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Iowa State University Athletics
Paul Rhoads Spring Media Conference No. 2
04.13.2009 | Football
AMES, Iowa ? Iowa State head football coach Paul Rhoads and select players met with the media on Monday for the second time, previewing the 2009 Spring Game. Click the links below to watch video clips of the media conference.
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“I'm pleased with our progress right now through 11 practices but certainly far from satisfied. I think, as a player, you can never be frustrated. If you get frustrated, you hold yourself back. At the same time you can't be satisfied with where you're at because then you're not moving forward. We've got to get better at every single phase as we enter this last week of spring ball. At the same time we're looking to improve and we've slowed down a little bit this last week. We're going to expose them to some final schematic concepts. We want to get them some general exposure to before we go into the summer and before we get to fall camp. A couple personnel notes: Alex Sandvig, and Mike Knapp will both be done with their athletic careers at Iowa State, both due to recurring and nagging knee injuries.”
“The depth is very much affected in the offensive line. Mike Knapp was a very technically sound football player, offensive lineman, and his presence at center in last year's offensive production was important. Losing that type of player and losing that type of depth is something we can't afford on the offensive line. Alex will be missed as well, and I don't mean this to sound derogatory. The impact will be less there just because of numbers and depth that already exists.
“In the end, the decision was made that it would not be worth it for Mike to continue to play and continue to rehab and do everything that he was doing rigorously on a daily basis.
“With Alex, we actually came to the realization a little bit sooner that it just wasn't going to come around where he could effectively play wide receiver at this level.
“In general terms, we did not sustain things very well on Saturday. In general terms, we're advancing, progressing with things getting installed with the fundamentals of what we're doing run-wise and what we're doing pass-wise. Our quarterbacks have become more accurate over 11 days, some receivers have stepped forward from a production standpoint, but we've got to sustain as an offense if we're going to have success. They were faced with more long yardage situations Saturday than they were short, and even though they moved the sticks for three first downs or two first downs they weren't able to get the ball into the end zone as much as we would have liked. That's where we lagged behind a little bit. I think in the overall understanding and installation of our spread attack, we're right where we would expect to be.
“It's a huge mental thing, and very much something that we continue to approach and work on. I stated, I believe a couple of weeks ago, there's no hiding the fact that we lost eight Big 12 football games, we've lost ten straight games and we have the longest road losing streak in the country. Those things take a toll on you, you don't go about your work and not be affected by that so most definitely we've had to try to establish a winning mentality in this football team and you do that by having competitive drills on a daily basis where there's a winner and a loser, you do that by drilling a work mentality that the end result produces winning results. From January 12th on, there's been a consequence for every type of action, physically and mentally, with the end talk being about winning and losing. So it has been emphasized over and over again and will continue to be emphasized this last week of spring ball and through the last three weeks of the spring semester into the summer and on and on and on.
“The players don't necessarily need to have those kids pointed out to them. You see it and you hear it. There are two types of leaders. One that just does, leads by example. Kelechi Osemele for example, he goes out and works his tail off every day whether it be a drill work, position work, and the players can see that. Then there's the other that leads both by example and with his words. Austen Arnaud comes to work every day and at the quarterback position he needs to be a sound off type of guy. Both leaders are needed and we're going to move this program ahead. We will elect captains at the end of spring ball. I don't want to wait until game week, I don't want to wait until the end of the season to elect captains. It doesn't make too much sense to figure out who your leaders are like that. I want to know the guys that are going to take this team and advance us right now at the conclusion of spring drills.
“Repetition is the number one thing that we have to do to get things taught to our kids. Some are at different levels and speeds and you can only advance as fast as the weakest link or the last player to learn it. We've got to get them all taught and that's continued with the classroom, on the field, individual one-on-one, individual extra time on film, and the coaches have got to continue to teach and to teach and to teach and take advantage of every opportunity that's presented to them.
“I think our offensive personnel is ahead of our defensive personnel right now. I think our defensive tackling has improved weekly, and they are playing together as 11 better than they did especially than they did the first day we put the pads on. The number of big plays that they've given up has been limited and the comparison that I make between the offensive and defensive is that I think we have some weapons on offense that can expose our defensive players, and they haven't been able to do that as much. Now I also said they've been working with a longer field. If we turn the ball over, we don't play well on special teams or we give the ball over on the 33, certainly we're going to be in the position where we give up too many points again. We've played as 11 on defense and we've limited big plays, heads us, at least, in the direction that we can cut back on 36 points a game.
“I think (Leonard Johnson's) potential to be as good as everybody says and talks about is there. Leonard, like everybody else on our football team needs to develop a consistent approach and a consistent level of play to reach that potential. Leonard has all the gifts to be an All-Big 12 type of corner and he needs to go out there and exercise those gifts daily.
“We're going to play a normal type of game Saturday. We're going to play four quarters. We're going to play 12-minute quarters, we could run the clock at some point in the second half, probably for sure in the fourth quarter. We're going to match up what we call good versus good. We're going to put the 1 offense and the 2 defense on the same side so the 1 offense is always playing the 1 defense and the 2 offense is always playing the 2 defense and so forth. That allows us to remain competitive and get better in the spring game. We'll be fairly vanilla on both sides of the ball for the spring game but we'll continue to work enough things that we get something significant out of our last scrimmage."
The Spring Game will take place Saturday, April 18 at 3 p.m. in Jack Trice Stadium Admission is free.
Players Mentioned
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/ FootballSaturday, April 25
Saturday, April 25
Saturday, April 25
Saturday, April 25
