This week we are joined by Hokies cornerbacks coach and defensive recruiting coordinator Derek "Cheetah" Jones. During our discussion with Coach Jones we cover everything from his position group, his philosophy on coaching and recruiting, his relationship with the staff, and how he feels about this team heading into the 2024 campaign.

0:23 Music. And welcome back to the Boundary Corner Podcast along with my partners, Brian Siegler and Jonathan Talley. I am Curtis Wilson and this episode is brought to you by Doctor Jeremy Counts down at the Main Street Pharmacy in Blacksburg, VA, Your friendly neighborhood pharmacy three O 1 S Main St.

1:08 Blacksburg. Gentlemen, gentlemen, how are. Y'all this evening. Hey guys, back-to-back weeks of recording going live with the crew here, man, it's going to be a fun night tonight. And we got, we got them stacked wall to wall pretty much until the start of the season, but this was going to be a lot of fun. Yeah, I was just going to say back-to-back, back-to-back weeks mean we getting closer to the season. You got to go through that offseason grind, man. It's rough, but we then almost made it. We're about to get in the fall camp. Little bit of news right quick before we get to the big thing. We went to the doctor again, took my son to the doctor for his checkup. Got some disturbing news.

1:49 Leg is leg is healing great. Everything's fine. But looking at growth plates, he ain't got much more to grow and he's distraught. He's at about 6 foot. They told him he might have two more inches. That's it. No. NO65 for you, buddy. Deuce. Deuce is good. I'm 62, so I was like, you may you may get to where I'm at, you may not, I thought. Right here. So he was a little, he was a little distraught by with that, but. What you say to him, you ain't going to never be bigger than me, son. Let me just say that, right? You're never going to. Be you're never going to be as big and as pretty as me so. Our forward is not in your future. Yeah, man, just hey, take what? Take what? The Lord give you He faster than me though, so he eyes. Oh man, it's it's already pre show y'all pre show? Let's go ahead.

2:41 What's up? Kevin, we got a bunch of people joining us tonight. Y'all the the, the pre show was great. So we're going to go ahead and bring him in here because we we got to start talking some more. We've already had a bunch of fun with him already. Pokey Nation, welcome your cornerback coach The Cheetah. Derek Jones. Coach Jones, how are you tonight, Sir? I'm doing good guys, man. How's everybody out there at Hokie Nation doing? We live in the dream, coach, we live in the dream. Having you on tonight's a lot of fun. We're ready to get it going again. Like Curtis said, the pre show, I mean you weren't you were spending a lot of gems right there. We're going to get some more coming out for Hokie Nation now, so just excited to have you on board.

3:25 Hey man, I'm glad you guys invited me on. Let's do it. Let's do it. Well, first of all, we discussed it beforehand, but we're going to do it here in public. Happy anniversary to you and Missus Jones 24 years just a few days ago, give out a big round of applause. And so Coach Jones, you were explaining to us, y'all had this wonderful, your wife planned a wonderful anniversary vacation, right? It's more like an annual vacation than an anniversary vacation. Whatever works. Yes you did. We've done some travelling here in the last four weeks and I'm glad to be back home. Yeah, it looks like you were, you were on the move.

4:06 You told us you were you were out there doing like a little bit of tour of the South, took a little couple trips there, got to see Coach Pross spot down in Alabama, a little bit of everything, right? Yeah, man, it it was. I mean, like as soon as the the vacation started, she had it planned and we went to Mississippi to visit her folks. And then we flew to Granada for six days with seven other coaching couples, something that we do every two years. And we came back from Granada, flew in the Memphis T, Memphis, TN and drove directly to coach prize house down in Orange Beach. We've been going down vacationing with him and Amy probably the last eight years or so at their place there and went through Atlanta to see one of my former players just had a brand new baby.

4:54 And then we drove to South Carolina to see my family and we went to Charlotte to celebrate the anniversary. And then we went back to the Raleigh Durham area to see some people. And she finally allowed me to come back home a couple days ago. He is back home it's it's good to again it's good to have you here so y'all did a lot of traveling a lot of stuff so and it seems just from your social media you love summer. Why wouldn't you it's a low down time. We know you're still out there recruiting, but. What is? What's? What's the big one fun summer thing you like to do every year? Is it is it that vacation or is it something else? You know, I usually like looking forward to getting to reconnect with friends. And one thing that those vacations do is allow me to get back to the Memphis, TN area in Mississippi where I have a lot of college teammates.

5:42 And you know, we get together and just sit back and act like we back in those old days again. And, you know, that's something you can't put a price tag on. And, you know, we don't recruit that area much here at Virginia Tech. So that's the only time I really get to see those guys. So I would say that's the one thing I look forward to because we all close to our 50s now, so we're not getting any younger. Definitely, definitely. Well, yeah, I'm going to go back. Can y'all hear me Good. So one, one thing, I don't know if y'all heard this, Hokey Nation coach Cheetah said. He was in Alabama. So I don't want to hear no more hillbilly jokes and bad Internet jokes, all right, because people take vacations and come to Alabama so y'all need to relax. But we going we going to go to the next question Coach. I kind of know the answer, but everybody in Hokie Nation wants to know where did you come up with the cheetah wings? Where did that come from?

6:37 You know, I'm a wing fanatic and have been for a long time. And my two favorite wings were lemon pepper wings and the traditional Buffalo wing. And what I started doing is I like to cook. I cook at home a lot myself and I like to make wings at home a lot myself. And So what I started doing many years ago was just taking the Buffalo wing and sprinking lemon pepper on it. And you know, with my nickname being Cheetah and that being the brand of my players, why not call it a cheetah wing? Because once you put the lemon pepper on it, you see the little black spot. And so everywhere I go, I'm kind of a creature of habit. Everywhere I coach, I kind of got one place that I go and that's just kind of my hangout. So fortunate for me, every place I've been over the course of the last 15 years, I've had a spot that would make those for me.

7:24 But ironically, when I got here to Virginia Tech, I was living in the Residence Inn pretty much. And I've known Coach Foster for a while through the profession, and he welcomed me when I got here. And he just told me he's like, you know, here's a place you can go to do this. Coach Foster's wife, Jesse, actually sold me my house. So we were interacting with them quite a bit and Coach Foster told me about PKS. He says it stays open late if you get back in town late recruiting. But he says it's never going to be many people in there this time of year. You can go in there, watch TV, you know, and get yourself something to eat. So I go in there one night and I look at the menu and they don't have lemon pepper on the menu as a sauce. They have Buffalo.

8:05 So me being the person I am, I always ask if you have lemon pepper because a lot of times they have spices back there that they don't have. And I asked the bartender, you know, could he make me a Buffalo wing sprinkle with lemon pepper? And he's like, let me go back here and ask him. And he went back there and he came back. He says, yes, they can do that for you. So I got the wings, took them back to the room. You know, just being new to Hokie Nation, I took a picture of them and it's the first time I'd ever done that. I took a picture of them, I thought nothing of it, ate them. They were really good. And I posted it. Cheetah Wing thought nothing of it, no big deal. Had no idea that anybody was even going to know what I was talking about. And to my surprise, I woke up the next day and it had gone viral.

8:47 And that was the birth of the original Cheetah Wing here in Blacksburg there. You go. Think about Hokie Nation, if they see something out there that they can latch onto you going you going to get it popping a little bit on the on the timeline there for sure. All right. Definitely. All right, can I ask another question real quick because you say you like to cook. I I'm going to take wings out of it because that sounds like that'd be your go to. You invite us three over to your home this fall after a game. What are you cooking us? It depends on if we cook it on the grill, if we cook in in the kitchen, if we cook it in the grill, if we cook it on the grill outside. I'm going to make ribs. I like my ribs. I come from a long family of BBQ people in South Carolina, so I take a great deal of pride in that.

