OPENING STATEMENT…
“Another conference opponent that I think is playing well, it’s just they haven’t won a lot of games yet. Offensively, Chip (Kelly) has done a nice job with this offense. He has been kind of shuffling quarterbacks, but they move the ball very well. They played tough against Oregon. They have two Pac-12 wins against Cal on the road and beating Arizona as well. They are an efficient offense and the defense is pretty athletic. They are a scary team. Time of possession – that’s what Chip kind of likes. They are balanced, they have a good runner, they run the ball fairly well. This is a big test for us. We have been in this situation before when we won two in a row and we didn’t handle it very well. Opportunities in life come along, you have to take advantage of them. We play at home and it’s our last home game – probably emotional for a lot of guys because they are seniors. A lot of the senior's parents will be here. All of those things become distractions and I think our focus needs to be very keen this week. This is an important game, they all become important in November. They are all games that can dictate what happens to you as a football team. I think the mindset for our coaches is pretty much set, I kind of went over that yesterday – had a good meeting with the staff. The players are well aware of what is going on this week. As I said, senior week is always big with a lot of distractions, a lot of family in town, players being pulled here and there, hearing about all those things that they can accomplish. You can’t accomplish anything unless you don’t have the right mindset and that’s going to work and going to practice. We are going to make sure that we get focused on practicing well this week so we have an opportunity to win a game.”
ON IF HE BELIEVES THE TEAM HAS OVERCOME THE PRESSURE AFTER A BIG WIN...
“Negative. Negative on that question. We will see how we handle it. This team, like UCLA and like Arizona – new head coaches trying to build programs and every time you play a game you find out a little bit more about your football team. I think that’s important and we will see where we are at after this game.”
ON USING THE OPPORTUNITY TO WIN THE SOUTH TITLE AS MOTIVATION…
“Make sure you coach your team that way. I’m going to coach my team the way I think is necessary and I think it’s this week and it’s only this week and I have always coached that way. I don’t get involved with all that other stuff, it doesn't make a lot of sense. When it shows up opportunity, you take advantage of it. We have an opportunity to try to win three in a row. We have not done that. That’s the biggest hurdle we have to face. Can we win three in a row? We haven’t done it yet. Until we do that, we have not done a whole lot to win two games in a row. Can we win three? That’s how I function, I don’t get caught up in all that other stuff. It’s too much to handle, it’s too much to explain. Just win. If you win it takes care of itself.”
ON OFFENSIVE LINE EFFICIENCY IN THE FOURTH QUARTER…
“The offensive line starts with coach (Dave) Christensen and that group up front. I thought the acquisitions of both transfer players has helped us. They have been very solid, especially the last couple of weeks. If you think about the numbers with this football team – we have passed it 281 times and we have ran it 333 times. That’s pretty good balance for the offensive football team.”
ON HOW SPECIAL N’KEAL HARRY IS…
“#1 (N'Keal Harry) is a special player. When you look at his numbers – 55 receptions, 828 yards, he’s got 11 total touchdowns – a couple of running and a couple receiving. We asked him to do a little bit of everything. He has been special the last two weeks. He really has when you think about his numbers – 5 touchdowns in two weeks. That is a credit to him and what he means to the team and when you think about him and Eno (Benjamin). Eno has 13 touchdowns. He’s over 1,000 yards rushing. No one anticipated that maybe he did coming into the season but, he had not played a lot. I don’t think he thought he was going to be carrying it 25 times a game, but that’s the numbers. He’s carried it 193 times. When you carry it 25 times, he will probably end up with 250 carries and to me that’s fine. I had backs that carried it 300 times. He does a good job, he’s remarkable because he is not the biggest guy in the world but, he has a way of bouncing off tackles and he has great balance. I think that helps us with running the ball with him and getting N’Keal involved. It becomes a pretty good offense. Manny (Wilkins) doesn’t have as many passing attempts as he would like, but I thought the last two weeks he has been spot on. He has made some good throws. (Brandon) Aiyuk has kind of come around now. Floyd ran the ball fairly well so I think our offense is starting to click. We need to keep clicking though. This is a good defense as far as athleticism so we have another test in front of us this week.”
