Jared Bartlett Baylor Preview
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00:00 We have Bandit End Jared Bartlett.
00:02 Questions for him?
00:04 Well, your senior day went pretty well.
00:06 Talk about that and just your whole career here.
00:11 Pretty good cap on a--
00:12 at least from the home portion.
00:14 You still got work to do, but let's
00:16 talk about that a little bit.
00:17 Absolutely.
00:19 It was just a great experience.
00:23 Before the game, just being kind of in an emotional mind frame
00:25 because when I walked, I saw my family on the field,
00:28 and I shook Coach Brown's hand.
00:30 I kind of got a flashback of all my time here,
00:32 all the years I spent here, all the seasons,
00:34 stuff like that, all the work I put in.
00:36 It was pretty emotional.
00:37 And then to cap that off with a dominant win over Cincinnati,
00:40 it just felt really good.
00:42 I'm happy.
00:43 I'm proud of the time I spent with my guys.
00:45 It's been a really good experience.
00:46 You know, in college careers, a lot of times guys will say,
00:49 well, it just flew by like that.
00:51 And it probably did, but in other ways
00:53 with COVID and all those things, it
00:55 seems like it's been forever in other ways, hasn't it?
00:58 It has.
00:59 I wouldn't say it flew by.
01:00 There's definitely a lot of defining moments
01:02 in there where I felt like time was going a little bit slower
01:04 than most people would say.
01:05 But it's been quite a ride.
01:10 Do you have another year?
01:12 I do.
01:12 All right.
01:13 Anything about that yet?
01:15 There's decisions I'll make later on,
01:17 more focused on this week and the bowl game
01:19 to come after that.
01:20 What do you think about these guys that
01:22 play college football for seven or eight years?
01:24 You've heard these stories about these guys
01:26 that are like almost 30 that have got this year or that.
01:30 I mean, after a while, you kind of get on with your life,
01:34 right?
01:34 Yeah, seven or eight years playing football,
01:37 college football.
01:38 It's pretty wild, personally, I think.
01:39 But hey, if you love the sport, and that's
01:42 the opportunity to play it, do what you got to do.
01:44 At least NIL now helps that a little bit.
01:46 Yeah.
01:47 Yeah.
01:48 Jarrett, from a statistical standpoint,
01:51 your game Saturday doesn't necessarily stand out.
01:53 But both Neil and Coach Leslie were
01:55 saying they thought it was maybe your best game of the year.
01:58 Take us through how that happened.
02:00 I mean, obviously, they commended you
02:01 a lot for fitting the run.
02:03 But what went right for you specifically on Saturday?
02:06 I mean, a lot of times, you can play a good game,
02:08 not necessarily show up in the stat sheet,
02:10 doing your job, having leverage, being
02:12 in the right spot and coverage.
02:14 Although I might not be making the play.
02:16 Maybe I'm setting other guys up to be in a position
02:17 to make plays, things like that.
02:19 Is it easier to accept that now than maybe what
02:22 it would have been a couple of years ago,
02:24 now that you're, I guess, a little bit more experienced?
02:27 Yeah, because I mean, every game is not
02:29 going to be a national player of the week game, a Big 12
02:32 player of the week game.
02:34 And you just got to accept that sometimes.
02:35 I mean, yeah, I'd like to show up on the stat sheet a lot more.
02:38 But at the end of the day, as long as we get the win,
02:40 that's all that really matters.
02:41 You're out there playing.
02:43 And you're doing your thing.
02:44 You've got your responsibilities.
02:46 But everybody has their responsibilities in the defense.
02:49 And you study it later.
02:51 What do you see from a guy like Cutter?
02:53 And how has he gotten better over the last, say,
02:56 three or four weeks?
02:57 What are you seeing from him?
02:58 I can see, from the first time that he played,
03:00 I can see he's a lot more relaxed in the sense of his
03:03 nerves, just reading his keys and stuff like that.
03:06 That's very important, especially at a linebacker spot,
03:09 not being too riled up.
03:11 You got to see what you're essentially reading.
03:13 I think he's really excelled at that.
03:15 He can make calls now.
03:16 He's got more confidence making his calls.
03:18 I've seen a lot of growth from him.
03:19 You were in a similar situation.
03:21 You played early in your career.
03:23 I mean, there's a lot going on there that you probably--
03:26 now you look back on it and go, wow, I got through it.
03:30 But do you see that from him?
03:32 Do you help him out a little bit?
03:33 Do you tell him?
03:34 Yeah.
03:34 Well, the thing is with him, I played four games
03:37 my true freshman year.
