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Cheetah Hunt · Boundary Corner Podcast

• 0:23
  Music. And welcome back to the Boundary
• 0:50
  Corner Podcast along with my partners, Brian Siegler and
• 0:54
  Jonathan Talley. I am Curtis Wilson and this
• 0:57
  episode is brought to you by Doctor Jeremy Counts down at the
• 1:00
  Main Street Pharmacy in Blacksburg, VA, Your friendly
• 1:04
  neighborhood pharmacy three O 1 S Main St.
• 1:08
  Blacksburg. Gentlemen, gentlemen, how are.
• 1:11
  Y'all this evening. Hey guys, back-to-back weeks of
• 1:16
  recording going live with the crew here, man, it's going to be
• 1:20
  a fun night tonight. And we got, we got them stacked
• 1:23
  wall to wall pretty much until the start of the season, but
• 1:25
  this was going to be a lot of fun.
• 1:27
  Yeah, I was just going to say back-to-back, back-to-back weeks
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  mean we getting closer to the season.
• 1:33
  You got to go through that offseason grind, man.
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  It's rough, but we then almost made it.
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  We're about to get in the fall camp.
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  Little bit of news right quick before we get to the big thing.
• 1:44
  We went to the doctor again, took my son to the doctor for
• 1:47
  his checkup. Got some disturbing news.
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  Leg is leg is healing great. Everything's fine.
• 1:53
  But looking at growth plates, he ain't got much more to grow and
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  he's distraught. He's at about 6 foot.
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  They told him he might have two more inches.
• 2:02
  That's it. No.
• 2:03
  NO65 for you, buddy. Deuce.
• 2:05
  Deuce is good. I'm 62, so I was like, you may
• 2:10
  you may get to where I'm at, you may not, I thought.
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  Right here. So he was a little, he was a
• 2:16
  little distraught by with that, but.
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  What you say to him, you ain't going to never be bigger than
• 2:20
  me, son. Let me just say that, right?
• 2:21
  You're never going to. Be you're never going to be as
• 2:23
  big and as pretty as me so. Our forward is not in your
• 2:26
  future. Yeah, man, just hey, take what?
• 2:29
  Take what? The Lord give you He faster than
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  me though, so he eyes. Oh man, it's it's already pre
• 2:37
  show y'all pre show? Let's go ahead.
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  What's up? Kevin, we got a bunch of people
• 2:43
  joining us tonight. Y'all the the, the pre show was
• 2:48
  great. So we're going to go ahead and
• 2:50
  bring him in here because we we got to start talking some more.
• 2:53
  We've already had a bunch of fun with him already.
• 2:57
  Pokey Nation, welcome your cornerback coach The Cheetah.
• 3:01
  Derek Jones. Coach Jones, how are you
• 3:04
  tonight, Sir? I'm doing good guys, man.
• 3:07
  How's everybody out there at Hokie Nation doing?
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  We live in the dream, coach, we live in the dream.
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  Having you on tonight's a lot of fun.
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  We're ready to get it going again.
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  Like Curtis said, the pre show, I mean you weren't you were
• 3:19
  spending a lot of gems right there.
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  We're going to get some more coming out for Hokie Nation now,
• 3:22
  so just excited to have you on board.
• 3:25
  Hey man, I'm glad you guys invited me on.
• 3:26
  Let's do it. Let's do it.
• 3:28
  Well, first of all, we discussed it beforehand, but we're going
• 3:31
  to do it here in public. Happy anniversary to you and
• 3:34
  Missus Jones 24 years just a few days ago, give out a big round
• 3:39
  of applause. And so Coach Jones, you were
• 3:43
  explaining to us, y'all had this wonderful, your wife planned a
• 3:47
  wonderful anniversary vacation, right?
• 3:52
  It's more like an annual vacation than an anniversary
• 3:54
  vacation. Whatever works.
• 3:56
  Yes you did. We've done some travelling here
• 3:58
  in the last four weeks and I'm glad to be back home.
• 4:05
  Yeah, it looks like you were, you were on the move.
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  You told us you were you were out there doing like a little
• 4:11
  bit of tour of the South, took a little couple trips there, got
• 4:14
  to see Coach Pross spot down in Alabama, a little bit of
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  everything, right? Yeah, man, it it was.
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  I mean, like as soon as the the vacation started, she had it
• 4:24
  planned and we went to Mississippi to visit her folks.
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  And then we flew to Granada for six days with seven other
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  coaching couples, something that we do every two years.
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  And we came back from Granada, flew in the Memphis T, Memphis,
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  TN and drove directly to coach prize house down in Orange
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  Beach. We've been going down
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  vacationing with him and Amy probably the last eight years or
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  so at their place there and went through Atlanta to see one of my
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  former players just had a brand new baby.
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  And then we drove to South Carolina to see my family and we
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  went to Charlotte to celebrate the anniversary.
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  And then we went back to the Raleigh Durham area to see some
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  people. And she finally allowed me to
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  come back home a couple days ago.
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  He is back home it's it's good to again it's good to have you
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  here so y'all did a lot of traveling a lot of stuff so and
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  it seems just from your social media you love summer.
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  Why wouldn't you it's a low down time.
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  We know you're still out there recruiting, but.
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  What is? What's?
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  What's the big one fun summer thing you like to do every year?
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  Is it is it that vacation or is it something else?
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  You know, I usually like looking forward to getting to reconnect
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  with friends. And one thing that those
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  vacations do is allow me to get back to the Memphis, TN area in
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  Mississippi where I have a lot of college teammates.
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  And you know, we get together and just sit back and act like
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  we back in those old days again. And, you know, that's something
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  you can't put a price tag on. And, you know, we don't recruit
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  that area much here at Virginia Tech.
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  So that's the only time I really get to see those guys.
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  So I would say that's the one thing I look forward to because
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  we all close to our 50s now, so we're not getting any younger.
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  Definitely, definitely. Well, yeah, I'm going to go
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  back. Can y'all hear me Good.
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  So one, one thing, I don't know if y'all heard this, Hokey
• 6:12
  Nation coach Cheetah said. He was in Alabama.
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  So I don't want to hear no more hillbilly jokes and bad Internet
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  jokes, all right, because people take vacations and come to
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  Alabama so y'all need to relax. But we going we going to go to
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  the next question Coach. I kind of know the answer, but
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  everybody in Hokie Nation wants to know where did you come up
• 6:33
  with the cheetah wings? Where did that come from?
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  You know, I'm a wing fanatic and have been for a long time.
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  And my two favorite wings were lemon pepper wings and the
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  traditional Buffalo wing. And what I started doing is I
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  like to cook. I cook at home a lot myself and
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  I like to make wings at home a lot myself.
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  And So what I started doing many years ago was just taking the
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  Buffalo wing and sprinking lemon pepper on it.
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  And you know, with my nickname being Cheetah and that being the
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  brand of my players, why not call it a cheetah wing?
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  Because once you put the lemon pepper on it, you see the little
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  black spot. And so everywhere I go, I'm kind
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  of a creature of habit. Everywhere I coach, I kind of
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  got one place that I go and that's just kind of my hangout.
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  So fortunate for me, every place I've been over the course of the
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  last 15 years, I've had a spot that would make those for me.
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  But ironically, when I got here to Virginia Tech, I was living
• 7:29
  in the Residence Inn pretty much.
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  And I've known Coach Foster for a while through the profession,
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  and he welcomed me when I got here.
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  And he just told me he's like, you know, here's a place you can
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  go to do this. Coach Foster's wife, Jesse,
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  actually sold me my house. So we were interacting with them
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  quite a bit and Coach Foster told me about PKS.
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  He says it stays open late if you get back in town late
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  recruiting. But he says it's never going to
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  be many people in there this time of year.
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  You can go in there, watch TV, you know, and get yourself
• 7:56
  something to eat. So I go in there one night and I
• 7:59
  look at the menu and they don't have lemon pepper on the menu as
• 8:02
  a sauce. They have Buffalo.
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  So me being the person I am, I always ask if you have lemon
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  pepper because a lot of times they have spices back there that
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  they don't have. And I asked the bartender, you
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  know, could he make me a Buffalo wing sprinkle with lemon pepper?
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  And he's like, let me go back here and ask him.
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  And he went back there and he came back.
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  He says, yes, they can do that for you.
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  So I got the wings, took them back to the room.
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  You know, just being new to Hokie Nation, I took a picture
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  of them and it's the first time I'd ever done that.
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  I took a picture of them, I thought nothing of it, ate them.
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  They were really good. And I posted it.
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  Cheetah Wing thought nothing of it, no big deal.
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  Had no idea that anybody was even going to know what I was
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  talking about. And to my surprise, I woke up
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  the next day and it had gone viral.
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  And that was the birth of the original Cheetah Wing here in
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  Blacksburg there. You go.
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  Think about Hokie Nation, if they see something out there
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  that they can latch onto you going you going to get it
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  popping a little bit on the on the timeline there for sure.
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  All right. Definitely.
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  All right, can I ask another question real quick because you
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  say you like to cook. I I'm going to take wings out of
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  it because that sounds like that'd be your go to.
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  You invite us three over to your home this fall after a game.
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  What are you cooking us? It depends on if we cook it on
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  the grill, if we cook in in the kitchen, if we cook it in the
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  grill, if we cook it on the grill outside.
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  I'm going to make ribs. I like my ribs.
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  I come from a long family of BBQ people in South Carolina, so I
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  take a great deal of pride in that.
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  If we're cooking on the inside of the house, I'm probably going
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  to make you guys some of my homemade meatballs.
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  I make meatballs, I put them in gravy and I accessorize them
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  with a variety of different vegetables.
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  Good hearty meal. He said he he said he
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  accessorize them with special. That man is the real deal.
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  Let me put y'all on some game two right quick before we go to
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  the next question, because Cheetah has to be pretty
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  diplomatic so he can't say some things that I can say, but I'm
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  going to tell y'all listeners on here.
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  It is a black people staple to get lemon pepper hot wings.
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  If you go to, if you are in any town, you may need to have your
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  gun on you because some of these wing spots are a little bit
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  crazy. You find your wings to go and
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  you go in there and you ask for lemon pepper hot all flats fried
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  hard. That's how that's what you got
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  to get. That's what.
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  That's your order. You know, most people won't
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  realize this, but I'll I'll let it out if you see me at any
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  point in time with my book bag. I have lemon pepper in that book
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  bag. I make my own cheetah wings
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  because some places don't have lemon.
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  Pepper but. I refuse to be denied.
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  You know they make orange pepper now, right?
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  Too. Yeah.
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  OK, that's all I want to ask. And, and, and you got to keep it
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  with you because you can't, you can't like take a chance if
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  they're going to go go skimp on you with the lemon pepper.
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  So you got to like, all right, they're here.
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  But I got to, I got to throw a little bit more on top here.
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  You got to finish it. Well, well, the thing about
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  lemon pepper is too now they're different brands.
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  Lemon lemon pepper is kind of like gasoline.
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  So, you know, some brands are better than others.
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  Here we go. And like restaurant, call it how
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  it is. You know, restaurants try to
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  profit. So they'll give you sometimes
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  that powdery lemon pepper. I don't want that.