ON INTERACTION WITH ROB LIKENS AFTER COMPLETE GAME ON OFFENSE…
“It starts with contiguity, understanding a little bit of the head coach's philosophy, understanding the strengths of our players and I think you find that out as you start playing football games. You always have this goal of what you want to become, you don’t know until you start playing and then you have to adjust when the season starts and I think we have kind of found our way. We have always been tinkering with it in just trying to find our way and I think in any good offense understands this – it's about the possession that you own and what you will do with those possessions. Anytime we can get a flow going, which we did this week against a really good defense, you gain confidence so I think our offense is gaining some confidence. It helps that our star players are playing well in big games and they need to play well because when they are playing well everyone feeds off those guys and we have three stars on offense. It starts with the quarterback, wide receiver and the runner. Those are the guys that get the most compliments. People expect them to play well so it is just a lot of pressure on them week in and week out and then the complimentary pieces that go along with that to fellas that I just named. They have an opportunity. When it's going and you get on a long drive, as I said in the fourth quarter in the last game we played was 12 minutes, almost 13 minutes of possession time. You have a chance to do some things and it’s hard to do, but the last couple weeks we have kind of found our way, which is good.”
ON DESCRIBING WHAT THE SENIORS HAVE MEANT THIS YEAR…
“Change is always hard on seniors, just like veterans in the national football league that might be in their last year and all of the sudden a new guy comes in. Okay, so how is he going to change it, how is he going to effect me – I’m not part of the guys that he obviously scouted or recruited or drafted in the NFL. I think, for the most part, I think what they have learned is that I adapt to the players we have and I thought for the most part the offense stayed intact what we were trying to do. As we continued to play, a lot of folks said, ‘they don’t throw the ball anymore.’ Yeah, we throw the ball, we just run it. We are balanced and I said that when I took the job. We are going to be balanced doesn’t mean we're not going to pass. I think I have adjusted to their strengths and I have let them play to that as we continue to grow as a football team and we go out and continue to recruit. You will see some changes because of the players that we bring in here. I am smart enough to know, you are only as good as the players you have and you if don’t put them in the position to have success then you have failed and I am not here to fail the players. That is not what I do. I try to put players in the best position so they can have some success and that’s what we try to do. I think they understand that.”
ON FAMILIARITY WITH CHIP KELLY...
“I met Chip awhile back when he was in Philadelphia. I was the honorary captain for the Eagles game. I met Chip then and spent some time with him when he was up in San Francisco. He is a good football coach. He is one of the better offensive college coaches in the country. When you think about what he accomplished up there in Oregon, it was fun to watch. He had that thing going now. That thing was going a thousand miles per hour and I remember sitting in the studio thinking that it was hard to deal with. Tony Dungy’s son had gone to school there for a little while and then left. Tony had visited him there as well. He (Chip Kelly) has a new way and was outside of the box of thinking in terms of training players. I like guys who will go outside his comfort zone. Other people might question him, but I think when he gets his players and develops his system at UCLA, they are going to be really good. They are competing right now and they have been in a lot of tight ball games. We are fortunate. We have been in some of them, but we have won. I respect him. He is a good football coach.”
ON CONTRIBUTION OF BRANDON AIYUK...
“He came out of junior college along with (Isaiah) Floyd. I thought early in the season that they were like Freshmen, even though they were JC guys. It was just new to them. The speed of the game I think caught them both by surprise. They had some hiccups early and they have overcome those hiccups. They are more confident now. You can see it every day in practice. I thought the catch Aiyuk made against Michigan State where he caught it along the boundary when he was out of bounds made me think that he was making progression. Every week he has been doing a little bit more. You can tell during the past few weeks that he is starting to get it now and Floyd too. That is good because that is what you anticipate when guys transfer from JC., the speed of the game catches them by surprise. It was like our freshmen when we started those guys early. Now, it looks like they are at ease with the speed of the game. So, he is a unique player. He has got some talent and it will be fun to watch him continue to play.”
ON MANNY WILKINS DEMEANOR ON SIDELINE AFTER INTERCEPTION...
“Generally when something like that happens, I always address the quarterback to let him know it is okay because the first play when we get back out there will be a pass. It is good to get it out of his system. He told me, 'that was on me' and I told him that we will stop them. He realizes that I am not one of those guys that will have a sudden change of demeanor. I have been in too many games as a player and as a coach. It is more settling to just understand that a bad decision was made. That is okay if you move onto the next series and talk about what we are going to try to do in the next possession. I do not make a lot out of it because I do not have time. No quarterback wants to throw the ball to the other guy. The good part is that he has played enough football where it doesn’t affect his confidence. As soon as that happens to a player, I make sure I address that with a player. Everyone wants to know what he is thinking. He is good and he knows to not throw it to the other guy. He is fine and he has been good during the last few weeks. We need him to play good down the stretch.”
