Plyler Interview: Recruiting Coordinator David Blackwell |
Coach Blackwell Interview 02/02/05 Plyler: I know you guys have to be happy about this class. Blackwell: Yes, we're extremely pleased with it. It is always a relief when that last fax comes in and you know you're done. Plyler: With the exception of a few, you guys really did not have to worry too much. Blackwell: Yeah, we felt pretty confident going into the morning with about 90% of them because they are strong character guys, and they have been with us a long time. We know them so well. There is always a little nervousness, especially when it doesn't arrive right when you think it would. It was a good day, everything went pretty smooth, no big surprises, and obviously we did not lose anybody. We did get Antonio, which was exciting to finally close that one out, we have been it for a long time. Ron West was relentless in recruiting him. And did a nice job of keeping us in the game the whole time and was able to close it out, so he did a nice job for us on that one. Plyler: Talk about the two linebackers you may have a chance to coach next season. Blackwell: We had both of those young men in camp at the same time, and I had a big ole smile on my face when camp was over, said if I can get those two guys I would take them right now and shut it down and not recruit another linebacker. We were able to get them, Josh is a guy who probably won’t get as much publicity today or tomorrow as Antonio gets because he committed so long ago. But Lord knows I appreciate him coming on as early as he did, and have the character and strength to hold that commitment as long as he did. They are both exciting football players athletically they have size, they were heavily recruited. Antonio is going to get a lot of publicity for being a signing day guy. I don’t want to take anything away from Rendrick Taylor, Josh Miller, James Davis, Thomas Austin, Barry Humphries, the guys who jumped on board a long time ago. Lord knows they had to fight, had calls coming in all the time trying to talk them out of us for eight or nine months. I really appreciate all of those guys also. Plyler: Lets talk about Demerick Chancellor, where do you think he'll start out at and what do you see in his future? Blackwell: We recruited Demerick as a running back. Coach Burns coming out of spring really liked him, we offered him, then his senior film came in this year and he became a guy who really skyrocketed up our board. He is a different style running back than James Davis is, so together it forms a really forms exciting combination. James was head and shoulders top guy on our board, we had a couple guys from North Carolina right there after him, and a few other guys but Demerick skyrocketed up to the top four. The fact that he was so versatile catching the ball out of the back field and having such speed and size makes him a really great compliment with James. I know when Coach Spence got here and was watching film they were his two favorites on film. That is exciting for us to get the ones you target. You never get all of them but we were excited to get both of those, and then you get Demerick's brother. His stats speak for its self. The guy had 23 career interceptions and he’s also a very dangerous return man, returned two kickoffs for touchdowns, and returned a punt for a touchdown this year. He’s a fearless defender, plays with a lot of confidence, and he’s very physical. A lot has been made about his size, he’s 5'9 1/2" 165 to 170 lbs, but he'll flat stick you. He has a knack for making big plays, and he had six touchdowns this year on defense counting his returns. We are excited about both of these young men. Plyler: Let me ask about Terrell Smith, out of Alabama, any idea where he'll get his first snaps when it comes to fall camp next year? Blackwell: Yeah, he's going to play wide receiver starting out, no question. Coach Swinney is really high on him as a wide out. One of the things when you look at this wide receiver class, we've got two big guys in Terrell and Rendrick, that are big athletes that are really physical that can run. And they are really smooth receivers. Then you have your flashy like with T.J.and then Grisham who is the speed guy. So its really a nice blend of athletes there at the receivers position. And we are excited about all of them. Plyler: Talk about Durrell Barry and Paul Muse. Blackwell: Durrell is a guy that we placed last year, we were extremely excited about him as an instate guy from Fort Dorchester. Immediately went up to Fort Union and within a few days of being up there the coaches there were calling us telling us how special he was. They said he was one of the best they had on their team. Paul Muse was a guy we had at camp, really athletic. Both of those guys with what Coach Spence likes to do, have an opportunity do some great things here. One of the first things Rob said to me after we got here was that we're going to have to adjust our numbers a little bit in recruiting because he wants more tight ends on the team. He likes using tight ends and getting them involved. We were too far in at that point, we had two committed and we felt good about that. We were too far in with our coordinators and new schemes, but we'll be able to adjust a little next year on some needs that we have that are a little different than what we have right now, it will be a smooth transition. Plyler: It’s been said that this is one of the best looking offensive