really good camp. So I am happy with that. And that's the only way we can plug that hole. And now we have Anthony Brown and Jon Fadule in there, and those guys can saturate the way you should. And grow and develop and then in a perfect world you have Patrick and Darius. Patrick has this seasons and Darius has this season plus two more. And then you have Anthony Brown who has been here in the winter, then has been here in the spring, going to be here for the summer camps, and be here for the and you've got another saturated guy, you've got John Fadule, who by fire got some playing experience, and now your starting to build some quarterbacks that you hope your will never be faced with that, of course barring injury which you can't predict, you hope you won't be faced with the two most critical positions for that to happen to again. And when your program's right, I remember coach (Frank) Beamer at Virginia Tech when I first got to Syracuse, when your program's right and you have been there and you have recruited and have recruited your classes properly, the only time it can get your again is if you have a bunch of guys leave early, so have a big senior class and a bunch of guys leave early, that's the only way it can get you again. Otherwise, you should be able to roll that thing over reasonably each year. And that's the goal. We will now be able to do that as we move forward. The only thing we have to do now, we have to mature this group up. This is heavy, heavy, filled with freshmen, redshirt freshmen, redshirt sophomores. But having said that, they love football and they compete, so that's fun and I really like being around that. They are going to win their share of games because of flat love of the game, toughness and everything that goes along with it. Exactly we are going to be better at each one of those position then we were one year ago. That will happen. It's got to be better enough. But it will be better. There's no doubt. The offensive line will be better, the quarterback play will be better, the kicker play will be better, even though I did not see that today. I have seen it all spring and I have seen it all camp, as short as we have been here at camp. So a lot of those areas are shored up, and I feel really good about where we are defensively, we have really good personnel, this is a personnel driven game. This is what it is. We have good personnel there. Because why? Because we started building it there first, because the whole emphasis of our program, my whole philosophy coming here was, you start by building a great defense and playing great defense building. Everything is done with a plan, not herky-jerky that sometimes I think people think it is. It's not. You recruit that way, put your best guys there and you filter then and build your system. The way our roster was built, here comes the offense now. Now we are going to have to do this with our offense and grow incrementally, which we are going to do.
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Reporter: Have you created your teams for Saturday's scrimmage and what are you looking for out of that first scrimmage?
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SA: Seeing guys compete with the coaches off the field. Create teams, sort of, they create themselves, everyone is going to pay. We are already dinged up. We already have got guys dinged up all over the place, we've got a bunch of guys down. Nothing serious but just enough to jumble you up. So that you go into Saturday, like today I think we had four receivers out today. So what happens is when you have four receivers and you get that dinged up injury bug, it puts the pressure on the rest of them and they take to many reps and you know what happens, you start losing them because the other guys are taking too much now and so then here comes the hamstrings and here comes the groins and it happens. Everyone's got that, it's the way it is. It hits the positions. And you notice when sometimes it hits a position in training camp and you get a run of it. You get a run of it because it puts the stress of the other guys to take more reps, and we are in it right now with the wide receivers, go figure. It's aggravating but it is what it is. Here's the good news, nothing serious. That's always good. But when you have a young team, if you have a veteran team, sometimes as a head coach you go great, get him out, now he won't get hurt. But we don't have a bunch of veterans so they need the work. A guy like Jeff Smith needs to work and Mike Walker needs to work. This is vital time to be missing.
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Reporter: After 3-9 last year is there a mark this year that will prove to you that you've got the program where you want it and heading in the direction you want?
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SA: I don't need to prove it to myself or anybody really. To be honest with you I know the program is going where it is supposed to be going.
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Reporter: I guess is there a goal?
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SA: Yes, the goal is to win the opener. And this is what I tell the team since I have been here. This is what I have been a part of everywhere in my career. Win the opener, get bowl eligible, then compete for a conference championship. That's what you do. You try to win the opener, and then you try to get bowl eligible. All those. Those first two things I just said are well within the reach of this football team. And then you've got from there. I would never short. I would never say nothing can be done. I say win the opener, get that done and from there, no matter what happens from there, you go to become bowl eligible, once your bowl eligible everything is still in front of you. That's the way I feel. I am not one of those guys, I never have been, and I have never been around a program that's broken it down, national championship on three. Let's take it one step at a time, even with veterans. One-game seasons. This team is very capable. If we stay healthy and continue to develop, it's a very capable football team. We will do some things that we will shake our heads at because we are young across the board but we will see great growth from that.
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Reporter: Steve last year was an interesting dichotomy and as the season went a long where you had a championship caliber defense but with an offense that didn't quite measure up because all the injuries and what not. Do you feel that the offense is putting some kind of inherent pressure to live up to that standard?