9:32 If we're cooking on the inside of the house, I'm probably going to make you guys some of my homemade meatballs. I make meatballs, I put them in gravy and I accessorize them with a variety of different vegetables. Good hearty meal. He said he he said he accessorize them with special. That man is the real deal. Let me put y'all on some game two right quick before we go to the next question, because Cheetah has to be pretty diplomatic so he can't say some things that I can say, but I'm going to tell y'all listeners on here. It is a black people staple to get lemon pepper hot wings. If you go to, if you are in any town, you may need to have your gun on you because some of these wing spots are a little bit crazy. You find your wings to go and you go in there and you ask for lemon pepper hot all flats fried hard. That's how that's what you got to get. That's what.

10:26 That's your order. You know, most people won't realize this, but I'll I'll let it out if you see me at any point in time with my book bag. I have lemon pepper in that book bag. I make my own cheetah wings because some places don't have lemon. Pepper but. I refuse to be denied. You know they make orange pepper now, right? Too. Yeah. OK, that's all I want to ask. And, and, and you got to keep it with you because you can't, you can't like take a chance if they're going to go go skimp on you with the lemon pepper. So you got to like, all right, they're here. But I got to, I got to throw a little bit more on top here. You got to finish it. Well, well, the thing about lemon pepper is too now they're different brands.

11:09 Lemon lemon pepper is kind of like gasoline. So, you know, some brands are better than others. Here we go. And like restaurant, call it how it is. You know, restaurants try to profit. So they'll give you sometimes that powdery lemon pepper. I don't want that. I want the thick lemon pepper. So I will sometimes ask to see the lemon pepper to see what it looks like. And if it's too powdery I'll just make my own. You got a go to brand? No, not really. I usually just look at it and look at the thickness. Yeah, yeah, I got one more food question. This one was just sent to me, Coach, they said, do you? They said Do you make your own dry rub? No, I haven't made my own dry rub.

11:50 I haven't. I haven't tapped into making my own seasonings. Yet. OK, got you. That man's busy recruiting. He ain't got time to do it. I can't experiment with this. I'll buy them. I I know what they look like. I know how I want them to be. Haven't really played around with that yet. All right, so we, we, we talked about PKS. What's what's your other go to food spots in Blacksburg since you've been there? Man, I like Bull and Bones, you know, good place to go. Got to know the owners pretty well there. I love Farmhouse. You know, that's a big date night spot for several of us coaches going there. And I'm a big Waffle House guy, man, I've been a Waffle House guy for a long time. But you know, Mcadoo's another place. I'm one of those people, man, I love going. I love small college towns because those people support you and so I try to give back to them. So if I like the cuisine, I'll walk in. You know, the Brazilian steakhouse over there, I think they have a really good steak.

12:45 I don't really understand what a lot of the sides are, but the meat is good. You know, as far as there, you've got, you know, a couple different pizza places here in town. But I I try to spread the wealth out pretty good there. We go that's pretty awesome. Well, we talked a lot of meat, but we going to get to the meat of the of the questions with coach Cheetah here. We're going to talk a little football so we know you got a couple of guys in that room. 2 names that stand out is Dorian and and Mansour for this year. We know those young men have made a name for themselves under your tutelage. Can you tell us kind of what has been your favorite thing with them or your favorite thing about them since you've been coaching them, those two guys? Yeah, without a doubt.

13:27 You know, talking about Dorian, the thing I like about Dorian is his competitive nature. I mean, he is the highly, highly competitive guy and that's the number one characteristic that you got to have in our position, specifically for the style of defense that we play. We play a lot of man coverage. So you got to be built a certain way. You've got to be very competitive. You've got to be a person that understands a lot of things that are necessarily not in the game plan that you've got to do to elevate your game. But I think it's competitive nature drives them to do the things that he has to do away from the field, away from practice, to elevate his game. And he's the guy that the rest of the guys in the room feed off of because he's always going to be the first one out there.

14:11 He's always going to be the one, you know, challenging not only himself but the other guys in the room to be more competitive. And that stuff is contagious. And when you talk about Monsieur, it will be mentality. You know, Monsieur was thrown in the fire by me very early in his career. And so, you know, he caught a lot of heat from me in that sense. I'm I'm a very honest coach. If you are not mentally tough, if you don't like honesty, if you don't like the truth, you don't struggle playing for me. And, you know, he's been a day one page one guy that has received a lot of that and he just handles it. He just takes it in. He never back talks, he never gets frustrated and it transitions to his ball game, You know, So I think that's one of the things about him and you see it in the physical way that he plays on the football field.

15:02 So those are the two things that you got to have when you a cornerback. And one of them has a very highly elevated level of it and the other has the other highly elevated level of it. Can I ask this? We've got a couple questions, but what is it about the physical part of their games? Like what is it that really like when you stepped foot, especially actually both of them, because the year you got here, Dorian had been here for a couple years, Mansour was in that freshman class. What was it physically? Was it footwork? Was it the way they did press? What did you like immediately physically? Because obviously the mindsets are there for both of them. Well, the thing about Dorian was just, you know, he had all the measurables and intangibles of a corner, you know, and just the things that he did naturally the first time I coached him. You're looking at this guy and say, you know, this guy bends well.

15:49 This guy changed directions really well, You know, being able to play the ball down field. That's just a lot of things that you can't coach that he had. And Monsieur, you know, he actually started with us as a safety. We, we, we was a safety initially. And he got hurt, you know, when he first got here. So we didn't get to see him do a whole lot. And he transitioned over to me at corner. And to be honest with you guys, the first time I saw Muscle Delane make a tackle was in the North Carolina game because he couldn't do anything because he had a shoulder injury. So we kind of threw him out that sight unseen and he was ready for the moment. I think he made the first two tackles that he was in for the ball game and you know it. It's continued since then, but Muscle likes contact. You know, he has the mentality of a safety playing corner. And you know, that's just what you see every day in practice as well.

16:40 Yeah, I love hearing corners that like to hit a little bit. I mean, that's a that's a hallmark of the Hokies. So have having somebody like that, having that mentality in that room, you'd love to hear that. Let's talk a little bit about some of the younger Cheetahs though. So we got Dante, we got Braylon. They played in 13 and 12 games, respectively. Getting kind of run in your unit on special teams, some a little bit watching these guys kind of go through the process now that they're a little bit further along. What are some of those areas of growth that you've seen since this time last year for those two? You know, first and foremost, both of the guys I think understand the position better than they did when they first got here. And a lot of that credit goes to the guys that are playing in front of them, you know, being able to pour into them. And anytime you've got guys that you can watch do things the right way, it makes a huge difference. And they're blessed to have that. You know, unfortunately for those guys, they were young last year and, you know, probably a victim of the guys being in front of them being such good players. You know, we were having some struggles early in the year, so we wasn't pulling away from a lot of people. So it's very hard to pull guys with the talent level of Munsu and Dorian out of the ball game and put unproven, untested guys in when you're trying to win ball games. And because, you know, we kind of overhauled that room, we didn't have a lot of guys that have been here with playing experience.

18:07 You know, the one guy that we had last year, you know, to buffer a little bit was Derek Canton and he gave us, you know, that third body guy. So those guys probably didn't get the number of snaps that you would like them to have gotten. But we didn't have another choice. You know, we were preparing them for the future because you can't go into a season just saying you're going to have two healthy corners expecting to do what we do on defense. You got to have guys that if something to one of those guys, and we saw that in year one when Dorian Strong got hurt that year one play away from not being able to do the things that you want to do on defense if you don't have the people to do it. And our defense is geared around having corners that can do what we do because if we can't play man coverage, we're not going to be very good. And that's one of the things that, you know, during the first year that we were here, we just didn't have the guys to be able to do the things that we wanted to do. So we've got to bring those guys along and those older guys are really helping in that process.

