Quoted: Preseason Camp – Sept. 28
9/28/2020 2:03:00 PM | Football
Below is a partial transcript of a Zoom press conference with Indiana head football coach Tom Allen on Monday, Sept. 28.
Head Coach Tom Allen
Opening Statement…
Welcome everybody. I am excited to be back at it again this week. We just finished up a really good practice this morning. We are in a really good flow with our practices right now, and we will talk about that in a few minutes. I want to give an update with our testing. Since we have gone to the rapid testing, which is a daily test that our school administers, we have had over 1,200 tests with only one positive. That was an individual that is not a football player and also not a full-time staff member, so that has been going in a good direction. We are about to get all of our guys back from the different levels of quarantine. We are in the process of still being in spider pads, which means we have been helmets only at this point. We will be in those again tomorrow, and then we will put on the shoulder pads and be shoulder pads and helmets only on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. We will have a walk-through on Friday and a preseason game on Saturday, a modified version of that scrimmage where we will get some live reps with full pads. We are excited about that. I do have some injury news to announce. Marcelino Ball tore his ACL last week in practice and will be out for the season. I hate that for him. He has been such a great player for us and has really matured so much as a young man. He will handle it the right way, but he will not be able to play this season. We wish him nothing but the very best as he will be having his surgery in the near future and begin the process of recovery for his future. Other than that, the guys have worked extremely hard and guys have stayed healthy out on the practice field. We have got a lot of good work in each and every single day. We are getting our team prepared to be able to play their best football right out of the gate on the 24th.
Q. On Marcelino's injury and the status of the husky position…
ALLEN: Bryant Fitzgerald will be the young man that we are moving to that position. He will be the starter there. D.K. Bonhomme is also a young man that has been a stinger linebacker for us, so he will also be getting a lot of reps [at husky] for us right now. It is a very similar position technically with how we play our defense, so he has been moved to that position. We also have Jamar Johnson, who played there last year as the backup to Marcelino. Jamar is an extremely talented football player and has the ability to play there. Noah Pierre has the skillset to play there and we have some other young guys that can play there. We feel like we have the depth to be able to rotate a couple of different guys, but right now it is going to be Bryant Fitzgerald as the number one guy at that spot and training D.K. Bonhomme to be his backup.
Q. On the overall depth of the team…
ALLEN: It is a legit concern that I think everyone is having right now in terms of how you handle the unknowns of the season, both with the normal injuries that always occur throughout a year and, obviously, the COVID situation that we are all dealing with. I think the offensive line has always been something we have mentioned as a concern. I do like the way it has been progressing, although we have not had pads on throughout this entire time, but with the spiders we are able to get a little more use of the hands with drill work without worrying about injury. We have been able to see a little more of their development, but we will know more by the end of this week once we have a couple of shell practices (helmets and shoulder pads) in and full pads on Saturday. I am really encouraged by the development of Luke Haggard, a young man we brought here as a tackle. The same goes for Chris Bradberry. Those two guys are new and I feel that they have given us a lot more depth at that tackle position than we have had since I have been here. I am encouraged by that, as well as the interior of the line. Dylan Powell is a great addition coming to us as a grad transfer that gives us some depth. Mike Katic is another guy that is stepping up. The entire offensive line is definitely an area that I would say is a concern, but I feel better than I did a month ago because we have had so many reps now. Like I said, I will know more as this week plays itself out. The defensive line continues to be… the mass of those guys that we use to continue to keep those guys healthy and fresh will be a priority. I think we have seen growth there as well. Those two positions are the ones we went into fall camp with the most concern about, but I feel a little better about both at this time. I do not think I ever feel great at this point because there are so many things we just do not know at this point. We want to keep everyone as healthy as we possibly can going into the season.