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  I want the thick lemon pepper. So I will sometimes ask to see
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  the lemon pepper to see what it looks like.
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  And if it's too powdery I'll just make my own.
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  You got a go to brand? No, not really.
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  I usually just look at it and look at the thickness.
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  Yeah, yeah, I got one more food question.
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  This one was just sent to me, Coach, they said, do you?
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  They said Do you make your own dry rub?
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  No, I haven't made my own dry rub.
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  I haven't. I haven't tapped into making my
• 11:53
  own seasonings. Yet.
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  OK, got you. That man's busy recruiting.
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  He ain't got time to do it. I can't experiment with this.
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  I'll buy them. I I know what they look like.
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  I know how I want them to be. Haven't really played around
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  with that yet. All right, so we, we, we talked
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  about PKS. What's what's your other go to
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  food spots in Blacksburg since you've been there?
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  Man, I like Bull and Bones, you know, good place to go.
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  Got to know the owners pretty well there.
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  I love Farmhouse. You know, that's a big date
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  night spot for several of us coaches going there.
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  And I'm a big Waffle House guy, man, I've been a Waffle House
• 12:28
  guy for a long time. But you know, Mcadoo's another
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  place. I'm one of those people, man, I
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  love going. I love small college towns
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  because those people support you and so I try to give back to
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  them. So if I like the cuisine, I'll
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  walk in. You know, the Brazilian
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  steakhouse over there, I think they have a really good steak.
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  I don't really understand what a lot of the sides are, but the
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  meat is good. You know, as far as there,
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  you've got, you know, a couple different pizza places here in
• 12:53
  town. But I I try to spread the wealth
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  out pretty good there. We go that's pretty awesome.
• 12:58
  Well, we talked a lot of meat, but we going to get to the meat
• 13:00
  of the of the questions with coach Cheetah here.
• 13:02
  We're going to talk a little football so we know you got a
• 13:07
  couple of guys in that room. 2 names that stand out is Dorian
• 13:11
  and and Mansour for this year. We know those young men have
• 13:15
  made a name for themselves under your tutelage.
• 13:18
  Can you tell us kind of what has been your favorite thing with
• 13:21
  them or your favorite thing about them since you've been
• 13:23
  coaching them, those two guys? Yeah, without a doubt.
• 13:27
  You know, talking about Dorian, the thing I like about Dorian is
• 13:31
  his competitive nature. I mean, he is the highly, highly
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  competitive guy and that's the number one characteristic that
• 13:38
  you got to have in our position, specifically for the style of
• 13:42
  defense that we play. We play a lot of man coverage.
• 13:45
  So you got to be built a certain way.
• 13:47
  You've got to be very competitive.
• 13:50
  You've got to be a person that understands a lot of things that
• 13:54
  are necessarily not in the game plan that you've got to do to
• 13:56
  elevate your game. But I think it's competitive
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  nature drives them to do the things that he has to do away
• 14:02
  from the field, away from practice, to elevate his game.
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  And he's the guy that the rest of the guys in the room feed off
• 14:08
  of because he's always going to be the first one out there.
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  He's always going to be the one, you know, challenging not only
• 14:15
  himself but the other guys in the room to be more competitive.
• 14:18
  And that stuff is contagious. And when you talk about
• 14:21
  Monsieur, it will be mentality. You know, Monsieur was thrown in
• 14:24
  the fire by me very early in his career.
• 14:28
  And so, you know, he caught a lot of heat from me in that
• 14:31
  sense. I'm I'm a very honest coach.
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  If you are not mentally tough, if you don't like honesty, if
• 14:38
  you don't like the truth, you don't struggle playing for me.
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  And, you know, he's been a day one page one guy that has
• 14:45
  received a lot of that and he just handles it.
• 14:48
  He just takes it in. He never back talks, he never
• 14:51
  gets frustrated and it transitions to his ball game,
• 14:54
  You know, So I think that's one of the things about him and you
• 14:58
  see it in the physical way that he plays on the football field.
• 15:02
  So those are the two things that you got to have when you a
• 15:05
  cornerback. And one of them has a very
• 15:08
  highly elevated level of it and the other has the other highly
• 15:11
  elevated level of it. Can I ask this?
• 15:13
  We've got a couple questions, but what is it about the
• 15:16
  physical part of their games? Like what is it that really like
• 15:19
  when you stepped foot, especially actually both of
• 15:23
  them, because the year you got here, Dorian had been here for a
• 15:25
  couple years, Mansour was in that freshman class.
• 15:29
  What was it physically? Was it footwork?
• 15:31
  Was it the way they did press? What did you like immediately
• 15:33
  physically? Because obviously the mindsets
• 15:35
  are there for both of them. Well, the thing about Dorian was
• 15:39
  just, you know, he had all the measurables and intangibles of a
• 15:42
  corner, you know, and just the things that he did naturally the
• 15:45
  first time I coached him. You're looking at this guy and
• 15:47
  say, you know, this guy bends well.
• 15:49
  This guy changed directions really well, You know, being
• 15:52
  able to play the ball down field.
• 15:54
  That's just a lot of things that you can't coach that he had.
• 15:57
  And Monsieur, you know, he actually started with us as a
• 16:00
  safety. We, we, we was a safety
• 16:03
  initially. And he got hurt, you know, when
• 16:06
  he first got here. So we didn't get to see him do a
• 16:09
  whole lot. And he transitioned over to me
• 16:12
  at corner. And to be honest with you guys,
• 16:14
  the first time I saw Muscle Delane make a tackle was in the
• 16:17
  North Carolina game because he couldn't do anything because he
• 16:20
  had a shoulder injury. So we kind of threw him out that
• 16:23
  sight unseen and he was ready for the moment.
• 16:25
  I think he made the first two tackles that he was in for the
• 16:27
  ball game and you know it. It's continued since then, but
• 16:31
  Muscle likes contact. You know, he has the mentality
• 16:33
  of a safety playing corner. And you know, that's just what
• 16:36
  you see every day in practice as well.
• 16:40
  Yeah, I love hearing corners that like to hit a little bit.
• 16:42
  I mean, that's a that's a hallmark of the Hokies.
• 16:46
  So have having somebody like that, having that mentality in
• 16:49
  that room, you'd love to hear that.
• 16:52
  Let's talk a little bit about some of the younger Cheetahs
• 16:54
  though. So we got Dante, we got Braylon.
• 16:57
  They played in 13 and 12 games, respectively.
• 17:00
  Getting kind of run in your unit on special teams, some a little
• 17:03
  bit watching these guys kind of go through the process now that
• 17:06
  they're a little bit further along.
• 17:08
  What are some of those areas of growth that you've seen since
• 17:12
  this time last year for those two?
• 17:14
  You know, first and foremost, both of the guys I think
• 17:17
  understand the position better than they did when they first
• 17:21
  got here. And a lot of that credit goes to
• 17:24
  the guys that are playing in front of them, you know, being
• 17:26
  able to pour into them. And anytime you've got guys that
• 17:29
  you can watch do things the right way, it makes a huge
• 17:33
  difference. And they're blessed to have
• 17:35
  that. You know, unfortunately for
• 17:37
  those guys, they were young last year and, you know, probably a
• 17:41
  victim of the guys being in front of them being such good
• 17:44
  players. You know, we were having some
• 17:46
  struggles early in the year, so we wasn't pulling away from a
• 17:49
  lot of people. So it's very hard to pull guys
• 17:52
  with the talent level of Munsu and Dorian out of the ball game
• 17:55
  and put unproven, untested guys in when you're trying to win
• 17:59
  ball games. And because, you know, we kind
• 18:02
  of overhauled that room, we didn't have a lot of guys that
• 18:05
  have been here with playing experience.
• 18:07
  You know, the one guy that we had last year, you know, to
• 18:09
  buffer a little bit was Derek Canton and he gave us, you know,
• 18:13
  that third body guy. So those guys probably didn't
• 18:15
  get the number of snaps that you would like them to have gotten.
• 18:19
  But we didn't have another choice.
• 18:20
  You know, we were preparing them for the future because you can't
• 18:23
  go into a season just saying you're going to have two healthy
• 18:25
  corners expecting to do what we do on defense.
• 18:28
  You got to have guys that if something to one of those guys,
• 18:31
  and we saw that in year one when Dorian Strong got hurt that year
• 18:35
  one play away from not being able to do the things that you
• 18:39
  want to do on defense if you don't have the people to do it.
• 18:41
  And our defense is geared around having corners that can do what
• 18:45
  we do because if we can't play man coverage, we're not going to
• 18:48
  be very good. And that's one of the things
• 18:50
  that, you know, during the first year that we were here, we just
• 18:53
  didn't have the guys to be able to do the things that we wanted
• 18:56
  to do. So we've got to bring those guys
• 18:58
  along and those older guys are really helping in that process.
• 19:03
  Awesome. And let let me ask this because
• 19:05
  it's kind of a little bit of a piggyback off that question
• 19:08
  because you talked about doing what you want to do.
• 19:11
  And when we had JC Price on, he talked about the one thing that
• 19:14
  kind of got the defense and the rhythm last year is when you
• 19:17
  were able to go a lot more man coverage as the season went on.
• 19:21
  And that kind of started racking up those tackles for loss,
• 19:24
  racking up those sacks. And then that reciprocal
• 19:27
  relationship between pressure on the quarterback man coverage
• 19:31
  given those those defensive lineman time to get to the
• 19:34
  quarterback. Talk a little bit about that and
• 19:36
  how that kind of helped the growth of your room last year?
• 19:40
  Yeah, it makes all the difference in the world, and
• 19:42
  that's been my background basically since I've been in the
• 19:46
  profession. I played college football for a
• 19:49
  guy named Jolie Dunn at Ole Miss at Ole Miss, and you know, we
• 19:52
  played a lot of 0 in man coverage.
• 19:54
  You know, we had the number one defense in the nation one year
• 19:56
  just because those things marry up When you can take away access
• 20:00
  throws from quarterbacks and access throws or hitches, slants
• 20:04
  in the three-step drops because you're playing soft coverage,
• 20:07
  you limit a lot of what they can do when you get up there and you
• 20:10
  take away a lot of the route side of the route tree.
• 20:13
  You make the quarterback hold the ball, which buys time for
• 20:15
  the defensive line to be able to get there.
• 20:17
  And the other thing you do is you make the quarterback have to
• 20:20
  be perfect and throwing when you play zone and when you play off,
• 20:24
  everything is timing. The receiver runs five step
• 20:27
  turns around the ball is there. Well, if you in his face that
• 20:30
  windows not going to be there. And the one thing that offenses
• 20:33
  are not going to do a whole lot is take shots down the field,
• 20:38
  because if you take shots down the field too often and you
• 20:40
  don't hit them, that gets you behind in the snap count, gets
• 20:44
  you behind in everything. And so now if you're backed up
• 20:48
  and you try to throw 2 take off routes, you have to punt the
• 20:51
  ball from there. You're giving the other team
• 20:53
  good field position. So it really limits a lot of
• 20:56
  what the offense can do when you can do that.
• 20:59
  But it's just we're married in that sense.
• 21:01
  You know, the defensive line loves that we can do that and we
• 21:04
  love it. They can get there. 100% let me
• 21:09
  ask this because you know, they kind of they did like you said,
• 21:12
  you wanted to get a more snaps last year.
