Aug. 30, 1996

Off The Practice Field...Head Coach Lou Holtz

JOHN HEISLER: To begin this afternoon Coach Holtz will make some openings remark then we will take some questions.

Lou Holtz

COACH HOLTZ: First of all, we will practice this evening under lights predominantly just to have the opportunity to catch punts, catch passes, et cetera. That will be our only opportunity. The past three days we have been on astroturf. We will go outside the next couple of days; probably go back to astroturf next Monday.

As far as the injuries are concerned, several people are starting to come back. I think Mosley will be back today full speed. Jamie Spencer will be back; he missed the last couple of days with an ankle injury. Joe Babey will be back to aid us on special teams.

Matt Williams showed up here with a stress fracture in his leg. Kevin Kopka underwent surgery for cartilage. Lee Lafayette with the knee. Those people are probably out for the entire year -- at least for a while. Jay Vickers hurt his shoulder about four days ago. He will probably be lost for 4 to 5 weeks, but other than that, our players are starting to come back and hopefully we can stay healthy this week as we go into it. Opening ballgame, you never know.

I say this each and every year. You really don't know. More upsets occur in the first game of the season than in any other time, and I'd say upsets the first three weeks of the season outnumber those that occur the other eight weeks of the season. So very early in the season it is always a very, very nerve-wracking time for your football team and your coach. It is nice, though, to know that you have certain players that have been in the game before that they will respond pretty well, referring to our offensive line, particularly our tackles and our centers.

I think Mike Rosenthal will play very well. Peter Chryplewicz has played a lot, but our wide receivers, you don't know. Not many of them played much. Autry has never been out there, although he played some tailback. Defensive secondary, Jarvis Edison, hadn't played much. Johnny Sanders has never played. We will just have to see as we go along.

I think we are pretty much set in our starting lineup. Jeremy Akers is starting at left guard, backed up by Jerry Wisne. And we will probably see Luke Petitgout some at tackle, not because Clevenger and Doughty aren't playing very well, but just because Lou Petitgout has done good some awful good things.

Wide receivers will probably be Emmett Mosley and Autry Denson, although you will see Malcolm Johnson, Dee Cooper and Ricky Nelson on defense. Alton Maiden will start at middle guard. I think we are going to see Corey Bennett a little bit more at one tackle position and possibly middle guard. He could work his way into the starting lineup in the near future. Linebackers of course will be Cobbins and Tatum, Bert Berry, Kory Minor. You are going to see Lamont Bryant and you will see Bobby Howard during the course of the game as well. Of course as I say Johnny Sanders, Jarvis Edison and our quarterbacks Rossum and Covington. I am anxious for you to see our football team and what you hope is that they will play in the game the way that they have been in practice. They practiced very well. Practiced confidently. You always question yourself as a football coach, have we practiced enough against one another? Have we scrimmaged enough? Have we had enough quality work? And this you never know until you get in the opening ballgame.

Our deep snapper will be Jon Spickelmier. John is very, very solid and did it for us last year until his injury. Hunter Smith will be our punter. He had an excellent fall camp in punting. I think he will punt very, very well. I think at place kicking right now will be Scott Cengia. Jim Sanson has a possibility and a young man by the name of Kevin O'Donnell has a chance to be our field goal and PAT kicker. He has been very, very consistent since he came back. We wanted to bring him back during two-a-days down at Colburn, but it was impossible because he had an injury to his playing foot, but he probably kicks it as consistently as anybody we have in the short period of time he has been with us, but we will just have to see.

Looking at Vanderbilt you can't say an awful lot about the opposition, but just from what I know from last year, they return 10 starters on defense. We have looked at the film. Their front 7 is very strong and they run very well. They are very, very athletic. Their last game of the year they held Tennessee to 12 points. They lost 12 to 7 to Tennessee. But they held Tennessee to 12 points. I was really impressed with their defense. Very, very athletic as I said, and they run very, very well. They are very, very strong. Not necessarily huge size, but Boycon -- their one down linemen -- he just has a unique knack to put his hands in there and arch his back; you don't get a lot of movement on him. We were fortunate last year to hit some sweeps on him early, and we played very well on defense. But their secondary is very, very good.