19:03 Awesome. And let let me ask this because it's kind of a little bit of a piggyback off that question because you talked about doing what you want to do. And when we had JC Price on, he talked about the one thing that kind of got the defense and the rhythm last year is when you were able to go a lot more man coverage as the season went on. And that kind of started racking up those tackles for loss, racking up those sacks. And then that reciprocal relationship between pressure on the quarterback man coverage given those those defensive lineman time to get to the quarterback. Talk a little bit about that and how that kind of helped the growth of your room last year? Yeah, it makes all the difference in the world, and that's been my background basically since I've been in the profession. I played college football for a guy named Jolie Dunn at Ole Miss at Ole Miss, and you know, we played a lot of 0 in man coverage.

19:54 You know, we had the number one defense in the nation one year just because those things marry up When you can take away access throws from quarterbacks and access throws or hitches, slants in the three-step drops because you're playing soft coverage, you limit a lot of what they can do when you get up there and you take away a lot of the route side of the route tree. You make the quarterback hold the ball, which buys time for the defensive line to be able to get there. And the other thing you do is you make the quarterback have to be perfect and throwing when you play zone and when you play off, everything is timing. The receiver runs five step turns around the ball is there. Well, if you in his face that windows not going to be there. And the one thing that offenses are not going to do a whole lot is take shots down the field, because if you take shots down the field too often and you don't hit them, that gets you behind in the snap count, gets you behind in everything. And so now if you're backed up and you try to throw 2 take off routes, you have to punt the ball from there. You're giving the other team good field position. So it really limits a lot of what the offense can do when you can do that.

20:59 But it's just we're married in that sense. You know, the defensive line loves that we can do that and we love it. They can get there. 100% let me ask this because you know, they kind of they did like you said, you wanted to get a more snaps last year. But what have you seen in the three phases so far this year? The growth, what have you seen from both Braylon and Dante and the growth they've taken because they did play a lot of freshmen from some people's eyes, because some people will say they didn't red shirt. They were out there every single game just about. So what have you seen them really grow with in these really actually in really the last 365 days almost? You know, maturity being number one, I always tell my guys it takes a certain level of maturity to excel at this level. And I've seen each one of those guys do that. And maturity covers the large window. You know, maturity and knowing how to go watch film. Maturity and disciplining yourself to do the things that you have to do when you're not forced to do it to get yourself better understanding, not being afraid to ask questions. And I think both of those guys have a vast knowledge of the game that they didn't have, you know, when they came here. The more snaps they get, the better they're going to get at it.

22:15 And so, you know, we were really able to make some headway to spring. Dante and Braylon both got a chance to run a lot of reps with the ones. Braylon's working a lot with the safeties. Because what we want to do with our secondary is we don't want to be one-dimensional. You know, we have corners and we have safeties, but the whole cheetah concept is about a guy that's versatile. We want to be able to get our best football players on the field and you'll see if at any point in time we get in trouble, You guys know very well that we can stick monsoon delay in that safety and pick right up right there. So we want to develop guys like Braylon and Dante into being versatile players because when you're a good player and you young and you have really good players in front of you, you want to be able to do more than one thing. But that's a lot to put on a true freshman to ask the guy to do a lot of different things.

23:06 But we were able to spring to be able to put both of those guys at multiple positions. And when you play safe, you learn more about corner and when you play corner you learn more about safety. So it just helps you all of our overall portfolio as far as a football player. Nice. Love hearing it, Coach. Let's talk about another one of those young guys. Let's talk about Josh Clark. We talked a little bit about him in the pre show and he showed out in the spring game and kind of throughout spring practice. We heard his name a few times being mentioned. By all accounts, how invaluable is it? Not only that, you got him on campus for both the winter phase, spring ball and now the summer phase. And for him, or not just for him, but for any of those guys coming in early, how big of an advantage is that for him? It makes a huge difference because those guys come in with time to be able to learn from their teammates, time to be able to get reps.

24:04 It's almost like having a season before you season. And fortunate for him, he came in by himself. So he got a lot of reps that you know, that the year before I think we had like five corners, you know, so you know, with each other. Whereas now Josh is by himself. So he got a chance to get a lot of reps. I was able to sprinkle him in there with the two some, you know, sprinkle him in there with the threes. But also, when you come in by yourself, you're the baby of the group, so everybody in the room is pouring into you, as opposed to when that group came in before, it was five of them sitting in there and Dorian's turning around looking, and he's trying to tell every last one of them something to spend time with him. So Josh kind of gets all the attention to himself. So that's been real beneficial to him. But Josh is a uniquely mature kid, and that's one of the things that you have to look for in the recruiting process. The recruiting process isn't just about ability. It isn't just about how fast is the guy or how good of a football player is, how mature is he? And in today's world, we have to look at guys in the recruiting process and say how much attention does he need? How much attention does he like?

25:13 How much does he want? How coachable is it? Is this a guy that's going to be able to conform the discipline or is he a guy that's going to say, I don't want to be disciplined, I'm going in the portal. You have to dig deep nowadays in ways you didn't have to, to find out the total makeup of this guy and what he's abiding. Josh was just the guy that checked all the boxes, you know, and it comes from his family, comes from a great family, very athletic family, couple brothers, played college football. One of his brothers was at UNC playing when I was at Duke. One of the sisters played basketball at Duke. I think mom played basketball. So very athletic, family, but very mature in the sense of how he came into the meeting room as a freshman and absorbed information and asked questions. And we do a lot of exercises in our room of being transparent. And, you know, one of the things I like to do is I like for my players to be honest with each other. And the only way that Josh Clark is ever going to be honest with Dorian Strong about something that he can do to be a better captain or a better player is for me to put them in those positions.

26:19 And you know, Josh was just one of those guys day one, page one, you know, whether it's Monsoor standing up there, whether it's Dorian standing up there, Josh spoke his mind and what he felt that those guys needed to improve on in order to be better leaders for him. And that's just who he is as a person. So being able to get here gives us an opportunity to get him some reps, but to also find out those things I just told you about him, which lets us know as we're making preparations where we can use him as the season approaches. Well, coach, you're getting so good at this thing, man. Did you answer any questions before I even ask them? So one of my questions that I was going to ask was going to talk about what you look for in recruiting and checking boxes. But man, you hit that nail on the head. So I'm going to kind of jump to something else before we get ready to take a break.

27:05 This is kind of off the off the cuff. When you came in and saw you played college ball, you said you played at Ole Miss, correct? Yes. And you were at DB. What? What number did you wear? Oh, oh, when I first got to college I wore #24. OK, that's a good number. That's a real good number. So #24 Dorian Strong is it? And we love Dorian. We love Dorian store. He's been at Virginia Tech a long time. What did you think when you walked in that in that room and you said, OK, who's my guy? And they said this is your guy right here, Dorian Strong. And he had #44 on what did you think about that number? Coach on the cornerback. You know, for, for me, I always believe that the player makes the number. The number doesn't make the player. And, you know, weirdly, I won an award at Ole Miss called the Chucky Mullins Award in my senior year. And it was #38 Chucky Mullins from Russellville, AL, got paralyzed on a football game at Ole Miss making a tackle, eventually passed away.

28:09 And they traditionally give that number to the best defensive player #38 was not a desirable number, but they made it desirable. And so even now, when I tell people I wore #30 in Canadian college, people that don't understand what it means, they kind of look at me weirdly. So me and Dorian kind of had a little something in common, you know, with that 44. But really and truly, when I saw him wearing #44 man, I looked at it as a confidence thing. You know, I think a lot of guys want numbers because they're sexy. I think a lot of guys want numbers because they're popular, because other people wore them. But it says a lot about your confidence when you put on something that nobody else is wearing. I mean, the guy's wearing a linebacker number and he's one of the best corners in the country.