• 21:14
  But what have you seen in the three phases so far this year?
• 21:17
  The growth, what have you seen from both Braylon and Dante and
• 21:20
  the growth they've taken because they did play a lot of freshmen
• 21:24
  from some people's eyes, because some people will say they didn't
• 21:27
  red shirt. They were out there every single
• 21:29
  game just about. So what have you seen them
• 21:31
  really grow with in these really actually in really the last 365
• 21:36
  days almost? You know, maturity being number
• 21:39
  one, I always tell my guys it takes a certain level of
• 21:43
  maturity to excel at this level. And I've seen each one of those
• 21:47
  guys do that. And maturity covers the large
• 21:50
  window. You know, maturity and knowing
• 21:52
  how to go watch film. Maturity and disciplining
• 21:55
  yourself to do the things that you have to do when you're not
• 21:58
  forced to do it to get yourself better understanding, not being
• 22:02
  afraid to ask questions. And I think both of those guys
• 22:06
  have a vast knowledge of the game that they didn't have, you
• 22:09
  know, when they came here. The more snaps they get, the
• 22:13
  better they're going to get at it.
• 22:15
  And so, you know, we were really able to make some headway to
• 22:17
  spring. Dante and Braylon both got a
• 22:20
  chance to run a lot of reps with the ones.
• 22:24
  Braylon's working a lot with the safeties.
• 22:26
  Because what we want to do with our secondary is we don't want
• 22:30
  to be one-dimensional. You know, we have corners and we
• 22:32
  have safeties, but the whole cheetah concept is about a guy
• 22:35
  that's versatile. We want to be able to get our
• 22:37
  best football players on the field and you'll see if at any
• 22:41
  point in time we get in trouble, You guys know very well that we
• 22:44
  can stick monsoon delay in that safety and pick right up right
• 22:47
  there. So we want to develop guys like
• 22:50
  Braylon and Dante into being versatile players because when
• 22:54
  you're a good player and you young and you have really good
• 22:57
  players in front of you, you want to be able to do more than
• 23:00
  one thing. But that's a lot to put on a
• 23:02
  true freshman to ask the guy to do a lot of different things.
• 23:06
  But we were able to spring to be able to put both of those guys
• 23:09
  at multiple positions. And when you play safe, you
• 23:12
  learn more about corner and when you play corner you learn more
• 23:15
  about safety. So it just helps you all of our
• 23:18
  overall portfolio as far as a football player.
• 23:21
  Nice. Love hearing it, Coach.
• 23:24
  Let's talk about another one of those young guys.
• 23:26
  Let's talk about Josh Clark. We talked a little bit about him
• 23:28
  in the pre show and he showed out in the spring game and kind
• 23:33
  of throughout spring practice. We heard his name a few times
• 23:35
  being mentioned. By all accounts, how invaluable
• 23:38
  is it? Not only that, you got him on
• 23:40
  campus for both the winter phase, spring ball and now the
• 23:44
  summer phase. And for him, or not just for
• 23:49
  him, but for any of those guys coming in early, how big of an
• 23:52
  advantage is that for him? It makes a huge difference
• 23:56
  because those guys come in with time to be able to learn from
• 24:01
  their teammates, time to be able to get reps.
• 24:04
  It's almost like having a season before you season.
• 24:07
  And fortunate for him, he came in by himself.
• 24:10
  So he got a lot of reps that you know, that the year before I
• 24:13
  think we had like five corners, you know, so you know, with each
• 24:18
  other. Whereas now Josh is by himself.
• 24:21
  So he got a chance to get a lot of reps.
• 24:23
  I was able to sprinkle him in there with the two some, you
• 24:26
  know, sprinkle him in there with the threes.
• 24:27
  But also, when you come in by yourself, you're the baby of the
• 24:31
  group, so everybody in the room is pouring into you, as opposed
• 24:35
  to when that group came in before, it was five of them
• 24:38
  sitting in there and Dorian's turning around looking, and he's
• 24:41
  trying to tell every last one of them something to spend time
• 24:44
  with him. So Josh kind of gets all the
• 24:46
  attention to himself. So that's been real beneficial
• 24:49
  to him. But Josh is a uniquely mature
• 24:51
  kid, and that's one of the things that you have to look for
• 24:54
  in the recruiting process. The recruiting process isn't
• 24:57
  just about ability. It isn't just about how fast is
• 25:01
  the guy or how good of a football player is, how mature
• 25:05
  is he? And in today's world, we have to
• 25:08
  look at guys in the recruiting process and say how much
• 25:10
  attention does he need? How much attention does he like?
• 25:13
  How much does he want? How coachable is it?
• 25:16
  Is this a guy that's going to be able to conform the discipline
• 25:19
  or is he a guy that's going to say, I don't want to be
• 25:21
  disciplined, I'm going in the portal.
• 25:23
  You have to dig deep nowadays in ways you didn't have to, to find
• 25:27
  out the total makeup of this guy and what he's abiding.
• 25:30
  Josh was just the guy that checked all the boxes, you know,
• 25:33
  and it comes from his family, comes from a great family, very
• 25:36
  athletic family, couple brothers, played college
• 25:39
  football. One of his brothers was at UNC
• 25:41
  playing when I was at Duke. One of the sisters played
• 25:45
  basketball at Duke. I think mom played basketball.
• 25:48
  So very athletic, family, but very mature in the sense of how
• 25:53
  he came into the meeting room as a freshman and absorbed
• 25:57
  information and asked questions. And we do a lot of exercises in
• 26:01
  our room of being transparent. And, you know, one of the things
• 26:05
  I like to do is I like for my players to be honest with each
• 26:07
  other. And the only way that Josh Clark
• 26:10
  is ever going to be honest with Dorian Strong about something
• 26:14
  that he can do to be a better captain or a better player is
• 26:17
  for me to put them in those positions.
• 26:19
  And you know, Josh was just one of those guys day one, page one,
• 26:22
  you know, whether it's Monsoor standing up there, whether it's
• 26:25
  Dorian standing up there, Josh spoke his mind and what he felt
• 26:28
  that those guys needed to improve on in order to be better
• 26:31
  leaders for him. And that's just who he is as a
• 26:34
  person. So being able to get here gives
• 26:37
  us an opportunity to get him some reps, but to also find out
• 26:40
  those things I just told you about him, which lets us know as
• 26:43
  we're making preparations where we can use him as the season
• 26:46
  approaches. Well, coach, you're getting so
• 26:49
  good at this thing, man. Did you answer any questions
• 26:51
  before I even ask them? So one of my questions that I
• 26:54
  was going to ask was going to talk about what you look for in
• 26:57
  recruiting and checking boxes. But man, you hit that nail on
• 27:00
  the head. So I'm going to kind of jump to
• 27:02
  something else before we get ready to take a break.
• 27:05
  This is kind of off the off the cuff.
• 27:08
  When you came in and saw you played college ball, you said
• 27:10
  you played at Ole Miss, correct? Yes.
• 27:12
  And you were at DB. What?
• 27:14
  What number did you wear? Oh, oh, when I first got to
• 27:17
  college I wore #24. OK, that's a good number.
• 27:21
  That's a real good number. So #24 Dorian Strong is it?
• 27:25
  And we love Dorian. We love Dorian store.
• 27:27
  He's been at Virginia Tech a long time.
• 27:30
  What did you think when you walked in that in that room and
• 27:33
  you said, OK, who's my guy? And they said this is your guy
• 27:36
  right here, Dorian Strong. And he had #44 on what did you
• 27:39
  think about that number? Coach on the cornerback.
• 27:42
  You know, for, for me, I always believe that the player makes
• 27:47
  the number. The number doesn't make the
• 27:48
  player. And, you know, weirdly, I won an
• 27:53
  award at Ole Miss called the Chucky Mullins Award in my
• 27:55
  senior year. And it was #38 Chucky Mullins
• 27:59
  from Russellville, AL, got paralyzed on a football game at
• 28:04
  Ole Miss making a tackle, eventually passed away.
• 28:09
  And they traditionally give that number to the best defensive
• 28:11
  player #38 was not a desirable number, but they made it
• 28:16
  desirable. And so even now, when I tell
• 28:18
  people I wore #30 in Canadian college, people that don't
• 28:21
  understand what it means, they kind of look at me weirdly.
• 28:24
  So me and Dorian kind of had a little something in common, you
• 28:27
  know, with that 44. But really and truly, when I saw
• 28:30
  him wearing #44 man, I looked at it as a confidence thing.
• 28:34
  You know, I think a lot of guys want numbers because they're
• 28:37
  sexy. I think a lot of guys want
• 28:38
  numbers because they're popular, because other people wore them.
• 28:41
  But it says a lot about your confidence when you put on
• 28:44
  something that nobody else is wearing.
• 28:46
  I mean, the guy's wearing a linebacker number and he's one
• 28:48
  of the best corners in the country.
• 28:49
  I'll take. It.
• 28:50
  There you go. Right?
• 28:51
  Exactly. Yeah, and it is it, like I said,
• 28:54
  I, I, I agree with you. It says something about the
• 28:56
  character there. So that that's definitely a
• 28:58
  point. I mean, you know, there's a lot
• 29:00
  of numbers that some of those, you know, cornerbacks that
• 29:03
  they've played for the Hokies that went on to do bigger
• 29:05
  things, made very popular and 44 was not one of them.
• 29:10
  So taking that on and making that his thing and, and now he's
• 29:14
  taking that that big step where he's getting a lot of that same
• 29:17
  type of conversation that those guys got in the past too.
• 29:20
  So. Man.
• 29:22
  When Dorian, when Dorian first got here, we was like, get him
• 29:25
  out of that 44 please. And now, but but now it's like,
• 29:31
  man, you know what? We might need to get somebody
• 29:33
  else in that 44 when he decides to leave because he's he's done
• 29:37
  that number proud. I got to give him his props,
• 29:39
  man, He has he has earned everything that he has got, and
• 29:42
  it is so awesome to see that kid to come in with what he was
• 29:46
  recruited and the rankings did. I know rankings don't matter,
• 29:49
  but the rankings they put on them and offers that he had to
• 29:52
  come in and then you look at his name up there as one of the top
• 29:56
  one of the top BBS, one of the top players in the country.
• 30:00
  Man, it's just awesome to see his story.
• 30:01
  So I thought I'd. Take this break.
• 30:03
  We got to get Dwight in here real quick.
• 30:05
  Yeah, on this. 1. Coach, have you been able to
• 30:11
  check out Chickasi spot in the 757?
• 30:15
  No, I know you told me about that, but God, but I hadn't had
• 30:18
  a chance to go back there. But it is definitely on my To Do
• 30:21
  List when we get back on the recruiting trail all.
• 30:24
  Right. We'll make a note of that.
• 30:25
  We'll make a note of that. The other thing about the
• 30:28
  numbers thing is right now, because we mentioned it, it's
• 30:30
  44. It's 44.
• 30:31
  My goodness. And what he's doing with it,
• 30:35
  it's going to be some kid that comes in, I'm sure with you in a
• 30:37
  few years, it's going to want a number that doesn't fit DBS.