I don't think there is much doubt that Fred Vincent and Eric Vance are two fine football players. I think they are going to play a lot of man-coverage; play us with a 9-man front. That is what I anticipate. I know they feel that they are going to stop the run and they can do that by putting 9 men up there. If they do that, the question I have is can we throw the ball successfully? Can we give the quarterback enough time? More importantly, can our receivers get open against tight man-coverage? That is a big question mark I have about this season. I have it about this opening ballgame. As I say, Vanderbilt is a very good defensive team. Going into fourth quarter last year, they were ahead of Alabama by a score of 19 to 10 and they beat the University of Kentucky which came on strong at the end of last year, so I really am concerned about our ability to move the football.

Offensively, they have a rebuilt offensive line. I don't know much about it. They did a lot of different things on offense last year. When you study the film against us, they played a lot of three wideouts -- then later they went to two tightends. Now I think they're a conventional two wideouts, tight end and then what I refer to as an H-back. H-back can be a tight end-fullback or a variety of things. We do know what to expect. We do know Damion Allen is an excellent athlete at quarterback. I don't know much about their starting wide receivers. I just know that they will be a very, very dangerous football team.

We just want to play. We don't care who we play, where we play, when we play; we just would like very much to play. And the expectations of our football team, you know, everybody talks, sometimes people talk to too much. That includes coaches. Our expectation is to go out there and let's find out what kind of football team we are. We lost our opener last year, but I thought we bounced back very well. But you know, you just have to be prepared for anything in this world, and sometimes we all want to live in a make-believe world and believe that everybody is good and everything is going to go our way and everything is going to turn out in happy land. The story this season did not start out with Once Upon a Time. It started out on January 14th, button 'em up. So we will go from here.

Q. What has Denson shown you at wide receiver so far?

COACH HOLTZ: What he showed us is he is not a polished wide receiver but he is a fine athlete. He catches the ball pretty well although he will catch the ball far more consistently in the future than what he has now. He is an excellent blocker. I think I can honestly say this about two players on our football team. I am sure I can say it about many more, but Marc Edwards and Autry Denson. They aren't running backs, they aren't wide receivers, they are football players. They are football players and I pay them the ultimate compliment, both of them.

Q. Just about Denson, there is no formula for how much time he will be at wide receiver or tailback, or might alter from play of play?

COACH HOLTZ: No, I don't think it will alter play to play. I think more series by series. I think we have three fine tailbacks. I think Randy Kinder, Robert Farmer are fine, fine tailbacks as well. I am not saying they are better than Autry Denson, certainly not saying that, but they cannot play a wide receiver whereas Autry could. If something were to happen to Kinder or to Robert Farmer as far as injuries are concerned, we would then have to look at either putting Marc Edwards at tailback or moving Autry Denson back to tailback, and I think we would do the latter. But right now, for this ballgame, we have everybody healthy, appears to be healthy, and I think it gives you the best chance to win. You will see him. We are going to get the ball to Autry Denson. Autry Denson also is going to run back punts, and that is always a little bit nerve-wracking the first time guy goes back. He catches them very well in practice. First time in a game, it is a little bit different. That is one reason we are going out tonight. I told Autry that we have the best chance to win when two things happen. One when he is on the field and two when he has his hands on the ball. We only have one ball, and Edwards is going to get it and Farmer is going to get it and Kinder is going to get it, and Autry Denson is going to get it. I hope we can get it to him. They play us man-coverage, I think maybe with a little bit of experience he is going to be able to beat that man-coverage, and that is very, very important to us. And if we can't get him the ball, then I'd never seen anybody intercept a snap from center. I have seen us fumble it. I have never seen anybody intercept it. So we are going to give him the ball if we have to hand it to him.

Q. Coach, can you talk about situation with Kilburg what exactly happened to him?

COACH HOLTZ: What happened with Jeff Kilburg, we were doing a 7 on 7 session and it was versus the defense and we have three tempos that we operate under. One is scrimmage. That means take the ball, carry it to the ground. The second one tempo is live thud. That means you tackle, you hit as hard as you can, but nobody on the ground. The third tempo is what we call tag off. Tag off means nobody on the ground, you don't hit the ball carrier, you touch him, and the ball carrier doesn't try to run in a pile or fall forward or anything he. We ran a tag off tempo and Jeff's leg buckled underneath him and he went down. Jeff is an individual that has been injured most of the time that he has been here. He missed most of spring practice and much of last fall. It's unfortunate because we are very, very thin at the center position. Right now, the backup would be John Morandi who is a true freshman from California. I think John Morandi is going to be a fine center. He competes well. I felt he would be fine. We got in a scrimmage on Saturday and he forgot he was a center. He wanted to know where the huddle was. Got set the huddle, got to remember his assignment, and all these other things, asking an awful lot of a freshman. If something were to happen to Rick Kaczenski we would go to John Morandi but there is a possibility that we could move back Jeremy Akers there as well. The thing I like about John Morandi, he does get the snap up there pretty consistently and when he keeps his poise, which he does very well as a freshman, he is good enough to win with this year.

