Midway through the camp period that's gone so far.
Sure, yeah, they you know, we're working hard. It's been tough camp, which it needs to be. We're still learning how to work. It's kind of a process, you know, just putting pieces together. I like our pieces. I think we got a lot of talent. We just have to I mean, and this is just this time of camp. We got to keep working every day to get better, even when it gets tiring, even when a lot of it's the same. The great offense is the great teams find ways to keep getting better every day. Okay, So
I feel like we're heading in that direction. We still have a ways to go, but that's what camp is and that's what it's for. So I feel good about where we are, like our progress. I think it's a work in progress. But we'll get there because it's our job too. After you guys over in the tent over there, anything serious or we just know camp kind of the regular camp, you know, nothing nothing dramatic now, thank god,
you know. And that's I mean, that's always about staying healthy and taking care of these guys and but also making sure they're getting enough work to kind of harden themselves and be ready to go through that stretch. So it's a fine line. You know, we'll rest them when we need to, and sometimes when it's time to go, you gotta go because there's gonna be days where games you don't feel great, but you gotta go. So I
think that's part of this whole process. And those guys who were in the tent, all the reports I got as they'll be back with and you know tomorrow a couple of days, nothing, nothing drastic, any more comfortable year two as an offensive coordinator or doesn't matter because you've been here before. Yeah, I mean I kind of it's good. It's definitely a different role for me because last year I was just so immersed right o line calling the plays,
all that stuff. So really for me, being the coordinator kind of became a Thursday, Friday, Saturday job, if that makes sense, right, Because my first job, I had to get the guys ready to play, make sure they were prepared to play, and then I could kind of focus on myself those last couple of days. So I can be a lot more big picture this year. Feeling a lot more comfortable. I like the role I have now because now I can kind of have a relationship with everybody.
It's not just the O line. I can go sit in the wide out room and go talk to those guys. I can go sit in the running back room and kind of get to know those guys.
So it's been really good.
The fight always is going to be when I with more time on my hands with certain things, is not to overthink things. Okay, I'm not sitting in a position room all the time, so I need to Really it's about getting in tune with my coaches.
Is this too much right now? All right? Do we need to scale it back? Or can we push them?
And so that's the thing I got to get used to in terms of as a coach. All of us it's easy, right, It's easy for us to understand a lot of the concepts and things like that, But for the guy out there playing, if it gets to be too much, you know, I relied heavily now on those guys to kind of scale back. Where last year when I had a position group, I could.
Ask valor Chase, hey, where we at? You know, what do we need to do? And they could they would give me an honest answer. So I'm getting a lot more comfortable.
But the thing is that it's almost learning a new role too, which has been a lot of fun. So it's definitely different, but it's been really good, enjoyed. I'm getting to know everybody a lot better, so it's been good.
What about the progress to be online giving that you lost guys.
Like, yeah, well, I think you know, obviously we have enough talent right in the end, it's gonna.
Be about how those five play together.
Right, So, Coach Pace and uh, Coach Swingle and Coach Past is doing a great job with those guys.
They're they're coming along. You know. The good thing for us is even though we lost guys, we still have a lot of experience. Right.
Brady Wayvern started games, Kyle Jurgens has started games. Carston Cassidy has started games. Ben Morowski has started games for US. West started all last year for US just about. So really, all those guys who are battling, with the exception of ty Chan who's running with the ones as well, have started games. It's just what they have to do is continue to learn how to play together, right, see it as essentially ten I seeing it the same way, and Coach Pace is.
Doing a great job with those guys and bringing them along.
So just the improvement they have made from springball into right now has been really impressive to see. And you know, I'll be honest, I mean, like at this with where we're at, I mean, it's always going to be hard to replace Chase Lunt Vousen, Christian Haynes, I mean, even Noel Right, it's really hard to replace those guys because we're such great players. But the great thing for us is we had a lot of guys have experienced and a lot of talent to kind of to fill in.
From that point. Do you feel comfortable another depth you do have on their line? I do.