ON N’KEAL HARRY DEALING WITH NATIONAL ATTENTION...
“I think the talk we had at the beginning of the season helped us form a pretty good relationship. I called him and Manny in because they are two of the better players and they have played a lot together. I told them our personal goals and that they have to be connected. I think we have got a pretty good relationship to be quite honest. I talked to both of those guys a couple of times to make sure that we are all on the same page. He knows that these last couple of games are important because of what this team is trying to accomplish this year. Every day he goes out there in practice, he prepares. When you watch guys prepare, you know they are going to play good. That is football. Guys that prepare and understand that nobody is out there during practice. When you watch him work, you are happy that he is having success because that is how it works. You can not cheat the game of football. I does not work that way. You have to put the work in when no one is out there. There is no fans, popcorn, or scoreboard. It is just a bunch of guys running around and practicing. The guys that are willing to do that play well and you can tell that the guys that do not put in the work. That is what I have always witnessed about football that it is so important to put the preparation in because in this game you practice more than you play for the rest of your life. I think the guys that get it early have success because it is a wonderful game. It is the greatest game that I have ever been involved in. I would not sit in this seat without this game. It has done everything for me and my family. I say that all the time and I mean that. I owe whatever I have to give back to football. This is a fabulous game and you learn a lot of life lessons when you are doing this. It teaches you things that you hold onto when you leave the game of football and hopefully these guys understand that.”
ON HOW THE TEAM IS BETTER POSITIONED TO MAINTAIN SUCCESS COMPARED TO BEGINNING OF THE YEAR...
“I think when they won two early and everybody told them they were certain things, they did not handle it that well. You do not get a lot of opportunities in life. This opportunity presents itself again. I told our players after the game that they have never won three straight. That was the challenge I offered to them. I did not know what they were all excited about because they had not won three in a row. Maybe I should be giddy, but it is always the next game for me. How coaches prepare, how players prepare, and how we perform on the grass is important for me. How you perform shows up. If we are fortunate to win, I will be in here next Monday challenging our players to win another game. That is how I work and I operate. I do not get caught up in anything else, but the preparation that week to try to win a game. The preparation part of coaching is fun. Watching them on the field and making some decision for them is necessary for our team. But, the reward is watching their enjoyment when they win a game. I sit on a table and just watch them for five minutes. I do not say a word. I just sit on the table and watch them. That is the joy for me at the end. I walk off the field and I say to myself that I get to watch these guys. They all know that I am watching them. I speak to them and then they get to go home.”
ON INFLUENCE OF HAVING KEVIN MAWAE ON STAFF...
“It is fun to have Kevin (Mawae). It is kind of ironic how this football thing goes in circles. I can remember when I was a rookie head coach with the Jets, he was on that football team. Generally, before every game, there were a couple of players that I would hug because I always told players, ‘Can a little bit of me go out there with you’ because I can not play anymore. That started with (John) Lynch in Tampa. I did the same thing when I was in New York. It was always three guys: the quarterback, the runner, and Kevin Mawae. If you watched us in our first game, we were excited that we can hug each other. There is a comfort there because Kevin can give light to a lot of the coaches on how I think and operate because he was with me for five years, whether it was the good times, bad times, or playoff times. A lot of the questions that a coach might have are thrown to Kevin because he is kind of a mouthpiece for me. As far as the players, he is a wealth of knowledge. Mawae, Antonio Pierce, Coach (Shaun) Nua, (Derek) Hagen have all been where these guys want to go. During the course of the day if you are not talking to them and you have potential or ambitions at playing at the next level, shame on you because they have knowledge and experience playing at the next level. It is fun having those guys because a lot of questions that players might be fearful of asking me, they can ask those guys. There are two guys that know me better than anybody: Kevin Mawae and Nate Wainwright. Nate Wainwright is my right-hand guy. When I hired him here, everybody was curious on what he does. Nate does what Nate does. He is my guy because he has been with me since the beginning of when I become a head coach. That helps you because you have to speak to so many people during the day and you can not touch everybody. I am the type of guy that talks to players and coaches. I visited with every coach this week. Since yesterday and today, I have visited with every individual coach and told them what I expected from each group. I have to go into the training room and equipment room. Those guys can help me because they know where I am at. They can look at my demeanor and hear my tone when I speak. Kevin and Nate have heard it before. If they have to decode something, they can do that. It is just good to have those guys around."
