Quoted: Preseason Camp – Oct. 5
10/5/2020 1:03:00 PM | Football
Below is a partial transcript of a Zoom press conference with Indiana head football coach Tom Allen on Monday, Oct. 5.
Head Coach Tom Allen
Q. On trying new things with a different schedule…
ALLEN: In some ways, yes, we are also trying to battle through a normal progression of getting into pads. We chose the route of being very judicious in the approach of not going too much too soon. It was actually our first day of full pads on Saturday, which is the day we scrimmaged, which is usually not the case. It was only our second day in full pads since the bowl game. We snuck in one day of full pads during spring ball that was day number four, it was our final day that we had. This was our first time since then, so you are trying to get your guys ready, so we reduced the numbers quite a bit. But as you mentioned, we have tried to speed up the learning process. We have done more situations even through walk-throughs, situational things in special teams, offense and defense, trying to teach those to be able to get guys ready to play at a high level, and cover all those potential things that do not always happen in a game and may not even happen in the first game or the first several games, but you never know. I just think you're just trying to balance that whole mindset of getting physically ready and not hitting too much. I did think our tackling was positive. Obviously, you are going against each other, but our goal was to get about 25-30 snaps of live gos for some guys. Some guys got in that range, some got a few less and then a couple got a few more. We are just trying to keep building a sense of the goal next time we have our Saturday scrimmage, with this coming Saturday to double those numbers. And then the next time that we would have a full situation will be our game, so definitely a unique situation. For me, it does not look any different than if we would be playing a conference team in week one, which we were supposed to play anyway in the original schedule. We were going to play at Wisconsin in the first game, so from that perspective it is not different. We are just trying to manage the calendar with the number of days we've been given here to get ready.
Q. On live reps during the week…
ALLEN: We will go a couple days this week, live during the week. It will be segmented. It will be more short yardage goal line. It is kind of hard to do those, even in thud tempo and keeping guys up is tough, whether it is third-and one, third-and-two, on the goal line or whether it is even in midfield, so I can see us doing those live. I do not see us doing a full-bore scrimmage during the middle of the week, we will save that for Saturday. We will have a pretty lengthy one this weekend. That is the plan. We are just trying to be very careful, just really evaluate our guys, know where we are at, know which workload we can handle as we continue to build this thing each and every day. We definitely have some live gos throughout the week.
Q. On rust during the scrimmage…
ALLEN: That is something we talked about. You go through and you evaluate it, and I have watched it three times now, and I feel like that for the first time doing some of those things in a long time, it was pretty clean. There were not a lot of false start penalties on the offense, not a lot of penalties in general terms, it was pretty clean execution from my perspective. I think that that is good in regards to the fact we have got a lot of guys back and so you can expect that in some ways. But you are just away and you are not doing those kinds of things together. I did think that was one of the positives from it. We still had mistakes and still had things that that we have to clean out, but it was not one of those sloppy scrimmages that you sometimes find yourself in when you do it for the first time in a long time. That was definitely something that I was encouraged by.
Q. On the depth of the wide receiver position…
ALLEN: I think, as a collective group, it is definitely one that we have challenged to see who is going to rise up. I would say from this past weekend Javon Swinton made some plays that really caught my eye, as he has done that consistently this fall. The thing about Javon that has really impressed me, and I shared this with our staff yesterday, is that when you think about a young man coming in as a true freshman, he does everything as he is supposed to do. There are never issues academically, whenever he is told to do something, he never shows up on a list where he is late for something or this did not get done or you did not follow through on this or that. He always takes care of his business and does not say a whole lot. He studies, he has been prepared and he has made plays. That is a great formula for a true freshman, so I think he is one for sure. Da'Shaun Brown is another one that showed flashes and made some big plays and needs to. We would expect him to rise up. Gary Cooper is a guy we have used as a tight end and flexed him out in different things, but he made plays as well in space and catching. So those are the three guys, as well as Jacolby Hewitt, that have done a good job. It is always hard to come back from that kind of injury that causes you to miss so much time. He is still learning the playbook. Obviously, he has been here, but then going out and executing it at a full speed level, being able to know exactly what to do and when to do it. He is definitely making progress, and he is a guy that we need to be able to win some of those one-on-ones when you get a lot of man coverage.
Q. On voting…
ALLEN: Our entire team is registered to vote, and has been. We were very on top of that. I really commend coach Brandon Shelby and Mike Hart as they came together and took ownership of that. I just want our guys to execute their right and their privilege to vote in our democracy. We never tell them who to vote for, but we challenge them to study, know the issues and vote for the person or individual that you believe represents what you want. It is very important. I know this has been a national emphasis, but we have really taken that to heart here. Our guys have gotten into that, like they should. The Big Ten Conference has made it so that we all have the opportunity to exercise our right to vote. This is very important, so this is something that we have been very aggressive with in regards to getting our players squared away. Most of our guys are out of state, so that is not a simple process to go through. I am encouraged by the way they have responded to that.
