Phil Longo talks WR Development, Javonte Williams' Fumble and Virginia's Elite Defense

Saturday was the first time Longo's seen a player attempt to dive five yards

Nell Redmond | USA TODAY Sports

Beau Corrales and Dazz Newsome have become pretty big targets for Sam. What have you seen from their development?

Beau actually had a tremendous spring ball for us. And then he was a little bit quieter in summer camp, but he has proven to be a very productive guy around the football. He's probably made the most contested catches for us this year. And so I think when a receiver does that, you know, you instill more confidence. If Sam has, or if any quarterback in this offense has, a similar matchup on both sides I want him to discriminate and throw to the guy that has proven to be maybe the better fade guy or the better change of direction route guy, whatever, whatever happens to be called on that particular play. So we want to feed the ball to the guys that have proven to be productive. And I think as each game has gone by, really starting with South Carolina when he caught the big touchdown, each week he states his case for Sam. So I think right now Sam feels really comfortable throwing to Beau, Dyami, Dazz, Toe, the four guys who are playing the most. That's why they're out there. I don't know if he’d tell you he favors one over the other right now, which is a good thing for our offense.

What has Beau worked on that has allowed him to make the next step?

I think it's the contested catches. I think he's done just a great job when he actually is covered well of of coming down to football. He's had more of those catches than our other receivers. He's been in more of those situations. So maybe where he's a little better or a little worse athletically than some of the other guys because he's long and he's tall and he's very, very aggressive to the football. And I think that if you wanted me to pinpoint one thing, that would be probably the top asset that he has.

I understand that you have a daughter who has diabetes?

I do. My, my eight-year-old daughter, Gianna is a type one diabetic and so she has something in common with Beau and they have pretty interesting relationship. He's handled conversations with my daughter very well and he's kind of an inspiration to her. They both live the same kind of life and I think it's been great for my daughter to see Beau and what he's accomplished and how he handles his issues. And I think she kind of feels like if he can do that, so can she. I think Beau probably does that for a lot of people, but I know it's been a huge benefit for my daughter.

How might you be able to understand what he’s going?

Well, it's a great point. I totally understand what he's going through because I live it every day with my daughter. So when he has similar issues, which he's managed very well, I don't think it's really affected him on the football field. He had a little bit of an issue in the spring and I think he kind of felt out a plan. He's got a strategy with all of our health people and so that really has not been a factor football-wise. But I think when or if he ever did have an issue, I certainly am well-informed because I live it every day with Gianna.

Sam was a little tough on himself after the game. What was different in his performance Saturday?

Sam and I talked. He's very self aware and he's very humble and he's extremely… he does almost really what I like to do with myself after the games. You evaluate your play calls, you self-evaluate and then you want to try and get better. And he does the same thing. He'll watch the game before we get together and he'll already be kind of informed. He knows what I'm going to correct him on. He had five plays in the entire game that he didn't execute to his liking or to ours. And so some of them became negative plays. Sam wants to be perfect and none of us are ever going to be, but when that's the goal, you have a greater opportunity to get close to it. And so, you know, we evaluated those five plays and we talked about them and he'd love to have them back. The good thing about Sam is I don't think you'll see him make those same mistakes this week and that's why he has just systematically gotten better from week to week.

Some people stress over the mistakes they made. How does he handle processing?

That's what we do. We just basically list between the two of us what we need to get better. And those are the things that you emphasize. And so if every player on your team ID’d and then evaluated what they did wrong, emphasized during the week and got better, your team would get better every single week. And that's a sign of good coaching and it's a sign of maturity with your players. And I believe our team has gotten better every week. And so we have a lot of that going on at every position, not just with Sam. The first thing that pops out to me is Coach Thigpen and some of the linebackers, I think they've got better every single week. It's not my job to evaluate them, but I think they're playing pretty good football. They are another, just a positive example of an aspect of our team that's getting better weekly. Sam's no different. Some do it better than others. That's the challenge every week for every coach and every player.

What's allowed Dazz to really take a step forward over these past few games?

You know, Dazz is playing very, very instinctively right now and I think he's going beyond just understanding the play that we're calling. He kind of understands why we're creating a certain matchup. I think he understands when he's not the primary guy and how he can help get the ball maybe to Dyami or one of the other receivers. He's doing a good job blocking right now. As every week goes by, he has a greater understanding of the whole thing. And I think he's to a point now where he's able to play as fast as he can play. He has speed and he is an athlete, so as soon as you can get anybody like a Dazz Newsome to not have to think when you're playing football, I think you're going to see their best football. That's kind of the crux of the whole offense.

Mack mentioned that he thought Javonte was trying to hard on his fumble late in the game. With the program having lost a lot in recent years, is that part of the process in making sure they don’t try to do too much?