“Another conference opponent that I think is playing well, it’s just they haven’t won a lot of games yet. Offensively, Chip (Kelly) has done a nice job with this offense. He has been kind of shuffling quarterbacks, but they move the ball very well. They played tough against Oregon. They have two Pac-12 wins against Cal on the road and beating Arizona as well. They are an efficient offense and the defense is pretty athletic. They are a scary team. Time of possession – that’s what Chip kind of likes. They are balanced, they have a good runner, they run the ball fairly well. This is a big test for us. We have been in this situation before when we won two in a row and we didn’t handle it very well. Opportunities in life come along, you have to take advantage of them. We play at home and it’s our last home game – probably emotional for a lot of guys because they are seniors. A lot of the senior's parents will be here. All of those things become distractions and I think our focus needs to be very keen this week. This is an important game, they all become important in November. They are all games that can dictate what happens to you as a football team. I think the mindset for our coaches is pretty much set, I kind of went over that yesterday – had a good meeting with the staff. The players are well aware of what is going on this week. As I said, senior week is always big with a lot of distractions, a lot of family in town, players being pulled here and there, hearing about all those things that they can accomplish. You can’t accomplish anything unless you don’t have the right mindset and that’s going to work and going to practice. We are going to make sure that we get focused on practicing well this week so we have an opportunity to win a game.”
ON IF HE BELIEVES THE TEAM HAS OVERCOME THE PRESSURE AFTER A BIG WIN...
“Negative. Negative on that question. We will see how we handle it. This team, like UCLA and like Arizona – new head coaches trying to build programs and every time you play a game you find out a little bit more about your football team. I think that’s important and we will see where we are at after this game.”
ON USING THE OPPORTUNITY TO WIN THE SOUTH TITLE AS MOTIVATION…
“Make sure you coach your team that way. I’m going to coach my team the way I think is necessary and I think it’s this week and it’s only this week and I have always coached that way. I don’t get involved with all that other stuff, it doesn't make a lot of sense. When it shows up opportunity, you take advantage of it. We have an opportunity to try to win three in a row. We have not done that. That’s the biggest hurdle we have to face. Can we win three in a row? We haven’t done it yet. Until we do that, we have not done a whole lot to win two games in a row. Can we win three? That’s how I function, I don’t get caught up in all that other stuff. It’s too much to handle, it’s too much to explain. Just win. If you win it takes care of itself.”
ON OFFENSIVE LINE EFFICIENCY IN THE FOURTH QUARTER…
“The offensive line starts with coach (Dave) Christensen and that group up front. I thought the acquisitions of both transfer players has helped us. They have been very solid, especially the last couple of weeks. If you think about the numbers with this football team – we have passed it 281 times and we have ran it 333 times. That’s pretty good balance for the offensive football team.”
ON HOW SPECIAL N’KEAL HARRY IS…
“#1 (N'Keal Harry) is a special player. When you look at his numbers – 55 receptions, 828 yards, he’s got 11 total touchdowns – a couple of running and a couple receiving. We asked him to do a little bit of everything. He has been special the last two weeks. He really has when you think about his numbers – 5 touchdowns in two weeks. That is a credit to him and what he means to the team and when you think about him and Eno (Benjamin). Eno has 13 touchdowns. He’s over 1,000 yards rushing. No one anticipated that maybe he did coming into the season but, he had not played a lot. I don’t think he thought he was going to be carrying it 25 times a game, but that’s the numbers. He’s carried it 193 times. When you carry it 25 times, he will probably end up with 250 carries and to me that’s fine. I had backs that carried it 300 times. He does a good job, he’s remarkable because he is not the biggest guy in the world but, he has a way of bouncing off tackles and he has great balance. I think that helps us with running the ball with him and getting N’Keal involved. It becomes a pretty good offense. Manny (Wilkins) doesn’t have as many passing attempts as he would like, but I thought the last two weeks he has been spot on. He has made some good throws. (Brandon) Aiyuk has kind of come around now. Floyd ran the ball fairly well so I think our offense is starting to click. We need to keep clicking though. This is a good defense as far as athleticism so we have another test in front of us this week.”
