Gopher Football
John Shevlin
– On how his bowl game opportunity and performance motivated him through the offseason . . .
For me it was like I was a hungry dog you know, you just get a little scent of action and it helped make everything clear. You know why you’re training, you know why you’re lifting, and you know why you’re puking. It just gave me that much more purpose to everything I was doing.
– On expectations of the linebackers this season . . .
I’m really excited about this season. As a group, we’ve kind of taken it upon our shoulders to step this defense up. We got a lot of guys who want to play their butts off and make every tackle, and I think that’s what you need to have a great defense.
– On the strength of schedule . . .
I’m really looking forward to it. If we win every game, nobody can come back and say we played a weak schedule. This is the Big Ten, so it doesn’t matter who you’re going to play; anybody can come out on top. With all the good teams you can’t take weeks off, and I think that will help us focus even more.
– On what area he has improved the most in since the end of last season . . .
Definitely my fundamentals. Coach Mason, Coach Lockwood and all the defenseive coaches stress fundamentals. When I came into the “˜U’ I was pretty raw. I only started playing football in 9th grade so up to that point I didn’t have any type of fundamentals. Fundamentals are everything, they put you in position to make every play, and that’s what it comes down to.
– On the new defensive coaches . . .
Coach Lockwood fills the room with a lot of energy, so he’s the kind of guy who makes you want to play for him. He coaches you hard, but when you do something right he’ll give you the love. He is expecting great things from us as a defense and we’re ready to prove him right, both as a unit and as a team.
John Pawielski
– On the recovery of his broken leg . . .
The leg is good, no problems there.
– On the new defensive coaches . . .
Coach Lockwood is a great coach, he’s a great motivator, a good people person, he communicates well with the kids, guys following him and want to play hard for him. Coach Cooks has been though it before as a former player. He’s had some success, he knows a lot, and I think the secondary is really excited to have him as their coach
– On Iowa alum/DB coach Kerry Cooks visiting the pink Iowa visiting locker rooms . . .
I don’t know if Cooks has ever been in those, that’s a good question! We’re looking forward to that one.
Mark Losli
– On his final year as a Gopher . . .
This is my last year here, so yeah I’m excited. But not even for just that you know, we have a good team coming back. This will hopefully be the best defense we’ve had in years and we hope we can go out there and prove some things.
– On the strength of schedule . . .
We like it this year. We’re not afraid of Purdue or Ohio State. Purdue has had a couple of rough years too. Last year they finished a little bit worse than they wanted to and same thing the year before, so we see ourselves being similar to them. So that Purdue game is going to be a really big game. If we can win that game we will have a lot of momentum and hopefully that can carry over. It could go either way, but if we can get that game, then we’re feeling pretty excited about having a lot of momentum and hopefully get that monkey off our shoulder and beat Michigan. It’s definitely going to be fun to play these good teams, and hopefully get a win so we can say “œWe beat these good teams”.
– On impressions of Mike Sherels and John Shevlin so far . . .
I think they surpassed what everybody thought they would. They’ve worked tremendously hard, put in the time, put in the effort, and they’re going to be our workhorses this year. We have a real tight group on defense and we’re all in there together. But those linebackers are tough, they’re sticking their heart in there every play.
– On what the defensive line needs to do to improve from last year . . .
What we’ve been shifting to since the bowl game is instead of worrying about responsibilities and playing gaps, we’re taking every play as a person challenge to beat the guy across from us. We’re thinking that if we can beat that guy across from us, then everything else will fill in. And if everybody beats that guy across from him, then we’ll win that play. I think it’s more about attitude now. It will be simpler for us and have to worry about less.
– On fans expectations of the defense . . .
Hopefully they’ll be able to watch from our performance this year and see the improvement. It’s been tough having a rough last couple of years. I don’t think we’ve really had any bad years the whole year, rather from game to game we’ve been up and down. It’s been more a matter of being inconsistent, and that’s something that we’re trying to work on. Once we get to a certain level where we’re playing well, we want to be able to keep that consistency up for the remainder of the season.
– On his thoughts so far on coach Bailey . . .
I think it’s been nothing but good for us so far. We have fresh ideas from a fresh mind, and we’re ready to take all the coaching he has to give.
Kyle McKenzie
– On what the defense needs to improve on . . .
We’ve just got to improve on hustling to the ball and just making plays. We just didn’t make enough plays last year. I think we proved in the bowl game that if we do make plays, we can do real well.
– On how the expectations are different this year than from last year . . .
This year we have more seniors, more leadership, and more focus, so we can’t go out there with big heads like people though we did last year. We just have to go out there and take it one game at a time.
– On the strength of schedule . . .
It’s a great schedule. When we win the Big Ten they can’t say nothing about the defense, the offense, or Minnesota. We’ll have proved it since we’ve played the best.