08-23-2023, 07:15 PM
Yurosek:
* Yurosek talked about camp being competitive, intense, and lots of reps. Sounds familiar.
* Acknowledgement that he's coming back from surgery. One thing I know about college football is many more players have off-season surgery than most fans realize. In the long-ago past years when I either knew a lot of people on the team or was close with player parents the glimpse I got into the number of surgeries was really eye-opening. Yurosek seems like a guy who has always used off-seasons for rehab but everything we're hearing from him and his coaches is that he's fully a go for the fall.
* Looking forward to seeing Yurosek out there in the new offense. As a reminder, aside from Karty Yurosek is the only proven all-conference player on our roster. In addition to Yurosek, the list of Pac-12 WRs or TEs who have had 35+ yards per game receiving on a qualifying amount of playing time two years in a row are Washington's Rome Odunze (first team preseason All-American), Cal's Jeremiah Hunter, Washington's Jalen McMillan, Utah TE Dalton Kincaid (now on the Buffalo Bills), Stanford's Elijah Higgins (now on the Miami Dolphins), USC's Tahj Washington, and Washington State's De'Zhaun Stribling (now on Oklahoma State). Utah TE Brant Kuithe got hurt last year but reached this mark in all three of the years prior to that. It's not a novel thought but Yurosek is the second highest profile TE in the Pac-12.
* Yurosek views the offense as fun and fast-paced (shocker) and seems to have faith in Taylor, referring to the coach's resume and past offensive success.
* Positive words on Deatrick and the level of conditioning, as we hear from everybody.
* It was interesting to hear Yurosek talk about Byham as tough and demanding, as Yurosek says it should be given the expectations for the room. Byham says the same thing about himself but for some reason I'm not sure I totally bought it as our coaches have such an outward sunniness (and some could say softness) to them. This is a reminder that we only see one, carefully presented side. I find it interesting Yurosek sees Byham as tough and demanding, and "very honest" was the other thing mentioned.
* Yurosek says he's been focused on "stance and obviously the run game." For all of Yurosek's receiving exploits, he hasn't quite broken through as a complete TE. According to PFF, among Pac-12 TEs with 100+ blocking snaps Yurosek graded #25 of 27 in run blocking #23 of 27 in pass blocking last year, and the year before #27 of 28 in run blocking and #2 of 28 in pass blocking (interesting outlier). That's a lot of data points of weak blocking. If he can develop that part of the game he becomes a much more complete player. Yurosek also mentioned the importance of connecting with all the QBs, a chemistry point that's certainly important for our most proven offensive weapon, but what was also interesting was that even after saying that Yurosek again repeated that stance and the run game (by the way, I think he may have been saying "stance in the run game" rather than "and") is his main focus. Good to know your weaknesses and work to mitigate, if not correct, them. That being said, we know what Yurosek's strength is and he's not in there for his blocking. Notable that Byham didn't even bother with blocking when talking about Yurosek. When talking about his ability to make contested catches Yurosek came across as the alpha he is as far as the college game goes.
* As I mentioned earlier, the TE interviews mentioned Roush and Holt rather than Hawkins, Ungar, and Taylor. I don't know if that's meaningful but I think it might be. Usually I'd write off the Yurosek interview data point as a function of what he was asked, but Yurosek calling Roush a "special player" who is "doing a great job" as somebody who feels like a third year player because of the early enrollment in 2022 sounded like it may have been notable praise. The most interesting part of this answer, though, was Yurosek saying he hopes there are a lot of two TE sets where they both can be out there. I'm sure that would be win-win from the TE perspective and may also appeal to Yurosek as he'd presumably be more the weapon and Roush more the blocker. I also feel like I detected the slightest edge to the comment, which sounded like a sincere hope rather than a prediction. Like us, he is yet to see game day personnel decisions in action. Taylor talks a lot about how much he likes the ability to use two TEs afforded by Stanford's recruiting, but that's not how Taylor has operated in the past. I wonder if Yurosek and Roush are wondering how many opportunities there truly will be for them to play simultaneously. I've predicted previously in a longer analysis that I predict that anybody hoping for TE usage like 2017 Stanford (34 percent of skill position snaps), 2018 Stanford (37 percent), or 2022 Utah (35 percent) will almost surely be disappointed but I could see Taylor responding to his relatively higher TE quality this year by having a breakdown very similar to what Shawvita did the last three years (23 percent most recently, three year median of 25 percent).
* Some real bite to Yurosek's characterization of the offense compared to Shawvita ("yeah, I think it's a complete 180" with some bite to the tone, and not the first time he has said 180). He elaborated "you can look at, as I said before, (Coach Taylor's) resume and see the difference." This was explicitly a comparison question, Yurosek took it this way, and it's not hard to read between the lines. It's interesting to hear apparent bitterness about Shaw's offense from someone who ate so prodigiously in it, but it's not that shocking when you think about Yurosek as an alpha not getting his due or the team accomplishments he would have wanted because the overall offense was less than the sum of the parts. Our players knew that was the case and while we don't hear "you can look at the resume and see the difference" very often, I am sure a lot of WRs and TEs from recent years think similarly.
* Once he got through making that statement, he noted that a lot of the TE versatility, "split flow" (new one for me, apparently H-back moving in a different direction than the RB to block), and motion from last year is what they're doing again. Maybe TE has less fundamental differences than WR. I wonder if the optionality of the route tree Osborne has talked about applies to TEs too. Given Yurosek's role as our leading weapon I'd kind of assume/hope so. After all that, Yurosek said the main difference from last year is....fast pace. I swear, after everything we're hearing if we don't break 75 offensive plays per game I'm going to feel misled.
* Yurosek had nice things to say about Holt, but it was mostly about how crazy it is to come so late in the year and how well Holt has handled that.
