How do you make that transition, though? If you're a guy who was recruited here to be a pro-style tackle or guard, your athleticism is at a certain point, your strength is at a certain point, your strength, your size. Can you take those guys and make them into a spread-style lineman?

To a certain extent you can. And I don't know that there's a spread-style lineman, but there's a certain linemen that we would like. We would like tall, long kids. But the kids we have, what it's about is effort and want-to. If they dig into the weight room, lock themselves in the weight room, and get on the jump ropes, get on footwork stuff, things like that, that will help them evolve.

I don't know what they did in the past, but that's something that I really believe in. You can create a guy, and I've done it, who comes in and you go, 'Holy Cow, this guy can't move' and by the time he leaves you he's one of your better moving guys just because he's decided that's one thing he's going to get better at. There will be some growing pains. But our job as coaches is to limit those as best we can.

So their offseason stuff, their conditioning program, has been more about agility and speed?

Up to this point, it has been agility, footwork, speed. This week we just started our 6 a.m. [workouts]. It is agility, footwork, speed. But it is also intestinal fortitude and to see how guys react when things aren't easy. Those are the two things I want to see. I want to see footwork and I want to see agility, but then I want to see how a guy is going to react.

If you have a guy who may not have the best feet but is one of the most mentally-tough guys that you've got, then you can make him into a player.

Who has impressed you in that regard, the mental makeup?

I think a young man, Austin Wentworth, is a kid that is doing a solid job. He's very versatile. He's played pretty much every position except for center along the front. Our center, Richard Helepiko, those are our two leaders right now, that I see, and other guys are trying to find where they fit and trying to get themselves into the shape to where they can be leaders.

It's hard to be a leader when you're out of shape and you're struggling yourself, and that's what we're finding now. Some of the guys aren't in as good a shape as they need to be or will be in, just because we haven't asked it of them yet. But as they start doing that, they're going to start understanding the tempo, the speed and our priorities.

Every program is different obviously, but you were in the conference and know what you had in terms of temperament or mentality and makeup in relation to the rest of the conference. Coming to Fresno State, was it what you expected? More? Less?

It was about what I expected. There are some tough kids and that's what Fresno State has always been known for -- mentally tough kids that may not be the best athletes, but they're going to hit you and they're going to keep coming after you.

Now, skill-wise, Fresno State was always feared for their skill. Ever since I've been in the conference playing against them, which has been a long time, they've always had guys at the skill positions and up front they've always been very solid, especially in the offensive line.

That's one of my charges -- to continue that tradition of Fresno State offensive linemen because I think Pat Hill, coach Hill, has done a great job here of establishing that. The number of guys he has gotten into the professional ranks from here, the type of recruits that he brought in, you always knew with their offensive front what you were going to get out of them. They were tough kids and they were going to grind the ball.

The toughness part of that doesn't change. But how you go about doing that ...

No. I had a coach that always told me there's more than one way to get to Chicago. My philosophy is there are guys who can run and are athletic and just as tough as any of those kids that he had that maybe were 330 pounds and just road-grading types, and I want the guys that can run a little better than that but still with that mental makeup.

When you go into spring, you have guys that have played certain positions, some who have played multiple positions. Do you know yet how they start out?

We'll, we've got a starting point right now. That's not necessarily the finishing point. I can see that already and I've told each and every one of them that -- this is where we're starting, it's probably not where we're going to finish at the end of spring, probably not where we're going to start at the start of fall camp and most definitely when we open up at Weber State it probably is not going to be that same group. Maybe not necessarily the same five guys, but the positions might change. There's no one position that's set yet.

OK. When you look at the tackles you have, they're going to be used to playing with a tight end next to them. You can call it a security blanket, especially here because they started using tackles as tight ends and when they went to two tight end formations it was two offensive linemen. They're not going to have that in the spread formations in this new offense.

I think both of our tackles right now in a perfect world would be better suited to have a tight end lining up next to them and they're not really used to being in space and we're just going to have to get them there. The great thing about playing our defense is we're going to see a lot of looks, a lot of varied pass rushes. We're going to be playing in space a lot, so we're going to have a big opportunity to get that done.

How much of that is a confidence or a comfort level, maybe a mental thing just knowing that, OK, I don't have help here (from a tight end) it's on me?

I think it's all mental. When you look at it, the alignments are the same. When you have a tight end covering up a defensive end, he might release [off the line of scrimmage] and might not touch him and that defensive end is actually wider than the guy on the open side. It's just a security blanket of being able to say, 'OK, he's not that far out there because he's on top of the tight end.'

Well the tight end had no effect, because he released. That defensive end still got up the field pass rushing but now we can say, 'Hey, we can get out to him easily.' Take that tight end away and line the guy up in the same exact spot, that tackle might say, 'Holy cow, that guy is way out there' because it's open space.

There is a pretty big mental adjustment there ...

Absolutely.

And you see those two guys ...