28:49 I'll take. It. There you go. Right? Exactly. Yeah, and it is it, like I said, I, I, I agree with you. It says something about the character there. So that that's definitely a point. I mean, you know, there's a lot of numbers that some of those, you know, cornerbacks that they've played for the Hokies that went on to do bigger things, made very popular and 44 was not one of them. So taking that on and making that his thing and, and now he's taking that that big step where he's getting a lot of that same type of conversation that those guys got in the past too. So. Man. When Dorian, when Dorian first got here, we was like, get him out of that 44 please. And now, but but now it's like, man, you know what? We might need to get somebody else in that 44 when he decides to leave because he's he's done that number proud. I got to give him his props, man, He has he has earned everything that he has got, and it is so awesome to see that kid to come in with what he was recruited and the rankings did. I know rankings don't matter, but the rankings they put on them and offers that he had to come in and then you look at his name up there as one of the top one of the top BBS, one of the top players in the country.

30:00 Man, it's just awesome to see his story. So I thought I'd. Take this break. We got to get Dwight in here real quick. Yeah, on this. 1. Coach, have you been able to check out Chickasi spot in the 757? No, I know you told me about that, but God, but I hadn't had a chance to go back there. But it is definitely on my To Do List when we get back on the recruiting trail all. Right. We'll make a note of that. We'll make a note of that. The other thing about the numbers thing is right now, because we mentioned it, it's 44. It's 44. My goodness. And what he's doing with it, it's going to be some kid that comes in, I'm sure with you in a few years, it's going to want a number that doesn't fit DBS.

30:40 So it's probably going to be that influential effect downstream where I want 47 and you can. And you're going to be like, you do you, son, because like you just said, be confident in it. And like like, I think you make a great point. The other thing is, I'm sure there were some people fooled the first time they saw 44 coming out on the boundary side and being like. Is. That a linebacker over there. What are they doing? If I'm, if I'm, if I'm a quarterback, I'm throwing that 44 all day at. 1st. Until he do. Until he do what? Dorian Strong. So it was. Bait. I think the I think the weirdest part about it was when I got here, Dorian wasn't very big and it looked a little bit awkward seeing 44 on that little body.

31:29 But hey, he made it his and I'm OK with it. He picked up a little weight now. He didn't got to be a, he didn't got to be a right size good man. All right, real quick. We've got more with Derrick Jones, but we are going to take a quick break from our partners over at Main Street Pharmacy. I can probably save you a lot of money and I can take a lot better care of you. That's pretty much it. My name is Jeremy Counts and I'm a pharmacist. I own and operate Main Street Pharmacy here in downtown Blacksburg. My brother's a pharmacist, I'm a pharmacist, my uncle's a pharmacist, my dad's a pharmacist. I remember he would give me M&M's to count in little pill counters. This is something I've always done, and I'm just lucky that what I know so well is something that I can do and feel good about it and get back to people.

32:14 Pharmacies are your frontline defense. Pharmacy's job is to make sure you're getting optimal care for the lowest price possible. Also, we take the pressure off of emergency rooms. I'll tell people immediately when they need to go to the doctor, or I'll tell them if they just need a cream over the counter. If there's something that isn't commercially available, if it's something that's not available in a certain strength or a certain form or anything like that, we'll make it. TaylorMade medications. Some of those options save people a lot of money. What motivates me, I get to take care of people and limit Blacksburg. That's all neat. All righty and we are back again. Coach Derrick Jones joining us tonight and coach, I want to kind of talk about some coaching staff and we've already hit this and now you and coach pry y'all obviously go a long way back together looking through y'all's history, y'all coach together in Memphis 2007.

33:08 Obviously you talked about Memphis earlier today. I was on the Tommy W the old Clemson coach, but how did that look because it was only one year? How did that relationship grow and come over the years and lead up to where, when Coach Pride takes the job December of 2021, he picks up that phone and calls you and says I want you to leave the cornerback room at Virginia. Tech, you know, well, the relationship started actually before our time at Memphis, OK Coach Pride was coaching at Louisiana Lafayette under Ricky Bussell, and I was the quarterback coach at Murray State. And, you know, coaching kind of goes, you know, you got a job open, you generally ask buddies if they know somebody to fit a position.

33:53 And Coach Pryor asked around. He's looking for a cornerback coach. Somebody gave me my name and he called me. We had a few preliminary conversations and he called me back one day and he was like, we want to fly you down. What? Strangely, I had torn my ACL coaching in a football game. You know, at Murray State we had that old carpet turf at the time and being hyperactive, I'm running down the sideline. One of my guys picked the ball off and I got to about the 25 yard line where I know I couldn't go up past it. I didn't want to get a penalty. And I tried to abruptly stop and snap my knee. You know, real bad athlete moment for me right there. And so I'm immobile.

34:36 I can't move. I just recently had surgery and I had this water cast on so I couldn't get on a plane. And I talked to him about it. He told me. He called me back and he said, well, is it OK if I fly out to see you? Well, I don't think he understands how bad I'm hurt at the time. And so he flies into Nashville, TN, drives to Murray, KY. I drives to my house and my wife goes to the door and brings them into my living room. And I am like on a couch with my leg elevated. And, you know, a quarterback coach is not just like ADB coach. You know, most people want their cornerback coaches to be able to actually demonstrate. You know, you can't coach corners off of a board. You can't coach corners off of film. You have to be able to show them, you know, the things that you want them to do.

35:25 Well, my poor wife has never been an athlete, definitely never been a cornerback. So strangely, I am on the couch trying to get this job and I am trying to get my wife, who's never played a sport in her life, to demonstrate the cornerback drills. Well, Needless to say, with me being immobilized and him not knowing if I really knew what I was talking about, I didn't get that job. But Coach Pryor and I just stayed friends and stayed in contact. And Fast forward a couple years later, I'm coaching at the Universe at University of Memphis and we have a job come open and Coach West comes to us and he's like, you know, I'm looking for either a linebacker or AD line coach. You know, I just want the best coach. If y'all got any names that you want to give me, let me know. Well, I knew that Coach Pry had a pass in both D line play and linebacker play and so I gave Coach W his name. They had preliminary conversations, flew Coach Pryin on the interview, and he ends up getting the job. And they moved us into a house together. I think they hired four or five, five new coaches that year. And they told us that we all have to stay in this house together and that if your significant other came to visit, they would get you a hotel room.

36:46 But when she left, you had to go back to the house. So we named it the Frat House. So we basically became roommates in 2007 and we lived together for about 5 months and really became friends. And then him and Amy were dating at the time and shortly thereafter got married. And we just started a tradition of every year because I had gone to Duke at the time and they were still at Memphis, and then they left there and went on to Georgia Southern. So we just made a pact that every year at the National Convention, we were going to get together. And so we always would get to the National Convention on Saturday, and we'd get together and go out to dinner somewhere and just have a good time. And we literally did that for over a decade. And so Coach Pry called me about a job opportunity a couple of different times when he was coaching, you know, because, you know, we really became good friends. And weirdly, during the pandemic, you know, nobody could do much.

37:44 So we got a group chat and we do small little things together, maybe get on the phone and have a date night over the phone because you couldn't go anywhere. And so me and my wife went out one night in Texas and Coach Price sent a message in the group chat that the four of us had. And he said, hey, man, nice shirt. I said, appreciate it. He said, one of us needs to get a head coaching job so we can start to do date night together. I said, well, I agree. And I swear, man, it wasn't. 2 weeks later Coach Pride called me and he said, man, I think I got a shot at the Virginia Tech job. I need to be able to give them some names and some people I bring with me, you know, as I'm going into these interviews And without a second thought, you know, I was actually in negotiations with a couple other people about a couple other jobs and without a second thought, man, I said if you get it, I'm with you.

