Since this is my day to man the Big 12 blog, I thought I'd do a Q&A with one of my former coaches, Turner Gill. Gill took the reins at Kansas in December, just finished his first recruiting class and is preparing for his first spring with a young group of Jayhawks.
He sat down to talk about expectations, quarterbacks, philosophy and Missouri.
You've been through a rebuilding process before and I know KU lost a significant group of top players. How much does that rebuilding experience from Buffalo help?
Turner Gill: Well, I think just like anything, experience does help you in all situations and particularly here in football and relating to young men and relating to the fans and relating to even the conference and all those types of things. We're trying to go through and build a program that's winning on a consistent basis. I'm looking forward to it, I'm excited about it and I think the thing that's going to help us is that there are some good things that have occurred in the past here. We're not totally starting from scratch per se because there is some talent here. We just need to build upon that and try to do it on a consistent basis.
I guess one of the biggest questions will be, who will replace Todd Reesing? What are you looking for out of your QBs heading into the spring?
TG: Well, consistent play, protecting the football and able to make plays, big plays, either with their legs or with their arm and hopefully we can find one that can do both. If we're able to do that and protect the football, then I think we'll have as exciting an offense as they've had in the past. And we'll just continue to build from there.
Does Kale Pick have the advantage because he was the backup last year?
TG: I guess in my mind it's open to whomever. We're really going to open it up to everyone who's here. It's a wide open race at really every position and it's no different there at the quarterback spot even though [Pick] was technically the second-team backup quarterback last year.
How is this offense going to look under your staff? Is it going to be much different than it was under Mangino?
TG: We're multiple. Chuck Long is going to be the offensive coordinator. We're going to adjust to the talent that we do have so we can do a little variety of things. I think that one big difference is that we will include a fullback. We will incorporate that into our gameplan. As far as how much? We'll just have to see how it goes with the talent that we have.
So will you keep some of the no-huddle spread system that they had before?
TG: We're going to have all that, but we're just going to incorporate a fullback who will be coming into the football game. Whether it's going to be 10 percent, 40 percent, we'll go through that this spring football and all through fall camp and really decide how much of that we will do.
And how about the quarterback? Will he be in shotgun or under center?
TG: Both
OK. How about defensively? What changes are we going to see there?
TG: Oh, I think the same thing. We're going to do some things multiply on defense. 4-3 is our base, but we can do a variety of things out of that. Again, we're going to see what we have with our defensive people and then adjust accordingly as a defensive staff to see what we can do best to give our young men an opportunity to succeed on the football field.
From what you've seen on film and maybe what you've seen in the past, how far is this team from being where it was a couple years ago?
TG: I truly can't answer that. It's too much of a speculation and I just don't have enough information to make a statement at this point in time of how well we're going to be, how good we're going to be and all of those types of things of that nature. So, I'd have to wait until a future time here, probably after spring football and particularly after fall camp.
Was the first thing Kansas people told you when you took the job that you had to beat Missouri?
TG: Well, that was on the radar screen, no doubt about that. I understood that. Our oldest daughter, Jordan (who is a sophomore at KU) talked about the things that are comparable to the Kansas and Missouri rivalry and all the things that go on there. So, I guess I knew about it from my daughter. All the fans here have talked about that.
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