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SA: I think so. I think that competitors, no one feels good about last year. The guys that were in it understand why, but you don't feel good about it. The year before we were pretty good on offense and we had a hard time stopping a number of teams, we could have had a nine-win year. But last year we were really good on defense but couldn't function on offense for all the reasons we have already ad nauseam gone through. And even with that, this team last year, in my opinion played really hard, all the way through the final game, played hard, both side. To say that the offense didn't play hard is not an accurate statement and as young as we were, we still had the ability to run the football and half way through the season we had a pretty high time of possession. And the offense, myself and the staff made a conscious decision that we were going to feature the defense for obvious reasons which I always do here. We could have went to a no huddle, an up-tempo, we worked on it really hard, we had it available but I said that is not going to help our defense. See that's the other thing people don't talk about. What we do offensively is to extenuate our defense because that is our number one goal, to be great on defense. A lot of teams don't do that. A lot of programs don't do that. Everyone looks at stats and all that stuff. Here is a stat that matters if you are wired right: winning and then what goes into that. If your philosophy is to play great defense first then everything else should support that. Everything. Then don't say that's your number one goal. Oh we want to play great defense, number one goal, and score 62 points. They usually don't goal hand in hand. Those high octane offenses usually don't play great defense, usually go through a lot of defensive coordinators, and don't win championships. You've got to be true to what you believe your philosophy is. Last year on top of everything else, instead of shifting which would have been the best thing we could have done offensively not team wise, would have been to say, we are not very good up front lets go as fast as we can and see if we can neutralize the line of scrimmage and make it a non-factor, just make it a fatigue game, and try to let Jeff Smith of someone get in space and make a couple of plays but I knew that would sacrifice the defense. So what do I tell you? Because I thought we played really hard last year, we were really not very good on offense, but we played hard. We gave ourselves, as inept as we were, we gave ourselves a chance to be in every game. We lost five games by three point or less. That speaks to where our program is. You want compare well this year, you won this and this year. Come on man. We played really hard, rally physically, we were in every, just about every single game we were in it to the bitter end. That speaks volumes to our players. That's why I don't look at it like some people look at it like. I know exactly what happen and now we have to fix it. What does that mean? Recruiting. What does that mean? Development. And you build. I didn't come here to build this thing; I came here to build this over time. I took this job knowing it would be a five-year deal. I knew that. Everyone knew that. But we jumped out to two bowl games in a row and yet I knew this blip was coming. I knew that blip was coming. It just got extenuated a little bit more because of the injuries and things like that. So the program is on the right track, moving in the right direction, its two thousand whatever moving on and I couldn't be more excited about the football team. And that's not a coaching up, that's how I really feel. I say that to be clear with everyone, not naïve there's not going to be still a lot of growing pains. There will be but it's exciting, very exciting. And I am excited about the quarterback play. Very excited about the quarterback play.
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Reporter: Steve, you said it's about personnel both sides of the ball and when you lose a Steven Daniels, what is your confidence level that this defense as it is currently constructed can do what it did or come close to what it did last year?
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SA: Let me answer that, two things, I am going to be really direct about it. First of all if you're measuring it off of statistics, I don't do that. Stats have a lot to do with who you play. And they are influenced heavily on a lot of factors of where you are in a game. For example, if you play a lot of poor offenses your stats are going to be skewed a little bit higher. If you are in games that the other team is ahead, like we played a lot of teams that were really close games, they were ahead and we were inept on offense. They didn't try to open the game up; they tried to end the game. Those things all skew stats. I say that because we were really good on defense last year. But we are not trying to beat our stats. They are not really relative that way. The biggest thing is winning. Now direction to your question. Can we be a real good defense based on who we lost? Yes. Why? I believe Connor Strachan replaces Steven Daniels. I think Connor Strachan is a phenomenal football player. Here is a guy that runs unbelievable. Steven was a thumper and he did a great job for us. Well Connor is a thumper but he can play man coverage. He is not going to get matched up in man, he's not going to be a match-up problem because he runs a 4.5. Will Harris, who is one of our safeties, who essentially take the place for Justin Simmons as is John Johnson. Those guys are playing safety now. John Johnson is an exceptional football player and Will Harris has the highest ceiling as any DB we have had here. So when you replace guys with equal or greater talent you feel decent about that. Up front we lost Connor Wujciak, but Ray Smith played a lot of football last year. We feel really feel strong about Ray Smith. Ray Smith is a really strong athletic guy