JaMarcus Shephard After Oregon State Practice: "We Operated Like a Football Team"

Following a recent Oregon State football practice, head coach JaMarcus Shephard spoke with the media. This piece offers several highlights from that conversation.

Shephard on his team's most recent scrimmage

"The main thing that I saw from us is that we operated like a football team. Like we should. There weren't a bunch of penalties. There were some, but not a ton of penalties, to the point where I felt like we didn't understand the rules of engagement within our sport. Our players have to understand the different situations. So, there was times when I was trying to create a little bit of adversity when one side of the ball was kind of surging, then I would create the adversity, to allow the other side of the ball to surge.

So, it was good that they handled those moments the right way. Those things are going to happen in games on Saturdays. I felt like our team just operated like a division one college football team getting prepared for the season."

Shephard on quarterback reps

What did you see out of the quarterbacks? Who stood out, and how did you split up those reps?

"We split up the reps evenly amongst all the quarterback group, so all of them got to work with both the ones and the twos pretty evenly across the board. That's how we're going to continue to move forward, pretty much all the way until we kind of make a decision about who's going to be the starter.

Brady Jones really showed up on Saturday. He continuously moved the offense down the field over and over and over, every time that he got a chance to get in there. And you know what? No, I'm challenging him at times, and kind of pushing to know, 'Hey, I don't know if you can do it again.', and you know what? He continuously - all throughout the practice - continued to prove everybody wrong. He could move the ball down the field. I was very, very happy with that. "

JaMarcus Shephard on transfer linebacker Dylan Layne

"[His leadership]'s been outstanding. I don't know if I've said this to you guys publicly or not, but we have our Unity Council and our team votes on members of the Unity Council. Then the Unity Council themselves voted Dylan Lane onto the Unity Council. I thought that was a huge badge of honor for that guy to get, having only been here for maybe a month at that time, and for them to vote him onto the Unity Council, I thought that was pretty special. That should speak volumes for the type of leader that he is.

You know, in that unity council, we're spending a lot of time talking about leadership, what that looks like, and Dylan Layne - there should be a picture of him sitting right next to that word leadership - so I'm super proud of him, and excited that he's immersed himself in the culture of our football team from day one. He's got a bright season ahead of him. He's going to do some really good things. His communication skills - we talk about having obnoxious communication - if you guys come to practice, you know I'm a pretty obnoxious communicator, all right? We want to make sure that they can hear and understand every single thing that's being said on the field. So, he is an obnoxious communicator at all times. So, super happy to have him a part of our football team."

Shephard on battles in the trenches

"Yeah, we can't block [outside linebacker] Takari Hickle right now. I'm just going to put it out there right now: offensive line, you can't block Takari. It's to a point right now where I might have to pull a guy out because I'm scared he's going to hurt somebody, because he's getting back there so fast. So hopefully our O-line will step up to the challenge and block Takari Hickle at least once. Like, let's start with one time, and then we'll move on them doing it again. But beyond that, I thought it was very competitive groups, between the O line and D line.

We didn't run the ball very well, you know. So obviously the D line got the best of us - the O line - in the practice today. [They] put some pressure on coach Hagen [Oregon State defensive line coach Mark Hagen], and he takes that stuff to heart. So he was all over them. Again, D line played really, really well today."

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