• 30:40
  So it's probably going to be that influential effect
• 30:43
  downstream where I want 47 and you can.
• 30:47
  And you're going to be like, you do you, son, because like you
• 30:50
  just said, be confident in it. And like like, I think you make
• 30:54
  a great point. The other thing is, I'm sure
• 30:57
  there were some people fooled the first time they saw 44
• 31:00
  coming out on the boundary side and being like.
• 31:03
  Is. That a linebacker over there.
• 31:06
  What are they doing? If I'm, if I'm, if I'm a
• 31:09
  quarterback, I'm throwing that 44 all day at. 1st.
• 31:14
  Until he do. Until he do what?
• 31:15
  Dorian Strong. So it was.
• 31:18
  Bait. I think the I think the weirdest
• 31:21
  part about it was when I got here, Dorian wasn't very big and
• 31:26
  it looked a little bit awkward seeing 44 on that little body.
• 31:29
  But hey, he made it his and I'm OK with it.
• 31:33
  He picked up a little weight now.
• 31:35
  He didn't got to be a, he didn't got to be a right size good man.
• 31:39
  All right, real quick. We've got more with Derrick
• 31:42
  Jones, but we are going to take a quick break from our partners
• 31:45
  over at Main Street Pharmacy. I can probably save you a lot of
• 31:49
  money and I can take a lot better care of you.
• 31:51
  That's pretty much it. My name is Jeremy Counts and I'm
• 31:54
  a pharmacist. I own and operate Main Street
• 31:56
  Pharmacy here in downtown Blacksburg.
• 31:58
  My brother's a pharmacist, I'm a pharmacist, my uncle's a
• 32:01
  pharmacist, my dad's a pharmacist.
• 32:02
  I remember he would give me M&M's to count in little pill
• 32:05
  counters. This is something I've always
• 32:07
  done, and I'm just lucky that what I know so well is something
• 32:11
  that I can do and feel good about it and get back to people.
• 32:14
  Pharmacies are your frontline defense.
• 32:16
  Pharmacy's job is to make sure you're getting optimal care for
• 32:19
  the lowest price possible. Also, we take the pressure off
• 32:23
  of emergency rooms. I'll tell people immediately
• 32:25
  when they need to go to the doctor, or I'll tell them if
• 32:26
  they just need a cream over the counter.
• 32:28
  If there's something that isn't commercially available, if it's
• 32:31
  something that's not available in a certain strength or a
• 32:34
  certain form or anything like that, we'll make it.
• 32:36
  TaylorMade medications. Some of those options save
• 32:38
  people a lot of money. What motivates me, I get to take
• 32:41
  care of people and limit Blacksburg.
• 32:43
  That's all neat. All righty and we are back
• 32:48
  again. Coach Derrick Jones joining us
• 32:51
  tonight and coach, I want to kind of talk about some coaching
• 32:56
  staff and we've already hit this and now you and coach pry y'all
• 33:00
  obviously go a long way back together looking through y'all's
• 33:04
  history, y'all coach together in Memphis 2007.
• 33:08
  Obviously you talked about Memphis earlier today.
• 33:10
  I was on the Tommy W the old Clemson coach, but how did that
• 33:15
  look because it was only one year?
• 33:16
  How did that relationship grow and come over the years and lead
• 33:21
  up to where, when Coach Pride takes the job December of 2021,
• 33:26
  he picks up that phone and calls you and says I want you to leave
• 33:30
  the cornerback room at Virginia. Tech, you know, well, the
• 33:34
  relationship started actually before our time at Memphis, OK
• 33:38
  Coach Pride was coaching at Louisiana Lafayette under Ricky
• 33:42
  Bussell, and I was the quarterback coach at Murray
• 33:45
  State. And, you know, coaching kind of
• 33:48
  goes, you know, you got a job open, you generally ask buddies
• 33:51
  if they know somebody to fit a position.
• 33:53
  And Coach Pryor asked around. He's looking for a cornerback
• 33:56
  coach. Somebody gave me my name and he
• 33:58
  called me. We had a few preliminary
• 34:00
  conversations and he called me back one day and he was like, we
• 34:05
  want to fly you down. What?
• 34:07
  Strangely, I had torn my ACL coaching in a football game.
• 34:12
  You know, at Murray State we had that old carpet turf at the time
• 34:16
  and being hyperactive, I'm running down the sideline.
• 34:20
  One of my guys picked the ball off and I got to about the 25
• 34:23
  yard line where I know I couldn't go up past it.
• 34:25
  I didn't want to get a penalty. And I tried to abruptly stop and
• 34:29
  snap my knee. You know, real bad athlete
• 34:33
  moment for me right there. And so I'm immobile.
• 34:36
  I can't move. I just recently had surgery and
• 34:40
  I had this water cast on so I couldn't get on a plane.
• 34:44
  And I talked to him about it. He told me.
• 34:47
  He called me back and he said, well, is it OK if I fly out to
• 34:50
  see you? Well, I don't think he
• 34:52
  understands how bad I'm hurt at the time.
• 34:55
  And so he flies into Nashville, TN, drives to Murray, KY.
• 34:59
  I drives to my house and my wife goes to the door and brings them
• 35:03
  into my living room. And I am like on a couch with my
• 35:07
  leg elevated. And, you know, a quarterback
• 35:10
  coach is not just like ADB coach.
• 35:12
  You know, most people want their cornerback coaches to be able to
• 35:15
  actually demonstrate. You know, you can't coach
• 35:18
  corners off of a board. You can't coach corners off of
• 35:20
  film. You have to be able to show
• 35:22
  them, you know, the things that you want them to do.
• 35:25
  Well, my poor wife has never been an athlete, definitely
• 35:29
  never been a cornerback. So strangely, I am on the couch
• 35:33
  trying to get this job and I am trying to get my wife, who's
• 35:38
  never played a sport in her life, to demonstrate the
• 35:41
  cornerback drills. Well, Needless to say, with me
• 35:44
  being immobilized and him not knowing if I really knew what I
• 35:49
  was talking about, I didn't get that job.
• 35:52
  But Coach Pryor and I just stayed friends and stayed in
• 35:56
  contact. And Fast forward a couple years
• 35:58
  later, I'm coaching at the Universe at University of
• 36:01
  Memphis and we have a job come open and Coach West comes to us
• 36:06
  and he's like, you know, I'm looking for either a linebacker
• 36:10
  or AD line coach. You know, I just want the best
• 36:12
  coach. If y'all got any names that you
• 36:16
  want to give me, let me know. Well, I knew that Coach Pry had
• 36:19
  a pass in both D line play and linebacker play and so I gave
• 36:24
  Coach W his name. They had preliminary
• 36:26
  conversations, flew Coach Pryin on the interview, and he ends up
• 36:30
  getting the job. And they moved us into a house
• 36:34
  together. I think they hired four or five,
• 36:37
  five new coaches that year. And they told us that we all
• 36:41
  have to stay in this house together and that if your
• 36:44
  significant other came to visit, they would get you a hotel room.
• 36:46
  But when she left, you had to go back to the house.
• 36:48
  So we named it the Frat House. So we basically became roommates
• 36:52
  in 2007 and we lived together for about 5 months and really
• 36:56
  became friends. And then him and Amy were dating
• 36:59
  at the time and shortly thereafter got married.
• 37:01
  And we just started a tradition of every year because I had gone
• 37:06
  to Duke at the time and they were still at Memphis, and then
• 37:09
  they left there and went on to Georgia Southern.
• 37:13
  So we just made a pact that every year at the National
• 37:16
  Convention, we were going to get together.
• 37:19
  And so we always would get to the National Convention on
• 37:21
  Saturday, and we'd get together and go out to dinner somewhere
• 37:25
  and just have a good time. And we literally did that for
• 37:28
  over a decade. And so Coach Pry called me about
• 37:32
  a job opportunity a couple of different times when he was
• 37:35
  coaching, you know, because, you know, we really became good
• 37:38
  friends. And weirdly, during the
• 37:41
  pandemic, you know, nobody could do much.
• 37:44
  So we got a group chat and we do small little things together,
• 37:47
  maybe get on the phone and have a date night over the phone
• 37:50
  because you couldn't go anywhere.
• 37:51
  And so me and my wife went out one night in Texas and Coach
• 37:56
  Price sent a message in the group chat that the four of us
• 37:59
  had. And he said, hey, man, nice
• 38:01
  shirt. I said, appreciate it.
• 38:04
  He said, one of us needs to get a head coaching job so we can
• 38:06
  start to do date night together. I said, well, I agree.
• 38:11
  And I swear, man, it wasn't. 2 weeks later Coach Pride called
• 38:14
  me and he said, man, I think I got a shot at the Virginia Tech
• 38:18
  job. I need to be able to give them
• 38:20
  some names and some people I bring with me, you know, as I'm
• 38:24
  going into these interviews And without a second thought, you
• 38:27
  know, I was actually in negotiations with a couple other
• 38:29
  people about a couple other jobs and without a second thought,
• 38:33
  man, I said if you get it, I'm with you.
• 38:35
  And he called me back a couple days later and said he was
• 38:37
  having, I think his third interview.
• 38:39
  And actually I was at a dinner for our seniors and I never told
• 38:43
  my wife about this courtship at all.
• 38:45
  She had no idea this was going on.
• 38:47
  And so Coach Fry and Amy called me and told me he got the job
• 38:51
  and officially offered me the job and I officially accepted.
• 38:54
  But still we didn't tell my wife.
• 38:56
  And so I invited my wife to come pick me up from the place I was
• 39:00
  at. I told my wife, actually, I
• 39:02
  couldn't drive. I needed her to come get me.
• 39:04
  And she was fussing at me talking about why you couldn't
• 39:06
  drive. I was like, I lost my keys.
• 39:08
  I just make it up. Stuff came to the restaurant
• 39:11
  man, and we got her own FaceTime.
• 39:14
  So it was a really special moment for us as four really
• 39:17
  close friends, for me to tell her in that moment that we were
• 39:20
  going to go work with some really good friends of ours.
• 39:22
  And I hadn't regretted one moment of it.
• 39:25
  That's an awesome. Story that is an awesome.
• 39:27
  Story I I, I love that it started with Rick and Russell
• 39:30
  too like that just feels kind of like meant to be for for for
• 39:34
  that that connection. So I, I really like that.
• 39:37
  I didn't know about that piece of it, so man.
• 39:42
  Yeah, well, he's, he's a good friend, man.
• 39:44
  But he's a, he's a really good head coach and I would not have
• 39:47
  joined him at this stage in my career if I didn't 100% believe
• 39:52
  in him. I mean, I knew what he was as a
• 39:54
  leader. I knew who he is as a man.
• 39:56
  I know how players gravitate to him.
• 39:58
  I know how coaches are going to want to work for him, which is
• 40:02
  evident by not seeing one person leave our staff this past year.
• 40:06
  I think that's probably the one thing that people don't
• 40:08
  understand in the coaching profession, how in demand good
• 40:11
  coaches are. And any time you see a program
• 40:15
  keep their entire staff together, that says volumes
• 40:18
  about the guy that's sitting at the head of the table.
• 40:20
  So I think bright things are on the future for us.
• 40:27
  I think Tally stepped out on this for just a second.
