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| Senior Bowl: Chan Gailey Press Conference (Tuesday) |
| By: Sideline Scouting Staff |
| January 25, 2011 |
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Chan Gailey |
Opening Statement: I thought practice was pretty good today. There were some things that were positives as far as ball handling and assignments. We still have a long way to go. The challenge, really, is to give enough to these guys to extend them and to challenge them, but not give them so much that overwhelmed. And you're walking that fine line during the course of that week. So we're just continuing to challenge them mentally and physically, and then obviously you back of physically as the week goes on. And then we'll see what point we have to back off mentally and we think we've got them to kind of the breaking point. But it was a good positive day I thought for our side of the ball.
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Christian Ponder
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On South QBs: I think that it's an interesting group. Christian's probably the more prototypical size-wise. He's the taller, bigger of the three. Has a good arm. I'm glad to see that his arm problems look like they're behind him. He's throwing the ball well. Probably throwing the deep ball better than any of the three to this point. Again, as you said, it's only two days of practice. But I think all three of them are very intelligent football players. I think Andy will be a better scrambler. Probably be the best scrambler of the three. I don't know that, but that's the feel I get from just looking around on the field and watching them move. Greg will be more of the pocket guy, cerebral guy. He's got a better arm than I probably gave him credit for walking in here. I think he's done a good job there. It'll be tough to see who starts. We're going to try to play all of them equally in the ball game, but to see who starts and what rotation we use, it'll be difficult. They're three pretty good guys. We [Georgia Tech] recruited Christian out of high school, so I've known him for a long time. It's been a long time, five years. I've known him five years.
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Greg McElroy
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On Greg McElroy: Guys like that have a great deal of confidence, but to be honest with you, everybody here has a great deal of confidence. Andy's won a bunch of football games too. I think that anybody that has come to this point in their career should have a lot of confidence, because you don't get to this game unless you've done a lot of great things. And there's very few one-year-wonders here. They've done it over the course of their career. So I'm looking forward to seeing how maybe some of that confidence translates into play as time goes on. Because some of these guys are having to do some things they've never done before -- play special teams, split reps. Their ego's taking a little bit of a hit in that respect. How do they handle that? That's another evaluation process.
On Von Miller: Von Miller would fit in any defense really well. He looks like he's a very explosive player. He's one of the few guys I happened to see and watch on TV a little bit during the course of the season. He's an explosive football player. I think he's going to be a good get for whoever gets him. He'd help us just like he'd help a lot of teams.
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Noel Devine
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On Noel Devine: That's probably is the definition of explosive. He has got that kind of quickness that takes your breath away some times. He can change direction. He can go sideways as far as he can go forward sometimes. So he's a special player, and the key for him will be in the right offense, getting the ball in space some. He's going to have a hard time playing every down in the NFL. But there's a place for a guy like that, I believe, in the NFL. [On Returning Punts] We'll see. We've got some guys that have done it before and are pretty good at it. So we'll probably share those duties as equally as possible to try to give them all a chance, because that's going to be one of his deals at the next level � To be able to be a quality return guy in the NFL.
On Individual stand-outs: You've known me long enough to know I'm not going to talk about individuals. If you ask me about a particular player, I'll try to comment on them, but if I talk about one guy, I'll go back and watch film and see that I should have talked about somebody else a little bit more as well. So I try to stay away from that as much as possible.
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Jeremy Kerley
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On Jeremy Kerley: He has got very good quickness. He is not the biggest guy out there, but he's got a pretty good understanding of the game. He catches on quickly. We've asked him to do a couple different things. He's playing inside and outside. He's probably going to be more of an inside player in the NFL. But he's got some quickness and some speed that makes him a little unique. I'll be interested to see how he does. There's a lot of guys like him. He;s going to have to be fairly unique to make it. A couple of the intangibles that I've seen thus far have been positives.
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Luke Stocker
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On Luke Stocker: He did make some big catches. I'll tell you what, if you miss him, your accuracy is poor, because he is a big target. Luke can run for a big man. He does have good hands. You have to make sure that you allow him to get out in open field some because he is such a big target and he's hard to match up on, especially for safeties sometimes. He's got a lot to learn about route running, which I think he's listened and learning about that. But he is a big target and has good hands.
On playing time: We're going to try to keep the reps in the game as equal as possible. Our job here is to showcase the guys. It's not about our offense, our defense or our special teams. It's to showcase their talents. So we're trying to get them as equal opportunity on the field for Saturday as much as possible. But who starts � they're earning that by their play during practice each day. That's how we'll decide that.
On Courtney Smith: He's another big target. He's made some good catches. He dropped a couple balls today that I was a little disappointed in, but he is a raw talent. There's very few of those six-five, 230 pound guys that come along every year. He's a guy that's got some potential. Where he falls, what he does with his abilities, only time will tell that. He does have some raw talent and he does have some potential. Hopefully he'll be more consistent as the week goes on.
On coaching small-school players: To me, if a guy has been picked for this game, somebody has seen something in him that they think he can play � that probably thought he should have played � somewhere else at one of the larger schools. I would be doing him a disservice to treat him any differently. I want to treat him just like we do every other player. Just because he played at a small school�and I coached at them, and I know there's guys there that can play. So you don't treat them any different. They don't want to be treated differently I don't think.
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DeMarcus Love
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On DeMarcus Love and Derek Sherrod: I probably need to reserve comment on that a little bit because I haven't gone down to the one-on-ones. I watch it on film, and I haven't watched it from today. The first day, I thought they were fairly physical. I thought they were strong from watching the first day's practice. But to say any more than that would be hard for me to say. I haven't watched the film from today's practice yet, so it's be hard for me to say anything more than that.
On the psychological aspect of changing positions: That plays into it, and especially in the linemen. You want to see if a guy can play guard. Can he play tackles? Is he a multiple guy? Can he play three positions? You want to know those things. So you try to do the best you can to find that out early in the week, and then, to give them the best chance to be successful on game day, you have to put them at a spot and leave them the longer the week goes. So you experiment early in t he week and then the further the week goes, you put them in one spot and let them play. Because you want to give them a chance to be successful.
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(January 28) --
The week of Senior Bowl practices are over, but more coverage is on the way.
We have posted notes and observations from both the North and South Thursday practices as well as transcripts from the Thursday press conferences.
Also posted is a Week in Review from the week's practices. Refer to the tabs above for full coverage. We'll have all the action coming to you from Saturday's game as well.
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