Longo & Bateman BC Week Pressers, Notes & Quotes

CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina offensive coordinator Phil Longo and defensive coordinator Jay Bateman met with the media Monday morning for their regular game-week press conferences and to discuss their units and Saturday’s opponent Boston College.

Here are some notes and quotes from what each had to say along with the full videos of their pressers:

*BC Coach Jeff Hafley has coached on the defensive side of the ball for most of his career, including serving as Ohio State’s co-coordinator last season. So, what has Longo seen from Hafley in the first two games at BC compared to what Longo has seen from Hafley previously?

“At Duke, they had one approach because of what Duke does,” Longo replied. “What they saw from Texas State is more similar from what they would see from us. Jake Peeler, the wide receiver coach at Ole Miss for me, is the offensive coordinator at Texas State, so there were a lot of similarities of what Texas State did against Boston College and some of the things that we do in our offense here.

“So, it was good film for us, and I would also say the game against Texas State brought out a few more things that BC has in the playbook. We saw more dime coverage, more two Tampa – we didn’t necessarily see that against Duke. So the playbook opened up, we saw a couple of new things from the second game.

“It’s a very disciplined, it’s a well-coached scheme. You’re watching Ohio State play in the same type of system. That’s really the defense that we’re facing in Boston College.”

*Longo says outside of having depth along the offensive line he wants to have it at wide receiver more than anywhere else on offense.

“The reason for that is we do throw the football a little bit and we cover a lot of ground, even when we run the football there are times when we’re running routes,” Longo said. “It’s good for us to develop depth because, in my opinion, in our opinion, Dyami Brown playing 60 reps as opposed to 85 he’s going to be a lot fresher.”

Longo said in his past experiences at Ole Miss and other places, the production of his best receivers “actually went up because they were fresher and they were better players on each of those downs.”

He also said that the next line of receivers are better at 100 percent than the starters are at 70 percent. So, the emphasis on building depth at receiver continues.

“The depth at wide receiver really is the number one thing, outside of our o-line, that’s going to allow us to maintain staying in our tempo if we want to,” he said.

*UNC’s offense is expected to pour a lot of points on the board and move up and down the field each week, so how does Longo handle not allowing them to get too high with success or too down if they don’t have as much success as expected?

“I make a comment a lot and I think it gets misconstrued sometimes, but I really would love our players on offense to play the game with a lot of enthusiasm, not necessarily a lot of emotion,” Longo said. “And I know that goes against everybody saying it’s an emotional game, but when you have emotional highs and emotional lows in a game it affects the way you play.

“I think there’s nothing wrong with playing with tremendous or great enthusiasm, but somewhere along the emotional realm you can get off track from a focus standpoint and we don’t want to do that. So, we want to play with great enthusiasm, we also need to play with great focus so that you don’t have the highs and the lows in the games, and I think that helps keep us from making the mental mistakes that we’re trying to avoid.”

*BC QB Phil Jurkovec transferred from Notre Dame and has passed for 510 yards, 3 TDs, 2 INTs and completed 70.5 percent of his passes in wins over Duke and Texas State. So what are Bateman’s thoughts about him?

“I think he’s a really good player,” Bateman said. “He’s a big kid. You don’t realize how big he is. In the Duke game, I was watching that live, and early on you see him scramble a couple of times and you see him get tackled and you’re like, man, you realize how big a kid he is. So, he was really highly recruited kid out of high school, and I think it was a huge get for them to get him in school and get him eligible. And I really think he makes the whole thing go.

“A lot of the stuff they do is him and we’re certainly going to have to do a great job with him. The way he keeps plays alive and scrambles and they do a good job of moving the pocket with him. I think he’s a really good player.”

*Ja’Quarious Conley was the talk of the program, last week once Mack Brown revealed the true freshman was now the starter at nickel with Trey Morrison moving to safety in place of Myles Wolfolk, who is now ineligible and out for the season.

Conley was an outstanding player on both sides of the ball in high school and could line up at nearly any skill position on offense or defense, but he’s a safety/nickel for UNC, which is where Bateman wanted him all along.

“I think Ja’Quarious can do a lot of things, and since I was recruiting him, I kept him on defense,” Bateman said, smiling. “I went to watch him play in… November or October last year, and he made about every tackle on defense and on offense they put him at receiver and threw it to him and they put him at running back and handed it to him, so I think he can do a lot of things.

“I think he could play running back but I think his future really is as a defensive back.”

*Conley said last week he expected to redshirt this season and didn’t envision getting on the field so quickly, much less starting. So how is he handling the responsibility that comes with starting at such an important position for a team with lofty expectations?

“I think that’s been the part he’s got to work on,” Bateman replied. “He’s worked really hard. I give the other kids in that room a lot of credit because they’ve spent a lot of time with him, and he’s spent a lot of time, too, learning what I do in this coverage, what I do in this check.

“Early on, we could tell that physically he was talented, but then it became okay, now he’s got to earn it and he went out and did it. It was very obvious to us that once he got it, he was going to be a really important part of the defense.”

*Last week, junior linebacker Jeremiah Gemmel said Conley used to constantly check to see what to do before plays and if he was lined up right back in August, but now he’s letting Gemmel know what he’s going to do. Conley’s understanding and confidence is growing at nickel. Is that what Bateman has also seen?

“Gemmel is a very demonstrative kid, alright? So Gemmel’s gonna kind of overrule some things sometimes,” Bateman said. “But the thing that’s going on now is he’s not having to communicate with JQ, ‘Hey, you’re doing this,’ now JQ’s communicating to him so Gemmel can focus a little more on the other stuff.

“The other thing is, JQ is either playing with Don (Chapman), who is really smart, or he’s playing with Trey, who plays that position also. So, he’s got guys that are helping him. And the other thing is, it’s not open heart surgery, right? You’re playing three-deep or your playing quarter. If it was that hard I wouldn’t be a very smart d-coordinator, right? Simplicity is the key. So, once he understands how the wording works, then he’d pretty much understand what he’s doing.”