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| David Yost, along with Cornell Ford, answered your questions in our Signing Day chat. |
Signing Day 2009 Coaches' Chat
For the first time, Mizzou assistant coaches answered your questions on mutigers.com during an hour-long online chat beginning at 1 p.m. CST. Offensive Coordinator David Yost and Cornerbacks Coach Cornell Ford were available to answer questions.
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| Moderator: Gang -- We've got a good group of questions already in the hopper. Coach Yost will be by shortly to take on your questions! |
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David Yost: Good afternoon, everyone. We're excited about today's signings. Let's get to your questions. |
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| Dan McCullough (Lee's Summit, MO): Out of this signing class, who has the chance to come in and make an immediate impact (one for offense, one for defense)? |
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David Yost: Kendial Lawrence on offense, because of our depth at tailback at this time, and his physical maturity and mental makeup will give him a head start. On defense, I would say that all three junior-college players are a given. The high-school player would probably be T.J. Moe because of his competitiveness, his athletic quickness and his maturity to help in our secondary and/or special teams. |
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| Chad (St. Charles, Mo.): Coach Yost. With all the offense TJ Moe was able to produce as a rusher, passer and receiver in his high school career, how did you let the D coaches steal him from you??? |
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David Yost: Through our evaluations of him as an athlete, we thought that he could make an immediate impact on the defensive side of the ball, and be a leader in our secondary that will run the show on defense. We feel that's his best position in the long run for him. |
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| Dan (Warrensburg): Out of all the QB's you are bringing in, who do you think is the most ready to start a college football game right now? |
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| Dimitri (Columbia): Excited to see how the QB competition unfolds this spring/summer. Is it out of the realm of possibility to have a two QB system? Or is that generally a bad idea? Thanks. Go Tigers! |
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David Yost: The guy that's most ready to run our offense today is Blaine Gabbert, because he's been here for a year and received half of the reps with our #2 offense and having game experience. It will be interesting to see if that will continue through the spring, summer and fall camp. As for a two-QB system, we'd like to settle on a starting quarterback that will give us the best chance to be successful. A two-QB system isn't a bad or a good thing; it's whether that is what best suits your team and your situation at that time. |
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| Gary (Kansas City): What one player in this class were you surprised that more schools weren't after? |
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David Yost: There's probably a few, but I would say Donovan Bonner is the one that comes to the top of my mind. A big, athletic safety that was highly productive in a good football area where a lot of recruiting goes on. I'm surprised he wasn't on 25 teams' lists. |
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| Jim Stone Springfield: Will there likely be any late signees? |
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David Yost: You never know; that's always a possibility. But as of now, our class is complete and all targets are accounted for. |
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| Andy (St. Louis): Congratulations on the 2009 class. My question is now that this year's class is done, what are the major priorities for next year's class? DB? RB? |
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David Yost: We started 2010 recruiting four months ago, and at this time, there's no one position that will be pursued or that we're behind in our depth for what we'd like it to be. |
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| John (Stafford, MO): How have Dalton and Glaser looked so far since arriving in Columbia? |
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David Yost: Both did really well at the first 6am conditioning, and after seeing them in quarterback meetings, both have a good base knowledge of football and have jumped into our player-run 7-on-7 workouts. I'm looking forward to seeing them once practice starts on March 10. |
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| Drew (Jeff City, MO): I know the Missouri crop was strong this year. But to the staff was it tougher to pull kids out of Texas this year? Also are you comfortable with the RB depth? |
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David Yost: No, we find it's always tough to get players out of Texas. You're competing with a lot of schools to get the guys we want, so this year was no different. We're comfortable with the depth as long as everyone stays healthy. Having Derrick Washington and De'Vion Moore at the top of the chart makes us feel comfortable with the depth we have. |
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| Jeff (Chesterfield, Mo): David. how do you balance the recruits opinion what side of the ball they want to play vs. where you think they would work out best in program. RB vs DB, TE vs DE, etc |
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David Yost: During evaluation, we project where we think their best position will be in college, but we let the recruit play the position they want to play, as long as they want to play it. |
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| Troy: Have you ever seen a more impressive highlight film then Kendial Lawrence`s? |
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David Yost: It ranks up there with some of the best ... Derrick Washington's, Jeremy Maclin's, Chase Daniel's, and Michael Egnew's. |
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| Brian (Columbia): You have a lot of offensive line talent in this class. Do you see any of them competing for playing time this season? |
