00:00Is 15 practices enough for you and your coaching staff to figure out what 2026 is going to look like?
00:06Or is it become harder now to build these teams because practice time, transfer portal, all of that?
00:14Yeah, I think the biggest, well, it's two things.
00:17You know, the first thing is, you know, back in your day and really up until five, six years ago,
00:23you knew your team.
00:24You've practiced with these guys before.
00:26Most of the team you've had in training camp the year before, most of the team, they were on the
00:30team the year before.
00:31Now, when we're going through, like, 40 new players every year, like, you need more time.
00:37Like, 15 practices is not enough when you're trying to reconstruct the season before every year or, you know, rebuild
00:45or redo, whatever you want to look at it as.
00:48They have changed the rules a little bit, allow you to do a little bit more with the team prior
00:52to spring ball.
00:53But I'm hopeful that they get to a spot where they give us about another six or eight practices and
01:01let us figure out how we want to do it throughout the offseason to just get our guys together a
01:05little bit more on the field.
01:07Coach, would you agree?
01:08It's not so much about the skilled players.
01:10It's more about the offensive line that these limited practices.
01:16I mean, you've got to get five dudes on the same page.
01:18And I would think that that group alone, you know, everybody looks at college football today and they see the
01:23skilled guys.
01:24But would you agree the toughest thing to get continuity with is the offensive line and to find the right
01:29five guys?
01:31Yeah, I mean, there's no question.
01:33We're fortunate.
01:33We have four of our five offensive linemen returning this year, which is just I'd say it's the biggest advantage
01:40you could have in college ball if you can have that type of continuity up front.
01:45Now, if you have any eligibility left, we are looking for some new D-line.
01:49And we do, we are, we did lose a pretty significant number of guys to graduation on our defensive line.
02:02So we have, we've got some young guys, we've got a couple portal guys, we've got some guys that were
02:06developmental guys the year before.
02:09So the continuity there and the work together there, I mean, you want to be a good line game team.
02:14You want to be able to run stunts.
02:15You want to be able to understand different fronts, you know, 15 practices, you know, happens fast.
02:23And so we're lucky on the offensive line to have four returners, but on the defensive line, we'll have probably
02:29three new starters.
02:30And that'll be where, well, we're going to have to put a lot of work in.
02:34Coach, how's the depth on the team?
02:35I mean, obviously today with all the transfer guys, I mean, you got to re-recruit sometimes your own roster
02:41to make sure.
02:42Can you imagine this coach back in the day when I had Russell Maryland and Cortez Kennedy behind me?
02:47I'm not thinking those guys are still behind me back in the day.
02:51So that's quite a test that you have to go through each and every single year, re-recruiting the guys
02:56that you recruit to come to your program.
02:59Yeah.
03:00I mean, it is, I think back to our Miami team that when I was there and in our running
03:06back room, we had Lamar Miller, Mike James, Duke Johnson.
03:09You know, I mean, are those guys really hanging out?
03:12Only one guy getting carries?
03:14Or, you know, a wide receiver, we had Philip Dorsett backing up Travis Benjamin.
03:18Is that really going to happen in 2026?
03:22You try to make it happen.
03:24So the depth is always a concern.
03:26I think the biggest thing and where I've kind of focused our time on when we look at, you know,
03:32spending money,
03:33is the programs that have these very large roster dollars are the ones that have the most depth
03:41because they can actually pay guys to sit.
03:45Where programs, you know, like right now, we've got some challenges financially to try to be able to,
03:50we can put together a really good, I think, first 22, you know, 11 on each side.
03:56But I think the depth is the key where that's where some of the differences are.
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