We want to get to eight and we're right at that right now, eight to nine, and then we're just asking young guys to step up, like Darren McLaughlin as a center. You know, the big thing for him is his development because and he's doing a great job, but to keep coming along because it's one of those things where we want to feel comfortable putting him in the game, and that's his goal. So we don't need to move
Carston Cassidy back to center, if that makes sense. So his development's critical, But I feel good about the depth. But what I'll say at the same time, you never feel good about your O line depth either, right, So it's one of those it's a catch twenty two where I feel good about it. I think those guys are working hard together. It just kind of becomes you never have enough. How much does a new QB's coach change
things somewhat? I mean, because we had a certain way we do things here, right, so a lot of those haven't changed.
For what I think what Price has done a great job of is bringing in new ideas.
Okay, a lot of really good, kind of thought out stuff that's really been tried and tested at the SEC level, right, some of the stuff they did, and there's a lot of stuff with a couple of new coaching points where we ran the same play, maybe a little coaching point here and there that's really helped improve some of those as well. So I would say it not necessarily business as usual because obviously Price's big.
Thing is he's the new guy, so he's had to fit in.
He's done a great job with that, but he also has some great ideas for us that have kind of helped us expand and do some new things as well.
So it's been a really good match and having continuity with that position of Joe and oh my god.
Yeah, and the great thing you know, Joe, Joe's been through it all, so I mean Joe's almost like a coach on the field at this point too, so he can almost He and Nick really and even Tuck to that matter, can really help Price, help Price it first, Hey, this is kind of how we read it last year.
This is what we did then Price and I could talk about it.
What do you like, all right, let's keep it that way, or you know, he kind of presents the new twigs.
That's awesome.
You know, I never thought of it in that regard, and we can make that adjustment.
So it's been really good when we.
Have guys like chasing Val like I don't even remember that missing games really the last couple of years.
You know, how do you keep the next guys ready to go?
Yeah, I mean I think it's just getting them as much experience as possible in practice number one, you know, keeping them in situations.
This is where coach Moore does a great job of.
But we put really throw those guys into the fire in these situations, and you know, as guys get older and more experience, like you're chasing about, hey, why don't you take this one off.
Let's get you know, whoever.
It may be, and the ones that left tackle just to kind of get them ready. And then obviously it helps to be able to win a couple of games by a big margin so we can get some guys in.
There to get some experience as well.
It's you know, it's a great problem to have that those guys didn't get hurt. But I've also been places, you know, my last year at William and Mary Uh, I think it was our first seven games, we had seven different lineups right, so up front, so it's just one of those things where you have.
To be ready for everything.
Back to the point of you can never have enough depth ever because you never know when that's you know, when something happens. It really it kind of got us on the inside last year and we had enough guys.
To get in there, and you know, they're coach the same way all the time. They all know this.
You know, we try to limit their techniques in terms of what they do so they can go in there and be ready to play. I guess the goal how important is the culture aspect of it in helping integrate, you know, all these new PCs and you know, keeping you know, buying into everything. Yeah, it's it's I mean, I think I just think this is going to be the new challenge in college football.
It's going to be a year by year thing.
So showing guys how we do things our way and you may have had success somewhere else, you may have done it a different way somewhere else, but this is how we do things here, and then making them understand and then I just think that confidence in that comes from demonstrated performance getting them out there, do it this way, give it a shot, and just keep hammering them on the details and the techniques of how we do things
to get them to fit in. But I mean, it's just everything like and this is the beauty of kind of now that I can sit back and think about some big picture stuff and talk to coach. More's just I mean, everything we're doing every year is gonna be Now. We're fortunate when we're able to keep a lot of our pieces, which is not always gonna be the case, and we got really close to losing some of them, so God bless those guys were staying with us.
But I mean, it's it's just that's.
Gonna be the challenge every year is you're gonna it's gonna look it's pretty much gonna look new every year. And and so that's the challenge to have a system that's teachable, understandable, and having a culture that they can come right into and buy anything.
And that's that's it.
And and that's everybody in the country is gonna have that right And that's gonna be the new kind of facet of coaching is finding that way to get these guys in there, because.
When you think about it, you bring a guy in June and he's got to be really going August, right, that is not much turnaround.
So and we also don't want to sacrifice some of the really good things we do because now it's too hard and you don't want to get too vanilli you. So there's gonna be there's a fine line with everything, and that's gonna be the challenge now in this new era era of college football.
Okay,