ON DEPTH CHART & POTENTIAL ADDITIONS TO 2017 ROSTER

“The young guys have ability, now can they between the ears handle that? We still have some things going on with the roster, so that’s why there is no depth chart right now and I don’t even know if I’ll have one on July 28th. The only one that really matters to me is the one we are going to go with when we get ready to play the week before we actually play. There are some things that need to be sorted out, but I really do think that we’re going to have some really good competition. The more competition we can have, the better that we can be. Could be three more additions, possibly. I’d like it to be three more, put it that way. I don’t have control over it, but that would please me very much if that could happen, given the circumstances we are involved in.”

DO YOU BUY INTO THE PRESEASON PREDICTION OF LAST IN AAC & DOES THAT GIVE THE TEAM A FEELING THAT THEY HAVE SOMETHING TO PROVE?

“If you’re a competitor, that should bother you. If people think of you here and you want to be there, you have a chance to prove that. It’s more from a team standpoint, we want to be the best we can be and if we are the best we can be then we’ll believe that. Our guys want to win every game that’s on our schedule. All you need to do is go out, beat people, win and you don’t need to say anything. Then you have the data and the numbers behind you.”

HOW DIFFERENT OF A COACH ARE YOU THAN WHEN YOU WERE HERE THE FIRST TIME?

“A lot different, shoot, I was wet behind the ears. That was the first time being a head coach and there were mistakes that I made. Experience is a great teacher, that’s the thing. I’m a lot more patient now than I probably was before. Certain things still bother me, but I don’t let them get to me like I used to. When you’re a little younger, you think you can control everything, but as you get older and you go through experiences, you find out that you can’t control everything, you try to do the things you can to prepare yourself. This is my 18th year now as a head coach and I think I’ve learned plenty over those previous seventeen. Being away from it for a year last year and having a chance to sit back, observe and watch somebody else was very beneficial too. The one thing I’ve learned a lot, but the thing that hasn’t changed are the core principles and values that I believe in and what I think it takes to win at this level. That hasn’t changed, but there’s other things that have changed from back in 1999.”

HOW DID YOU VIEW ARKEEL NEWSOME’S ROLE WHEN YOU THOUGHT SOUTH CAROLINA TRANSFER RB DAVID WILLIAMS WOULD BE ON THIS ROSTER VERSUS NOW?

“You see that, but until guys get here and you see what they can do [you don’t really know]. But I’m sure Arkeel was motivated to make sure that his role wasn’t going to be diminished, even though we were bringing somebody else in. That’s a tough question to answer because that’s something that is more of a hypothetical because it never happened.”

MATT SCHONVISKY / SITE CREATOR