Before the start of practice, Mack Brown lists fall objectives.
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00:00 [silence]
00:23 Team is back to 100 percent, so we're really blessed
00:26 that they're all healthy and doing well.
00:29 I do think that Coach Hess and the players
00:33 have done a remarkable job,
00:35 and Kelsey, our nutritionist, Luke Ross, our trainer,
00:42 they've done a tremendous job through all this pandemic
00:45 in the spring of keeping the guys healthy,
00:48 getting them in shape,
00:51 even the ones who have had a positive,
00:54 they look good right now.
00:55 And I really commend the NCAA for allowing us
01:00 to watch them work out and get to be around them more
01:03 because with not only their physical health right now,
01:07 but their mental health, they need to be around coaches,
01:09 and they need to be around us.
01:10 And that's very, very important,
01:13 and we need to be able to see them work out
01:14 and meet with them.
01:16 And then the NCAA for the first time
01:18 is allowing us to have walk-throughs with them.
01:21 And that helps the teaching process
01:24 that we would have had in spring practice.
01:27 It's obviously not full speed, and you can't hit,
01:30 but it's really, really helped.
01:32 And it's 20 hours a week.
01:33 You still get a day off, so it gets the guys in a routine
01:37 like they're going to have during the season.
01:39 And then to even go a step further,
01:41 the NCAA allowed us this morning for the first time
01:45 for the guys to wear helmets in that walk-through.
01:49 And I don't know how much you can see of this.
01:51 Probably it doesn't look like much, Jeremy,
01:53 but -- and, Jeremy, you may can get it.
01:56 But there's a shield in the front,
02:00 but there's also a shield underneath
02:02 down here at the bottom.
02:04 I'll get Jeremy to hold it up for us.
02:08 And with this shield,
02:09 I feel like it gives the guys extra protection.
02:13 Now, some of them that wore it this morning
02:16 in the walk-through didn't like it as well
02:18 because they said, you know, you had trouble breathing.
02:21 But in practice, we're either going to wear the shield
02:24 or we're going to wear a mask.
02:26 And then in the games, they'll be able to do
02:28 whatever the doctors allow them to do.
02:31 But today was the first day.
02:34 Jeremy, can you hold that up
02:36 so maybe the guys can see it better?
02:38 I'm going to take my backdrop off and see if that helps.
02:44 Okay.
02:48 As Jeremy's getting that ready,
02:50 we start practice on August 6th like was planned before.
02:54 We'll have two days in shorts.
02:55 The NCAA rules have not changed.
02:58 We'll have two days in shells,
03:00 which is shoulder pads and helmets.
03:03 And then we'll have the rest of the time in pads.
03:06 And that will give us the normal start.
03:10 Here is the lower shield that we're putting on the helmets now.
03:15 So you can see the upper shield a lot of the guys wear anyway.
03:19 And the lower shield would just replace the mask
03:23 because that is protection from them down at the bottom.
03:27 And a lot of the guys really liked it.
03:29 Some felt like the shield fogged up a little bit.
03:33 But kudos to the NCAA for letting us wear it today
03:38 and up until we start practice because I've told our players,
03:42 wear it until practice starts at least and try to make it work
03:46 because people think it's safe.
03:49 And then if you don't like it,
03:51 we'll go back to the doctors and look at other options.
03:53 But let's try to make that work.
03:55 Our school starts on August the 10th.
03:58 So then we go back to 20 hours a week with a day off.
04:02 So we will not have as much time
04:05 as we normally would in preseason camp
04:08 to visit because of school starting earlier for us
04:11 because it was supposed to start the 18th.
04:14 But we're also not really sure when our first game will be
04:19 because Rick Steinbacher is working hard
04:22 to figure out when the plus one is
04:25 because we don't have a plus one yet.
04:28 And Bubba and Rick are working on trying to schedule.
04:32 Scheduling has gotten very fluid here the last couple of days
04:36 just because of decisions made by the ACC,
04:39 decisions made by the SEC,
04:42 and some decisions that were already made
04:45 by the Big Ten and the Pac-12.
04:47 So now we've got to figure out who that plus one is.
04:51 And then you have to figure out when do you schedule them.
04:54 So all of that's changing as we speak.
04:58 So I'm really not sure who that is, who that will be,
05:03 what those options are, or when it will be.
05:05 So we have to have a preseason camp
05:09 with a schedule to play on the 12th.
05:12 Maybe the 19th. Maybe the 26th.
05:15 We've just got to try to prepare
05:18 a number of different practice plans
05:21 until we can get ourselves in a position
05:24 where we know who we're playing.
05:26 Goals for the fall have not changed.
05:28 They were the same as the spring.
05:31 Now you have COVID guidelines,
05:33 and we have our medical guidelines.
05:35 So we obviously have to go by those guidelines.
05:39 The strict interpretation of those guidelines
05:43 are we can't play.
05:44 And the most important thing for all of us
05:47 is the safety of our players, our staff,
05:50 our fans, our media, everybody involved,
05:54 people that are first responders
05:57 and healthcare people at the stadium.
05:59 So it's something that everybody is looking at
06:03 from top to bottom to figure out
06:06 exactly how this thing's going to work.
06:09 For us in football, we've got to create more depth.
06:12 It was one of the disappointing things for us
06:14 and everybody else that we didn't get
06:16 to have spring practice
06:18 because we had a lot of young guys
06:20 that we could have looked at and worked in the spring.
06:22 And we had 13 early enrollees
06:24 and some guys that redshirted last year.
06:26 So we have to make hard decisions
06:28 with all those guys in the fall camp
06:33 to see which will be ready to play and which will not.
06:35 Our kicking game needs to get better.
06:38 We mentioned that the other day.
06:39 So we'll work hard on kicking game
06:42 starting from the first day.
06:44 We want to be better in the red zone,
06:46 short-yardage goal line.
06:47 We want to be better at two-point plays
06:49 now that the overtime rule has changed for sure.
06:52 And we always want to be good in one-minute offense
06:55 because we want to be good right before the half
06:57 and right at the end of the game
06:59 if we need to drive the length of the football.