Q. Coach, can you talk about what you told your team to expect as far as improvement from Vanderbilt offense that didn't really do much in Sound Bend last year?

COACH HOLTZ: That was a real emotional game for our football team. We don't know exactly what Vanderbilt is going to do but I know the greatest improvement a football team makes is between the first and second year of a football coach. I think Coach Dowhower in there and now he knows the personnel and knows what he has and knows assets and liabilities and who makes plays, et ceteras, will put those people in the appropriate places. But in an opening ballgame we go in there saying we don't know what to expect. We try to prepare for everything. We try to keep things simple to what we are going to do, but I don't think there is any doubt that our football team and our coaches will have to adjust during the course of the game on both offense and defense. I want to say this about Vanderbilt's kicking game which I did not cover. They were 10th in the country last year net punting and they blocked 5 punts, so they have a very, very good punting game, and they put a lot of pressure on your punter. So it is going to be important for us to excel in the kicking game as well.

Q. You made reference to never having played at Vanderbilt or in Nashville. As you can imagine, there is lot of excitement here. Are you ever surprised by the level of excitement that comes to a Notre Dame game when it plays at a new site and how do you insulate your team from getting caught up in fan reaction like that?

COACH HOLTZ: I wish I could say to the football team, man, I tell you Friday afternoon we get there, we are going to go out there and we need to push tickets, we are going to have to do radio interviews, TV and try to get people to come to the game. I'd love to have that. I wish there was empty stadium. I wish nobody cared we were coming. But that goes with University of Notre Dame. So what we try to do is like everything else, we try to take something turn it into a plus. I think it is a compliment. Vanderbilt administrators certainly into the team. Compliment to the University of Notre Dame that there is tremendous interest in this game. We don't try to do anything different. Wednesday I spoke to our football team in great length about how we conduct ourselves during the game and trips and being on time and why we are going, and you know, we don't take cameras and sunglasses and we aren't going on a tour. We aren't going for anything except we are going down there to play a football team that is obviously very, very important and we need to stay focused on what we do. I do have some concerns with the fact that it's a Thursday night game and our players, I don't know how much they are into soap operas, I can assure you I am not, so the time they are going to spend Thursday concerns me because they are anxious to play. It's a long day and you have to be able to stay relaxed. I will be attending a luncheon down there with officials from the University of Notre Dame and the officials and coaching staff from Vanderbilt. So my day will be pretty well occupied but I do worry a little bit about our football players.

Q. You landed Bill Mitoulas out of the Toronto area couple years ago. Now it seems all the powerhouses are up here in Canada, recruiting. What do you attribute that to?

COACH HOLTZ: I think that there are some good athletes up there in Canada. Bill Mitoulas -- I referred to him as our Canadian Mounty. He has been one of the more pleasant surprises on our football team this fall. Right now he is playing behind our captain Lyron Cobbins on all our specialty teams. I just think the fact that people realize that there are good athletes in Canada and you have pretty good school system up there I might also add. I think you go to school year longer than we do, but I just think they are good athletes. The way the Canadian League is, I you need to correct me if I am wrong, but the Canadian League has to have so many athletes that are Canadian citizens; is that correct?

Q. They have to have a certain number of Canadian athletes, yes?

COACH HOLTZ: Seems to me if an individual is a pretty good athlete and wants to have a chance to play professional athletics, if he went to a good school he would have good chance to play in the Canadian League. I also think the fact that Mike Wadsworth, our athletic director, came down here and played under Ara Parsegian -- very, very successful. But we go wherever we can to find a good athlete. We are delighted to add Bill Matter to the list here, and I hope we will find other fine athletes from Canada come down here. They have wonderful discipline,good, hard workers and they are solid people.

Q. Your expectations are always high on your program, this year they seem possible a little higher. Usually people anticipating another National Championship run. Does that bother you and how do you prepare your team for that type of expectations every year?

