The Craig Way Show
Quinn Ewers, Michael Taaffe on their favorite part of Gameday
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Owning a rental property sounds like a dream until you realize how much work goes into getting it ready. Determine a competitive rent price, market the property, schedule the showing screen tenants, draft the lease at a rent collection, handle maintenance request, maintain communication. Whew, sound complicated? Runners' warehouse is here to take the hard work off your rental to-do list. Qualify tenants, check, rent collection, check. Maintenance coordination, you got it. Go to Runnerswarehouse.com for a free rental analysis to find out how much your home can rent for. Call 303-974-9444. Because from now on, the only thing you need on your to-do list is to call Runnerswarehouse. Let's hear some more from Quinn Ewer's along one's quarterback, shifting to the back field. You may have heard that the receiver Ryan Niblet, since long words have been kind of short changed a little bit, running back and Veltan Gardeners had to transfer in, grad transfers added into the mix as well. But Ryan Niblet has started to take some snaps at running back as well as being the receiver that he is. And Ewer's was asked about that dynamic. I mean, he's a smart kid. I think he's always understood each position. But I think he's done a good job over the past couple of weeks, changing it up and then getting into running back. And he's got to get, or he's gotten used to running in between the tackles. I think that's the biggest change up is running around all those guys, and he's used to being around the smaller DVs. Yeah, that's one thing. Now, with regard to the running back position itself, how important is it for the running backs to get that first game under their belt, especially the experienced ones like Jared Gibson, of course, Trey Weisner, has had some experience, but largely he played on special teams. So, you know, James Lewis is the experienced back back there. But with the newer crop, how important is it for some of those lesser experienced guys to get in those reps in a real game situation? Yeah, I think Blue's got a lot of confidence in himself. You know, he's played in games and he's made big plays in big moments. And, you know, we're all, we all know he's capable of doing. And, you know, and the other guys, you know, they got to get some games under their belts and some experience. But I think it's super important for those other guys, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. That's, you know, nothing beats experience when you get into a game. All right. Now, back to yours himself. A lot of questions asked about Quinn and how his offseason win and the leadership thing and all that stuff. But in short, where has he improved the most this offseason? I think the biggest thing for me is being more comfortable in the pocket, not having such, you know, not having such like a one to roll out or one to look down the line of scrimmage, keep the eyes down field and overall just comfortable within the offense and comfortable within defensive schemes. Pre-snap and post-snap. Yeah, certainly helps as well. Now, if you haven't noticed, Quinn Ewers has done a bit of acting lately. He's been in television commercials representing law firms, representing NCA football 25. And we hear that he's going to be in those new Dr. Pepper fans, Bill commercials, playing a deputy to the sheriff. The sheriff, of course, is Brian Bosworth, the former Oakland was sooner and all that sort of says, so Quinn was asked, how's that acting career going for him? I think it's gotten a lot better in the past year or so for sure. In the high school direction of the whole Dr. Pepper thing. Oh, who knows? Who knows? The guys liked it though, so... All of they calling you the deputy? You know, I've actually heard that a couple times. I think it's funny. Which originally L.D.L. has gotten the most reaction out of the locker. Maybe we'll video for a four, four, four, four, four, four, four. Yeah, that one's probably no one. Yeah, that was one for the law firm there to talk about that. And he took it all and tried good, naturely as well. Okay, we mentioned Veltin Gardner transferring in from SMU, the grad transfer man. It was pretty late. Remember they had to make sure that he graduated and can enroll as a grad student. All that finally worked out. And now trying to pick up football as well. How difficult is it for a guy like Gardner to step in as ask of viewers? Yeah, I definitely think that everyone has grown to fully buy in and fully trust what Coach Sarkis is saying. And, you know, he's won national championships, and he's put guys in the draft and in the NFL. So, I mean, trust him and he'll take care of the rest for sure. We all trust him. That's good to know that he continues to work and improve on that. All right, so as they continue to go forward, does this team embody its head coach? Does it take on the personality of the head coach? You know, in short, is this team embodying what Sarkis is all about? Yeah, I definitely think that everyone has grown to fully buy in and fully trust what Coach Sarkis is saying. And, you know, he's won national championships. And he's put guys in the draft and in the NFL. So, I mean, trust him and he'll take care of the rest for sure. We all trust him. Okay, a couple more things from Quinn Ewers. Does he have a favorite part of game day, the whole experience and getting ready? You know, Sark kind of waxed eloquently on it yesterday. Does Quinn have a favorite part of game day? Man, just fans. I like being around the fans and feeling the excitement that they have. Okay. And then finally, this will certainly be the first game for Quinn since last year ended in New Orleans on the passes that went incomplete in the end zone. So, does he still carry the memory of that Washington loss in the college football playoff semifinal with him? Definitely thought about it. I mean, I'm a human being and I understand, you know, what happened. But, you know, it's tough stuff. It's tough to look back on games like that. And, you know, I