Head Coach Tom Allen
Q. On trying new things with a different schedule…
ALLEN: In some ways, yes, we are also trying to battle through a normal progression of getting into pads. We chose the route of being very judicious in the approach of not going too much too soon. It was actually our first day of full pads on Saturday, which is the day we scrimmaged, which is usually not the case. It was only our second day in full pads since the bowl game. We snuck in one day of full pads during spring ball that was day number four, it was our final day that we had. This was our first time since then, so you are trying to get your guys ready, so we reduced the numbers quite a bit. But as you mentioned, we have tried to speed up the learning process. We have done more situations even through walk-throughs, situational things in special teams, offense and defense, trying to teach those to be able to get guys ready to play at a high level, and cover all those potential things that do not always happen in a game and may not even happen in the first game or the first several games, but you never know. I just think you're just trying to balance that whole mindset of getting physically ready and not hitting too much. I did think our tackling was positive. Obviously, you are going against each other, but our goal was to get about 25-30 snaps of live gos for some guys. Some guys got in that range, some got a few less and then a couple got a few more. We are just trying to keep building a sense of the goal next time we have our Saturday scrimmage, with this coming Saturday to double those numbers. And then the next time that we would have a full situation will be our game, so definitely a unique situation. For me, it does not look any different than if we would be playing a conference team in week one, which we were supposed to play anyway in the original schedule. We were going to play at Wisconsin in the first game, so from that perspective it is not different. We are just trying to manage the calendar with the number of days we've been given here to get ready.
Q. On live reps during the week…
ALLEN: We will go a couple days this week, live during the week. It will be segmented. It will be more short yardage goal line. It is kind of hard to do those, even in thud tempo and keeping guys up is tough, whether it is third-and one, third-and-two, on the goal line or whether it is even in midfield, so I can see us doing those live. I do not see us doing a full-bore scrimmage during the middle of the week, we will save that for Saturday. We will have a pretty lengthy one this weekend. That is the plan. We are just trying to be very careful, just really evaluate our guys, know where we are at, know which workload we can handle as we continue to build this thing each and every day. We definitely have some live gos throughout the week.
Q. On rust during the scrimmage…
ALLEN: That is something we talked about. You go through and you evaluate it, and I have watched it three times now, and I feel like that for the first time doing some of those things in a long time, it was pretty clean. There were not a lot of false start penalties on the offense, not a lot of penalties in general terms, it was pretty clean execution from my perspective. I think that that is good in regards to the fact we have got a lot of guys back and so you can expect that in some ways. But you are just away and you are not doing those kinds of things together. I did think that was one of the positives from it. We still had mistakes and still had things that that we have to clean out, but it was not one of those sloppy scrimmages that you sometimes find yourself in when you do it for the first time in a long time. That was definitely something that I was encouraged by.
Q. On the depth of the wide receiver position…
ALLEN: I think, as a collective group, it is definitely one that we have challenged to see who is going to rise up. I would say from this past weekend Javon Swinton made some plays that really caught my eye, as he has done that consistently this fall. The thing about Javon that has really impressed me, and I shared this with our staff yesterday, is that when you think about a young man coming in as a true freshman, he does everything as he is supposed to do. There are never issues academically, whenever he is told to do something, he never shows up on a list where he is late for something or this did not get done or you did not follow through on this or that. He always takes care of his business and does not say a whole lot. He studies, he has been prepared and he has made plays. That is a great formula for a true freshman, so I think he is one for sure. Da'Shaun Brown is another one that showed flashes and made some big plays and needs to. We would expect him to rise up. Gary Cooper is a guy we have used as a tight end and flexed him out in different things, but he made plays as well in space and catching. So those are the three guys, as well as Jacolby Hewitt, that have done a good job. It is always hard to come back from that kind of injury that causes you to miss so much time. He is still learning the playbook. Obviously, he has been here, but then going out and executing it at a full speed level, being able to know exactly what to do and when to do it. He is definitely making progress, and he is a guy that we need to be able to win some of those one-on-ones when you get a lot of man coverage.
Q. On voting…
ALLEN: Our entire team is registered to vote, and has been. We were very on top of that. I really commend coach Brandon Shelby and Mike Hart as they came together and took ownership of that. I just want our guys to execute their right and their privilege to vote in our democracy. We never tell them who to vote for, but we challenge them to study, know the issues and vote for the person or individual that you believe represents what you want. It is very important. I know this has been a national emphasis, but we have really taken that to heart here. Our guys have gotten into that, like they should. The Big Ten Conference has made it so that we all have the opportunity to exercise our right to vote. This is very important, so this is something that we have been very aggressive with in regards to getting our players squared away. Most of our guys are out of state, so that is not a simple process to go through. I am encouraged by the way they have responded to that.
Players Mentioned
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