Previously: Jim Harbaugh, DJ Durkin, Tim Drevno, Greg Mattison, Kyle Kalis, Brian Cole, Chase Winovich, Drake Harris, Jabrill Peppers, Royce Jenkins-Stone, Willie Henry, Jourdan Lewis, Wyatt Shallman, James Ross III

[Eric Upchurch/MGoBlog]

Tyrone Wheatley has his hands tied. Ask him about his running backs and that’s the symbol he shows you, hands mashed together to indicate the lack of separation between the players in his position group. He talked about that at Media Day, as well as what it’s like to have his son play for both his alma mater and the team he’s currently coaching.

Did you go back and watch any film on Drake Johnson to get a feel as far as what you’re going to have with him?

“Yeah, I did. I mean, I knew Drake. I recruited Drake when I was at Syracuse. He’s a guy who has a lot of talent [and] a lot of promise, but once again, he’s going to be held to the same standard.”

How did the group look as far as skills beyond just running with the ball- blocking, things of that nature- in the spring?

“They looked good. They looked real good. They had a great base. They’re all well coached backs. All are well coached backs. The biggest thing now is you just have to separate them.

“Right now they’re all in a pack. One or two just has to emerge and separate themselves from the pack. I think that’s the biggest problem that’s going on right now. They’re all well coached, they’re all good athletes, they’re all good football players, they’re all good running backs, but no one has just said, ‘Hey, I’m going to distance myself’ and that’s the problem right now.” 

Have you had any talks with Fred Jackson as far as picking up where he left off?

“Uh…eh, you asked that question already. No, not really.”

Your son being here- how much does he want to separate himself from you and be a college student? What’s that relationship been like?

“We give him his space, but to say separate himself, he’s already separated himself because the distance of my playing years and his playing years are so far apart that there’s already distance. Now I’m dad, but I’m the running backs coach. Coach Harbaugh, Jay Harbaugh, coaches him. So when you say distance yourself, that’s the distance.

“We’re close. People have to understand that’s my son still and I still will look at him as a father, being proud of him as a father and having expectations. I think sometimes a father’s expectations are a little tougher than a coach’s expectations, you know? But yeah, the distance is already there but we’re very close.”

[Much more after THE JUMP]

Have you seen him take to the college life pretty well?

“Yeah, he has. But you have to understand, this is a kid who grew up in it. So for him, this is- I wouldn’t say it’s second nature, but he has a clue as to what it is. I’ve coached college football before. He’s seen what young men do when they get in trouble, how it affects them. He’s heard me talk about it. He’s been in meeting rooms before. He’s been around college football, so he has an idea. He embraces it and he’s taken well to it.”

You weren’t a big partier in college. Is he sort of in your mold? Or I don’t think you were…

“No. Nooo. No, I wasn’t a partier. You kidding me? I stayed in my room all- no, ha. I mean, I went out to certain things, certain events, but to say was I a guy that you saw at every party? I wasn’t a guy that needed to be at every event, and he’s the same way. He’s the same way.

“But at the same time, as we were just talking about, he has to have his room to grow. You know, I trust him. Of course, my wife has done a great job assisting me in raising him. There has to be a trust factor that he’ll go out and do the right things. So will I be standing over his shoulder looking? No. Nope, there won’t be none of that.”

Has he come to you more or less than you thought in this short period?

“About what I thought. What I’d say about that is he has come to me [and] we have spoke about some things, but it’s right about what I expected, the frequency of times he’s come to me and asked me some questions.”

How many times did you have that talk with him saying ‘do not come here because of me’ and to ‘make this your decision’?

“Every day. We talked- I think that was what I stressed the most because it is tough. I wouldn’t know what it felt like because I didn’t have to follow in anyone’s shoes. So the expectations placed on him, and in all honesty I was happy when he hit his growth spurt. I was thrilled when he hit his growth spurt. People always say, ‘Why were you happy when he hit his growth spurt?’ Because what other position would he play? It got to the point where all my boys, I wanted them to play defense. Go play defense. It’s that deal.