think it adds a little bit motivation and added motivation over the overall season for sure. But, you know, I try not to focus on it too much. Okay. All right. So, there's some things from Quinn Ewers. Now, a little more from Michael Taff. We heard him talking about tackling and improvement of the defense. And so, which brings us now to one of the newcomers there in the secondary. And that's Jelani McDonald and where has McDonald made the most progress? John is a stud. He's athletic, he's physical, he's a ball hawk, he's smart. And I think, you know, just he didn't have, you know, he was moving around last year in the defense. He was playing a little bit of linebacker, a little bit of star, a little bit of safety. He was just moving around. But the coaches knew that he was going to be a player because he was always running in the ball. No matter if he was that linebacker, if he was that star or safety, he was always getting to the ball. He was finding his way to the ball. He was breaking when the ball was thrown. And so, he's just always been a guy since he got to campus. And then, now that he's, you know, settled down on more than just kind of focusing on one position, that's helped him a lot in growing his game. Okay. That always helps. With regard to the team mindset, I talked about this, the game last Saturday in Dublin, Ireland, Florida State's upset loss to Georgia Tech. You would think that would probably garner the attention of college football teams, especially favored ones and the better ones all across the country. So Michael Taft was asked about that loss for Florida State to Georgia Tech. Did it help get the long ones attention? You know, I think comparison is always the thief of joy, but we were definitely Washington, we were paying attention. You know, you try to be more situational masters by seeing what other teams do across the country and see what, you know, an underdog type of story, tries to attack a team like Florida State and what they do on offense, what they do on special teams, what do they do when it gets so low go, what do they do when, you know, the quarterback just throws a turnover a pick and the defense now gets on the field. So just little things like that, but I'm really just focused on Colorado State and we got a really good opponent coming up. All right. There was that quote again, I was like, you know, what is it comparison is a thief of joy. Do you think someone's like, Hey, dare you say it a second time? Is it kind of like Beetlejuice? You say Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice? That kind of thing comparison is a thief of joy. He said it last week. Wow. I like that. I like it again. I did like hearing it. Okay. How does growing up around Jadi Baron and Andrew Makuba remember Jadi from Conley, Makuba from LBJ, Taffram Westlake, they did a lot of off season work together, they've known each other. I mean, Makuba and Baron have known each other since middle school. How does growing up around those guys help on the field? Yeah, for sure. Well adversity is always going to strike. You know, I think it comes up in many, many ways. It's never the same based on each team. You know, I think J4, JWIT, Quinn, Jake Majors, the leaders that were on the team last year, they probably got different adversity pieces than what we've got as leaders this year. And so, you know, the best thing that we've done as leaders is we're on the same page. There's not one leader speaking out of this side of his mouth, and I'm coming at somebody else at this side of my mouth. We're all on the same page and everybody on the team understands the mission and what we're trying to get as leaders and then, you know, down the ladder to the team. Yeah, that's all about hailing me, first of all, as I mentioned, the deal about being around Jadi Baron and Andrew Makuba and how it has that helped them on the field. Man, that's hard. You know, our quarterback that's going to trot out on Saturday is pretty good. He's experienced and when you trust guys as defensive backs with one another, it makes it real easy. You know, I can trust Jadi, I can trust Makuba even before they got here and Jadi the same way before I got here. And so, just knowing that you can speak to them in a different language, you know, Makuba can get on me, Jadi can get on me and I'm not going to come at it in sideways because we're all family. And so, that's just the main point about it is like I'm just really excited to play with those guys. It's so much fun to see how much we've worked together, that come together as one team, one defensive backroom. It's so cool and it's cool for, you know, our defensive back trainer that has trained us all our, you know, all our career growing up and even to this day, it's probably cool for him to see that three of his guys are in the back end, so I'm excited about those guys. Okay, and then finally, finally, they're the same question that we put to Quinn viewers. His favorite part of game day. I listened to a Colt McCoy documentary my sophomore year and he talked about when he runs out of the tunnel, he takes three breaths. And so, I go on the 36 yard line for Jake Ellinger, he wore 36 in high school, wear 16 for Jackson Coker, so try to, you know, uphold both of those guys that left the legacy for me. And I go to the 36 yard line, I take three breaths, look at the visitors side, look at the ends on side and look at our side and just soak it all in because there's not a lot of people that can say they played for the burn orange. This is the only, this is the only school that gets to wear this color and I'm so blessed to be on the field playing representing my school, representing my state. So that's my favorite thing, taking it all in and then going out there and playing. There it is from Mookie Tapp, Michael Tapp. All right, we'll be back to wrap up today's edition of the program on Sports Radio EM13 under the zone. It's time for today's Lucky Land Horoscope with Victoria Cash. Life's gotten mundane, so shake up the daily routine and be adventurous with the trip to Lucky Land. 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