ON INTERACTION WITH ROB LIKENS AFTER COMPLETE GAME ON OFFENSE…
“It starts with contiguity, understanding a little bit of the head coach's philosophy, understanding the strengths of our players and I think you find that out as you start playing football games. You always have this goal of what you want to become, you don’t know until you start playing and then you have to adjust when the season starts and I think we have kind of found our way. We have always been tinkering with it in just trying to find our way and I think in any good offense understands this – it's about the possession that you own and what you will do with those possessions. Anytime we can get a flow going, which we did this week against a really good defense, you gain confidence so I think our offense is gaining some confidence. It helps that our star players are playing well in big games and they need to play well because when they are playing well everyone feeds off those guys and we have three stars on offense. It starts with the quarterback, wide receiver and the runner. Those are the guys that get the most compliments. People expect them to play well so it is just a lot of pressure on them week in and week out and then the complimentary pieces that go along with that to fellas that I just named. They have an opportunity. When it's going and you get on a long drive, as I said in the fourth quarter in the last game we played was 12 minutes, almost 13 minutes of possession time. You have a chance to do some things and it’s hard to do, but the last couple weeks we have kind of found our way, which is good.”
ON DESCRIBING WHAT THE SENIORS HAVE MEANT THIS YEAR…
“Change is always hard on seniors, just like veterans in the national football league that might be in their last year and all of the sudden a new guy comes in. Okay, so how is he going to change it, how is he going to effect me – I’m not part of the guys that he obviously scouted or recruited or drafted in the NFL. I think, for the most part, I think what they have learned is that I adapt to the players we have and I thought for the most part the offense stayed intact what we were trying to do. As we continued to play, a lot of folks said, ‘they don’t throw the ball anymore.’ Yeah, we throw the ball, we just run it. We are balanced and I said that when I took the job. We are going to be balanced doesn’t mean we're not going to pass. I think I have adjusted to their strengths and I have let them play to that as we continue to grow as a football team and we go out and continue to recruit. You will see some changes because of the players that we bring in here. I am smart enough to know, you are only as good as the players you have and you if don’t put them in the position to have success then you have failed and I am not here to fail the players. That is not what I do. I try to put players in the best position so they can have some success and that’s what we try to do. I think they understand that.”
ON FAMILIARITY WITH CHIP KELLY...
“I met Chip awhile back when he was in Philadelphia. I was the honorary captain for the Eagles game. I met Chip then and spent some time with him when he was up in San Francisco. He is a good football coach. He is one of the better offensive college coaches in the country. When you think about what he accomplished up there in Oregon, it was fun to watch. He had that thing going now. That thing was going a thousand miles per hour and I remember sitting in the studio thinking that it was hard to deal with. Tony Dungy’s son had gone to school there for a little while and then left. Tony had visited him there as well. He (Chip Kelly) has a new way and was outside of the box of thinking in terms of training players. I like guys who will go outside his comfort zone. Other people might question him, but I think when he gets his players and develops his system at UCLA, they are going to be really good. They are competing right now and they have been in a lot of tight ball games. We are fortunate. We have been in some of them, but we have won. I respect him. He is a good football coach.”
ON CONTRIBUTION OF BRANDON AIYUK...
“He came out of junior college along with (Isaiah) Floyd. I thought early in the season that they were like Freshmen, even though they were JC guys. It was just new to them. The speed of the game I think caught them both by surprise. They had some hiccups early and they have overcome those hiccups. They are more confident now. You can see it every day in practice. I thought the catch Aiyuk made against Michigan State where he caught it along the boundary when he was out of bounds made me think that he was making progression. Every week he has been doing a little bit more. You can tell during the past few weeks that he is starting to get it now and Floyd too. That is good because that is what you anticipate when guys transfer from JC., the speed of the game catches them by surprise. It was like our freshmen when we started those guys early. Now, it looks like they are at ease with the speed of the game. So, he is a unique player. He has got some talent and it will be fun to watch him continue to play.”
ON MANNY WILKINS DEMEANOR ON SIDELINE AFTER INTERCEPTION...
“Generally when something like that happens, I always address the quarterback to let him know it is okay because the first play when we get back out there will be a pass. It is good to get it out of his system. He told me, 'that was on me' and I told him that we will stop them. He realizes that I am not one of those guys that will have a sudden change of demeanor. I have been in too many games as a player and as a coach. It is more settling to just understand that a bad decision was made. That is okay if you move onto the next series and talk about what we are going to try to do in the next possession. I do not make a lot out of it because I do not have time. No quarterback wants to throw the ball to the other guy. The good part is that he has played enough football where it doesn’t affect his confidence. As soon as that happens to a player, I make sure I address that with a player. Everyone wants to know what he is thinking. He is good and he knows to not throw it to the other guy. He is fine and he has been good during the last few weeks. We need him to play good down the stretch.”