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David Yost: We want all incoming recruits to plan on getting into the depth and vying from playing time; from there, we see where they stack up physically, mentally, and maturity-wise. A lot of the OL definitely have the physical tools right now to compete at the Big 12 level. |
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| Bobby Ballgame (Jefferson City): What can you tell us about Washington, Boldin and White? We don't know much about them. |
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David Yost: All three guys in our evaluation process really stood out athletically, and in their competitive nature. I think all three will be high-level players for us -- some sooner than others -- but this is an example of us trusting our evaluation process vs. the recruiting lists that everyone has. |
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| John(Center, MO: Is it easy to tell if a recruit is just taking advantage of a visit to Columbia and he is really not interested? |
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David Yost: It's not easy, and you really never have a chance to get a guy if he doesn't visit, so we may sometimes bring in guys so that we have a chance to get them, even if it doesn't seem as though you're a leader for them. |
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| Moderator: Coach Yost has to get off to a meeting, so we're glad to welcome Coach Ford. |
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| Butch Lancaster: Which side of the ball will Richardson play on. Keep up the GOOD WORK! God Bless you guys for all you've done for MU football |
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| Brad (Sacramento): Sheldon Richardson is listed as a TE on the official site. Will he start his career there or finish his career there? |
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Cornell Ford: We're going to let Sheldon play whatever position he wants to play. He wants to start out at tight end, but he's also talked about maybe wanting to do both. |
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| Clay (Liberty, MO): Looks like you landed another great class, congratulations! How did the discussion with Sheldon Richardson go in regards to what position(s) he will play? |
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Cornell Ford: We always let a player play at the position they want, until they come to us with a request to move. It's always up to that player. If they want to stay, they'll stay. |
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| J. R.: Coach Ford,
With only Gettis and Rutland (Hobson still waiting), at cornerback, do you think any of the current recruits can immediately step in and play? |
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Cornell Ford: I tell all my guys that all positions are open. If a true freshman can come in and play right away, it's his position, Carl Gettis did that two years ago, so we have no problems with that. It's hard to say today if any of the new recruits are there -- we haven't seen them on the field yet -- and every kid's different, but I think the kids coming in are very athletic. They may need to get bigger physically, but we'll see when they get the pads on. |
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| Patrick (Fenton): Chris Freeman appears to be quite a grab for the Tigers. What is the feeling regarding him only playing 2 years of H.S. ball? Looks like he can definately occupy some space up front.... |
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Cornell Ford: He'll occupy a LOT of space up front! He's just a big, athletic kid with that amount of size. He's just an attractive-looking prospect. We've got some big kids on our team right now, but he'll come in and fit well. |
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| Bo (Scottsdale, AZ): Coach, wonderful job in St. Louis. Now that the signings have come and gone do you ever go back and see who may have not signed and possibly offer them? |
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Cornell Ford: We'll always go back and take a look. We do a good job of evaluating talent, though, so usually we've offered to everyone we think can help us. If someone's "on the bubble", though, we may come in after the fact, but rarely does that happen. |
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| Andy (St. Louis): Well done in St. Louis this year Cornell. My one question though, is what do you think it will take to sign kids like Wingo in the future, or are these types of kids just looking to go somewhere else? |
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Cornell Ford: We roll out the red carpet for all of our kids. For anyone that decides not to sign with us, we go back and look at if there's anything different we could have done in our recruiting process. For various reasons, some kids don't want to come here, and that's OK. If a kid doesn't want to be here, we'd rather they go somewhere else. |
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| Seth Daniel, Butler: It always seems that offensive players get all the recruiting attention. Did you all focus more attention on defensive recruiting this year, especially at LB, CB and S? Any recruits in that area we should watch for? |
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Cornell Ford: It may seem that way on the outside, but we try to do a good job of recruiting all positions. We feel we do a good job of recruiting across the board. Media reports may hype offensive players more, but we recruit all positions the same. We feel like we got some great guys on the defensive side of the ball. |
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| Moderator: Folks, we thank you for all of your questions. We were only able to answer a handful of them relative to the number asked. On a side note, there were several questions that we are unable to answer because they pertained specifically to 2010 (and later) recruits, and we are unable to comment on prospective student-athletes at this time. Thanks for your support of the Tigers!
As an added note, Mizzou All-Access subscribers can view Coach Pinkel's press conference LIVE at 4 p.m. this afternoon! |
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