• 40:29
  So I'm going to take over this next one here.
• 40:32
  You know, we we got we got the prod details in there and like I
• 40:36
  said, just just awesome to hear that story.
• 40:38
  You also got a partner in the back end there with the with the
• 40:41
  D block, one of the Ogs of DBU at Virginia Tech, Pearson Prelo.
• 40:48
  He was one of the first, you know, he was the first time
• 40:51
  college coach when you guys kind of got together when y'all
• 40:53
  started in 2022. What's it been like to watch his
• 40:57
  maturation in the profession over the last couple years?
• 41:01
  You know, it's, it's been awesome, man.
• 41:03
  Pearson is a very, very bright football coach.
• 41:07
  And you're talking about a guy, even though he hadn't coached a
• 41:09
  whole lot, you're talking about a guy who had a 12 plus year NFL
• 41:13
  career, been around some really, really good football coaches.
• 41:17
  And when you play that long in that league, you have to have
• 41:20
  knowledge of the game and it easily transitions.
• 41:23
  But the other thing about Pearson, he's a good teacher.
• 41:26
  You know, seeing him on the board, seeing him with this
• 41:28
  guys, making them understand, it just comes natural for it.
• 41:32
  And some guys just have that, you know, some guys can coach
• 41:35
  for 20 years and just not be good at it.
• 41:37
  And some guys can do it for one year and you just know they have
• 41:40
  that it factor and he has that. And the other portion of it,
• 41:44
  man, he's become a really good friend of mine.
• 41:46
  We we really don't do much without each other.
• 41:48
  And I think you have to have that in the secondary because we
• 41:51
  have to be aligned. We have to be on the same page.
• 41:53
  I don't think you have to hang out together as much as we do,
• 41:56
  but we do, you know, we go to lunch together pretty much every
• 41:58
  day and we hang out together every day.
• 42:00
  And me and Pearson will be on the road recruiting and we may
• 42:03
  talk to each other on the phone while we're driving for an hour
• 42:05
  and a half, two hours, you know, So it's been and a real joy.
• 42:09
  And Jeff Pearson having the connection that he has to so
• 42:13
  many other great defensive backs in Virginia Tech players.
• 42:17
  That's a huge recruiting peace force.
• 42:19
  You know, like I played at the University of Mississippi.
• 42:21
  So I know of a lot of guys, but I don't know them.
• 42:25
  Pearson has direct contact to a lot of these guys that we can
• 42:29
  get involved in the recruiting process to help us, you know,
• 42:32
  whether they're from certain areas, we're recruiting and
• 42:34
  young men can identify with them.
• 42:36
  And that means a lot, you know, because young men want to go
• 42:39
  where they can identify that people that have done things
• 42:41
  they want to do, have done. I'm going to ask this, and this
• 42:47
  is kind of the Pearson piece and kind of being at Virginia Tech,
• 42:49
  because you've coached a long time, you played, when you see
• 42:54
  the amount of defensive backs, I'm going to put defensive backs
• 42:57
  in general that have come through Virginia Tech and the
• 43:00
  level of what they played, you know, how does that feel?
• 43:04
  Because you know, you walk through, you got D Hall, you see
• 43:07
  other names and there's other names and probably some guys,
• 43:09
  you know, and it's like this isn't one of those places where
• 43:15
  people don't look at the DBS. It's front and center.
• 43:19
  How does that feel? Because I'm sure you've had
• 43:22
  interactions with some of those guys since being down there and
• 43:25
  knowing that in a way it's and then you've already started it.
• 43:31
  If you continue in that legacy of this GroupMe and you and
• 43:36
  Pearson's group, it's what this school is known for.
• 43:40
  Yeah, man, it was definitely one of the things that attracted me
• 43:44
  to this job. And even though at the time you
• 43:48
  didn't have a lot of guys that were being nationally
• 43:50
  recognized, I knew it was the place that you could get the
• 43:54
  best caliber defensive backs in the country to come play.
• 43:57
  You know, I was on the other sideline for 12 years and I was
• 44:01
  in a lot of those recruiting battles and I didn't mean didn't
• 44:04
  win a lot of those, you know, when I was doing that.
• 44:07
  So I had first hand experience with a lot of these guys and,
• 44:11
  you know, just recruiting against Virginia Tech in the
• 44:13
  past. And when you see a kid get that
• 44:16
  Virginia Tech offer, you'd almost cringe because you know
• 44:19
  that all your work and all your hours and all your time's
• 44:22
  probably now in vain. And I can honestly say that now
• 44:26
  when I'm recruiting the defensive back, I don't worry
• 44:28
  about anybody else in America offering them because I feel
• 44:31
  like we've got something to offer that not many other people
• 44:34
  in America have to offer. And I think at this point in my
• 44:38
  career, I'm finally at a place to where I can maximize my
• 44:43
  ability to coach and to develop with the top caliber athletes in
• 44:48
  America, and I'm excited for the future.
• 44:52
  Yeah, that was a great question, Curtis, man, I, you know, I
• 44:55
  wasn't even thinking about that and looking at it like that, but
• 44:58
  kind of does go hand in hand with what what I was going to
• 45:00
  ask though now, because when you think about your your position
• 45:05
  group and then we're going to flip over to the offense.
• 45:09
  Virginia Tech's been known for some some great BB runs.
• 45:12
  We haven't been known for a lot of hot powered offense wide
• 45:17
  receiver groups. So now I feel like we have that,
• 45:20
  you know, I feel like that the nation has taken a taken a a
• 45:24
  look at what Virginia Tech has in that wide receiver room.
• 45:27
  And we know iron sharpen iron sharpens iron.
• 45:30
  So those practices is what we want to talk about.
• 45:34
  Like how intense are those practices between like your guys
• 45:38
  and that wide receiver group and also with the coaches?
• 45:40
  Like are y'all friendly with each other to get that growth or
• 45:43
  y'all competing like the like the young men are competing?
• 45:47
  You know, I think it kind of goes both ways.
• 45:50
  You know, Fun Tail and I are really close, so we all get back
• 45:54
  and forth because we understand that it gets our young men
• 45:58
  going. And so you know, but Funtell and
• 46:01
  I have a unique way or not. Not only do we sell it to our
• 46:05
  players, we sell it in recruiting.
• 46:06
  And I'll get to that a little bit later, but you know, we've
• 46:09
  got a lot of guys in that receiving core that are just as
• 46:14
  good as anything that these guys are going to see any Saturday.
• 46:17
  And you don't get good in games, you get good in practice.
• 46:22
  You know, you look at the amount of games that you play, how many
• 46:25
  snaps you play, how many targets come your way.
• 46:28
  It's not a large, large number when you tally it up at the end
• 46:30
  of the year, but in order to get yourself to where you can play
• 46:34
  the way Dory and Strong played this year, you have to have guys
• 46:38
  like Cohen, Felton and Gosnell to be able to get you sharp on a
• 46:43
  daily basis. And we have very competitive
• 46:46
  Pascal sessions in one-on-one sessions.
• 46:49
  But we also do a lot of individual drills together.
• 46:52
  And you know, it's one thing for me to have my DBS trying to
• 46:55
  demonstrate stuff to each other. We're not receivers.
• 46:58
  It's a whole different animal when you can bring a guy that
• 47:02
  may not be as good as the guys you're going to play on Saturday
• 47:05
  that you're working against. So that instills confidence.
• 47:09
  You know, young guys like Braylon Thomas Williams, Dante
• 47:13
  Lovett, Kristen Williams, being able to go against guys like
• 47:17
  Jalen Lane and Cohen Felton, Ollie Jennings, it only makes
• 47:21
  those guys better. So it's been really good to have
• 47:24
  that competition. And the other piece of it is one
• 47:27
  thing I always sell in the recruiting process to both
• 47:30
  receivers and defensive backs is what I just said.
• 47:33
  You have to be knowledgeable of the receivers coach.
• 47:37
  If you play corner, you need to be knowledgeable of him.
• 47:40
  And the reason you need to be knowledgeable of the receivers
• 47:42
  coach is you need to know his ability to coach, to develop and
• 47:48
  to recruit that position because as I said earlier, you're going
• 47:52
  to get good in practice, not in the games.
• 47:55
  And any receivers that we bring in here, they need to be
• 47:58
  knowledgeable as me, as the coach and of Pearson because
• 48:02
  they need to know our ability to be able to recruit, coach and
• 48:06
  develop the guys they're going to be going again.
• 48:08
  And so I am always talking to young men on the phone about
• 48:13
  what Funtail Mimes brings to the table as a coach and a
• 48:17
  recruiter, you know, because I want to add that aspect of it
• 48:21
  and it just gives us a little bit more ammunition in the
• 48:23
  recruiting process. I love hearing that because it's
• 48:26
  like you're not just recruiting guys.
• 48:29
  I'm going to get you better. We're going to get you better
• 48:32
  collectively. We're going to get you better
• 48:33
  because of the guys that you're going to line up against and
• 48:35
  practice every day. No doubt about it.
• 48:39
  Let me ask this and it kind of is going that iron shopping on
• 48:43
  iron. I am assuming y'all film these
• 48:45
  scrimmages. Do you guys sit as a collective
• 48:48
  unit and just watching And then and I know it's different
• 48:53
  positions and everything, but you know someone like Stu Hall
• 48:56
  who's a tight end coach, hey, hey, hey cheetah, so and so is
• 49:01
  kind of doing something with his legs when y'all were playing
• 49:03
  this type coverage. Do y'all do things like that on
• 49:06
  a daily basis? Yes, indeed.
• 49:09
  You know, because we're one family and even though we're
• 49:12
  competing against our offense and they're competing against
• 49:15
  us, we know ultimately to get to where we got to go, we got to
• 49:18
  compete at the highest level possible against our
• 49:20
  competition. So that's just part of coaching.
• 49:23
  You know, it's JC Price's job to be able to tell me if he sees
• 49:27
  something that one of my guys doing.
• 49:28
  Or it's JC Price's job to be able to tell Ryan Crook if his
• 49:32
  guard is tipping that he's pulling a certain type of way.
• 49:35
  It's my job to be able to tell. Fun tell minds that one of his
• 49:38
  receivers gets down deeper in his stance when he's getting the
• 49:41
  ball as opposed to when he's not.
• 49:44
  Or every time he goes to get the ball, he's doing something with
• 49:47
  his gloves. These are things that I study
• 49:50
  that Fun Tell may not study. So naturally I've got to be be
• 49:53
  able to go tell him that about his guy so that he can make
• 49:56
  those corrections. So that's just a normal part of
• 49:58
  coaching, I think, on every coaching staff.
• 50:01
  Nice. Something else I want to bring
• 50:03
  up and these two going to be getting on me after the call.
• 50:06
  Like, you keep asking more questions than we put out there.
• 50:08
  Like, well, you know. It's all good.
• 50:12
  I'll let it slide. I'll let it.
• 50:13
  Slide Curtis, I know you got all night, so this is good, but let
• 50:17
  me ask this because, you know, we threw his name up here a
• 50:19
  little while ago and he's one of me and Brian's best friends.