Going into spring practice my two starting tackles are Austin Wentworth and Cody Wichmann. The two inside starting guards and Matt Hunt and Trevor Richter and the center is Richard Helepiko, just because those are guys that have played here before.

If there's someone in that back row that can step up and take one of their jobs, that's what I want, because competition increases level of play. If I can have 10 guys that have the ability to start, that means those starters are better. As soon as you have 10 distinct starters and five guys behind them that have no chance of starting, those starters get content and when you get guys content you're not going to be a good offensive football team or a good football team period.

As soon as there's no competition, the level of play goes down.

Where do you feel that you are in that regard?

I think we need more competition. I really do. We don't have enough competition from one to 10 and that's something we're really working on and trying to push, whether it's recruiting new guys to come in or cultivating some of these young kids and instilling a competitive attitude in them.

Like I tell them, whether you're walking in the door at Jack In The Box to get lunch or you're in a drill, I want you to win. If you've got to knock a guy down to get through that door first, you do it. I mean, it's a mind-set. Being a competitor isn't something you can turn on and turn off. You either like to compete or you don't. Now, I do believe you can put it into people, but it has to be all the time, it can't be some of the time.

That's always the question: Can it be taught or is it something that some guys just innately have?

I believe it can be taught, but it's got to be forcefully taught. Like I said, it can't just be taught an hour a day. It has to become a fabric of their life. The old adage, whether you're playing chess or Xbox with your buddies, it's not OK to lose. I believe in everything you do there's a winner and a loser. Make sure you're that winner.

Along those lines, are you going to do any physical testing to see where guys are -- bench press numbers, squat numbers, agility?

I don't think so, because we don't have enough time. We're just trying to create a base for them -- get them to know the system, learn it, and then go through spring ball. After that we're going to have another, I think it's six- or seven-week strength and conditioning period, and we're going to be able to test after that.

It's a spread offense, but the word "multiple" has always been included in that. Where do the tight ends fit?

I think no matter what you do, you have to have some of those guys, and we're going to play with tight ends. If we have a big guy that can run a little bit and create mismatch problems and then keep a defense on its heels with what formation we can be in next, we definitely have to do that. That's something we have to be smart about, as well as going four wides, and still be able to go double tight in situations. You have to be able to do that. You can't play a whole game of four wides because situations are going to dictate that you're going to need protection off the edges in the run game and things like that towards the end of games.

Have you had a lot of time to watch tape from last year, to see your guys?

I haven't watched a whole bunch, because what we've been doing since we got back is watching a lot of cut-ups from this offense. I know these guys can down block and I've watched a lot of tape on them because when I was at Nevada we followed them quite a bit throughout the season as far as we played someone right after they did, so I saw this offense and I have a general idea of what guys can do.

Lot of my judgment, and I don't care who they decided to play last year and for what reason, I want to know who I decide to play and I have my reasons and that's based on what we're going to do in spring ball, what we're going to do in the conditioning periods, what we're going to do in the weight room.

Let's go through some players. Who do you really like at this point, if anyone?

I haven't seen them on the field enough to know that. I know what they do in conditioning and I know they're getting better every day, but a kid who looks great in a conditioning setting might look horrible when you put the pads on. A kid that looks horrible when you're in conditioning, when you throw the pads on, he might look great. But as a unit we're working, we're getting better and every day, like I said, we're trying to accomplish one goal and be better than we were the day before and that's the big thing now and I'll have a better idea if you ask me that question after spring ball.

Take me through the progression of those 15 spring practices. At some point, do you want to have a comfort level that, yes, the tackles are going to be able to do this and the guards are going to be able to do this?

I would like to be able to say we're set, we're good to go. But I don't think we're going to because in 15 short practices -- we basically have a four-week window -- we're trying to install a whole brand new offense. We front load it and we throw it all at them and then we refine it. And at the same time a whole brand new defense is being installed that they've never seen, so there are going to be a lot of questions about how fast guys are playing.

We're going to say, 'This guy can't do it. He's too slow ... ' but in reality he's just questioning what he's doing because he hasn't repped it enough. And then as we get through 29 practices of fall, when we're able to meet with them longer and able to watch more video and they start to get more of a comfort level, the speed of their play is increased and you say, 'OK, this is the guy I thought he was.'

Our questions aren't going to be answered [this spring]. Now, there are certain questions that are going to be answered, but all of the questions won't be answered by the end of spring ball.

Is there one question that has to be answered by the end of the spring?

Are we going to compete? And, are we going to finish? Those are the things we want to see. And, how fast are we going to play? You understand and you take it as an offensive coach and as a coach in general, there are going to be mistakes made. How do you respond to those mistakes? How fast do you go making those mistakes? Are they mistakes from speed, or are they mistakes just from ignorance and not understanding what you're doing?

But the biggest thing from my side is, 'Are they going to compete and are they going to finish?' If they do that, then we can teach them everything else because, like I said, we've got enough time in the fall to teach them all that. If they've got that mental makeup to compete and finish, we'll be OK.