38:35 And he called me back a couple days later and said he was having, I think his third interview. And actually I was at a dinner for our seniors and I never told my wife about this courtship at all. She had no idea this was going on. And so Coach Fry and Amy called me and told me he got the job and officially offered me the job and I officially accepted. But still we didn't tell my wife. And so I invited my wife to come pick me up from the place I was at. I told my wife, actually, I couldn't drive. I needed her to come get me. And she was fussing at me talking about why you couldn't drive. I was like, I lost my keys. I just make it up. Stuff came to the restaurant man, and we got her own FaceTime. So it was a really special moment for us as four really close friends, for me to tell her in that moment that we were going to go work with some really good friends of ours.

39:22 And I hadn't regretted one moment of it. That's an awesome. Story that is an awesome. Story I I, I love that it started with Rick and Russell too like that just feels kind of like meant to be for for for that that connection. So I, I really like that. I didn't know about that piece of it, so man. Yeah, well, he's, he's a good friend, man. But he's a, he's a really good head coach and I would not have joined him at this stage in my career if I didn't 100% believe in him. I mean, I knew what he was as a leader. I knew who he is as a man. I know how players gravitate to him. I know how coaches are going to want to work for him, which is evident by not seeing one person leave our staff this past year.

40:06 I think that's probably the one thing that people don't understand in the coaching profession, how in demand good coaches are. And any time you see a program keep their entire staff together, that says volumes about the guy that's sitting at the head of the table. So I think bright things are on the future for us. I think Tally stepped out on this for just a second. So I'm going to take over this next one here. You know, we we got we got the prod details in there and like I said, just just awesome to hear that story. You also got a partner in the back end there with the with the D block, one of the Ogs of DBU at Virginia Tech, Pearson Prelo.

40:48 He was one of the first, you know, he was the first time college coach when you guys kind of got together when y'all started in 2022. What's it been like to watch his maturation in the profession over the last couple years? You know, it's, it's been awesome, man. Pearson is a very, very bright football coach. And you're talking about a guy, even though he hadn't coached a whole lot, you're talking about a guy who had a 12 plus year NFL career, been around some really, really good football coaches. And when you play that long in that league, you have to have knowledge of the game and it easily transitions. But the other thing about Pearson, he's a good teacher. You know, seeing him on the board, seeing him with this guys, making them understand, it just comes natural for it.

41:32 And some guys just have that, you know, some guys can coach for 20 years and just not be good at it. And some guys can do it for one year and you just know they have that it factor and he has that. And the other portion of it, man, he's become a really good friend of mine. We we really don't do much without each other. And I think you have to have that in the secondary because we have to be aligned. We have to be on the same page. I don't think you have to hang out together as much as we do, but we do, you know, we go to lunch together pretty much every day and we hang out together every day. And me and Pearson will be on the road recruiting and we may talk to each other on the phone while we're driving for an hour and a half, two hours, you know, So it's been and a real joy. And Jeff Pearson having the connection that he has to so many other great defensive backs in Virginia Tech players.

42:17 That's a huge recruiting peace force. You know, like I played at the University of Mississippi. So I know of a lot of guys, but I don't know them. Pearson has direct contact to a lot of these guys that we can get involved in the recruiting process to help us, you know, whether they're from certain areas, we're recruiting and young men can identify with them. And that means a lot, you know, because young men want to go where they can identify that people that have done things they want to do, have done. I'm going to ask this, and this is kind of the Pearson piece and kind of being at Virginia Tech, because you've coached a long time, you played, when you see the amount of defensive backs, I'm going to put defensive backs in general that have come through Virginia Tech and the level of what they played, you know, how does that feel?

43:04 Because you know, you walk through, you got D Hall, you see other names and there's other names and probably some guys, you know, and it's like this isn't one of those places where people don't look at the DBS. It's front and center. How does that feel? Because I'm sure you've had interactions with some of those guys since being down there and knowing that in a way it's and then you've already started it. If you continue in that legacy of this GroupMe and you and Pearson's group, it's what this school is known for. Yeah, man, it was definitely one of the things that attracted me to this job. And even though at the time you didn't have a lot of guys that were being nationally recognized, I knew it was the place that you could get the best caliber defensive backs in the country to come play.

43:57 You know, I was on the other sideline for 12 years and I was in a lot of those recruiting battles and I didn't mean didn't win a lot of those, you know, when I was doing that. So I had first hand experience with a lot of these guys and, you know, just recruiting against Virginia Tech in the past. And when you see a kid get that Virginia Tech offer, you'd almost cringe because you know that all your work and all your hours and all your time's probably now in vain. And I can honestly say that now when I'm recruiting the defensive back, I don't worry about anybody else in America offering them because I feel like we've got something to offer that not many other people in America have to offer. And I think at this point in my career, I'm finally at a place to where I can maximize my ability to coach and to develop with the top caliber athletes in America, and I'm excited for the future.

44:52 Yeah, that was a great question, Curtis, man, I, you know, I wasn't even thinking about that and looking at it like that, but kind of does go hand in hand with what what I was going to ask though now, because when you think about your your position group and then we're going to flip over to the offense. Virginia Tech's been known for some some great BB runs. We haven't been known for a lot of hot powered offense wide receiver groups. So now I feel like we have that, you know, I feel like that the nation has taken a taken a a look at what Virginia Tech has in that wide receiver room. And we know iron sharpen iron sharpens iron. So those practices is what we want to talk about.

45:34 Like how intense are those practices between like your guys and that wide receiver group and also with the coaches? Like are y'all friendly with each other to get that growth or y'all competing like the like the young men are competing? You know, I think it kind of goes both ways. You know, Fun Tail and I are really close, so we all get back and forth because we understand that it gets our young men going. And so you know, but Funtell and I have a unique way or not. Not only do we sell it to our players, we sell it in recruiting. And I'll get to that a little bit later, but you know, we've got a lot of guys in that receiving core that are just as good as anything that these guys are going to see any Saturday.

46:17 And you don't get good in games, you get good in practice. You know, you look at the amount of games that you play, how many snaps you play, how many targets come your way. It's not a large, large number when you tally it up at the end of the year, but in order to get yourself to where you can play the way Dory and Strong played this year, you have to have guys like Cohen, Felton and Gosnell to be able to get you sharp on a daily basis. And we have very competitive Pascal sessions in one-on-one sessions. But we also do a lot of individual drills together. And you know, it's one thing for me to have my DBS trying to demonstrate stuff to each other. We're not receivers.

46:58 It's a whole different animal when you can bring a guy that may not be as good as the guys you're going to play on Saturday that you're working against. So that instills confidence. You know, young guys like Braylon Thomas Williams, Dante Lovett, Kristen Williams, being able to go against guys like Jalen Lane and Cohen Felton, Ollie Jennings, it only makes those guys better. So it's been really good to have that competition. And the other piece of it is one thing I always sell in the recruiting process to both receivers and defensive backs is what I just said. You have to be knowledgeable of the receivers coach. If you play corner, you need to be knowledgeable of him.

47:40 And the reason you need to be knowledgeable of the receivers coach is you need to know his ability to coach, to develop and to recruit that position because as I said earlier, you're going to get good in practice, not in the games. And any receivers that we bring in here, they need to be knowledgeable as me, as the coach and of Pearson because they need to know our ability to be able to recruit, coach and develop the guys they're going to be going again. And so I am always talking to young men on the phone about what Funtail Mimes brings to the table as a coach and a recruiter, you know, because I want to add that aspect of it and it just gives us a little bit more ammunition in the recruiting process. I love hearing that because it's like you're not just recruiting guys.

48:29 I'm going to get you better. We're going to get you better collectively. We're going to get you better because of the guys that you're going to line up against and practice every day. No doubt about it. Let me ask this and it kind of is going that iron shopping on iron. I am assuming y'all film these scrimmages. Do you guys sit as a collective unit and just watching And then and I know it's different positions and everything, but you know someone like Stu Hall who's a tight end coach, hey, hey, hey cheetah, so and so is kind of doing something with his legs when y'all were playing this type coverage. Do y'all do things like that on a daily basis? Yes, indeed.