• 50:22
  Tally's gotten to know him over the last couple years, Coach
• 50:25
  Compton. But how important has it been
• 50:28
  for not only this staff, but for you with those coaching clinics
• 50:33
  where you're teaching? Because Because Robbie made a
• 50:35
  joke. Robbie's a bigger guy, but he
• 50:36
  made a joke here talking about 40 year old £350.
• 50:40
  Trying to demonstrate ain't great.
• 50:42
  But how important are those clinics to get those high school
• 50:45
  coaches in there and to show them your techniques?
• 50:47
  And then just in general for the high school relation piece, how
• 50:51
  is how? Big is that Ben?
• 50:53
  Because Coach probably was not shy about it the day he stepped
• 50:56
  on that. The state is ours in the
• 50:59
  region's going to become ours. It's invaluable because high
• 51:05
  school coaching relationships are where you get the
• 51:09
  information that you need. We spend a lot of time
• 51:12
  recruiting, but you got to think of how big of an investment it
• 51:15
  is to say that you're going to trust the kid to come in and be
• 51:20
  who you need him to be. To develop the culture of a
• 51:24
  program. You've got to have high school
• 51:26
  coaches that you trust. You got to have high school
• 51:29
  coaches that are going to be honest with you, and you've got
• 51:32
  to get to know them to make sure those things are happening.
• 51:35
  But you also got to have relationships with high school
• 51:38
  coaches, so they're OK bringing young men to campus that may not
• 51:41
  have rides. You got to be have relationships
• 51:44
  with high school coaches. That information that's true for
• 51:48
  information so you don't waste your time in recruiting, you
• 51:51
  know, things like that. One of the big parts about
• 51:54
  taking this job for me was it put me back into a lot of the
• 51:59
  recruiting areas I've had for a long time at other schools I've
• 52:01
  been at. When I went to Texas, that was
• 52:05
  one of the things that I found out during the pandemic.
• 52:08
  I went to the Texas Tech right when the pandemic hit.
• 52:12
  I didn't know a lot of Texas coaches well, kids can't visit
• 52:15
  campus. We can't go to schools.
• 52:19
  High school coaches are going to send their kids where where they
• 52:22
  know people. I'm on Zooms like this, talking
• 52:26
  to guys I don't know about, turning their kids over to me,
• 52:30
  you know, that was hard. And these coaches are sending
• 52:34
  their players at a time that was very critical to coaches they
• 52:38
  trust. Well, it was a lesson for me.
• 52:40
  So I had a couple of different job opportunities when I took
• 52:43
  this one, but this was the one that basically put me back home.
• 52:47
  I've recruited the same recruiting areas that I've
• 52:50
  always had, with the exception of the area that I have in
• 52:53
  Virginia, and that was pretty easy for me because of the power
• 52:57
  of social media. You know, most of the schools
• 52:59
  that I walked into, the coaches knew who I was because of my
• 53:02
  Twitter presence. But one of the first things
• 53:05
  Coach Pry told me, because it was me, Coach Pry, JC Price and
• 53:11
  Sean Quinn the first day that we were out and we went straight to
• 53:14
  the 757 and he said, man, every time you get out, I want you to
• 53:18
  come over here because we have done a good job here.
• 53:20
  And we walked into Warwick High School and there was a custodian
• 53:24
  in the hall where he stopped and he looked at us and he was like
• 53:27
  Virginia Tech. He's like, we hadn't seen a
• 53:29
  coach in Virginia Tech around here in five or six years.
• 53:32
  And I went over to Hampton High School and I heard the same
• 53:35
  thing. I went to Denby High School, I
• 53:37
  heard the same thing. And I'm like, you know, this
• 53:40
  isn't going to be as hard as possible because all we got to
• 53:43
  do is what we're supposed to do. And, you know, I've developed
• 53:46
  relationships with a lot of these coaches.
• 53:48
  A huge plus has been having Funtell minds on staff because
• 53:52
  everybody knows Funtell. You know, he's from Virginia.
• 53:55
  He's coached at like 30-5 different schools in the state
• 53:58
  of Virginia. You walk into a school with him,
• 54:01
  the janitors know him, the principals know him, the
• 54:03
  secretaries know him. So it's been really good, you
• 54:06
  know, just to develop those relationships and Coach Fry kind
• 54:10
  of limited what we were doing in recruiting, just recruiting our
• 54:13
  footprint. And that's been very strong for
• 54:16
  us because when you only recruit a certain radius, you get to go
• 54:20
  to these places more times. We're not spending a lot of time
• 54:24
  away from our footprint. So we're showing our faces in a
• 54:27
  lot of these schools over and over and over again and that's
• 54:31
  paid dividends for us. Yeah, it seems like when you
• 54:34
  guys are stepping out of the footprint, it is a very
• 54:36
  deliberate step. Otherwise you're.
• 54:40
  You're staying staying kind of where where the bread butters
• 54:43
  made. Yeah.
• 54:44
  You know, if, if it makes sense for us to go outside of the
• 54:47
  footprint, you know, relationships that we may had.
• 54:50
  You know, you may have a guy that's a legacy at Virginia Tech
• 54:53
  that has a son, or you may have a coach that you know very well
• 54:56
  that has a kid that just wants to come to Virginia Tech.
• 54:59
  Those are exceptions. And naturally, once you get to
• 55:02
  the transfer portal, you have to be a little bit more broad, but
• 55:05
  not now that you're dealing with a different type of maturity
• 55:08
  when you're dealing with that and you know a little bit more
• 55:10
  about some of these guys, that's more like NFL free agency than
• 55:14
  it is the recruiting piece. But I think you guys also know
• 55:16
  we've taken a lot of guys out of the transfer portal that are
• 55:19
  Virginia guys as well. So we're still trying to stay
• 55:23
  close. And what I've come to find out
• 55:25
  in a small amount of time, the further away from home guys go,
• 55:30
  the more likely they ought to try to go back home.
• 55:33
  And that's just a trend that's coming with nil now because a
• 55:36
  lot of guys that are close to the net get marketing deals or
• 55:42
  as guys that may not be close to not getting those mom and pop
• 55:45
  deals. And that's just the part of the
• 55:46
  business that we're in right now.
• 55:48
  Tal, you were about to say something there.
• 55:50
  Go ahead, man. You know, just real quick, man,
• 55:52
  I mean, we've talked about it a couple times and then in spaces
• 55:55
  with guys like, you know, Dwight being in there with us just
• 55:58
  talking about recruiting and you know, looking at looking at how
• 56:02
  coaches recruit, of course coach Jones knows.
• 56:05
  No, they've they've got pretty good at this thing.
• 56:07
  But we had some people whenever you guys first got here would be
• 56:10
  like, why are they going to, you know, this school you just
• 56:13
  mentioned Warwick, what work don't have no players, you know,
• 56:16
  3-2 years ago, three years ago, why would they go to this
• 56:19
  school? Well, you know, not the name,
• 56:21
  any names, but you Fast forward and then this school pops up
• 56:24
  with a four-star guy or five star or three star guy that
• 56:27
  everybody's on and be like, Oh yeah, you remember when the
• 56:30
  coaches went there three years ago, you know, and started
• 56:33
  building that relationship. So now you get into those those
• 56:37
  battles and get into those recruiting talks with those high
• 56:40
  level players because of a a relationship that you developed
• 56:44
  3-4 years ago. So I mean it was it, it was
• 56:47
  great to see. We don't have to go a lot into,
• 56:50
  you know, the regime that was here before you guys, but it was
• 56:53
  great to see when you guys came in how y'all hit the ground
• 56:56
  running. Just being active on social
• 56:58
  media, man, it, it, you know, being willing to talk to people,
• 57:02
  being willing to go in and talk to a custodian in a school
• 57:05
  because I feel like sometimes so certain people get, you know, I
• 57:10
  guess a, a place of power, a position of power, like a head
• 57:12
  coach. And they feel like they're above
• 57:14
  that. You know, they feel like they
• 57:15
  don't have to speak to a custodian when they go in
• 57:19
  somewhere. They don't have to go talk to
• 57:22
  the, the Barber on the corner. But that may be the way that you
• 57:25
  get into a family. So again man, kudos to you guys
• 57:29
  for what you've done and how you guys have built relationships
• 57:32
  and we starting to see dividends from it.
• 57:35
  Yeah, it's been good, man. And just a general recruiting
• 57:39
  practice in itself. When you go into schools, often
• 57:43
  you get to know more people and you're trying to find out about
• 57:47
  these young men. You know, in the world of the
• 57:49
  transfer portal now you better know as much about these young
• 57:52
  men as you could possibly know. And so when I go in, I know what
• 57:56
  the coach is going to say. But as I'm leaving that school,
• 57:59
  I may ask the principal, I may ask that security guard at the
• 58:03
  front. I go into lunch rooms and ask
• 58:05
  the lunch room. Ladies in certain areas know
• 58:08
  everybody in town. And so you're asking them and
• 58:11
  they may tell you something simple as this, where you need
• 58:14
  to get to his grandma. Well, how would I have known
• 58:16
  that if Sister Teresa hadn't have told me this in the
• 58:20
  lunchroom? So you're just equipping
• 58:23
  yourself with more knowledge by talking to people, but you want
• 58:26
  people to be ambassadors for you as well.
• 58:29
  So my mom always told me, don't be the person to ask for
• 58:33
  something when you need it. Speak to people when you don't
• 58:37
  want anything. And it's no different when it
• 58:39
  comes to recruiting. Go into the school, establish
• 58:41
  these relationships. Because the other thing you
• 58:43
  don't know in this profession, you don't know who's going to
• 58:46
  end up where. Coaches move around in high
• 58:48
  school, they move around in college, they move around in the
• 58:50
  NFL. So you better make sure that
• 58:53
  you're covering your base for anything that may take place,
• 58:56
  whether it's three years, four years or five years later.
• 58:59
  And it's your job. It's not hard to do.
• 59:02
  And, and you talked about, you know, it, it being important
• 59:05
  what other people you're thinking and, and how they
• 59:07
  present you to those players. You know, I've always been told,
• 59:10
  like I act in a way where when you're not in the room, those
• 59:15
  people are talking good about you.
• 59:18
  And it and. It sounds like that's the
• 59:20
  mentality that y'all are bringing to that, that
• 59:22
  relationship building as well. Treat people like you should and
• 59:25
  they're going to talk about you when you're not around.
• 59:28
  And the other piece of it is, I mean, you're talking about going
• 59:30
  to high schools in the state of Virginia.
• 59:33
  You know how many educators we run into in schools that are
• 59:36
  teachers that are assistant principals that went to Virginia
• 59:39
  Tech. And one of the first things I do
• 59:41
  when I go into a school is say, do we have any Hokies?
• 59:44
  Well, Miss Smith is a Hokie. Will you take me by a classroom?
• 59:48
  You know, those things carry a lot of weight because now this
• 59:51
  lady is teaching this guy in chemistry that I'm trying to
• 59:53
  recruit. You know, it just makes the
• 59:56
  difference. Then you do things like that.