Q. On teaching points from other games around the country…
ALLEN: I think that specials teams would be the area that I point to the most. We have special team's meetings every morning to start our day. We have made it an emphasis with a lot of video clips, and we did it again this morning, of games from the previous weekend. We want to not only talk to our guys, but also give them the visual example to show them how critical it is to be so locked in to all of the things that we do from an execution standpoint, whether that is fielding punts, catching the snaps, and the attention to detail in how we communicate in the backend with the return guys, the kickoff return guys and fielding onside kicks. Showing the rules on all of that, making sure the ball goes 10 yards, when you can and cannot touch it, should you let a hot one go free for the back row, which is something that we saw on Saturday that cost a team a chance to win the game. Special teams is probably the biggest thing that we have capitalized on in some different situations. Also, clock management and going through as a staff and talking about how to manage games and how we would handle a certain situation if it happened to us. We are just trying to learn, all the time. We encourage our guys to watch as much football as they can. Once we finish practice on Saturdays and get the film broken down, we all go do the same thing. We have to capitalize and learn from watching the game being played because we are going to be in that position really soon. We are going to have to go all out against a Top-10 team in the country. We are going to have tackle, block and execute extremely well. The tackling part of it is what it is. We have not been allowed to be in pads. The entire conference is in the same rules, but we will all start being in pads on Wednesday as a collective group. We will make sure we are working on tackling as much as we possibly can without getting too many guys dinged up.
Q. On the remainder of the preseason schedule…
ALLEN: This weekend will be our preseason game one. We will have meetings leading up to the scrimmage that have a game-day feel and really try to get our guys in that mode, that mindset. It will be a little bit different this year as we have had more padded practices leading up to the scrimmage than in the past, so we will not get as many reps. Usually we try to get about 50 snaps for the ones and twos, individually, and the threes as well. We will cut that number down, probably in half, to get our guys less live reps but emphasize situational football. We have to tackle and we have to block live. We will have officials here for that. It probably will not be in the stadium as it normally is, so there will be a little modification with that because of the number of individuals on the field that we are able to have at this time. Within the realm of it being a different situation, I want to create as much live football as we can that we feel like our bodies and our team are ready for. I see it being a situation in which we work on moving the football down the field to start, then we will create red zone situations, coming out situations, and some scripted third-down situations where we get a chance to work on third and short, third and medium and third and long situations. We will throw in some special teams work where we get some live pressures on our punt team and some live pressures on our PAT/field goal unit. Those would be the emphasizes on week one. Preseason game two would be the following Saturday, which will be on October 10, and that will be a pretty full scrimmage for us, probably our one really big scrimmage we will have for camp. We will try to get 40-50 snaps for each of the groups. We will work on some of the areas we feel like we need to get to, like 2-minute situations with the officials here and working through all of those situations. Preseason game three will be the week before the season-opener. We still do not know if we are playing on Friday night or Saturday yet, but based on which day we play will be the day we play preseason game three. That will be our mock game. That is usually done is spiders with a lot of situations. We script the entire thing; we basically try to simulate a game from the start to finish. We do warm-ups, taking the field, all of those things with our players. We try to create a very similar feel for our guys and try to get them in game mode. Then, we will be a week out from our season opener, so we will go through a normal game week of preparation with a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, walk-through day and the day before a game. That is kind of an overview of everything that I see planned out for the next three weeks.
Q. On opening the season with Penn State creating a higher sense of urgency…
ALLEN: It sure better. They are a very good football team. There is no ramping up on your schedule this year. Like you said, we have done it in the past. My first season as head coach, 2017, we opened on a Thursday night against Ohio State. There is no doubt, that creates a sense of urgency. I already sense it from our guys. We still have to go through the entire process of getting ourselves prepared and getting ready. Everyone in the conference is dealing with the same situation, so whether we play on Friday or Saturday, whatever day they tell us we are going to start, it is going to be a Big Ten game. For us, it happens to be one of the Top-10 teams in the country coming to Bloomington. We have to realize what we are up against and how well we have to play to defeat a team of that caliber. I do think that is a positive, because that creates that natural sense of urgency and I do not have to work super hard to get them to understand how good of a team we are about to play. They know how good Penn State is and that is definitely positive for us.