* Yurosek talked about camp being competitive, intense, and lots of reps. Sounds familiar.
* Acknowledgement that he's coming back from surgery. One thing I know about college football is many more players have off-season surgery than most fans realize. In the long-ago past years when I either knew a lot of people on the team or was close with player parents the glimpse I got into the number of surgeries was really eye-opening. Yurosek seems like a guy who has always used off-seasons for rehab but everything we're hearing from him and his coaches is that he's fully a go for the fall.
* Looking forward to seeing Yurosek out there in the new offense. As a reminder, aside from Karty Yurosek is the only proven all-conference player on our roster. In addition to Yurosek, the list of Pac-12 WRs or TEs who have had 35+ yards per game receiving on a qualifying amount of playing time two years in a row are Washington's Rome Odunze (first team preseason All-American), Cal's Jeremiah Hunter, Washington's Jalen McMillan, Utah TE Dalton Kincaid (now on the Buffalo Bills), Stanford's Elijah Higgins (now on the Miami Dolphins), USC's Tahj Washington, and Washington State's De'Zhaun Stribling (now on Oklahoma State). Utah TE Brant Kuithe got hurt last year but reached this mark in all three of the years prior to that. It's not a novel thought but Yurosek is the second highest profile TE in the Pac-12.
* Yurosek views the offense as fun and fast-paced (shocker) and seems to have faith in Taylor, referring to the coach's resume and past offensive success.
* Positive words on Deatrick and the level of conditioning, as we hear from everybody.
* It was interesting to hear Yurosek talk about Byham as tough and demanding, as Yurosek says it should be given the expectations for the room. Byham says the same thing about himself but for some reason I'm not sure I totally bought it as our coaches have such an outward sunniness (and some could say softness) to them. This is a reminder that we only see one, carefully presented side. I find it interesting Yurosek sees Byham as tough and demanding, and "very honest" was the other thing mentioned.
* Yurosek says he's been focused on "stance and obviously the run game." For all of Yurosek's receiving exploits, he hasn't quite broken through as a complete TE. According to PFF, among Pac-12 TEs with 100+ blocking snaps Yurosek graded #25 of 27 in run blocking #23 of 27 in pass blocking last year, and the year before #27 of 28 in run blocking and #2 of 28 in pass blocking (interesting outlier). That's a lot of data points of weak blocking. If he can develop that part of the game he becomes a much more complete player. Yurosek also mentioned the importance of connecting with all the QBs, a chemistry point that's certainly important for our most proven offensive weapon, but what was also interesting was that even after saying that Yurosek again repeated that stance and the run game (by the way, I think he may have been saying "stance in the run game" rather than "and") is his main focus. Good to know your weaknesses and work to mitigate, if not correct, them. That being said, we know what Yurosek's strength is and he's not in there for his blocking. Notable that Byham didn't even bother with blocking when talking about Yurosek. When talking about his ability to make contested catches Yurosek came across as the alpha he is as far as the college game goes.
* As I mentioned earlier, the TE interviews mentioned Roush and Holt rather than Hawkins, Ungar, and Taylor. I don't know if that's meaningful but I think it might be. Usually I'd write off the Yurosek interview data point as a function of what he was asked, but Yurosek calling Roush a "special player" who is "doing a great job" as somebody who feels like a third year player because of the early enrollment in 2022 sounded like it may have been notable praise. The most interesting part of this answer, though, was Yurosek saying he hopes there are a lot of two TE sets where they both can be out there. I'm sure that would be win-win from the TE perspective and may also appeal to Yurosek as he'd presumably be more the weapon and Roush more the blocker. I also feel like I detected the slightest edge to the comment, which sounded like a sincere hope rather than a prediction. Like us, he is yet to see game day personnel decisions in action. Taylor talks a lot about how much he likes the ability to use two TEs afforded by Stanford's recruiting, but that's not how Taylor has operated in the past. I wonder if Yurosek and Roush are wondering how many opportunities there truly will be for them to play simultaneously. I've predicted previously in a longer analysis that I predict that anybody hoping for TE usage like 2017 Stanford (34 percent of skill position snaps), 2018 Stanford (37 percent), or 2022 Utah (35 percent) will almost surely be disappointed but I could see Taylor responding to his relatively higher TE quality this year by having a breakdown very similar to what Shawvita did the last three years (23 percent most recently, three year median of 25 percent).
* Some real bite to Yurosek's characterization of the offense compared to Shawvita ("yeah, I think it's a complete 180" with some bite to the tone, and not the first time he has said 180). He elaborated "you can look at, as I said before, (Coach Taylor's) resume and see the difference." This was explicitly a comparison question, Yurosek took it this way, and it's not hard to read between the lines. It's interesting to hear apparent bitterness about Shaw's offense from someone who ate so prodigiously in it, but it's not that shocking when you think about Yurosek as an alpha not getting his due or the team accomplishments he would have wanted because the overall offense was less than the sum of the parts. Our players knew that was the case and while we don't hear "you can look at the resume and see the difference" very often, I am sure a lot of WRs and TEs from recent years think similarly.
* Once he got through making that statement, he noted that a lot of the TE versatility, "split flow" (new one for me, apparently H-back moving in a different direction than the RB to block), and motion from last year is what they're doing again. Maybe TE has less fundamental differences than WR. I wonder if the optionality of the route tree Osborne has talked about applies to TEs too. Given Yurosek's role as our leading weapon I'd kind of assume/hope so. After all that, Yurosek said the main difference from last year is....fast pace. I swear, after everything we're hearing if we don't break 75 offensive plays per game I'm going to feel misled.
* Yurosek had nice things to say about Holt, but it was mostly about how crazy it is to come so late in the year and how well Holt has handled that.