BOB DAVIE: The thing, and I will talk to them a little bit more about it during two-a-days, you like them thinking very optimistically; you like their goals to be exceptionally high. That certainly helps you getting through two-a-days. If you don't have goals, you know you show me somebody that is bored with life, that doesn't have the burning desire to get up in the morning and go do things. I'll show you somebody without a lot of goals. I'm a great believer in them. Now that we are into the season, they can forget all of that nonsense. During two-a-days that was great. Right now that is not important. What is important right now is to beat Vanderbilt. I don't even think you can think of a National Championship until you get to the 10th or 11th ball game. If you start thinking about it before then you are being little bit unrealistic. I said this before, and I mean it from the bottom of my heart, you don't win a National Championship. Wake up one day and you are, or you wake up one day and you are very, very disappointed that you are not. We have experienced both. But I think if you try to live up to other people's expectations, I think that is a very, very frustrating thing to do and I think it is a very shallow way to live. I am one of these old-fashioned people. I think that leadership is not saying what people want to hear, but leadership is really saying what needs to be said. Some of things that I will say to our football team, I know they're not necessarily things they want to hear, but they're things that have to be said, and they are sacrifices that have to be made Do I think we have a chance to win the National Championship, yes. Do we have the best chance, absolutely not. Some people have a paved road, they play too tough games. Let us just not take anything for granted and let us get down there and play and I will talk more about the situation probably on Sunday. I will start talking to them about it on Sunday. I wouldn't talk to them about it until then. But on Sunday we will start talking everyday about some facts of life.

Q. What question did you have going into fall camp that you feel have been answered?

COACH HOLTZ: I think that we have an excellent punter. I think Hunter Smith is going to punt very, very well. I still have more questions than I would like to have place kicking or on our plays kicking but I think we are definitely improved there. We are not as good as I'd like to be at this time. But we haven't made any during a game, we haven't missed any during a game. We have made some in practice that I thought we should make and we have missed some. So our punter has been a very, very pleasant surprise. I think our offensive line has a chance to be pretty strong. I think Mike Rosenthal has been a most pleasant surprise. I expected Mike to be a good offensive linemen this year. But he is an excellent offensive guard. He is not as quick but he replaces Ryan Leahy who made it to last cut of the Cardinals. I feel good about that. Alton Maiden on defensive line at nose guard I think has been a very, very pleasant surprise and Alton predicted it. Alton came back he said, Coach, I am going to be outstanding student. And he was, and then, he came to us this summer he said, I am going to be the most dedicated athlete you have in the summer program and I am going to start for you. He signed a contract on it. I didn't ask that. He did that. He has done it all. Did it in academics. He has been a great surprise. I think that -- I'd like to -- I thought Kory Minor would be good outside linebacker, I thought Lamont Bryant would be good. And I think Johnnie Sanders has eliminated lot of my concerns at strong safety. I felt he would be pretty good I but I think he will be a little better than we did this early. He has never played a game. I think Ivory Covington has really matured and grown, and Allen Rossum, let's say a referee calls a jump ball, I think they are going to be fine at corner. They are not very, very big. So we have had a lot of pleasant surprises, I think I do. You know, Malcolm Johnson has really progressed I think Ricky Nelson and Dee Cooper come the last couple of days has been positive. So we have had a lot of them.

Q. Speaking of corner, if something were to happen to one of those two, you only have two choices I guess at this time. Who between the two would be the first one off the bench, Harper or Shannon Stevens?

COACH HOLTZ: That would be dependent upon the situation. Both of them are going to get a lot of work this week. We are going to have some physical practices with No. 2. We also can move Ty Goode to a corner. I think Ty Goode has been a pleasant surprise. I think Ty Goode has come back and he has played very, very well. So we talked that Ty Goode could possibly be at corner and Ben Gibibow could be a safety, Johnnie Sanders could go to free, Benny to strong.

Q. Dan O'Leary was playing some slit end. What is happening with that experiment, is he still there?

COACH HOLTZ: He is still going to be there. We feel Dan O'Leary has a lot of natural talent in pass receiving, et cetera, and we were really struggling at split end. Mosley was injured, Malcolm Johnson's knee was banged up a little bit, and the freshman, you know, seem to be more interested in what their girlfriend was doing back home than they were what was called in the huddle, but that that has changed drastically the last couple of days. So he will eventually be at tightend, but until we are completely satisfied at wide receiver, we will continue to look at him there.

