The Craig Way Show

Final Words from Steve Sarkisian ahead of Gameday

Craig and Cam close out Friday shows with the last of Steve Sarkisian's media availability from Thursday as he talks about defending Colorado State's Tory Horton, the importance of Quinn Ewers establishing chemistry with wideouts early on, and what is on his mind heading into Saturday.

Duration:: 11m
Broadcast on:: 30 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

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Determine a competitive rent price, market the property, schedule the showing screen tennis, drop at the lease at a rent collection, handle maintenance request, make any communication. 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 or call 303-974-9444 because from now on, the only thing you need on your to do list is to call runners warehouse. As we draw closer to this. So if we're talking long worn football, why not hear some more from head coach Steve Sarkisian. Yesterday, we heard some sound from him talking about Derek Williams and how his fall camp had gone. What about the secondary overall? Yes, much was made of the fact that the long warrants had their struggles in the past game at times past defense game, especially when it came to just giving up big plays more than anything else. So Sark was as if he got the vibe from his guys in the secondary that they're looking to make a statement this season, starting tomorrow. Well, I think so. But I think part of that is we still got to be a great run defense. You know, I think one of the misnomers about our past defense numbers is how many pass attempts we faced last year. I think we were in top of the country if I'm not mistaken. So because you couldn't run it on us, you threw it. And inevitably, you're going to find yards somewhere in the passing game. Our key to the drill in the secondary is we got to eliminate the explosive plays. Yeah, no doubt about it. It's important to do that to try to keep those things down to a minimum. So continuing on that secondary thing, Johnny Baron, as we know, throughout his six seasons at the University of Texas has been an every man. He's a guy who can play wherever you need him, whenever you need him in the secondary. He has played both corner positions, both the boundary corner in the field corner. He has played the boundary safety in the field safety. He has played the star back. So he's played and he pretty much quarterbacks a lot of what goes on in the secondary. So with a dangerous receiver like Tory Horton, over 1100 receiving yards last year for Colorado State, offering the biggest, not only deep threat, but overall receiving threat for the Rams going into this game. The question was asked of Sarc, might you move your most experienced defensive back? Johnny Baron to wherever, whatever side of the field, Tory Horton shades, whether it's boundary, whether it's, you know, X, whether it's Z, whether he's in the slot, would start continue just using Johnny Baron, almost like a spy, if you will, but just locking him down on Tory Horton overall, instead of just relying on the entirety of the secondary and matchups. I don't think we have to necessarily do that. There could be moments, you know, specific situations when that arises, but we're comfortable with the guys that we have back there. And I think there are a lot of them are interchangeable. I think that's one of the beauties of Ajade Baron, because he can play three positions here Saturday, you know, he can play corner, star and safety. And so, and then the versatility to to disguise coverages is helpful for us that way too. So again, if he's just locked on one guy the whole time, that kind of minimizes our ability to disguise some of the things we're trying to do. Yeah. And remember, the other guys who are back there in that secondary, Sark has pointed out that Jalen Gilbo's had a tremendous fall camp. So you can look for Gilbo to really contribute probably in that star position as well. Manny Muhammad at one corner spot in has been at times capable of shutting a guy down. Gavin Holmes had a really solid fall camp as well. And then of course your field safeties and your boundary safeties. I mean, you know, Michael Taff had to go through quite a bit of the fall camp workouts with a small cast on his hand, but he's ready to go. We talked about Derek Williams and what he can do there at the safety spot. And then at the other safety spots, seeing an Andrew Makuba there and a Jelani McDonald, each of whom have had really good fall camps. And then you have other guys like Kobe Black, Gavin Holmes. There's there's guys who can definitely contribute on that. It's not necessarily down to just plain and simple, only having to put one guy on the best receiver and then, you know, rely on your best hopes and the other matchups there. And that's one thing that Sark was talking about about making sure to be able to disguise some things as well. Overall, overall, in terms of his offense, in terms of his defense, in terms of the matchup, in terms of the opponent, what is Sark focusing on the most heading into this opener, the multitude of defenses that they could call that are nowhere on tape. And then what are we going to call to adjust to that? And that's for myself and the and the offensive staff. That's not, I try not to put all that on the players. I just want to make sure that, you know, if they they got it, they can play anything and to make sure that whatever they come out in, and we are able to identify that in the first series or two, that we're putting our players in a good position to be successful. Yeah, I mean, it makes perfect sense there. And you heard that in the first hour of the program when we had that Colorado State matchup segment from last night's edition of Long One Weekly with Coach Sark and where he talked about how, and I even asked him as a follow up about Colorado State potentially doing what Rice did last year and that was to come out to open the game with something completely different, something longer to not seen defensively. And you know, you probably don't have a great many unheard of wild things that you would show on the offensive side of the football. It's kind of tough to game plan that. But on the defensive side, you can shake up some things. You can change up some things, especially with personnel groupings. So that's why Sark was talking about that. That's what happened with the game with Rice last year. And he's fully expecting that possibility to be there for this game tomorrow afternoon. And then one other thing to talk about and it's almost like all roads lead back to Quinn Ewers in a lot of ways. All roads lead back to Quinn because throughout the course of the fall camp, what have we heard Sark talk about or more correctly to be fair to Sark? What have we heard him be asked the most about? Well, it's been Quinn Ewers. His development, his improvement, his physicality and yes, the L word the leadership thing. We heard that quite a bit. So he was asked repeatedly about where Quinn had developed as a leader, how he had developed it. In fact, Ewers teammates were all asked, how have they seen Quinn differently as a leader? And they've asked Ewers himself. They asked when, how are you different in terms of the leadership thing? So that was all going to be part of it as well. But it's about more than just leadership, especially when you're out there on the field and the snaps start going. And so the question was asked of Sark, how important is it for Quinn Ewers to establish chemistry with the receivers? Obviously there's no more Xavier Worthy. There's no more AD Mitchell there. There's no more JT Sanders there. But there are very, very talented guys who have stepped in either through the portal or through their own growth in the program. So the question, how important is it for Quinn to establish chemistry with his wide outs early on in this? Well, again, I think the beauty of the way we practice and how competitive our practices are put in, we put them in a lot of situations to where rapport and chemistry is going to matter. And I think that that has shown up in a lot of our scrimmages in our team settings. And we feel comfortable with that rapport. Naturally, I'm sure we'll have some growing pains there. But because of the way we work and the time and the effort that those guys put in in the summer on their own and then what we do in training camp, I feel confident that Quinn's got good rapport with all these guys. But like I said, I'm sure there'll be some growing pains that that we'll have to work through. All right. So there it is some more conversation with Longhorn's head coach Steve Sarkisian. When we come back, we'll set the stage for the weekend. We'll be ready to wrap up the week's worth of programming and get you ready for week number one of the college football season, especially as it relates to the Texas Longhorn. So we'll do all that when we come back here on a Friday afternoon on Sports Radio AM 13 on the zone and where you always listen to us for free right here on the iHeart Radio app. You slept through your alarm, missed the train, and your breakfast sandwich. Cool. Sounds like you could use some luck. 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