in there and Truman Gutapfel looks elite to me right now. On the edge we have Harold (Landry) who is a little dinged up right now but he is going to be fine and got guys like Zach Allen and Wyatt Ray and of course got Kevin Kavalec. So we have some guys. If I had to answer you squarely and say Steve, I feel great about our defensive personnel; the only thing I would tell you is we have little depth. That's where we need a little good fortune. Last year, we had more depth because these guys I'm speaking about all played but yet we had those other guys, as well. We are not giving away talent this year but we are giving away a little bit of depth. So if were to take a run of injuries on the defensive side of the ball, it could skew off. Were as last year, we actually stayed pretty healthy on defense for the first time. But you know how it goes sometime. Where can we take this least amount of trauma last year? On the offensive line and quarterback. Where did we take the most amount of injury trauma. Right were you couldn't afford to take it. It's like Murphy's Law. It just happens. So that would be were my concern is: depth. That is a valid concern. The talent of our starting defense, I think it's pretty damn good now. It's pretty damn good. In fact we will run even better this year than we did a year ago, in terms of team speed, both sides of the ball. We can run. We've got guys that can flat run. On offense, Jeff Smith is an elite skilled athlete, he was 170 pounds last year, 171 pounds last year, he's 194 pounds now, and he's a sub 4.4 guy and he's not 17 anymore. He's an elite athlete. I'm just telling you. We are excited about that. Why wouldn't you be excited about that. Now he's got to mature as a receiver. And there's a maturation process there. But you can't be excited about that guy. You need to be. Last year when he got hit, he crumbled to the ground. There were several occasions that is we've got this much more we probably would have got some points and maybe would have won another game or two. He's a freshman, at 194 pounds right now, I have already seen it, all of a sudden he's got contact power, and he's got great speed. Mike Walker has elite speed. He has elite speed. He's 200 pounds, whatever he is. We haven't had that. We usually have one guy that can run. Alex Amidon could run. We have 2, 3, 5, 6 guys that can run. Our DBs, they can run with anyone in the conference. That's a pretty big statement, right? Think about who our conference is, but our DBs can run with anyone in the conference. They have speed. And they say, 'Oh what about recruiting?' You tell me, what about recruiting. You watched the recruiting. We are pretty athletic, we are pretty fast, we can run. We've got some pretty good players playing right now. Especially on the defensive side, and on the offensive side some really talented players that are ready to come into their own. They are going to start to come into their own. I think the recruiting speaks for itself. I don't measure it off of five stars, I measure it off of productivity when they get here; when they come and when they leave. Where are they at when they leave.
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Reporter: Steve, two parter here, in speaking about the defense, almost overlooked here is Matt Milano who wound up getting…
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SA: Not overlooked, best player on the team.
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Reporter: Can you speak to how he will remain a feature component of this defense?
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SA: Same way. We are running the same defense. Nothing has changed.
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Reporter: With the exception of the coordinator.
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SA: Yeah, but it is the Boston College defense. We formulated that all together here. That's not changing. How much pressure you have and how much you don't change is on your personnel. Is it 98%, is it 64%? Each year we have gotten better in the back end. We are getting to the point now that we will be able to play some zone coverage and take some heat off of the corners. I said that wrong. We will be able create a pass rush with a four man rush so that we will be able to take some pressure of the corners in man coverage, so we can play so zone, which we had talked about doing a year ago. Matt Milano is in the same structure he was in before. He will still be in the same capacity that he was. Now the percentage, we will wait and see based on who we are. If our pass rush is struggling, we are going to bring more heat, that's going to put more pressure on man, that puts Matt more into the blitz package. When I came here I wanted to go out and hire a defensive coordinator that had the same philosophy as me. That's what you do when you are a head coach. I wanted to hire a guy who was a pressure orientated guy that was an attack-style guy. I went to Donnie (Brown). I knew Donnie and I knew his package. I wanted that package to be Boston College's package. We soaked into that as a football program and we built it around that based on our talent and we will continue to do that. Coach (Paul) Pasqualoni, for example, was a part of that. He was the head coach at the University of Connecticut where Don worked for him there. Coach P is one of the brightest defensive minds I have ever been around in my life. He full understands the whole package. Coach (Jim) Reid has been around football longer than anything. He understands all. It's not rocket science now. It comes down to are you committed to the pressure. You've got to be committed to the pressure. Then you've got to live with the results. You have to understand. Our goal is, when you bring the house, what happens to offenses, you will stymie a lot of offenses, but then you have to pay attention to the amount of big hits that happen to you. Because what you can't do is say, 'OK, we shut this down, we shut this down, it's