It is. That's part of a few of the plays that Sam had. He went outside the framework of the play and tried to do more than he really needed to. And he would tell you the same thing. I smile because Mack Brown, he seems to nail these situations. He describes him really exactly. Javonte had a huge game. We were down there with an opportunity to win the game because of the way he played, because of the way a lot of the guys played. He brought one of his best games Saturday. And here he is at the end with an opportunity, he wants to put the exclamation point on a great night. Right? And he leaves his feet at the five-yard line and right around the four, the three, winds up fumbling the football. You hate to see a running back who’s had such a great night finish his game that way. But he was, he was trying… I said, ‘why, why did you jump?’ He never jumps. He puts his feet on the ground and he runs people over. And I've never seen him jump with the exception of one run at Virginia Tech where there was an obstacle on the ground. He said, ‘I'm trying to win. I was just trying to win.’ And that's what he's trying to do. But you know, the way Mack puts it is he was trying to do a little bit more than he really needed to do on that play. We were really, really excited. We had put a couple of things in down there, thought we would pound that thing down to the two or the one. We had another play we wanted to run. We felt like we could get it in and go up by 10 and close the show and that would have been a pretty good feeling. But we like to make things dramatic sometimes. And the rest is kind of history. You know what happened after that.

You ever had a player try to jump from that far out?

No, no, no. I don't think he realized he was at the five. I think he saw the goal line and he was trying to finish it there. He's trying to make an athletic play and he did. The ball is susceptible when you're in the air. it's hard to squeeze the ball high and tight and keep it protected when you're in the air because you've got to extend your arms to get up into the air in the first place. It puts the ball in jeopardy and that's what happened. So

Mack mentioned that Javonte wanted to apologize to the team after the fumble. How does that speak to his character?

Well, I mean, he feels responsible and of course he's not. It's any play that any player didn't make in the game is all equally responsible all the way through, including the staff, so there was no need for that, but it kind of tells you what kind of kid he is. I think right now it's just going to motivate him to focus in a little bit more this week. And I wouldn't be surprised if we got another great game out of Javonte.

How did the offensive line grade out in your opinion?

They graded out better. I mean, we emphasized some of the mistakes that we made last week and we didn't make them Saturday. I didn't feel that way in pass protection. I think we have some things that we want to shore up there that we had done better previously that kind of popped in the Saturday's game a little bit, but in the run game, Javonte did a heck of a job. It's also a product of our offensive line. I think we rushed for 205 yards and Michael and Javonte and Antonio did a good job and we rolled through those three guys. I thought we did a really good job of controlling the line of scrimmage, and better than most weeks, we got to the second level and engaged some people at the second level and it turned some four- or five-yard runs into some explosive runs. And so that was a bright spot for us on Saturday night.

Once you get Nick Polino back, how will that change things up front?

Well first you get him back, which means you get him cleared medically, then you've got to get him out on the field for practice and see where he really is, you know? So everybody transitions back to practice differently. If he looks fine and he doesn't look rusty and he's techniquing well and he's moving, I'm sure Stacy will work him into the lineup. Tuesday will be our first time watching him really work out on a physical level. So we'll know more probably after the end of the week… Guard or center, wherever. We do need and we want depth at both positions. He has the ability to play both. So I think, No. 1, we’ve got to see where he is. No. 2, he has been snapping, so it's not like he's taken four or five weeks off snapping. He's been doing that for a while now, so it'll just be a matter of where do we think he can help us best.

If you could single out one area where Brian has progressed the most since Nick went down, where would it be?

Overall continuity, consistency. Snaps have gotten better. We chart every snap in practice, every snap in games. When you have a bunch of X's over the picture of the quarterback on our snap chart, you have concerns and that has dwindled and gone down. We're getting a lot of snap consistency from him and he's been doing a really good job mentally of making calls and, and getting us in there in the right position. So Brian mentally has gotten better week-to-week and then snap consistency has gotten better.

What do you expect to see from Virginia this week?

Well, now they're good. Now these, these guys are… this is much like Clemson. They're much longer. This is a bigger defense that we're going to see here. They are a rangier and longer up front, at the second level and in the secondary. So it's going to feel a lot more like that game in terms of we're going to have to do a good job of refitting our hands up front on the O-line when they chop them off. We're going to have to do a good job of getting the hands of the DBs off us at receiver. That just adds another challenge. They’re similar in that way. The two D-ends are really, really good. Linebackers are very good. They do a good job pursuing to the football. They are very, very multiple in coverage and so for Sam to trigger the ball quickly when we throw it, he's going to have to do a good job of ID’ing what they're doing. And our guys will have to do a good job of working into space when they zone it and creating separation when they man it. We have our hands full and our work cut out for us this week

Are they similar to Duke with their multiple fronts?

System-wise they are different, but saying multiple coverages is pretty vanilla. They will run a lot of the things that Duke did coverage-wise. They're going to get there differently. They're going to present different pictures than we saw last week. And then just athletically, I think the biggest similarity is what we saw at Clemson.