49:09 You know, because we're one family and even though we're competing against our offense and they're competing against us, we know ultimately to get to where we got to go, we got to compete at the highest level possible against our competition. So that's just part of coaching. You know, it's JC Price's job to be able to tell me if he sees something that one of my guys doing. Or it's JC Price's job to be able to tell Ryan Crook if his guard is tipping that he's pulling a certain type of way. It's my job to be able to tell. Fun tell minds that one of his receivers gets down deeper in his stance when he's getting the ball as opposed to when he's not. Or every time he goes to get the ball, he's doing something with his gloves. These are things that I study that Fun Tell may not study. So naturally I've got to be be able to go tell him that about his guy so that he can make those corrections. So that's just a normal part of coaching, I think, on every coaching staff.

50:01 Nice. Something else I want to bring up and these two going to be getting on me after the call. Like, you keep asking more questions than we put out there. Like, well, you know. It's all good. I'll let it slide. I'll let it. Slide Curtis, I know you got all night, so this is good, but let me ask this because, you know, we threw his name up here a little while ago and he's one of me and Brian's best friends. Tally's gotten to know him over the last couple years, Coach Compton. But how important has it been for not only this staff, but for you with those coaching clinics where you're teaching? Because Because Robbie made a joke. Robbie's a bigger guy, but he made a joke here talking about 40 year old ��350. Trying to demonstrate ain't great.

50:42 But how important are those clinics to get those high school coaches in there and to show them your techniques? And then just in general for the high school relation piece, how is how? Big is that Ben? Because Coach probably was not shy about it the day he stepped on that. The state is ours in the region's going to become ours. It's invaluable because high school coaching relationships are where you get the information that you need. We spend a lot of time recruiting, but you got to think of how big of an investment it is to say that you're going to trust the kid to come in and be who you need him to be. To develop the culture of a program. You've got to have high school coaches that you trust. You got to have high school coaches that are going to be honest with you, and you've got to get to know them to make sure those things are happening.

51:35 But you also got to have relationships with high school coaches, so they're OK bringing young men to campus that may not have rides. You got to be have relationships with high school coaches. That information that's true for information so you don't waste your time in recruiting, you know, things like that. One of the big parts about taking this job for me was it put me back into a lot of the recruiting areas I've had for a long time at other schools I've been at. When I went to Texas, that was one of the things that I found out during the pandemic. I went to the Texas Tech right when the pandemic hit. I didn't know a lot of Texas coaches well, kids can't visit campus. We can't go to schools.

52:19 High school coaches are going to send their kids where where they know people. I'm on Zooms like this, talking to guys I don't know about, turning their kids over to me, you know, that was hard. And these coaches are sending their players at a time that was very critical to coaches they trust. Well, it was a lesson for me. So I had a couple of different job opportunities when I took this one, but this was the one that basically put me back home. I've recruited the same recruiting areas that I've always had, with the exception of the area that I have in Virginia, and that was pretty easy for me because of the power of social media. You know, most of the schools that I walked into, the coaches knew who I was because of my Twitter presence. But one of the first things Coach Pry told me, because it was me, Coach Pry, JC Price and Sean Quinn the first day that we were out and we went straight to the 757 and he said, man, every time you get out, I want you to come over here because we have done a good job here.

53:20 And we walked into Warwick High School and there was a custodian in the hall where he stopped and he looked at us and he was like Virginia Tech. He's like, we hadn't seen a coach in Virginia Tech around here in five or six years. And I went over to Hampton High School and I heard the same thing. I went to Denby High School, I heard the same thing. And I'm like, you know, this isn't going to be as hard as possible because all we got to do is what we're supposed to do. And, you know, I've developed relationships with a lot of these coaches. A huge plus has been having Funtell minds on staff because everybody knows Funtell. You know, he's from Virginia. He's coached at like 30-5 different schools in the state of Virginia. You walk into a school with him, the janitors know him, the principals know him, the secretaries know him. So it's been really good, you know, just to develop those relationships and Coach Fry kind of limited what we were doing in recruiting, just recruiting our footprint. And that's been very strong for us because when you only recruit a certain radius, you get to go to these places more times. We're not spending a lot of time away from our footprint. So we're showing our faces in a lot of these schools over and over and over again and that's paid dividends for us. Yeah, it seems like when you guys are stepping out of the footprint, it is a very deliberate step. Otherwise you're.

54:40 You're staying staying kind of where where the bread butters made. Yeah. You know, if, if it makes sense for us to go outside of the footprint, you know, relationships that we may had. You know, you may have a guy that's a legacy at Virginia Tech that has a son, or you may have a coach that you know very well that has a kid that just wants to come to Virginia Tech. Those are exceptions. And naturally, once you get to the transfer portal, you have to be a little bit more broad, but not now that you're dealing with a different type of maturity when you're dealing with that and you know a little bit more about some of these guys, that's more like NFL free agency than it is the recruiting piece. But I think you guys also know we've taken a lot of guys out of the transfer portal that are Virginia guys as well. So we're still trying to stay close. And what I've come to find out in a small amount of time, the further away from home guys go, the more likely they ought to try to go back home.

55:33 And that's just a trend that's coming with nil now because a lot of guys that are close to the net get marketing deals or as guys that may not be close to not getting those mom and pop deals. And that's just the part of the business that we're in right now. Tal, you were about to say something there. Go ahead, man. You know, just real quick, man, I mean, we've talked about it a couple times and then in spaces with guys like, you know, Dwight being in there with us just talking about recruiting and you know, looking at looking at how coaches recruit, of course coach Jones knows. No, they've they've got pretty good at this thing. But we had some people whenever you guys first got here would be like, why are they going to, you know, this school you just mentioned Warwick, what work don't have no players, you know, 3-2 years ago, three years ago, why would they go to this school? Well, you know, not the name, any names, but you Fast forward and then this school pops up with a four-star guy or five star or three star guy that everybody's on and be like, Oh yeah, you remember when the coaches went there three years ago, you know, and started building that relationship. So now you get into those those battles and get into those recruiting talks with those high level players because of a a relationship that you developed 3-4 years ago. So I mean it was it, it was great to see. We don't have to go a lot into, you know, the regime that was here before you guys, but it was great to see when you guys came in how y'all hit the ground running. Just being active on social media, man, it, it, you know, being willing to talk to people, being willing to go in and talk to a custodian in a school

57:05 because I feel like sometimes so certain people get, you know, I guess a, a place of power, a position of power, like a head coach. And they feel like they're above that. You know, they feel like they don't have to speak to a custodian when they go in somewhere. They don't have to go talk to the, the Barber on the corner. But that may be the way that you get into a family. So again man, kudos to you guys for what you've done and how you guys have built relationships and we starting to see dividends from it. Yeah, it's been good, man. And just a general recruiting practice in itself. When you go into schools, often you get to know more people and you're trying to find out about these young men. You know, in the world of the transfer portal now you better know as much about these young men as you could possibly know. And so when I go in, I know what the coach is going to say. But as I'm leaving that school, I may ask the principal, I may ask that security guard at the front. I go into lunch rooms and ask the lunch room. Ladies in certain areas know everybody in town. And so you're asking them and they may tell you something simple as this, where you need to get to his grandma. Well, how would I have known that if Sister Teresa hadn't have told me this in the lunchroom? So you're just equipping yourself with more knowledge by talking to people, but you want people to be ambassadors for you as well.

