San Diego State Football Press Conference Quotes
March 20, 2019
Head Coach Rocky Long
On Saturday's Spring Game:
"We would like to invite as many fans and friends to come out and watch our football team scrimmage against each other on Saturday. We're going to divide up into two teams. I haven't decided yet, but I'm probably going to divide the coaches up, too, so they have allegiance to one team or the other. We're going to play a regular game until we get to a certain number of reps and then we might do a running clock so we don't get too many plays in the scrimmage. Hopefully it's going to be sunny. I heard it's not going to rain on Saturday. We'll get out there on the grass. Hopefully we'll get enough people out there to add some excitement to the festivities, and they'll want to come out and watch next year."
On how the teams will be split up:
"Basically it's going to be the first (team) offense and the second (team) defense will be one team, and they'll be in the same color jersey. And then the first (team) defense and the second (team) offense will be in the different colored jersey. Now what might be weird to everybody is that we only have nine healthy offensive linemen, so we are putting them in gray jerseys so they can play on either team and not be a distraction. So one team will be in black jerseys and one team will be in white jerseys, but the offensive linemen will be in gray jerseys so they can play on both teams. The offensive linemen are going to win no matter what or lose, however you want to look at."
On if there is a concern being down to only nine healthy offensive linemen:
"No, we've been practicing the whole time in spring ball like that. We have three projected starters in the offensive line that are not practicing. Two of them are getting over injuries and surgeries, and one hurt his toe during the early part of spring ball, but he'll be fine. All three of them will be back next fall. Then we have some freshmen coming in, so it's not a real concern. It just makes it a little harder to divide the team up equally."
On unveiling the new offense to the public on Saturday:
"It won't be the whole offense, but for those who are real fans of ours, the offense will look a whole lot difference than last year. That doesn't mean our philosophy has changed, but we're going to be in a lot more spread formations and our quarterbacks are going to be in the shotgun a lot more. We're still running the same kind of running plays. We've added some things to the passing game and we'll see how the quarterbacks perform. If the quarterbacks perform well, everybody will like what they see. If the quarterbacks don't perform very well, everybody will wonder why we changed (our offense)."
On the quarterback rotation for Saturday:
"I don't know right now. What we've been doing up until now is Ryan Agnew plays but nobody gets to hit him and the other three quarterbacks are live, and I assume that will be the same on Saturday."
On the quarterback play so far in spring ball:
"I think our quarterbacks have been very inconsistent to this point. At times they do some good things and at times they do some things that aren't very good. Some of that is because of the new offense and some of that is because the three other than Ryan Agnew haven't played very much. One of them is a junior college transfer who hasn't played in our system until now. They're young and inexperienced, so you'd expect if might be inconsistent performance during practice."
On if Juwan Washington will play on Saturday and if any other players will be held out:
"Normally Juwan Washington carries the ball two or three times and gets hit two or three times, and he doesn't play very much anymore. We'll limit the reps of Kyahva Tezino on defense. He's played a lot of football and doesn't need as many reps, but everybody else will play the whole time.
"(Juwan) will be out there, but once he gets hit two or three times he won't be playing much after that. If they throw the ball every time he'll be out there for 10 or 15 plays. If they hand it to him two or three times, well maybe he'll score every time so he'll get to keep playing."
On how Juwan Washington has adapted to the spread offense:
"I think he's fine. I don't think the running back position is the hard part. They do exactly what they do the rest of the time when they carry the football. I think the difficult part is the quarterbacks. Especially the ones that have been in our system who are used to being under center and now they're back in the shotgun like they were in high school. The passing game is a little more complicated than it was before, but it shouldn't matter to the offensive linemen or the running backs."
On if Juwan Washington will still return kicks:
"I think he'll probably still return kickoffs, but he won't return punts."
On some things that he hasn't seen in spring ball that he would like to see Saturday in the spring game:
"You always would like to better than you think you are. It's hard to tell because you're playing against yourself and your team is kind of diluted. You're not just playing 11 guys on offense and 11 guys on defense, most of the time you've got a lot more guys playing than that. We've got quite a bit done to this point so far and we'll have three practices after the spring game that we can get some things done."
Rocky Long Press Conference Ahead of Spring Game