“It was his decision and I wanted it to be his 100%. I never wanted to sway it, because as a dad I never wanted, years down the road, to sit down with him where he was like ‘Hey, I made a terrible decision based on what you think was right.’ My wife and I did a great job of raising him, put him in situations where he could see things and understand things so when he was old enough to make that decision based on what he wanted and what he felt he needed.

“People always say, ‘He’s 17 or 18 years old, how does he know? What does he know that he needs?’ Well, if you put your kids in a situation where they can see certain things they start to build their own process and they start saying ‘okay, this is what I want. This is how I want it. This is how I’m going to attack it. This is my strong point, these are my weak points.’ TJ’s a very, very, very bright young man. He had a chance to grasp that at an early age. I think I’m the fortunate one.”

Fred Jackson said sometimes it was tough to watch his kid get coached. You know, hearing your kid getting yelled at by your fellow coaches. Do you worry about that at all?

“No. Because once again…I’ll give you a prime example. TJ growing up, I never coached him. I would take him to other people. I would pay for him to get weight training. I would pay for him just for people to train him. The only thing I really did was speed and agility, and that was basically our time to have father-son time. So for that very same reason I wanted other people to coach him. I wanted other people to yell at him.

“My biggest thing [with] most of his high school coaches, I would get on the coaches. Not with the playing time my son received, because if a coach said, ‘Hey, you played a great game’ and I said it was terrible, I was on the coach and the coach would laugh and say, ‘You know what, that’s the first time a parent has ever come to me and said coach my kid harder.’

“And I was trying to prepare him for this…I won’t say moment we were going to be together, but when he goes to college he’s going to be coached by people and it’s going to be hard. Does that bother me? No, because I understand this. I understand it. I understand it, I’ve been in it and hey, sometimes he may need to be cranked on. And guess what-- if the coach doesn’t do it, I can do it. So for me, and as I said earlier, sometimes as a dad my expectations as a father go far beyond those of a coach. Some of the coaches might have to tell me, ‘Dad, calm down’ but at the end of the day I’ve cut the cord. I believe and trust in coach Jay Harbaugh and that’s TJ’s coach. That’s TJ’s coach and Coach Harbaugh will coach him.”

In terms of coaching your position, how much leeway is Jim giving you with your position group? Does he step in much?

“Well, as a process as the whole thing goes obviously he has the last say-so in what he thinks and what he sees, and then you have coach Drevno who has his say-so as a coordinator. I think I’m kind of a start, but obviously coach Harbaugh, Jim Harbaugh, is the ultimate end. We’ll sit down, we’ll collaborate and he’ll see some different things and ultimately he has the goal and foresight for where he wants this team to go. Obviously I have to follow that and understand where he wants to go and facilitate that in my room, and so as we start getting guys going he may see a certain thing that I may not see or I may see something he won’t see so that’s where the conversation will start, but it ultimately ends with coach Harbaugh.”

But you do feel like you have enough-

“Yeah, I have enough autonomy. Yeah, I do.”

MGoQuestion: You mentioned that you’ve got a group of running backs right now and that you need to see separation. Beyond the obvious, what are some of the things you’re looking for to create that separation? How do you gauge that?

“How do I gauge that? Production. Plain and simple. Seriously, it’s simple. Production. That is it.”

Sometimes production in practice doesn’t translate to production on the field. How do you put the pieces-

“How do you put the pieces together? There’s something- there might be a fundamental issue where something’s happening. That’s my job to make it translate from, as we call it, from the white board to the practice field and from the practice field to the game. So day one, opening against Utah, you continue. As I said, it’s going to be a continuing work in progress until we find that guy. And you’re absolutely right, production on the practice field doesn’t always transfer over to the battle.”

How quick are you with the hook? Do you have a track record for if you see in a couple plays that this guy’s not doing it- because you’ve been there, and you know a lot of backs say the more reps they get the better they get.

“The thing I always say is, and it’s kind of going back to what you alluded to and it kind of goes back to when I was here, there’s no such thing as a rhythm. Let’s throw that fallacy out. There’s no such thing as a rhythm. ‘I have to get a couple-’ No, you don’t.