58:29 So my mom always told me, don't be the person to ask for something when you need it. Speak to people when you don't want anything. And it's no different when it comes to recruiting. Go into the school, establish these relationships. Because the other thing you don't know in this profession, you don't know who's going to end up where. Coaches move around in high school, they move around in college, they move around in the NFL. So you better make sure that you're covering your base for anything that may take place, whether it's three years, four years or five years later. And it's your job. It's not hard to do. And, and you talked about, you know, it, it being important what other people you're thinking and, and how they present you to those players. You know, I've always been told, like I act in a way where when you're not in the room, those people are talking good about you.

59:18 And it and. It sounds like that's the mentality that y'all are bringing to that, that relationship building as well. Treat people like you should and they're going to talk about you when you're not around. And the other piece of it is, I mean, you're talking about going to high schools in the state of Virginia. You know how many educators we run into in schools that are teachers that are assistant principals that went to Virginia Tech. And one of the first things I do when I go into a school is say, do we have any Hokies? Well, Miss Smith is a Hokie. Will you take me by a classroom? You know, those things carry a lot of weight because now this lady is teaching this guy in chemistry that I'm trying to recruit. You know, it just makes the difference. Then you do things like that.

1:00:00 Oh, 100%. I mean, and it's all it's all about that. It's that whole just constantly building relationships tally and sales Cali something you always were talking about and you know, through our years, it's relationships. You know, how did three guys who did not go to Virginia Tech, you know, love the school, but over the last couple years we have we're having the pleasure of interviewing you tonight. We had the chance to interview Coach Pry relationships, creating relationships, having good conversations with people. You know, make sure we got to talk to you out at Hardywood. You and Gunter. We mean me and Brian said in 15 minutes and talk to y'all and y'all took the time to talk to us, got in, blow us off.

1:00:45 Y'all didn't look for the next person to talk to. Y'all talked with us because we had a genuine conversation and it's awesome to see. All right, we're going to keep rolling. I'm sure some more questions will come up from my crazy brain. But I do want to ask this because we are. You told us a little while ago. We're one week away from the kids reporting for fall camp. Few days after that they'll get the practices going up. For this week. We also know that right now you're home alone. So do you have a ritual that you do leading up to fall camp? Do you have anything like here's my week? This is everything I want to get. Done. No, I don't really have a ritual I do leading up to fall camp, but fall camp is my time to go on a diet and get my body in shape.

1:01:31 If anything else, you know, sadly, because we take these whirlwind vacations right before camp, you know, my body and everything else, blood pressure and all that stuff a little bit out of whack, you know. So training camp, you know, it's structured. I'm around exercise equipment. And so I take that time every year to make sure that I get my body in good enough shape to be able to withstand the late nights and the long hours. But more than anything else, just to find the balance. So if I've got any ritual, I look forward to getting myself in the state so that I can still at 50 years of age, be able to somewhat demonstrate the drills I need to demonstrate to Josh Clark and the young guys that I've got. I don't want y'all to read about me past, not from an asthma attack or nothing out.

1:02:16 There, there you go. There you. Go I like hearing that. I like, you know, you talked about being, you know, on the road for a month. I can't imagine like four weeks worth of, you know, Rd. meals, different meals at different restaurants, you know, all that stuff that. I mean, the man, the man said he carried around lemon pepper. You know how much sodium that thing got in it. Of course, of course he going to go get back, right? You want to look up, so you talk about blood pressure. You go look at the back of that lemon pepper. I promise. You no doubt about. It and that's what coach to coach to get that lemon pepper out of here. Yeah, Oh yeah, true, true. You can do the salt free with Miss Dash. So I got to yeah, you get you get a little pepper, you get a little pepper.

1:02:59 Not much lemon with Miss Dash. So I didn't try it too though. But yeah, coach, we're going to go, you know, keep it rolling here. Back in June, we talked with Coach Pry and he just talked about managing the expectations for the season. What are you doing with your group to just, you know, to manage these expectations? Because us as as fans, every year we're going, we're going to be hype. We're going to throw the hype train on, but now it's more than just hokey nation and hokey fans. Like national media is picking up things. You know what I'm saying, people that we don't even have TikTok personalities, but this is a team. And then now you got the the video game that came out and you got video, video game experts like this is a fun team to play with because they got this, this myth. So how you get?

1:03:45 How do you handle those expectations for your group? You know, for me it's not that big of a deal for my group. I coach corners. And so your day one page one training as a corner is don't let your highs get too high, don't let your levels get too low. I mean, you can make a great player at corner and be the reason you lose a ball game, you know, and everybody understands that. So it's just a natural mentality that I instill on a daily basis with my guys. So it's really not that big of a deal that they're starting to read a lot of positive things about themselves because they're taught not to listen too much to the cheers because the boos will also come in a sense. And that's just how you have to train corners from a mentality standpoint.

1:04:29 But I think Coach Pride himself does a really good job at that. You know, even our first year here, things were not going well. Coach Pride's entire message to the team on a consistent basis has been don't listen to the noise, don't listen to the noise. We believed what we were doing. We were confident in what we were doing, but we knew it was going to take some time. You know, we didn't come in here thinking we were going to wave a magic wand and all of a sudden, you know, go win 12 ball games. We've all been in situations like this with veteran coaches, but we were 100% confident in what we were doing and how we were going about doing it. And you have to teach the team to be the same way. And anything we've done last year doesn't matter. We've done nothing this year.

1:05:15 And my guys understand that. I tell my guys all the time, pre season rankings mean nothing. Whether you're ranked high or whether you're ranked low, it doesn't make a difference if you're ranked pre season, all ACC. If you're not post season, all AC, post season all ACC matters. So my guys are going to understand that from the first day that I coached him, I don't care about what nobody says about you, good or bad. So I don't want you to care about what nobody said about you, good or bad. You keep your head down, you keep working and you grind, and your production will speak for itself. You don't have to tell people how good you are, and you don't have to explain to people that you're not bad. Curtis, we found somebody else that doesn't give a shit about pre season. If you ever wanted to get Brian Ziegler on a tangent for 15 minutes, talk to him about pre season, AP, pre season coach rankings.

1:06:06 He sit at the break room in our own workplace and he'd go off on somebody 15 minutes. It was great. OK, I want to ask you though. Go ahead. You know, it's, it's good because people love football and people want something to read about that feeds the frenzy. You know, I think it's really good for fans to get that perspective. But when you actually play the sport or you coach the sport, that's the last thing you care about because you haven't done anything. You know, I mean, every year you look at it, there's never been a preseason top 25 that ended up the way that it it was in the preseason, not one time. I don't know that to be true, but I promise you that's never happened.

1:06:47 Pretty sure it's never happened. Yep. And and my, my thing was always it's good for the fans. It's great for the fans because it builds the hype and gets everybody going. When you started making it a part of the process of post season play and stuff like that, I'm like, you're biasing what that's what what the what the what's going to end up at the end because of what you had at the beginning. Don't want to be wrong. Let at least September play out, maybe even half of October or most of October before you start talking about OK, well, here's the good teams, and here's the teams that aren't quite there yet, and here's the teams that don't belong at all. But it's like anything else, man Everything sales and you know, those Athlons, Lindsay's magazines, somebody's grabbing them off the shelf. Somebody's making money up and somebody's punching a website to read about what somebody thinks other teams are going to finish. I hope my guys aren't wrapped up into that. You know, You know, it's nice to maybe go to the magazine and grab a picture, but I think my guys are trained pretty well not to pay that much attention.

1:07:48 You know, your family can pay it attention. It's good for them to be able to pass around at the grocery store and things like that, but we got to stay focused on the task at hand. And it's funny hearing you talk about cornerbacks where it's like as an offensive lineman, we had the opposite, you know, problem. I think you, like you guys had to stay even keeled because you're you're one big player, one bad play away from having your name out there. And then it's offensive lineman. We got to stay even keeled because we're anonymous. And anytime we screw up, that's the only time we're not anonymous. I can tell you from having played corner, and even though it's been a long, long time ago, once you've been beaten, you're humble.