just these six plays.' Yeah but if those six plays cost you the game then it cost you the game. Our philosophy isn't going to change. Our philosophy is not going to change. If I wanted to run less pressure last year I would have done it. I have that ability to do that. Don and I were wired at the hip together real good. It was really good alignment. With Jim Reid it's really good alignment. I think that we had an outstanding football coach in Don Brown and I love him and we had a bunch of great coaches and I loved those guys. Why wouldn't I love them? I hired them. It's a compliment to your program when you have really good coaches and people hire them away. That means you hired the right guys. And now I have gone out and hired these guys and I loved these guys and my next biggest job is to hang onto all of them. That's the struggle you get into. And when people aren't poaching your staff you get nervous. No one wants them. That's just the way it is. I hope I am answering that for you. We are going to be in the same system of defense, the same calls. It will just come down to what we perceive as the percentages of what we do. That will shift. But the last time I checked, Steve Addazio didn't go out and block anybody. Don Brown did not tackle anybody and blitz anybody. It's a players game and we have some great players and those players made some hellacious plays and with all due respect to all coaches myself included, it is a little overrated. It is shocking how that works. I look at New England (Patriots). It's an amazing thing. They win a lot of football games. Tom Brady is a hell of a player. He's a great player. I was at Florida, won a national championship. Tim Tebow was a hell of a player. When I was at Syracuse, we won a lot of games. That Donovan McNabb was somebody. I like to tell you, I remember one time we were talking at Florida about our third-down percentages. Stat wise the third down was really cool, third and long, most difficult down. Man we were really good at third down. Yeah but Tebow pulled the ball down and ran half the time for those. So how good was that third-down passing attack? Not very but the stats on it were phenomenal, weren't they. Because we had a dude that put the team on his back and made it happen. Tyler Murphy, you think he could put the team on his back a little bit. All of a sudden we beat USC, number nine team in the country at home. That guy put the team on his back. He did. Virginia Tech on the road. Boom. It's all on the line. He hits a QB draw. There's an unblocked defender right there (*juke noises*). Boom. Touchdown! Man what a hell of a call that was huh? That was a hell of a call. God, look at that call! There's an unblocked defender right there, but that athlete, that freaky athlete. That's football. That's college football, that's pro football. I view our job is you've got to recruit, you've got to develop. The development is important, the fundamental development and the organization of your practice, and the aura of your team. You want to have a tough team? That's your shtick. Whatever your shtick is. Don't care about defense? Just score 60? Great. If it works, that's tremendous. So that's what's really important. And I'm going to tell you: recruit, recruit, recruit, recruit, recruit! There was a guy here by the name of, what was it? Matt Ryan? You're going to retire his jersey. Pretty good player, right? They make you right, guys like that. They make you really right. And then when you've got a bunch of those guys, like you've got a guy like him and you surround him with some talented guys, you're getting real right. We've been in the top whatever forever for rushing. Not so much last year. I forgot how to block the run game.
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Reporter: Steve you spoke that you're excited about the quarterback play right now. What is it that excites you about Patrick Towles and some of the other guys?
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SA: Well, it's that they're really developing as passers. It's fun to watch. It's not like dealing with amateurs right now. These guys are learning how to throw the football. I'm a little bit concerned that the core of our receiving group is sitting on the bench right now, but they can throw the football. They can spin it. You know what I love? The leadership, the love of ball. It kind of lifts you up a little bit. Pat's an older guy. He's 6'5", 250 pounds running sub 4.6 and he's got a rocket arm. Darius Wade's been around a long time now, and he spins it now. He can play. Last year, what'd he throw six passes, the poor guy? He's got ability. He hasn't gotten an opportunity. He comes in against Maine opening day, then we play the other team we play, Howard or somebody, and he's off the field in two seconds. Then zippidy-doo-da here you go man: Florida State is in town. That was a great learning experience for him until he snapped his ankle. And here is right now. This guy is talented; he's really talented. That's a good thing. You feel like you've got two guys. I'm not discounting the other guys, but you've got two guys, one who has experience at a very high level, and the other who has a bunch of experience through some hard knocks so to speak. Yeah, I'm excited about the quarterback play. I hope you can understand that. That was a horror show last year. It was tough.
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Reporter: Do you expect to name a starter before the season? What's your timeline?
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SA: I'll know what that is. I just have to decide whether or not there's some kind of advantage to keeping it down a little bit until we go play the game. It won't be the great mystery for us; we'll name the starter. They're not that different in their skill sets, so it probably doesn't make much difference. That's something I'll probably just roll with.
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Reporter: Will they both see a lot of time?