“Your first play is the first most important play. Your rhythm is practice. Your rhythm is game film. Your rhythm is studying. All those things have put you in a rhythm. So when you practice you must practice like it’s a game. You must run every…and practice must be intense. That’s your rhythm, so on game day you can literally say, ‘I’m already in stride.’

“That’s one of the things I’ve talked about with my guys right now [is] let’s put the fallacy of rhythm out the window. ‘But I’ve got to get in rhythm, I’ve got to get a couple plays.’ No. No. I give them keys. You understand what your keys are. You understand what’s asked of you so let’s do it and let’s put it together, because when I was here if I had to wait to get in a rhythm I wouldn’t be talking to you right now. There’s no such thing as rhythm.”

Have you had years where you’ve had No. 1s going in and years where you haven’t had it decided by the beginning of the year, and how different is that for you as a coach?

“Even though you have a No. 1 you never really want to say he’s a No. 1, because then why are the other guys…why should I go to practice?”

Well, they’re trying to take his job, right?

“But it goes back to the point. You’re No. 1. Everybody, he’s No. 1. What the hell am I going to practice for? You’re No. 1. Why should I do anything?”

No. 1 can always get knocked down.

“You always have to have that door open. No. 1 is No. 1 for that year. Now you come back. Guess what? The board is clean. It’s clean. Everybody has to compete all over again.”

That’s how it’s going to be each week?

“I wouldn’t say week by week, but I would say it’s a work in progress until we can get that guy, like I said, competitively over and over and over again on a consistent basis. If he’s consistent and he can beat the guys out consistently then yes.”

Is Ty Isaac in the mix?

“They all are right now.”

Is he healed all the way?

“Right now from what I understand from the trainers he’s good.”

I know you don’t want to talk about individuals, but is there anybody that you say, ‘If he could just do this he’d be fine’?

“All of ‘em.”

One thing? Everybody’s one thing short?

“One to many. I know I’m being vague, but I’m not being vague not to give you anything. It’s just my style of coaching, because I don’t really look at ‘Oh, he’s one thing short.’ Because you really can’t look at just one thing. It’s a body of work. It’s a body of work.

“Because if this guy has one thing, and this guy is better at the one thing he’s lacking in then you get into this where you just keep going in circles. At the end of the day it’s collaborative work of several little things, but then at the end of the day it’s consistency and production.”

I guess to rephrase it, are these guys close to being what you want or does everybody have a lot of work to do?

“Oh, they’re close. They’re close. They’re coached very well. All these guys were coached very well. They were coached absolutely well. The only problem is no one has separated. They’re all kind of like this /knots hands together. That’s just exactly where they are.

“They’re all coached well. They’re smart young men in the classroom. They want to compete. They block. They run well. But the one thing they have to do is they just haven’t separated, you know? That’s it. Now, what that one thing may be, who knows, that might separate them but they have to separate.”

Do you have any idea if you’re going to get Drake [Johnson] at a certain point or do you just kind of operate without him and then when he shows up, he shows up?

“Yeah. Just kind of operate so when he comes in, he comes in.”

He seems to have a different style than some of the other guys? Just from film you’ve seen?

“They all have different styles. As you can tell I don’t get into styles. CJ Spiller had a totally different style than Fred Jackson. Jerome Smith, when I was at Syracuse, had a totally different style than Antwon Bailey. I had a totally different style than all the guys.

“I’ll tell you this and you’ll laugh at me, but in terms of style I was probably the most vanilla guy in the backfield in terms of style when I played. So I don’t get caught in style. I get caught in what produces at the end of the day.”

For 20 years Fred Jackson would be at these things saying, ‘This kid’s going to be the next Tyrone Wheatley’ but you don’t do that…

“Because you don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know. It’s hard. Hell, he didn’t know I was going to be the next good one. It’s just…at some point it just clicked for me and it worked, and I’m hoping that’s what happens with these guys.”