1:08:29 I don't care. I don't care what else happens in your career once you've been beaten and you've had that feeling of having to get down and try to block APAP and take that job to the sideline. You don't want that to happen no more. So you're not going to get too hyped about much of anything because you have to do the things that you have to do not to get that feeling anymore. That's a horrible feeling and not many people want that feeling. Not at all. Coach, I want to ask you something real quick because we know you do have a book out there, but I always see the the #apw and I know that's one of your mentalities, but where did it come from? The always play to win. You know, I may always play to win up in high school.

1:09:11 Actually, I mean, it actually started. I used to have a little select slogan in high school. I it was, I play to win. I would always say that I played to win. I played to win and it's just confidence, something very simple. And strangely, when I got to Duke, we didn't have anything to stand on. I mean, we hadn't won a lot of ball games. There was not a lot of morale in the room. And social media was just starting to come into play. It was Facebook, there was no Twitter, there was no Instagram. But I wanted to be able to come up with something that would identify my brand as a coach, as a recruiter with young men. Everybody was coming up with hashtags. And so Always Play to Win had always been my motto. So I just put it into a little equation with the A to Peter Two and the West.

1:10:02 And then it transitioned into a company and a foundation on once I wrote the book. And we've been able to do a lot of things since that, but it simply stands for Always Play to Win. There's somebody out there loving your mentality, coach one. Of our I, I love that you kind of had that mentality going back to your high school days out. And I love that it started with a way to kind of get that self-confidence boost, that confidence going into those big time situations where a lot of times you know that that confidence is what you fall back on and how you stay even keeled through those processes, those ups and downs of a game, those ups and downs of the season. So I love that we're kind of wrapping up here.

1:10:43 I'm, I don't know if anybody else has anything they want to throw in there, but I, I wanted to kind of this will be my, this will be my last one that I'll throw at you. Can you sum up kind of what's what, what you feel about this season, this team and and maybe even specifically your unit in one word, how you feel heading into this season? Easily hungry. I'm hungry is the word. And I would say that, you know, because I've witnessed it. You know, I've seen the way these guys have worked in the offseason. I've seen how these guys have responded to the noise. I saw how we didn't lose anybody major in the portal. I saw how our coaching staff stayed intact. I know the belief and I know everybody understands. Now we have a shot to fulfill a lot of the things that we believe we can fulfill.

1:11:34 But you got to be hungry. Nothing's going to be handed to you. There's a lot of good football teams on our schedule. There are no easy games on our schedule, despite what predictions there are. But I think this team is really hungry to prove to themselves and the rest of the world that we are a National Football power. Nice. I love that. I love that. And that, that was the word I was hoping you were going to say when, when I when I put that question. Together I put it. Together. I wrote it back. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't let anybody else know about. I was like, I hope he says hungry because that because that's what I'm seeing and and I think that's Hokie nation. That's what we want this team to be is still hungry to kind of take that next step, continue reaching for those goals that I know you guys have and coach pride talked about it at ACC media day today that are a lot bigger than, you know, just, you know, getting back to a bowl again or just winning 10 games. You know, the the, the expectations are up there for what you can accomplish and being hungry to accomplish that is important.

1:12:39 One of the things I've learned in my coaching career and playing career is that if you don't expect to win championships, you're not going to win championships. And that's the bottom line of it. You know, if you expect to get to a bowl game and that's your expectation, that's what's going to happen for you. And there's no harm in saying our goal is to win A championship, not saying it's going to happen, but that has to be the goal in order for us to reach it. Because if that's not your goal, you're not pushing yourself to the limit to reach that. And that's just the mindset. Oh yeah, definitely. Love that coach. Love that man. I know you're getting ready to get out of here, so I'm all I'm. I got one more I'm going to throw at you. I know you've been busy.

1:13:21 I know you've been ripping and running. We got to see a couple of our guys go to ACC Media day and we had Dorian representing your your group of guys. Did you get to see his outfit? Yeah, man, I saw his blue suit yesterday when he picked it up. Man, I, I told him that's impressive, you know? So I was going to ask you. I was going. To ask you, Playboy myself, I like that. I was hoping you was going to say you got to see it, so I was going to ask you to rate. Rate his drip coach one of the team where you think he was at. I will give him a 10 on that one man. I mean, it takes it takes confidence to step out in something like that. I know that person because I do it all the. Time, I think he looks. It's almost like a father watching his son blossom into something else. So when I saw that suit yesterday, I was like, that's my guy.

1:14:09 Yeah, yeah, I've seen it. I was like, OK, he look, he looks like a cornerback, like he looks like ADB, you know what I'm saying? Because the DBS like you got to be a little bit flamboyant. You got to talk a little junk like when I seen him with that suit on, I was like, Yep, that's that's what he looked like. So I got to ask coach what he what he thought about that. So that's. All I got when I go to buy a blazer suit and I say what would somebody else not wear? That's what I want. Give me two of them. Exactly. Brian, you got anything else for coach tonight? I think I'm all set, brother. Man, coach, this has been an entertaining hour and 15 minutes. We thank you so, so much for giving us your time because we know you do not have much of it leading up to these last few weeks of summer before you hit the fall camp.

1:15:01 And, and it's been a pleasure. This is the second time me and Brian has gotten to talk to you. The the everything that come y'all, I'm going to just say this in person re show during the show, the man that y'all see putting stuff out on social media, all this stuff, the sayings, the quotes, you're always had to your mentality Every time I love, I still love reading it. It's a great time to be a hokey. No doubt about it man, and I appreciate y'all having me on and man, I just want to say the Hokey Nation, man, we appreciate you guys. The one thing that's been stable since we started here is the support of the fans and Hokey Nation and that's been big for us.

1:15:43 You guys have no idea what it means for me to be able to go into a high school or go into a household and sell to kids that they're going to be able to play in front of one of the best atmospheres in all the sports, not just college football. That's big, and it's big, big that for our social media presence that there's so much positivity from Hokey Nation on social media. I don't think a lot of fan bases understand how much you can hurt a program with negativity. You know, I've been at a couple of places where people would just go on to the official website and attack the coaching staff. That's not helping us. That's not helping us to grow because why do parents want to send their place to a fan base that's unsupportive, you know, And those are the things that we don't have to worry about with Hokey Nation, man. So hats off to all of you.

1:16:38 We love you. Y'all are a weapon, Y'all are the 12th man and let's go win some football games. Yes, Sir. Y'all. Thank you, Coach Jones for that. That is going to wrap up this episode of the Boundary Corner Podcast brought to you by Main Street Pharmacy. I'm Curtis Wilson. I'm Brian Siegler. Jonathan Talley. It's a great time to be a hokey. This is Coach Derek Cheetah Jones. Visit our website, boundarycornerbt.com to check out all of our episodes. While you're there, follow us everywhere. We're on Twitter, we're on Facebook, Instagram. We have a YouTube channel as well. Any podcast source you can think of, Brian bumps it to them. It'll be there tomorrow morning if you want to listen to this again. As always, we let our buddy Jason Long who is down in the Roanoke area.

1:17:25 He plays us in, he plays us out. Take a look at him, Jason Long, music.com. Check him out for all of his stuff, connections to his Facebook page, his YouTube sites, and in the next few weeks here. He's got a few things going on down in Roanoke. I want to pump these out. He is going to be at the West End Farmers Market on August 6th. He is going to be at the Waxena City Tap Room on August 7th at 6:30 to 8:30. He will be playing at the Roanoke Taco Fest in September as well. I kind of laughed at that. But again, we thank you all for listening. Thank you all so much in the chat tonight. A lot of chatter out there, and as always, let's go. Okie.

1:18:45 The.

Derek Jones

Cheetah Hunt