Head Coach Tom Allen
Opening Statement…
Welcome everybody. I am excited to be back at it again this week. We just finished up a really good practice this morning. We are in a really good flow with our practices right now, and we will talk about that in a few minutes. I want to give an update with our testing. Since we have gone to the rapid testing, which is a daily test that our school administers, we have had over 1,200 tests with only one positive. That was an individual that is not a football player and also not a full-time staff member, so that has been going in a good direction. We are about to get all of our guys back from the different levels of quarantine. We are in the process of still being in spider pads, which means we have been helmets only at this point. We will be in those again tomorrow, and then we will put on the shoulder pads and be shoulder pads and helmets only on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. We will have a walk-through on Friday and a preseason game on Saturday, a modified version of that scrimmage where we will get some live reps with full pads. We are excited about that. I do have some injury news to announce. Marcelino Ball tore his ACL last week in practice and will be out for the season. I hate that for him. He has been such a great player for us and has really matured so much as a young man. He will handle it the right way, but he will not be able to play this season. We wish him nothing but the very best as he will be having his surgery in the near future and begin the process of recovery for his future. Other than that, the guys have worked extremely hard and guys have stayed healthy out on the practice field. We have got a lot of good work in each and every single day. We are getting our team prepared to be able to play their best football right out of the gate on the 24th.
Q. On Marcelino's injury and the status of the husky position…
ALLEN: Bryant Fitzgerald will be the young man that we are moving to that position. He will be the starter there. D.K. Bonhomme is also a young man that has been a stinger linebacker for us, so he will also be getting a lot of reps [at husky] for us right now. It is a very similar position technically with how we play our defense, so he has been moved to that position. We also have Jamar Johnson, who played there last year as the backup to Marcelino. Jamar is an extremely talented football player and has the ability to play there. Noah Pierre has the skillset to play there and we have some other young guys that can play there. We feel like we have the depth to be able to rotate a couple of different guys, but right now it is going to be Bryant Fitzgerald as the number one guy at that spot and training D.K. Bonhomme to be his backup.
Q. On the overall depth of the team…
ALLEN: It is a legit concern that I think everyone is having right now in terms of how you handle the unknowns of the season, both with the normal injuries that always occur throughout a year and, obviously, the COVID situation that we are all dealing with. I think the offensive line has always been something we have mentioned as a concern. I do like the way it has been progressing, although we have not had pads on throughout this entire time, but with the spiders we are able to get a little more use of the hands with drill work without worrying about injury. We have been able to see a little more of their development, but we will know more by the end of this week once we have a couple of shell practices (helmets and shoulder pads) in and full pads on Saturday. I am really encouraged by the development of Luke Haggard, a young man we brought here as a tackle. The same goes for Chris Bradberry. Those two guys are new and I feel that they have given us a lot more depth at that tackle position than we have had since I have been here. I am encouraged by that, as well as the interior of the line. Dylan Powell is a great addition coming to us as a grad transfer that gives us some depth. Mike Katic is another guy that is stepping up. The entire offensive line is definitely an area that I would say is a concern, but I feel better than I did a month ago because we have had so many reps now. Like I said, I will know more as this week plays itself out. The defensive line continues to be… the mass of those guys that we use to continue to keep those guys healthy and fresh will be a priority. I think we have seen growth there as well. Those two positions are the ones we went into fall camp with the most concern about, but I feel a little better about both at this time. I do not think I ever feel great at this point because there are so many things we just do not know at this point. We want to keep everyone as healthy as we possibly can going into the season.