• 1:00:00
  Oh, 100%. I mean, and it's all it's all
• 1:00:02
  about that. It's that whole just constantly
• 1:00:07
  building relationships tally and sales Cali something you always
• 1:00:10
  were talking about and you know, through our years, it's
• 1:00:14
  relationships. You know, how did three guys who
• 1:00:19
  did not go to Virginia Tech, you know, love the school, but over
• 1:00:25
  the last couple years we have we're having the pleasure of
• 1:00:27
  interviewing you tonight. We had the chance to interview
• 1:00:30
  Coach Pry relationships, creating relationships, having
• 1:00:34
  good conversations with people. You know, make sure we got to
• 1:00:36
  talk to you out at Hardywood. You and Gunter.
• 1:00:39
  We mean me and Brian said in 15 minutes and talk to y'all and
• 1:00:41
  y'all took the time to talk to us, got in, blow us off.
• 1:00:45
  Y'all didn't look for the next person to talk to.
• 1:00:47
  Y'all talked with us because we had a genuine conversation and
• 1:00:49
  it's awesome to see. All right, we're going to keep
• 1:00:53
  rolling. I'm sure some more questions
• 1:00:54
  will come up from my crazy brain.
• 1:00:56
  But I do want to ask this because we are.
• 1:00:58
  You told us a little while ago. We're one week away from the
• 1:01:01
  kids reporting for fall camp. Few days after that they'll get
• 1:01:05
  the practices going up. For this week.
• 1:01:08
  We also know that right now you're home alone.
• 1:01:11
  So do you have a ritual that you do leading up to fall camp?
• 1:01:17
  Do you have anything like here's my week?
• 1:01:20
  This is everything I want to get.
• 1:01:21
  Done. No, I don't really have a ritual
• 1:01:24
  I do leading up to fall camp, but fall camp is my time to go
• 1:01:29
  on a diet and get my body in shape.
• 1:01:31
  If anything else, you know, sadly, because we take these
• 1:01:35
  whirlwind vacations right before camp, you know, my body and
• 1:01:40
  everything else, blood pressure and all that stuff a little bit
• 1:01:43
  out of whack, you know. So training camp, you know, it's
• 1:01:46
  structured. I'm around exercise equipment.
• 1:01:50
  And so I take that time every year to make sure that I get my
• 1:01:53
  body in good enough shape to be able to withstand the late
• 1:01:57
  nights and the long hours. But more than anything else,
• 1:01:59
  just to find the balance. So if I've got any ritual, I
• 1:02:02
  look forward to getting myself in the state so that I can still
• 1:02:06
  at 50 years of age, be able to somewhat demonstrate the drills
• 1:02:09
  I need to demonstrate to Josh Clark and the young guys that
• 1:02:11
  I've got. I don't want y'all to read about
• 1:02:14
  me past, not from an asthma attack or nothing out.
• 1:02:16
  There, there you go. There you.
• 1:02:17
  Go I like hearing that. I like, you know, you talked
• 1:02:20
  about being, you know, on the road for a month.
• 1:02:22
  I can't imagine like four weeks worth of, you know, Rd. meals,
• 1:02:29
  different meals at different restaurants, you know, all that
• 1:02:32
  stuff that. I mean, the man, the man said he
• 1:02:33
  carried around lemon pepper. You know how much sodium that
• 1:02:36
  thing got in it. Of course, of course he going to
• 1:02:39
  go get back, right? You want to look up, so you talk
• 1:02:42
  about blood pressure. You go look at the back of that
• 1:02:44
  lemon pepper. I promise.
• 1:02:46
  You no doubt about. It and that's what coach to
• 1:02:48
  coach to get that lemon pepper out of here.
• 1:02:49
  Yeah, Oh yeah, true, true. You can do the salt free with
• 1:02:53
  Miss Dash. So I got to yeah, you get you
• 1:02:58
  get a little pepper, you get a little pepper.
• 1:02:59
  Not much lemon with Miss Dash. So I didn't try it too though.
• 1:03:03
  But yeah, coach, we're going to go, you know, keep it rolling
• 1:03:05
  here. Back in June, we talked with
• 1:03:08
  Coach Pry and he just talked about managing the expectations
• 1:03:11
  for the season. What are you doing with your
• 1:03:14
  group to just, you know, to manage these expectations?
• 1:03:17
  Because us as as fans, every year we're going, we're going to
• 1:03:22
  be hype. We're going to throw the hype
• 1:03:23
  train on, but now it's more than just hokey nation and hokey
• 1:03:27
  fans. Like national media is picking
• 1:03:29
  up things. You know what I'm saying, people
• 1:03:31
  that we don't even have TikTok personalities, but this is a
• 1:03:34
  team. And then now you got the the
• 1:03:36
  video game that came out and you got video, video game experts
• 1:03:41
  like this is a fun team to play with because they got this, this
• 1:03:43
  myth. So how you get?
• 1:03:45
  How do you handle those expectations for your group?
• 1:03:49
  You know, for me it's not that big of a deal for my group.
• 1:03:54
  I coach corners. And so your day one page one
• 1:03:58
  training as a corner is don't let your highs get too high,
• 1:04:01
  don't let your levels get too low.
• 1:04:03
  I mean, you can make a great player at corner and be the
• 1:04:05
  reason you lose a ball game, you know, and everybody understands
• 1:04:08
  that. So it's just a natural mentality
• 1:04:11
  that I instill on a daily basis with my guys.
• 1:04:14
  So it's really not that big of a deal that they're starting to
• 1:04:17
  read a lot of positive things about themselves because they're
• 1:04:20
  taught not to listen too much to the cheers because the boos will
• 1:04:23
  also come in a sense. And that's just how you have to
• 1:04:26
  train corners from a mentality standpoint.
• 1:04:29
  But I think Coach Pride himself does a really good job at that.
• 1:04:33
  You know, even our first year here, things were not going
• 1:04:36
  well. Coach Pride's entire message to
• 1:04:39
  the team on a consistent basis has been don't listen to the
• 1:04:44
  noise, don't listen to the noise.
• 1:04:46
  We believed what we were doing. We were confident in what we
• 1:04:49
  were doing, but we knew it was going to take some time.
• 1:04:51
  You know, we didn't come in here thinking we were going to wave a
• 1:04:54
  magic wand and all of a sudden, you know, go win 12 ball games.
• 1:04:58
  We've all been in situations like this with veteran coaches,
• 1:05:02
  but we were 100% confident in what we were doing and how we
• 1:05:05
  were going about doing it. And you have to teach the team
• 1:05:08
  to be the same way. And anything we've done last
• 1:05:11
  year doesn't matter. We've done nothing this year.
• 1:05:15
  And my guys understand that. I tell my guys all the time, pre
• 1:05:19
  season rankings mean nothing. Whether you're ranked high or
• 1:05:22
  whether you're ranked low, it doesn't make a difference if
• 1:05:25
  you're ranked pre season, all ACC.
• 1:05:28
  If you're not post season, all AC, post season all ACC matters.
• 1:05:33
  So my guys are going to understand that from the first
• 1:05:35
  day that I coached him, I don't care about what nobody says
• 1:05:38
  about you, good or bad. So I don't want you to care
• 1:05:41
  about what nobody said about you, good or bad.
• 1:05:42
  You keep your head down, you keep working and you grind, and
• 1:05:45
  your production will speak for itself.
• 1:05:48
  You don't have to tell people how good you are, and you don't
• 1:05:50
  have to explain to people that you're not bad.
• 1:05:53
  Curtis, we found somebody else that doesn't give a shit about
• 1:05:55
  pre season. If you ever wanted to get Brian
• 1:05:59
  Ziegler on a tangent for 15 minutes, talk to him about pre
• 1:06:04
  season, AP, pre season coach rankings.
• 1:06:06
  He sit at the break room in our own workplace and he'd go off on
• 1:06:09
  somebody 15 minutes. It was great.
• 1:06:11
  OK, I want to ask you though. Go ahead.
• 1:06:14
  You know, it's, it's good because people love football and
• 1:06:18
  people want something to read about that feeds the frenzy.
• 1:06:23
  You know, I think it's really good for fans to get that
• 1:06:27
  perspective. But when you actually play the
• 1:06:29
  sport or you coach the sport, that's the last thing you care
• 1:06:33
  about because you haven't done anything.
• 1:06:34
  You know, I mean, every year you look at it, there's never been a
• 1:06:39
  preseason top 25 that ended up the way that it it was in the
• 1:06:43
  preseason, not one time. I don't know that to be true,
• 1:06:45
  but I promise you that's never happened.
• 1:06:47
  Pretty sure it's never happened. Yep.
• 1:06:49
  And and my, my thing was always it's good for the fans.
• 1:06:53
  It's great for the fans because it builds the hype and gets
• 1:06:55
  everybody going. When you started making it a
• 1:06:58
  part of the process of post season play and stuff like that,
• 1:07:02
  I'm like, you're biasing what that's what what the what the
• 1:07:06
  what's going to end up at the end because of what you had at
• 1:07:08
  the beginning. Don't want to be wrong.
• 1:07:10
  Let at least September play out, maybe even half of October or
• 1:07:14
  most of October before you start talking about OK, well, here's
• 1:07:17
  the good teams, and here's the teams that aren't quite there
• 1:07:19
  yet, and here's the teams that don't belong at all.
• 1:07:22
  But it's like anything else, man Everything sales and you know,
• 1:07:26
  those Athlons, Lindsay's magazines, somebody's grabbing
• 1:07:29
  them off the shelf. Somebody's making money up and
• 1:07:32
  somebody's punching a website to read about what somebody thinks
• 1:07:36
  other teams are going to finish. I hope my guys aren't wrapped up
• 1:07:39
  into that. You know, You know, it's nice to
• 1:07:42
  maybe go to the magazine and grab a picture, but I think my
• 1:07:45
  guys are trained pretty well not to pay that much attention.
• 1:07:48
  You know, your family can pay it attention.
• 1:07:50
  It's good for them to be able to pass around at the grocery store
• 1:07:53
  and things like that, but we got to stay focused on the task at
• 1:07:55
  hand. And it's funny hearing you talk
• 1:07:58
  about cornerbacks where it's like as an offensive lineman, we
• 1:08:01
  had the opposite, you know, problem.
• 1:08:02
  I think you, like you guys had to stay even keeled because
• 1:08:06
  you're you're one big player, one bad play away from having
• 1:08:09
  your name out there. And then it's offensive lineman.
• 1:08:11
  We got to stay even keeled because we're anonymous.
• 1:08:14
  And anytime we screw up, that's the only time we're not
• 1:08:17
  anonymous. I can tell you from having
• 1:08:21
  played corner, and even though it's been a long, long time ago,
• 1:08:25
  once you've been beaten, you're humble.
• 1:08:29
  I don't care. I don't care what else happens
• 1:08:31
  in your career once you've been beaten and you've had that
• 1:08:35
  feeling of having to get down and try to block APAP and take
• 1:08:38
  that job to the sideline. You don't want that to happen no
• 1:08:42
  more. So you're not going to get too
• 1:08:43
  hyped about much of anything because you have to do the
• 1:08:46
  things that you have to do not to get that feeling anymore.
• 1:08:49
  That's a horrible feeling and not many people want that
• 1:08:52
  feeling. Not at all.
• 1:08:55
  Coach, I want to ask you something real quick because we
• 1:08:57
  know you do have a book out there, but I always see the the
• 1:09:00
  #apw and I know that's one of your mentalities, but where did
• 1:09:04
  it come from? The always play to win.
