WATCH: Jacob Sykes on 'Books and Ball', Facing UCLA's Offense
UCLA football defensive lineman Jacob Sykes last spoke to reporters following Wednesday morning's practice session at the Wasserman Football Center. Sykes talked about coach Chip Kelly labeling the Bruins' culture as "Books and Ball" focused, how he is adjusting to the academic workload in Westwood, what he sees going against Dorian Thompson-Robinson and Zach Charbonnet in practice and where he thinks the defense can improve during the bye week.
Chip Kelly said UCLA football culture is "Books and Ball" – what does it mean to you?
Yeah, absolutely. Books and ball means that we kind of have the day split into two halves—we have the football half where we go all in on football and the give 100% you have, and then you have the books part where you go to class, you get your homework done, you get your studying in and we go 100% on that part too, so we’re student-athletes, we like to attack both with all of our time and effort.
Similar to what you experienced at Harvard?
Absolutely. Both institutions require you to kind of manage your time well, you have to kind of know what you’re doing, plan your day out and kind of attack everything with intention because it’s very intentional, intentional about your books, intentional about your classes, intentional about football and so you just kind of carry that over and it was a nice transition for me.
Heavy burden? A lot of work? Is the outlet winning? Is winning the fun part?
Uh, the fun part is the journey, actually. You can have fun in everything that you do—you’re out here every day with a good group of guys and you’re in the classroom with great students, you’re attacking everything, winning is also fun, but you’ve got to kind of fun everything to enjoy the process.
Teach us something about Socrates?
Um, he had a dinner party where he was trying to explain what Eros was, or what love was, and he had a bunch of different people there and they were kind of all giving interesting ideas and one idea that was interesting was that people were split in half at creation and that’s why we always want a counterpart because we’re looking for our whole.
What stands out to you going against the offense in practice every day?
Uh, obviously we have a great offense, it’s a great challenge for us because we consider ourselves a great defense and we can go against them every day in practice, so we just rely on them to kind of bring the energy and we bring the energy as well and we both go at it. As my old coach used to say at Harvard, iron sharpens iron, so when they get good, it makes us better and we’re better, it makes them better, so it’s kind of us all just working together.
So you have to do a good job this year because the offense is so good?
Absolutely. There’s so much to improve on.
What have you learned about Zach Charbonnet and what makes him tough?
What makes him tough is that he does everything every day. He’s out here every day working every day, he goes full speed every day. I was fortunate enough to play against Aaron Shampklin, who was on my team at Harvard, who was with the Cowboys for a little bit, he got hurt, but he was also a great back and they kind of things in common, that they worked on themselves every day, they kept playing every day, they kept challenging you every day and it’s great to see good competition.
With your emphasis on education and knowledge of philosophy, does that correlate to football? Are you more of a cerebral player?
I think knowledge can definitely help in the game. You know, we’re all in the film room and we’re all in our meeting rooms trying to learn more about the defense; the more you know about the defense, the faster you can play because the less you have to think about it, so once you really understand your defensive stuff to the core, it’s all like reacting to the offense now, you don’t have to think, oh, should I take this step or this step, it’s all like, I know where I’m supposed to be, I know what they can do, so now I just have to react to what they’re doing.
What about Dorian? How has he stood out to you?
It’s a great challenge. Whenever you go against a mobile quarterback, I know that we have a guy on our team that’s giving us a really good look at kind of keeping and containing him in the pocket and you know what a dangerous weapon looks like and it just gives the defense a really great look on how to attack a big player.
How would you asses the defense to this point?
Um, I think we’ve performed well, I don’t think we’ve performed to our abilities. I think like everyone would say, we all have a lot to work on, we always can get better even if we have our best game next week, we can have a better game the week after that. It’s all about improving, it’s all about taking steps forward, there’s always stuff you can improve on, so we’re playing well but we want to play better.
What's your focus in improvement week?
I’m trying to get better in every aspect of my game, honestly. I’m working on literally every aspect from pass rush to run defense to knowledge of the game, I just want to get better as a whole individual.
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