ON N’KEAL HARRY DEALING WITH NATIONAL ATTENTION...
“I think the talk we had at the beginning of the season helped us form a pretty good relationship. I called him and Manny in because they are two of the better players and they have played a lot together. I told them our personal goals and that they have to be connected. I think we have got a pretty good relationship to be quite honest. I talked to both of those guys a couple of times to make sure that we are all on the same page. He knows that these last couple of games are important because of what this team is trying to accomplish this year. Every day he goes out there in practice, he prepares. When you watch guys prepare, you know they are going to play good. That is football. Guys that prepare and understand that nobody is out there during practice. When you watch him work, you are happy that he is having success because that is how it works. You can not cheat the game of football. I does not work that way. You have to put the work in when no one is out there. There is no fans, popcorn, or scoreboard. It is just a bunch of guys running around and practicing. The guys that are willing to do that play well and you can tell that the guys that do not put in the work. That is what I have always witnessed about football that it is so important to put the preparation in because in this game you practice more than you play for the rest of your life. I think the guys that get it early have success because it is a wonderful game. It is the greatest game that I have ever been involved in. I would not sit in this seat without this game. It has done everything for me and my family. I say that all the time and I mean that. I owe whatever I have to give back to football. This is a fabulous game and you learn a lot of life lessons when you are doing this. It teaches you things that you hold onto when you leave the game of football and hopefully these guys understand that.”
ON HOW THE TEAM IS BETTER POSITIONED TO MAINTAIN SUCCESS COMPARED TO BEGINNING OF THE YEAR...
“I think when they won two early and everybody told them they were certain things, they did not handle it that well. You do not get a lot of opportunities in life. This opportunity presents itself again. I told our players after the game that they have never won three straight. That was the challenge I offered to them. I did not know what they were all excited about because they had not won three in a row. Maybe I should be giddy, but it is always the next game for me. How coaches prepare, how players prepare, and how we perform on the grass is important for me. How you perform shows up. If we are fortunate to win, I will be in here next Monday challenging our players to win another game. That is how I work and I operate. I do not get caught up in anything else, but the preparation that week to try to win a game. The preparation part of coaching is fun. Watching them on the field and making some decision for them is necessary for our team. But, the reward is watching their enjoyment when they win a game. I sit on a table and just watch them for five minutes. I do not say a word. I just sit on the table and watch them. That is the joy for me at the end. I walk off the field and I say to myself that I get to watch these guys. They all know that I am watching them. I speak to them and then they get to go home.”
ON INFLUENCE OF HAVING KEVIN MAWAE ON STAFF...
“It is fun to have Kevin (Mawae). It is kind of ironic how this football thing goes in circles. I can remember when I was a rookie head coach with the Jets, he was on that football team. Generally, before every game, there were a couple of players that I would hug because I always told players, ‘Can a little bit of me go out there with you’ because I can not play anymore. That started with (John) Lynch in Tampa. I did the same thing when I was in New York. It was always three guys: the quarterback, the runner, and Kevin Mawae. If you watched us in our first game, we were excited that we can hug each other. There is a comfort there because Kevin can give light to a lot of the coaches on how I think and operate because he was with me for five years, whether it was the good times, bad times, or playoff times. A lot of the questions that a coach might have are thrown to Kevin because he is kind of a mouthpiece for me. As far as the players, he is a wealth of knowledge. Mawae, Antonio Pierce, Coach (Shaun) Nua, (Derek) Hagen have all been where these guys want to go. During the course of the day if you are not talking to them and you have potential or ambitions at playing at the next level, shame on you because they have knowledge and experience playing at the next level. It is fun having those guys because a lot of questions that players might be fearful of asking me, they can ask those guys. There are two guys that know me better than anybody: Kevin Mawae and Nate Wainwright. Nate Wainwright is my right-hand guy. When I hired him here, everybody was curious on what he does. Nate does what Nate does. He is my guy because he has been with me since the beginning of when I become a head coach. That helps you because you have to speak to so many people during the day and you can not touch everybody. I am the type of guy that talks to players and coaches. I visited with every coach this week. Since yesterday and today, I have visited with every individual coach and told them what I expected from each group. I have to go into the training room and equipment room. Those guys can help me because they know where I am at. They can look at my demeanor and hear my tone when I speak. Kevin and Nate have heard it before. If they have to decode something, they can do that. It is just good to have those guys around."