Here is a recap of Gophers’ Jerry Kill’s Sunday interview on WCCO.
Jerry Kill on whether college football will ever allow players to work with coaches in the summer…I’ll tell you what, it’s talked about every year. They’ve loosened it up a bit where you can now attend some of their workouts, but basketball may now even lose that. I don’t know, it will be interesting. They (the NCAA) have so many other things going on right now that I don’t know that its at the top of their list.
Jerry Kill on what the players are doing now during the summer…Right now they are in the strength part of their program. They are lifting a bunch, they are running in the mornings and we can be there. In the afternoons there is Captains Practice and they run that themselves. The group that is in charge this year is doing a fantastic job.
Jerry Kill on the summer weight program for in-coming freshmen…Most freshmen it is a big eye opener. They aren’t used to getting up at 5:15 in the morning, working at 6:00, get breakfast, go to class, get to tutoring, then running and then captain’s practice. It’s a lot different for them. Every once in a while we’ll run into a program in high school that runs it that way, but for most kids its an eye opener.
Jerry Kill on the Gophers secondary being the best he’s had at Minnesota…I don’t think there is any question that it will be. We’ve got some great depth and the in-coming kids can move around too. I think it will be a strong point in our team. We have the two best lock down corners in the Big Ten, a lot like Michigan State had.
Jerry Kill on opening on a Thursday night as opposed to a Saturday…The big thing is a lot has to do with it being on prime time TV, there’s a lot of money involved with that. In this particular year to open on national TV is a big deal to our state and our program.
Jerry Kill on playing at Colorado State…I know quite a bit about them. I know from last year you win 12 ball games you are a pretty good football team. They lost their QB and RB, but they have one of the best WRs in the country. It will be a smooth transition for them as they won’t do a lot differently. We don’t have anything on the schedule (that’s easy) and we better be ready for every game.
Jerry Kill on QB depth beyond the Top 2 (Leidner and Streveler)…One kid that has really impressed us is Jacques Perra, he has a great arm, but he had some arm problems and didn’t get to get into the Spring Game. Then we have the true freshmen who has a lot of athletic ability but we need to see him on the field. Then we have a kid committed who I hope we can hang on to because he’s special. I think that we are sitting fine and the biggest thing is taking Mitch to where he was last year and taking one more step. He’s going down to Peyton’s Manning Camp, we brought in Adam Weber. I also like where Chris is at. I think we’ll be fine there, the biggest thing is who we put around him and I think we got some people who can be more explosive and make some plays.
Jerry Kill on Jacques Perra…He did really well in Spring and he hurt his elbow and its been a slow process. Connor Rhoda has been good as well. We have a chance to be a good football team and a lot of that lies on everybody getting better and the QB taking the next step. We’re going to be good on defense, there’s no question about that. Offensively we’ve been solid but we need to go from being solid to being really good.