Q. You talk highly the way the wide receiver core has looked last couple of days. Does that mean we can rule Jarious Jackson out?

COACH HOLTZ: The one thing you can do, you can absolutely rule Jarious Jackson out of being wide receiver. When Tom Krug was with us in the spring there was always a possibility that we would take Jarious Jackson and make him a quarterback/receiver. He is very talented individual. By having him at wide receiver you could then take and put Ron Powlus at wide receiver, Jarious Jackson under center for a play or two without anybody knowing it. But we can't afford to do that with Jackson being No. 2 and Eric Shappel being No. 3. So you would definitely not see Jarious Jackson at wide receiver, at least until he throws his first interception. (Laughter)

Q. Coach, with Vanderbilt being somewhat of an underrated team, and with what happened with North Western last year, how does that affect your preparations for the game next week?

COACH HOLTZ: It really doesn't affect what we do or how we prepare. I thought we prepared just as hard for Northwestern as we did for Michigan, with our football team and everything else, you know. What people remember now but they didn't know at the time was that North Western beat Michigan, beat Penn State, won the Big 10, went undefeated in the Big 10, and yet we lost the game, we missed an extra point, fumbled couple of times, they played an excellent game. I thought we played pretty well for an opening ballgame there. But you know, let's give North Western a lot of credit, and I know that there have been articles where Vanderbilt says they are going to be the North Western of this year, they are going to, you know, be able to beat Notre Dame and then go on from there, you know, to an outstanding season. Now, I am not saying that they predicted that they would beat Notre Dame. They didn't do that. But it in reading an article out of the paper down there, their players did say that, you know, they are capable of beating Notre Dame, they feel they can, they feel that they, you know, didn't really prepare for Notre Dame last year, whereas they have this year, and they are very, very talent and could very well be a surprise football team. I think that, you know, like anything else, in opening ballgame they are going to play very, very well. They are going to play hard. I know they are. But we are too. We are going to play very well down there. I just have that confident we are going to play well. We also expect Vanderbilt is going to play very, very well and we also know in the opening ballgame strange things happen. But as far as our team playing well, I have no reservations the fact that we are going to play well. I said that sometimes and I have been wrong. When I have said that, far more times I have been right. And I think we are going to play well. I just hope that it is good enough. We are going to play well.

Q. Jarious Jackson can be ruled out at wide receiver. How about as short yardage quarterback? Any chance of seeing him next Thursday in that role?

COACH HOLTZ: We have no plans right now to put Jarious Jackson on the field in a short yardage situation. We did that with Paul Faylor, did it with Kevin McDougal when we had those two, and the reason that we have eventually went to that was we felt Paul Faylor was so close to Kevin McDougal. If you will remember going into opening ballgame I wasn't even sure who was going to be the starter. It was so close, it was Faylor/McDougal, McDougal/Faylor. We decided to go with Kevin McDougal. And as you will recall, I think we were playing North Western and we were really struggling and I think they scored to take the lead, now this is three years ago. And, you know, we played Faylor some, we played McDougal some, we put Kevin in, he hit that pass down the sideline, I remember and we took it in and scored. So we started him the next week but it was still real close and then we go up against Michigan and Kevin McDougal just, boom. But now you have a guy like Paul Faylor was so close, we felt we will give Paul a chance to lead Notre Dame, we put him in short yardage there, and did a nice job. We didn't put him there because McDougal could not do it; we did it because it was so close going in, as you recall, it was so close we just felt it was the right thing to do.

Q. In defense in terms of quickness and depth, especially up front, does this unit remind you of any that you had earlier in your career at Notre Dame?

COACH HOLTZ: I don't think we are as quick as we have been up front on defense. Bryant Young and Flannigan were very, very quick. I think Paul Grasmanis was pretty quick. I think Dansby has lost some of his quickness. Dansby gained an awful lot of strength and doesn't seem to be as quick. So I don't think we are as fast and as quick as we have been particularly at safety, but I think it is a good defense I think if we that we compare with some of the better defenses that we have had here. Is it dominating defense? I hope so, but I can't say. But then again when you go against one another you are going to dominate the third team and you are going to stifle the second team, but and we haven't scrimmaged it enough ones against ones because of depth concerns, so I really don't know. But I will say this, if we can gain some confidence on defense, I think how good we are going to be on defense depends upon our ability to play well on third down and how well we play on goal line. If we play well on goal line and play well on third down, I think we will be a very, very good defense.

