April 14, 2007
SAN DIEGO - 2007 San Diego State Spring Football Scrimmage No. 1
SDSU Head Coach Chuck Long
Opening Statement:
"This was a good scrimmage for us today. I thought it was solid on both sides of the ball. We did not have a long scrimmage today. Our goal was to have about 48 plays, which we were able to do. Before that we had a team thud period to get some more plays in during the practice.
"One of our biggest concerns from last season is the injury situation. We are trying to get all of our guys out of spring practice healthy and at the same time see some of our younger players.
"We had a lot of young guys play well today. I am very pleased with guys like Tony DeMartinis and B.J. Williams, who had really good days today on defense. I thought Brandon Sullivan and Davon Brown preformed well on offense. We have been throwing a lot at them and we did the same today. We will probably start scaling back a little bit and start repeating plays.
"The big thing is we didn't have injuries coming out of this scrimmage and that was my number one goal. We tried to work some special teams and get those guys involved. We are still working toward figuring those lineups out."
On Jose Perez:
"He is another guy I should have mentioned with the younger players earlier. He is a player that switched from offense to defense right before the first practice. He has done a nice job. He has excellent ball skills and I thought he performed well. He has steadily improved every single day and is a hard working guy."
On Darren Mougey's switch to wide receiver:
"That move has been great. He didn't catch any balls today but he has caught five to six per practice and that is good to see. He knows the entire offense. We have moved him everywhere in the offense. By the end of spring or going into fall camp, we will settle on probably one or two positions for him. We like the way we can be flexible with him.
"We want to put our best players on the field. Our goal was to do that with Darren Mougey last year. We were planning on getting him into the offense if he was not going to be the starting quarterback. Injuries took care of that and he had to become a full-time quarterback."
Comparing this season to last season:
"I feel a lot better from day one. We are so much better from the way we are hitting to being more sound in our schemes. We scaled back the playbook during the offseason to try and give our players the best chance to succeed."
On the injury situation this season compared to last season:
"We are much better now. We still have some players that are hurt from last year, like Eric Miclot and Lance Louis and we still need to get DeMarco Sampson back. Those are guys that we have not really seen yet as coaches. We are hoping to get those guys along with some others - Josh Cunningham, Fred Amano and Ernie Lawson. We are a lot better off now."
On the status of Lynell Hamilton:
"It has been a tough road for Lynell. He has a knee that we are trying to calm down. My goal is to get him to the fall and that may mean he might not play during the spring. My goal for him is to give him a good year to go out on. I don't want him coming into the fall hurt."
SDSU Wide Receiver/Quarterback Darren Mougey
On the transition from quarterback to wide receiver:
"It's a transition that I have enjoyed, but I still have a lot of work to do and I am looking forward to it. Today is just one day closer to getting to that full transition."
On his shoulder:
"The shoulder is holding up fine. It's the legs more than anything, out here running around like these receivers do. I have never prepared the way they have in past. It's the legs, more than anything that is having trouble holding up."
On whether being a quarterback makes the transition to receiver easier:
"It makes the transition a lot easier. I know where a lot of the guys are supposed to be on the field and all of the schemes. I just have to work on getting there and doing the steps over and over."
SDSU Quarterback Kevin Craft
On the scrimmage:
"I felt pretty good. Obviously, we are working out some of the finer tune aspects of our offense. We just need to work out a couple of bugs and we'll get better week to week."
On the team:
"The biggest thing is we want to win. Everybody out here is hungry and I think it's been everybody's goal in the offseason to prove it whether it's in the weight room or out here on the field."
On the repositioning of players:
"(The coaches) moved around a couple of guys and I think they have adjusted well. Darren (Mougey) is a phenomenal athlete. He is a big guy that is physical, he's fast and he can go up and get the ball. They moved some quicker guys to defensive back. Overall, I think guys have adjusted pretty well."
SDSU Quarterback Kevin O'Connell
General comments:
"We have a long way to go before the season starts. I am just trying to, work on my health and everything in the weight room and then out here (on the field), just work on my reads, just being 100 percent better in each category. The coaches still want the quarterback to run a little bit and be athletes and get our completion percentages up. We should be fine. For our first scrimmage today, there was a lot of energy. We just need to do some work on our assignments. For the most part, guys showed a lot of effort today, which was really nice to see."
On the scrimmage:
"Today was our first scrimmage so it's always tough to judge it until you see the film. We had one good drive and we started off driving the ball pretty well. For the most part (it went) well. We had a couple of mistakes here and there, but that's spring football. Hopefully by the Red/Black Game, we'll have those things cleaned up and we should be ready to go into the summer and get better."
On the team's youth:
"There are some really exciting young guys that we're fired up about. You saw some of that today with Brandon Sullivan and Davon Brown and the receivers outside. Darren (Mougey) switching to receiver to help out the team. There are a lot of guys, especially offensively, that are going to have a chance to have the ball in their hands. We're just looking forward to getting them the ball and letting them do things with it."