• 1:09:07
  You know, I may always play to win up in high school.
• 1:09:11
  Actually, I mean, it actually started.
• 1:09:13
  I used to have a little select slogan in high school.
• 1:09:16
  I it was, I play to win. I would always say that I played
• 1:09:20
  to win. I played to win and it's just
• 1:09:21
  confidence, something very simple.
• 1:09:24
  And strangely, when I got to Duke, we didn't have anything to
• 1:09:29
  stand on. I mean, we hadn't won a lot of
• 1:09:31
  ball games. There was not a lot of morale in
• 1:09:34
  the room. And social media was just
• 1:09:36
  starting to come into play. It was Facebook, there was no
• 1:09:38
  Twitter, there was no Instagram. But I wanted to be able to come
• 1:09:42
  up with something that would identify my brand as a coach, as
• 1:09:48
  a recruiter with young men. Everybody was coming up with
• 1:09:52
  hashtags. And so Always Play to Win had
• 1:09:56
  always been my motto. So I just put it into a little
• 1:10:00
  equation with the A to Peter Two and the West.
• 1:10:02
  And then it transitioned into a company and a foundation on once
• 1:10:07
  I wrote the book. And we've been able to do a lot
• 1:10:09
  of things since that, but it simply stands for Always Play to
• 1:10:12
  Win. There's somebody out there
• 1:10:15
  loving your mentality, coach one.
• 1:10:17
  Of our I, I love that you kind of had that mentality going back
• 1:10:20
  to your high school days out. And I love that it started with
• 1:10:23
  a way to kind of get that self-confidence boost, that
• 1:10:26
  confidence going into those big time situations where a lot of
• 1:10:30
  times you know that that confidence is what you fall back
• 1:10:32
  on and how you stay even keeled through those processes, those
• 1:10:36
  ups and downs of a game, those ups and downs of the season.
• 1:10:39
  So I love that we're kind of wrapping up here.
• 1:10:43
  I'm, I don't know if anybody else has anything they want to
• 1:10:45
  throw in there, but I, I wanted to kind of this will be my, this
• 1:10:48
  will be my last one that I'll throw at you.
• 1:10:51
  Can you sum up kind of what's what, what you feel about this
• 1:10:54
  season, this team and and maybe even specifically your unit in
• 1:10:58
  one word, how you feel heading into this season?
• 1:11:03
  Easily hungry. I'm hungry is the word.
• 1:11:07
  And I would say that, you know, because I've witnessed it.
• 1:11:11
  You know, I've seen the way these guys have worked in the
• 1:11:13
  offseason. I've seen how these guys have
• 1:11:16
  responded to the noise. I saw how we didn't lose anybody
• 1:11:21
  major in the portal. I saw how our coaching staff
• 1:11:24
  stayed intact. I know the belief and I know
• 1:11:28
  everybody understands. Now we have a shot to fulfill a
• 1:11:31
  lot of the things that we believe we can fulfill.
• 1:11:34
  But you got to be hungry. Nothing's going to be handed to
• 1:11:36
  you. There's a lot of good football
• 1:11:38
  teams on our schedule. There are no easy games on our
• 1:11:42
  schedule, despite what predictions there are.
• 1:11:44
  But I think this team is really hungry to prove to themselves
• 1:11:49
  and the rest of the world that we are a National Football
• 1:11:52
  power. Nice.
• 1:11:55
  I love that. I love that.
• 1:11:57
  And that, that was the word I was hoping you were going to say
• 1:12:01
  when, when I when I put that question.
• 1:12:03
  Together I put it. Together.
• 1:12:04
  I wrote it back. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't let
• 1:12:06
  anybody else know about. I was like, I hope he says
• 1:12:09
  hungry because that because that's what I'm seeing and and I
• 1:12:13
  think that's Hokie nation. That's what we want this team to
• 1:12:15
  be is still hungry to kind of take that next step, continue
• 1:12:18
  reaching for those goals that I know you guys have and coach
• 1:12:21
  pride talked about it at ACC media day today that are a lot
• 1:12:25
  bigger than, you know, just, you know, getting back to a bowl
• 1:12:29
  again or just winning 10 games. You know, the the, the
• 1:12:32
  expectations are up there for what you can accomplish and
• 1:12:36
  being hungry to accomplish that is important.
• 1:12:39
  One of the things I've learned in my coaching career and
• 1:12:42
  playing career is that if you don't expect to win
• 1:12:45
  championships, you're not going to win championships.
• 1:12:49
  And that's the bottom line of it.
• 1:12:50
  You know, if you expect to get to a bowl game and that's your
• 1:12:53
  expectation, that's what's going to happen for you.
• 1:12:55
  And there's no harm in saying our goal is to win A
• 1:13:00
  championship, not saying it's going to happen, but that has to
• 1:13:03
  be the goal in order for us to reach it.
• 1:13:05
  Because if that's not your goal, you're not pushing yourself to
• 1:13:09
  the limit to reach that. And that's just the mindset.
• 1:13:13
  Oh yeah, definitely. Love that coach.
• 1:13:14
  Love that man. I know you're getting ready to
• 1:13:17
  get out of here, so I'm all I'm. I got one more I'm going to
• 1:13:20
  throw at you. I know you've been busy.
• 1:13:21
  I know you've been ripping and running.
• 1:13:24
  We got to see a couple of our guys go to ACC Media day and we
• 1:13:28
  had Dorian representing your your group of guys.
• 1:13:31
  Did you get to see his outfit? Yeah, man, I saw his blue suit
• 1:13:34
  yesterday when he picked it up. Man, I, I told him that's
• 1:13:37
  impressive, you know? So I was going to ask you.
• 1:13:39
  I was going. To ask you, Playboy myself, I
• 1:13:42
  like that. I was hoping you was going to
• 1:13:44
  say you got to see it, so I was going to ask you to rate.
• 1:13:47
  Rate his drip coach one of the team where you think he was at.
• 1:13:51
  I will give him a 10 on that one man.
• 1:13:53
  I mean, it takes it takes confidence to step out in
• 1:13:56
  something like that. I know that person because I do
• 1:13:59
  it all the. Time, I think he looks.
• 1:14:01
  It's almost like a father watching his son blossom into
• 1:14:04
  something else. So when I saw that suit
• 1:14:06
  yesterday, I was like, that's my guy.
• 1:14:09
  Yeah, yeah, I've seen it. I was like, OK, he look, he
• 1:14:12
  looks like a cornerback, like he looks like ADB, you know what
• 1:14:16
  I'm saying? Because the DBS like you got to
• 1:14:17
  be a little bit flamboyant. You got to talk a little junk
• 1:14:19
  like when I seen him with that suit on, I was like, Yep, that's
• 1:14:23
  that's what he looked like. So I got to ask coach what he
• 1:14:25
  what he thought about that. So that's.
• 1:14:27
  All I got when I go to buy a blazer suit and I say what would
• 1:14:30
  somebody else not wear? That's what I want.
• 1:14:34
  Give me two of them. Exactly.
• 1:14:39
  Brian, you got anything else for coach tonight?
• 1:14:42
  I think I'm all set, brother. Man, coach, this has been an
• 1:14:46
  entertaining hour and 15 minutes.
• 1:14:48
  We thank you so, so much for giving us your time because we
• 1:14:54
  know you do not have much of it leading up to these last few
• 1:14:56
  weeks of summer before you hit the fall camp.
• 1:15:01
  And, and it's been a pleasure. This is the second time me and
• 1:15:04
  Brian has gotten to talk to you. The the everything that come
• 1:15:09
  y'all, I'm going to just say this in person re show during
• 1:15:13
  the show, the man that y'all see putting stuff out on social
• 1:15:17
  media, all this stuff, the sayings, the quotes, you're
• 1:15:21
  always had to your mentality Every time I love, I still love
• 1:15:25
  reading it. It's a great time to be a hokey.
• 1:15:29
  No doubt about it man, and I appreciate y'all having me on
• 1:15:32
  and man, I just want to say the Hokey Nation, man, we appreciate
• 1:15:35
  you guys. The one thing that's been stable
• 1:15:38
  since we started here is the support of the fans and Hokey
• 1:15:41
  Nation and that's been big for us.
• 1:15:43
  You guys have no idea what it means for me to be able to go
• 1:15:47
  into a high school or go into a household and sell to kids that
• 1:15:51
  they're going to be able to play in front of one of the best
• 1:15:53
  atmospheres in all the sports, not just college football.
• 1:15:56
  That's big, and it's big, big that for our social media
• 1:16:01
  presence that there's so much positivity from Hokey Nation on
• 1:16:06
  social media. I don't think a lot of fan bases
• 1:16:09
  understand how much you can hurt a program with negativity.
• 1:16:13
  You know, I've been at a couple of places where people would
• 1:16:16
  just go on to the official website and attack the coaching
• 1:16:21
  staff. That's not helping us.
• 1:16:23
  That's not helping us to grow because why do parents want to
• 1:16:27
  send their place to a fan base that's unsupportive, you know,
• 1:16:31
  And those are the things that we don't have to worry about with
• 1:16:34
  Hokey Nation, man. So hats off to all of you.
• 1:16:38
  We love you. Y'all are a weapon, Y'all are
• 1:16:40
  the 12th man and let's go win some football games.
• 1:16:43
  Yes, Sir. Y'all.
• 1:16:45
  Thank you, Coach Jones for that. That is going to wrap up this
• 1:16:48
  episode of the Boundary Corner Podcast brought to you by Main
• 1:16:51
  Street Pharmacy. I'm Curtis Wilson.
• 1:16:54
  I'm Brian Siegler. Jonathan Talley.
• 1:16:57
  It's a great time to be a hokey. This is Coach Derek Cheetah
• 1:17:01
  Jones. Visit our website,
• 1:17:03
  boundarycornerbt.com to check out all of our episodes.
• 1:17:07
  While you're there, follow us everywhere.
• 1:17:08
  We're on Twitter, we're on Facebook, Instagram.
• 1:17:10
  We have a YouTube channel as well.
• 1:17:13
  Any podcast source you can think of, Brian bumps it to them.
• 1:17:16
  It'll be there tomorrow morning if you want to listen to this
• 1:17:18
  again. As always, we let our buddy
• 1:17:21
  Jason Long who is down in the Roanoke area.
• 1:17:25
  He plays us in, he plays us out. Take a look at him, Jason Long,
• 1:17:30
  music.com. Check him out for all of his
• 1:17:33
  stuff, connections to his Facebook page, his YouTube
• 1:17:37
  sites, and in the next few weeks here.
• 1:17:40
  He's got a few things going on down in Roanoke.
• 1:17:42
  I want to pump these out. He is going to be at the West
• 1:17:45
  End Farmers Market on August 6th.
• 1:17:48
  He is going to be at the Waxena City Tap Room on August 7th at
• 1:17:51
  6:30 to 8:30. He will be playing at the
• 1:17:54
  Roanoke Taco Fest in September as well.
• 1:17:57
  I kind of laughed at that. But again, we thank you all for
• 1:18:01
  listening. Thank you all so much in the
• 1:18:03
  chat tonight. A lot of chatter out there, and
• 1:18:05
  as always, let's go. Okie.
• 1:18:45
  The.