Media days have come to a close.
Personally I've enjoyed myself, but I'm sure you do not care about that.
Tidbits about Media Days on Longhorns side:
Jumping off the page during Media Days for the Longhorns side had to be Charlie Strong's confidence. Coach Strong brought with him to Dallas the confidence of a man who owns an insane amount of talent, wiped out the competition in recruiting, and has (at this point) won the state of Texas back despite an 11-14 record. One of the first things he started off saying was "I'm so excited now going into the season because of what I have." One could see this at the beginning of his breakout session when he went on a 5 minute rant about how good he expects both sides of the ball to be. To me, that felt very "Un-Charlie Strong like."
Charlie Strong told the media that not only do the Baylor players help relieve some pressure on the field, but they've relieved pressure on signing a larger class in 2017.
Another interesting tidbit is Charlie Strong seemed sure that Erick Fowler will be on campus saying, "when we start camp he should be ready to go." Now I don't know how this will shake out in the end, but from everything we've heard the status of Erick Fowler is not trending in the right direction. Hopefully Strong is correct on this one.
Despite all the confidence, Charlie Strong seems to be very unsure of the kicking position and one could tell that it worries him. It appears all he is looking for is a guy who can be consistent from a certain distance and to know that he can rely on getting points within that distance whether it be 50 or 25 yards. It's the only question I don't think Charlie Strong could talk his way around because there really is no other answer. The Longhorns still do not have a
reliable kicker on the team.
A common theme Charlie Strong put out into the seas of media was the fact that he feels confident in his senior leadership. A reporter would trot out a question like, "how do you feel about Malik Jefferson being the face of the program?" or "Is Malik Jefferson a true leader that you may let lead the team this year?" and Charlie Strong would say, "yeah he is" then immediately point to guys like Tim Cole and Bryce Cottrell. During the big main press conference Charlie was asked about his senior leadership and he had this to say "
It's better than it has been, and if you harp on something enough I think they get the message and they've gotten the message now..."
Of course Charlie Strong was still most excited in his younger guys. You, the reader, can see this in action. Look at any video I put out on twitter. When Charlie Strong reminisces about the young talent he has on this team he gets emotionally lighter and you can see the toothy smile. When asked about guys who he thinks will be break outs this year the first guy he mentioned (and also the only guy he mentioned when asked the question) was Brandon Jones. Charlie Strong told the media to watch out for Brandon Jones starting next year because he's less afraid of starting younger skill players than starting the young big boys,
"...you get concerned about the bigger guys, because now if I'm a freshman defensive lineman or offensive lineman and I'm going against a veteran who has been four or five years into someone's program they're bigger and stronger. So they're going to know a lot more, but skill guys, it's just athlete on athlete..."
With all the confidence Charlie Strong had, he also made sure to acknowledge that his journey in Austin so far has not been the smoothest. He started his main press conference with "
We've gotta be better than what we were the last two years. We've got to elevate. We've got to elevate this program and it's about making sure that our players understand it's about accountability, about responsibility and it's about moving this program forward," and later explained to the media in breakouts that he couldn't find a "...hardest loss to swallow..." because they all hurt so much. He has gone on to take the Saban approach to winning games by putting on games where the team could've done better (like Iowa State) on a loop in the locker room and not letting the players touch the TV controller.
Another huge question for the Longhorns was "who will be the starting QB for the Longhorns?" It seems like the media has already made up its minds on this issues as a larger portion of questions Charlie answered today pertained to Shane Buechele. And from what I could gleem from his answers Shane Buechele may be (one of) the hardest working player(s) on the team. Charlie Strong repeated the story about Shane and Collin Johnson basically refusing to go home. Charlie Strong also went into his leadership capabilities saying...
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But an actual answer to the question of when he will announce a starting QB came in the form of "you will know very early on into preseason camp who the guy is going to be." My money is on Buechele.
Charlie also cover recruiting quite a bit. I believe his main message here was, "Hey! Despite my success the past two year, I'm not going to change up my recruiting strategy one bit." Y'all can still count on the nail-biting finish to the recruiting cycle that we all experienced this year.
Lastly, Charlie Strong also touched on a number of non-football topics. Specifically the fact that he believes his football player should have the ability to speak out on current issues in the public and he encourages them to speak out. He feels that he should show that coming together is an option and the solution, and this was a larger reason he decided to visit the Dallas Police Department.