03:38 He's really been in a role where he's been playing a lot more--
03:41 he played more games than I did.
03:43 He's got guys like Lee next to him.
03:45 He's got me next to him.
03:47 That's why that confidence can really build and grow,
03:49 because he has guys that are older that can lead him
03:52 through that.
03:52 My first year here, it was really
03:54 the first year of this defense.
03:56 So guys necessarily weren't as confident as making
03:58 the calls and stuff like that.
04:00 So it's a completely different scenario, I feel like.
04:02 You guys were just kind of running around
04:04 until you could figure out what was going on.
04:06 Yep.
04:06 What is your leadership strategy, I guess,
04:09 as a veteran player in that situation,
04:10 when you have a guy like Cutter having to step up?
04:12 Do you go to him and say, this is what you have to do?
04:14 Or do you wait for him to come to you?
04:16 Or how do you go about it once that
04:18 it's going to be clear that you're
04:19 going to have a freshman who's going to really be relied upon?
04:23 I miss a mix of both.
04:24 Since we don't necessarily play the exact same position,
04:26 there's some things I'm not going to tell him.
04:28 Because at the end of the day, it
04:30 is his job to make a certain call based on what he sees.
04:32 But if it's something that I clearly know is maybe off,
04:35 of course, the guy's going to make some mistakes.
04:36 He's a young guy.
04:37 But I just want to be positive in the way that I approach him
04:41 so he can take that advice that I give him
04:43 or the advice that Lee gives him,
04:45 and he can grow from that.
04:47 As coach Leslie, what's Day Day Hawkins like?
04:51 Because it seems like he's having the time of his life
04:54 nonstop.
04:55 Like as a person?
04:56 Yeah.
04:57 Exactly how it seems, yeah.
04:58 He's a really energetic guy.
05:00 I love Day Day.
05:01 Really cool guy.
05:04 How much does that affect other people?
05:06 I mean, even when you just have one guy who's positive
05:10 or just never gets down, how much does
05:12 that affect the whole defense?
05:14 That keeps the mood up.
05:16 Juice and energy is very important,
05:18 especially in the sport of football.
05:20 When you have a low energy level coming out in games,
05:22 that's how teams come out flat.
05:24 That's how teams end up getting smacked in the mouth
05:26 like first quarter, first play.
05:27 And it's like, oh, what's going on?
05:28 Why aren't we locked in, ready to play?
05:29 Having dudes like that really gets the energy flowing
05:31 and gets dudes ready to play.
05:34 Did he come in like--
05:35 Yeah, that's just who he is all the time.
05:38 On the football field, in the meeting room, outside of here.
05:41 That's just the type of guy he is.
05:43 Pattern for the defense has been play OK or struggle
05:48 a little bit, have a stretch where you play really well,
05:52 and maybe struggle a little bit again.
05:54 And now you're back on a stretch where
05:56 you're playing pretty well.
05:59 How do you smooth that out?
06:00 How do you get that consistency where you're always doing that?
06:04 Because for the most part, you have.
06:06 But there have been those instances--
06:08 and I'm talking about the defense collectively--
06:10 that have had some struggles.
06:12 Why has that been, you think?
06:15 Well, the football season is a long season.
06:19 At times, mistakes are going to be made.
06:20 Adversity is just part of life, part of playing
06:24 football, the sport.
06:25 It isn't necessarily why those things are happening.
06:28 It's what you do to respond to that.
06:30 And I feel like we've always responded really
06:32 well throughout the season.
06:34 Now, how do you build off that?
06:35 You take this good performance.
06:38 I mean, there was a stretch here where Cincinnati got nothing
06:41 for, what, four or five series in a row.
06:44 How do you build on that and continue that through to Baylor
06:47 and then the bowl game?
06:48 Just repeating our best, repeating our technique,
06:50 repeating what we do.
06:51 We don't need to change anything as far as our mindset.
06:55 We base our defense off effort, aggression, and playing
06:59 together.
07:00 And that's all we've got to do to repeat that.
07:02 You're one of those guys that will go back and say, dang,
07:04 we would have just done this against Houston.
07:06 Or we would have done this against Oklahoma State
07:08 in the fourth quarter.
07:10 Things could be considerably different.
07:12 Are you one of those guys?
07:13 Well, I mean, it's hard to say nobody thinks about that.
07:16 I try not to think about that as much.
07:18 But I mean, it's kind of hard.
07:19 But you can't live in the past.
07:21 Regrets are doing nothing but holding you back
07:23 at the end of the day.
07:24 So yeah.