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Tulsa's Defense Focusing on Improving Against the Run
8/14/2004 12:00:00 AM | Football
Aug. 14, 2004
Tulsa, Oklahoma -
Defensive Coordinator Todd Graham's thoughts on how the defense is progressing after six days of practice:
We've progressed quite well. We're gettting the installation of our defense done with our young kids, and our veterans have come back in great shape. I feel really good about our returning starters that we have on defense, then we have a vast group of young talented guys. Our big focus is getting better against the run. Our goal is to be the number one defense in the WAC, and to do that we have to get better against the run. Our focus has been really hard on that. The kids have worked hard and are doing a good job. As an overall defense we're going to be a lot faster. Defensive line-wise, we graduated five guys there, but I really feel like we're going to be better up front. We're bigger. Walter Boyd is a 6-3, 300-pound guy, Brandon Jones is a 6-2, 275 pound guy, and Charles Walker is going to give us a lot more size up front joining with the guys who played a lot up front last year. We're going to be bigger, faster and stronger up front, so we feel pretty good about that. We have a lot of young guys at linebacker who are learning. We're really, really athletic. Nick Bunting and Michael LeDet are the guys coming back that are a lot stronger and faster. We've just got to develop and find that third backer. We have a lot of talented guys there. We're looking at Ty Page in there, Nelson Coleman is a guy that's coming on that had some playing experience last year who could be in the mix. Chris Chamberlain looks good, Corey McMurrian is playing really well and doing some good things. We've got to come up with 4 to 5 linebackers and there's no doubt we can do that. We're going to be extremely fast there. We had a really talented recruiting class, and it was heavily loaded with safeties. Jonathan Penelton is one of the young guys that really has a lot of promise. Randy Duncan has really been impressive at free safety, as well as Billy Greenidge. We have Shannon Carter returning at free safety, and Clint Rountree is having an exceptional camp so far. Bobby Blackshire has really picked it up. So I feel really good about the safety position. We're still trying to experiment with Ty Page. He's at linebacker right now. He can end up moving back to safety, but he's so big and physical that we're just trying to find the right place for him. He's 6'2 , 220-pound kid and can flat out run. He's learning right now. We've got him playing linebacker, we'll just have to see where we go with that. At cornerback, Jermaine Hope and Oliver Fletcher are coming back, and I think they're two of the best corners in the conference. Nick Graham is the third guy there, and we have some other young guys. Anthony Germany is another guy at safety that is really coming on. Bobby Klinck is going to be a great player for us. He's playing bandit right now and doing a great job. We're young, but we're really pleased with the talent, speed and the depth back there. But the depth is definitely young.
Offensive Coordinator Charlie Stubbs will discuss the offense tomorrow.