lines that Clemson has signed in a while. They look like a lot of the offensive lineman we grew up watching at Clemson. Blackwell: There’s no question. One thing that stands out the most about this group is that they are huge. We had Thomas and Barry here this weekend; Thomas has slimmed down some due to wrestling, he’s down around 280. Barry was at 295 lbs. They are the shorter ones with Thomas being 6'5" and Barry being 6' 3 1/2". Corey is 6' 7", Quentez is 6' 4", Jamarcus is 6' 5". They are big guys, but they are athletes. These guys can move their feet and they can bend so it’s a nice group. They committed along time ago we shut it down, I was a little nervous that we shut it down so early in the offensive line because we had these guys committed up. I kept asking in meetings, everybody sure these guys are solid, because we were having to turn away guys. It’s always scary when you turn away guys, if we don't hold on to one of these guys. But, they hung in there with us the whole time, and Lord knows the character of these guys is something I think people are going to see. They are really a strong character group of kids. Plyler: What is the status of Corey Lambert, as far as work outs go, when he can be cleared, how does everything work for him here in the future? Blackwell: As soon as we get him cleared through clearinghouse than he'll be able to work out in our weight room. He's a guy that hopefully we can get over into our summer school, and get him going right away. We anticipate him being cleared. It just takes a little time to get things through clearinghouse. We could have pushed some things through, but we hit a point where we would be starting him too far behind in school so we made the decision not to. We did not want to set him up for failure academically. We would not do that with any of our signees, where you are bringing them in three weeks behind class, that's not fair to anyone. So we thought the best thing was to wait and bring him over in the summer. He is only going to miss fifteen days of spring ball and we feel like we can catch him up pretty fast. Plyler: Let’s talk about some of the big bodies up front. Blackwell: You look at the national championship game and you look at how many great linemen that those teams have planted on both sides of the ball. It gets really exciting when you're great upfront on offense. You can line me up a tailback and run the ball and I can get three and half yards of carry. If you add that up every three plays you're moving the chance. You put a guy like James Davis, Demerick Chancellor or one of the running backs we have, Reggie Merriweather, behind that and you have a chance to do something special. The same thing is true upfront on defense. It’s no secret that the last two years as we progressed through the season the d-line grew up, we became a great defense, a much better defense a more dominating defense. I'm a firm believer in winning it upfront. Plyler: Talk about those guys in the back 7 or so. Blackwell: Kavell is a guy who is real versatile. We really like him as a player. Went under the radar a little bit during recruitment because he was an early commitment. At the time he was committed he was being heavily recruited, we'll probably start him off in safety and he can grow into a lot of different things, outside linebacker possibly depending on how big he gets. One of the neat things about this class is they're top line guys. We did not drop below what we perceived to be our top line. Hopefully we are right on our evaluations. If we are it’s going to be a heck of a class. We really won’t know that until two years down the road. We're real impressed with Sadat Chambers, think he’s a real versatile athlete. Again just really classy young me, a great group of students, so a lot of positives about this class. Plyler: It sounds like you had a lot of your prospects recruiting for you too. Blackwell: Yeah, those guys are amazing. That's one thing that I love is that they bought into the program and they took ownership and said we're apart of you, this is our team. When you have guys like Quentez and T.J. doing that it really helps, and even the guys that are committed, I kept hearing how hard the Clemson commitments were recruiting at the Shrine Bowl. That's an unselfish thing for players to do because they are recruiting to help the team, sometimes maybe they were hurting themselves, recruiting more competition for themselves, but when that happens that's when you get it headed in the right direction. Plyler: Let’s give you a chance to brag on your staff. Blackwell: No question, the whole staff, even the secretaries, sacrifice an awful lot on recruiting weekends and things like that. The girls in the office do a great job for us. We had to activate Billy Napier to go on the road, and he did an outstanding job for us during the month of December. What that meant was nobody came off the road. Our guys were on the road the whole time. The whole staff did a great job, obviously Burton Burns did a great job with James Davis. Ron West was relentless in recruiting Antonio Clay, Brad Scott with Thomas Austin and getting him in early. And Brad did a great job with the other offensive lineman. That’s what you see with our staff, we have a lot of unselfish guys. It’s not how many guys you sign, its getting the best and the ones you want. And Brad was hey let me help on these offensive lineman, who needs me. He was always going to see Barry Humphries