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SA: I'm not rotating quarterbacks.
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Reporter: So it will be one guy and that's it?
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SA: Yes, unless he can't perform. It's not one of those deals where I'm like 'Hey let's go play a series with this guy." I told you that a long time ago. It's not anything I ever wanted; it just ended up that way for a host of reasons.
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Reporter: Has either one of them made more of an impression so far?
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SA: Not yet. Honestly, they've both looked good. They've had their high moments and their low moments just like everyone does. You really want to see them operate the team without coaches on the field. That's why Saturdays are good because I make the coaches get off the field. I did a little bit today, but I mean get them off the field, man. Coaches are overbearing. It really wears you down. I get mad about that, and I did the same thing as an assistant coach. But you've got to let them develop their own personality. You can't enable them. Let the quarterback develop that skill set. Let him get after the receiver, get after the tackle. Let him do that. Dan Koppen came and spoke to our team the other day, which was phenomenal. And he spoke about Tom Brady. It was unbelievable. He runs the whole thing. He's on everybody, on their effort; he's on everything! Here's a 15-year veteran! That's why they're the best franchise in professional football. They've got that guy, and he's phenomenal, and Dan talked about that. Dan was saying that you wanted to play for him. He brought everything up around him. Pretty cool. Really, pretty cool. Dan said they fought for him to protect him because he worked harder than anybody in that organization. It's really cool to hear all of that. It's what you know, but it reinforces what you think.
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Reporter: When those kind of visits happen, do you see your guys, your quarterbacks especially, trying to soak it all in?
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SA: I hope so; that's why we do it. The whole idea is not to hear the same voice. To get another voice in, and let the guys hear from Dan Koppen, 11-year NFL veteran, Super Bowl champion. It's impactful. We try to bring a bunch of our alumni back in here. Every preseason camp we probably have five or six different alums come in and talk to our guys about their experiences and it's really cool. And I think our guys really enjoy it. They really absorb it, and I absorb it. I love it. You get a window into the guy's soul. It really reinforces how proud you are to be at Boston College and to be a part of this great tradition and university when guys come in and they talk about what it meant for them to be a student-athlete. It's not just some cheap talk. They take pride in the fact that you went to class and embraced your academics, but you played like a champion and wanted to play at the highest level of football. It's really cool.
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Reporter: How difficult do you imagine it's going to be to decide on a starting quarterback?
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SA: I hope it's going to be really, really difficult. That's the greatest thing that could possibly happen honestly. Because that means you've got two dudes in here, and you've got a comfort level that if someone goes down, you're not like 'Uh oh, here we go.' But I don't even want to say that because then next thing you know we have two guys go down. But I'm happy we have who we have. I love the young guys too. Big Anthony Brown is going to be a hell of a player. John Fadule is working really, really hard, so we've got some guys. It gives you a comfort level. Now you've got to go make plays. We know who's in there, now you've still got to go in there and play. That's an unknown commodity, the winning part. The most important part: winning. I don't care how we get there. Just win.
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Reporter: How's Colton Lichtenberg been? How's the confidence?
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SA: Great, he's grown up. He's a lot like Nate Freese a fair amount. He's growing up. You can see him growing up. He still looks like he's six, but his mentality is changing. He's growing up. Mike Knoll is growing up. I'm proud of what Mike Knoll has done. He's gone through a lot of stuff, but he's hung in there, and you know what? He's getting better. Those guys are getting better. You've got to win. We're going to measure it as ball going through the uprights or not going through the uprights, enough wins, not enough wins. But do I think that Colton Lichtenberg will have a good career here when it's all said and done? Yes, I think that. It's got to happen, but I believe that.
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Reporter: What kind of development have you seen from Chris Lindstrom from this year to last year?
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SA: I mean, 265 pounds, 17-years old, 300 pounds. That's all the difference in the world when you play that position. He's a bigger man. He was forced into the fire and he got his tail whipped around a fair amount. He whipped some tail every once in a while, but he got whipped a lot. It's a harsh lesson, but it made him a better player. He's very ready to play. He's very ready to play. He's one of our very best offensive linemen. You'd like 10 of him now. He's aggressive and he's a 'get after it' guy. And he's got some size now to match up with these 310-pound inside guys that we've got to play against. We're having this conversation like all of a sudden he's John Hannah, but can you imagine him in his third year? He'll probably be 310 pounds and that much more skilled. Imagine him in his fourth year. I'd like to see this offensive line in their fourth year. If we can keep them all together it might be one of the most dominant offensive lines out there. But we're in year two right now, so we've just got to get a little better and that's what we're going to do.
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