Q. On teaching points from other games around the country…
ALLEN: I think that specials teams would be the area that I point to the most. We have special team's meetings every morning to start our day. We have made it an emphasis with a lot of video clips, and we did it again this morning, of games from the previous weekend. We want to not only talk to our guys, but also give them the visual example to show them how critical it is to be so locked in to all of the things that we do from an execution standpoint, whether that is fielding punts, catching the snaps, and the attention to detail in how we communicate in the backend with the return guys, the kickoff return guys and fielding onside kicks. Showing the rules on all of that, making sure the ball goes 10 yards, when you can and cannot touch it, should you let a hot one go free for the back row, which is something that we saw on Saturday that cost a team a chance to win the game. Special teams is probably the biggest thing that we have capitalized on in some different situations. Also, clock management and going through as a staff and talking about how to manage games and how we would handle a certain situation if it happened to us. We are just trying to learn, all the time. We encourage our guys to watch as much football as they can. Once we finish practice on Saturdays and get the film broken down, we all go do the same thing. We have to capitalize and learn from watching the game being played because we are going to be in that position really soon. We are going to have to go all out against a Top-10 team in the country. We are going to have tackle, block and execute extremely well. The tackling part of it is what it is. We have not been allowed to be in pads. The entire conference is in the same rules, but we will all start being in pads on Wednesday as a collective group. We will make sure we are working on tackling as much as we possibly can without getting too many guys dinged up.
Q. On the remainder of the preseason schedule…
ALLEN: This weekend will be our preseason game one. We will have meetings leading up to the scrimmage that have a game-day feel and really try to get our guys in that mode, that mindset. It will be a little bit different this year as we have had more padded practices leading up to the scrimmage than in the past, so we will not get as many reps. Usually we try to get about 50 snaps for the ones and twos, individually, and the threes as well. We will cut that number down, probably in half, to get our guys less live reps but emphasize situational football. We have to tackle and we have to block live. We will have officials here for that. It probably will not be in the stadium as it normally is, so there will be a little modification with that because of the number of individuals on the field that we are able to have at this time. Within the realm of it being a different situation, I want to create as much live football as we can that we feel like our bodies and our team are ready for. I see it being a situation in which we work on moving the football down the field to start, then we will create red zone situations, coming out situations, and some scripted third-down situations where we get a chance to work on third and short, third and medium and third and long situations. We will throw in some special teams work where we get some live pressures on our punt team and some live pressures on our PAT/field goal unit. Those would be the emphasizes on week one. Preseason game two would be the following Saturday, which will be on October 10, and that will be a pretty full scrimmage for us, probably our one really big scrimmage we will have for camp. We will try to get 40-50 snaps for each of the groups. We will work on some of the areas we feel like we need to get to, like 2-minute situations with the officials here and working through all of those situations. Preseason game three will be the week before the season-opener. We still do not know if we are playing on Friday night or Saturday yet, but based on which day we play will be the day we play preseason game three. That will be our mock game. That is usually done is spiders with a lot of situations. We script the entire thing; we basically try to simulate a game from the start to finish. We do warm-ups, taking the field, all of those things with our players. We try to create a very similar feel for our guys and try to get them in game mode. Then, we will be a week out from our season opener, so we will go through a normal game week of preparation with a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, walk-through day and the day before a game. That is kind of an overview of everything that I see planned out for the next three weeks.
Q. On opening the season with Penn State creating a higher sense of urgency…
ALLEN: It sure better. They are a very good football team. There is no ramping up on your schedule this year. Like you said, we have done it in the past. My first season as head coach, 2017, we opened on a Thursday night against Ohio State. There is no doubt, that creates a sense of urgency. I already sense it from our guys. We still have to go through the entire process of getting ourselves prepared and getting ready. Everyone in the conference is dealing with the same situation, so whether we play on Friday or Saturday, whatever day they tell us we are going to start, it is going to be a Big Ten game. For us, it happens to be one of the Top-10 teams in the country coming to Bloomington. We have to realize what we are up against and how well we have to play to defeat a team of that caliber. I do think that is a positive, because that creates that natural sense of urgency and I do not have to work super hard to get them to understand how good of a team we are about to play. They know how good Penn State is and that is definitely positive for us.
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