Q. How is Ron Powlus? What is his mindset? Have you seen any difference in him since the last time he played before his injury?

COACH HOLTZ: I think that Ron is like most people that are injured. They really appreciate the opportunity to play and he has more enthusiasm. You don't take things for granted. He doesn't seem to have any effect at all. He has been tackled, he has been hit several times in practice and really hadn't affected him. I remember the first time in the scrimmage he got hit went down, and first thing I did was, Is he okay? You thought he was, but you just want to be sure, but he seems to be fine. He is definitely the leader of the offensive team he and Marc Edwards. There is no doubt that they are running this team.

Q. Lou, followup on that, Powlus has been saying that he doesn't feel there is that much of a burden on him this year because there is more versatility in the offense. How is that going to shape up for you between the passing and running game?

COACH HOLTZ: Well, we would like to be a little bit more balanced than what we have been, but make no mistake about it, we are going to be a running football team. I mean, that is going to be our first inclination but we do work an awful hard on the passing game. I feel quite confident that if our receivers, if our receivers, can beat man-coverage, we will be much more diversified than what we have in the past. Will we throw the ball 40 times a game? No. But I'd like to think if people aren't -- we got to come up with the way where people can't play us with nine men up front and man-coverage on us because that is what I think some people are going to try and do.

Q. You said that Dansby had gained some strength or lost quickness, is that since last spring?

COACH HOLTZ: Yeah, I said since last spring he has gotten stronger and he is a very, very good football player. Maybe our legs retired. We have been through a long, strenuous time. I would expect some of their legs are starting to come back now because they had a day off yesterday and we are in one-a-days and sitting in class, et cetera, we just don't look as quick as a football team as what we did last spring.

Q. Some defenses want different teams college pro will have a player who sort of has to be accounted for, maybe he is the best park rusher in some cases, is Dansby potentially that kind of a player on your defense?

COACH HOLTZ: I would hope so, but I don't know. Dansby made an awful lot of plays, you know, the spring before he get injured he made a lot of plays last spring. We will just have to see what happens when we get into the season. I agree with you, have to have some people that are going to make plays, whether it be sack the quarterback, or get penetration or lost yardage plays, et cetera, we are just going to have to see.

Q. Priority of getting Jarious sometime? Are you going to give him a series or he is a mop up quarterback if you get in that situation?

COACH HOLTZ: We would like to get Jarious Jackson some opportunities to play, but we have to keep in mind our No. 1 objective is to win the football game. And you always do what you feel you have to. I don't think there is any doubt that we have to get Jarious Jackson on the field and get him some playing time but, it is not going to be an experimentation. We will just have to see and play it by ear as we go along.

Q. This other kicker you mentioned, Kevin O'Donnell?

COACH HOLTZ: Yeah, young man name of Kevin O'Donnell. He was out in the spring, and the one thing that I like about him he kicks the ball end over end. When I look at a place kick, I like to see the thing go end over end, because then it will stay on line. You know, there are some successful golfers that hit big sweeping hooks, some hit big sweeping slices, not talking about a fade, I am talking about a slice. Those people might play a hole or two pretty good, but if you are slicing or hooking the ball, it is going to catch up with you. When you kick the helicopter, the knuckle ball, it is going to have a tendency to react different ways. And so I like the way Scott Sengia has kicked the ball and I like the way Kevin O'Donnell has kicked the ball and Samson at times, but whoever can get that ball to go end over end will end up being our place kicker.

Q. Is O'Donnell a walk-on, soccer player?

COACH HOLTZ: No, just a walk-on.

Q. Who would spell Marc Edwards if he needs a breather at this point for fullback?

COACH HOLTZ: That would be Jamie Spencer. Behind Jamie it would be a toss-up. Joey Goodspeed could very possibly be the third fullback, but Jamie Spencer is back in practice today, and he'd would be No. 2.

Q. How does he look? I know he has been out a lot?

COACH HOLTZ: He has looked very good, protected the ball well, runs well, he is a good blocker. As long as Jamie protects the football, he will be fine, and I expect that he will. He has done very nice job of protecting the ball this year. This fall. Okay, very good, thank you for coming.