or Corey Lambert or Jamarcus Grant and Qunetez Ruffin. Our guys are really unselfish and I think we looked at the big picture as far as where a guy was ranked on a recruiting board, you know you may have this guy ready to commit but let’s try and get the one above him. And we lost some kids doing that, but that's part of the game. The end result I think the whole staff is pretty happy with what we did. Plyler: Were you able to buddy recruit because you had so many early commitments? Blackwell: Yeah, and in fairness they have done that around here before. It’s not something new we were just able to do it a little bit more this year. We openly talked about it and tried to do it more this year only and because we had some success with it, it’s getting a little more publicity. We tried to get involved this year with phone calls with coordinators and position coaches early in the process and I think the more people they know the better it is. Our coaches do a nice job with that throughout the season. Coach Burns did a great job with me with Demerick, getting in there on the phone early, and he knows him as well as he knows me. That makes it easier to recruit a guy, I think since we have been a little more successful this year might play more into that. Plyler: Were Coach Hobby and the two coordinators able to help you out coming in late in the process? Blackwell: No question, the nice thing with that situation was everyone came in with what can I do to help, point in me in the direction you need me to go, tell me where you want me to go and what you need me to do and I'll do it. Coming in that late there's some things from a numbers standpoint that we'll have to address, different mentality. Being as late in the recruiting process instead of we need this and this, it was what can we do to help get what we got. We'll sit down after signing day and recruit some safeties defensively because things we'll be doing defensively needs more of a true safety. There will be a lot of things still similar, Coach Spence likes using a tight end, and wants to recruit tight ends which is something we're doing. I love recruiting tight ends but I like moving them into other positions. And were going to have to recruit some to keep them there too, and I don't have any problem with that at all. Plyler: What does Coach Koenning want to do defensively? Blackwell: I don't know about that yet, we'll get more into that this week, fixing things where we think they should go. A lot gets made out of letters, I think last year we had a Mike, a Jack and a Whip for our three linebackers. This year we'll have a Sam, a Mike and Will. In Pittsburgh we had Sam, Mike and WIll, at Carolina we called him a Buck instead of Will. The letters are usually different, we called it a rover last year and we're calling it a cat safety this year, we called it a defensive end last year we're calling it bandit this year. I don't see it being a John Johnson type bandit position with what were looking at. But as it evolves it could become that more. It’s still mostly four man front, just the eagle terminology. There will be some things change I'm sure as we move the personnel around, but it won’t be as drastic as people think it will be. Plyler: Tell us about the schedule that you guys have for the next couple of weeks. Blackwell: We actually leave tomorrow. We have the high school closing in Myrtle Beach this weekend, have Sunday off and start meeting Monday offensively and defensively. We'll have to be pretty good here until spring ball just because the terminology will be a little different. All the coaches have coached before so it won’t be a big deal for the coaches, but the terminology will be different so you have to meet a lot. Get your personnel in the right place, get your terminology straight, and start moving yourself in that direction to prepare yourself for spring ball. There will be a significant amount of meetings, more so than usual because you've had turn over on your staff and everybody has to get comfortable with the terminology. Defense will probably be lined up the same, offensive will probably be the same, but we might call it something different than we did in the past, just getting all of that squared is what we'll be getting on over the next couple of weeks. Plyler: Are you guys already junior recruiting? Blackwell: Coach Bowden was on the phone today with a couple of juniors. They can call him but he can't call them, and starting that process. Already had a few today and have several lined up for calling tomorrow. We are already full speed in that direction, it never ends and it never stops. With early commitments guys are making their minds up early and you have to get on them early, and work harder and longer. That's the nature of the beast. Plyler: Congratulations, I know it’s a really exciting day for you. Blackwell: We're excited, but like I said before, you're never too high, never to low. We'll see in two years how good this class really is. You can't put all of your eggs in one basket. We're pleased with the quality of the person we've gotten in this class. And I think that says something about the young men we're recruiting and the direction we're heading. Obviously the character part is important but they have to be able to play to. I think this is a really strong character group of young men. And I think its going to be fun to watch them over the next few years.
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