What Neal Brown Said Following the Spring Game

Neal Brown met with the media following Saturday's spring game.

Thoughts on the defense

"We held some guys out but I thought Lee Kpogba really showed. I thought he was physical in the run game early. Probably would have had two sacks if the quarterbacks were live. I thought Hammond Russell did a nice job in the run game really pushing and getting some penetration. Jai Faverus made a couple nice plays. And I think we played the deep ball well minus one time at corner which has been something we've been working on."

Thoughts on the offense

"Jeremiah Aaron made a couple nice plays which is somebody we really need to take another step, so that was good to see. Kole Taylor probably had the play of the game, the one-handed catch going across the middle. He made a couple of catches during the scrimmage. Devin Carter had the explosive play there in the third quarter, that's kind of what he's been doing. And we're talented at running back. We're going to have a spot for all those guys. CJ [Donaldson] had some nice runs. I thought Tony [Mathis] saw it well today. Justin [Johnson] and Jaylen [Anderson] both had some nice yardage after contact. And then Jahiem had the big run. He's explosive. We've seen that in practice."

Thoughts on the quarterbacks

"I need to go watch it. If you look statistically, Garrett's stats were better. One of those that he hit was probably going to be a sack. Both of them are runners and in this format, it's hard for them for their full tool set to be shown. I thought Nicco threw two really nice deep balls and our receivers didn't play the ball very well. Without having a chance to watch it, it's hard to tell but I thought they protected for Garrett a little better which is unfortunate for Nicco. Like I said, this is going to be the long game. Regardless of what happened today or what happened through the first fifteen. This was going to be winter, spring, it's going to through summer and into fall camp before we figure it out."

If he came to any conclusions as to whether he or Chad Scott will call the offensive plays

"Nah. We'll worry about that in the fall."

Jimmy Bell 

"He worked out for two weeks fundamentally and today was his sixth practice. And you see improvement. Today was probably the second time that nobody's been out there telling him exactly what to do and he got beat for a sack today just because he didn't set off the ball. In pass protection, if he'll get depth in his set, he's going to be really hard to beat just because his arms are so long. To give you some perspective tackles in the NFL, you talk about wingspan. They're usually in the 84-85 [inch range]. That's good. He's 87 plus. He's really long. There's some fundamental things and just flow of the game that he's got to get into. He and I are going to spend some time early part of this week and I'll talk to Coach Huggins and I think we'll come to a pretty quick resolution on where it all stands."

How they get better before the start of the season

"We've got to hold our roster. That's where you start. And then we're going to add some pieces. We've got to get a lot of work done. Not just from a strength and conditioning standpoint but from a football standpoint too in all three phases."

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