Cam, this is your first game in green. What do you want out of Saturday?
Win. That’s really it, man.
They good, though. Everybody keep saying tune-up. They been running that offense a long time and they know what they doing with it, so we gotta come play a physical game. For real.
Do you have a number in your head? Carries, touches, anything anybody’s told you?
Nah. They told me be ready.
That’s it? Nobody’s given you any sense of the workload?
I don’t be knowing that till Saturday anyway. Whatever it is, it’s gonna be because of them boys up front, so write about them.
Is anybody coming in for this one?
My mom flying in Friday. She done asked me about parking like three times now and she’s getting dropped off. I don’t know what that’s about.
My little cousins coming too. They don’t care nothing about the game, they wanna see the tunnel. That’s all they been talking about. I told them ain’t nobody letting them in the tunnel and they decided I’m lying to them.
They’re going to run the ball forty-five times and try to keep your offense off the field. Does that change how you have to play?
That’s a coach question. They got that.
My job’s the same every week. Be right, be on time, hold onto the ball.
Cam, my phone lines are still full of people who think the wrong quarterback is playing Saturday. You’re the guy taking the handoff. Give me something.
I’ll take it from either one of them and be happy. Both of them can play.
Cam, respectfully. That’s five answers and I don’t have a sentence I can use.
(laughs) My bad.
Nah, I hear you. It’s Thursday, though. Whatever I say today, somebody reading it out loud in a meeting tomorrow. Might be them, might be us. So.
Is that on purpose?
Yeah.
I like you though, Steve.
Rustin, you’ve played tackle your whole career. When did you find out you were playing center?
June.
That’s the whole answer? Can you take us through the conversation?
There’s not really much to take you through. I got told, I said okay, now that’s what I do.
I’m not being short with you. That’s what happened.
You’re six-seven. Centers are usually four or five inches shorter and the reason people give is leverage. Is that a problem Saturday?
Might be. We’ll see.
I’ve got further to go to get where a short guy already is, so I start lower than I used to and I try to stay there. If I don’t, a nose tackle picks me up and moves me and then everybody in here writes about it. That’s the whole thing.
What actually changed? Tackle to center. Not the idea of it, the parts.
(sets down the fork) Ball’s in my right hand. So one hand’s got a job before the play even starts and the other hand’s doing everything else.
Stance is narrower. Weight’s more forward. Out at tackle you can sit back some because the guy’s outside you and he’s got to travel to be a problem, you’ve got a yard and about a second. Inside he’s already on you by the time you look up. There’s no room and there’s no time in there.
And I make the calls now. Nobody ever asks about that one and that’s the actual job.
Is that the part that keeps you up?
Nothing keeps me up. I sleep fine.
There are people around this program who hear “six-foot-seven center” and wince. Has any of that gotten to you?
Yeah, I’ve seen it. My dad sends it to me. He thinks he’s helping.
They might be right. I don’t know. We haven’t played a game, so nobody’s right yet, and I’m not going to argue about Saturday on a Thursday.
Rustin, nobody upstairs will say this on the record, so I’m asking the guy who has to do it. Is this a good idea?
Ask me Sunday.
Sorry, one more on the height. Has anybody your size ever played center? Did you look it up?
No, I didn’t look it up.
That’s three, by the way. Three questions about how tall I am in about five minutes. I’m not mad at anybody. It’s just the same answer every time. It’s on the ground. It’s the same distance off the ground for me as it is for anybody. I don’t really know what else to tell you. I don’t have a better answer than that and I know you want one.
The two-deep has ORs at two interior spots. Do you know who’s playing next to you Saturday?
Yeah.
Is that something you can share?
No. Nothing dramatic in it, it’s just Thursday.
Every preview of this game has the interior of your offensive line as the biggest question on the roster. Some of them put it harder than that.
It’s not wrong.
You’ve blocked for both quarterbacks. Half the state thinks a mistake got made and you’d know better than anybody. Who’s better?
Not my department.
Come on. You have an opinion.
Sure. And I’ve been graded my whole career by people who’ve never played my position and I didn’t enjoy any of it, so I’m not going to do it to a guy in my own building.
They get the same protection. That’s all I’ve got for you.
Last one. How will you know Saturday went well?
I’ll watch it Sunday. I’ll know Saturday night, probably, but I’ll know for sure Sunday.
Jayden, at the start of camp nobody outside this building expected you to play at all this year. How did you find out you were going to be starting?
Yeah, no, for sure. Um.
How did I find out. So I don’t know if I’m, like, starting starting? Because nobody’s said it. Coach Sheridan just started putting me with the ones, I want to say early August, and I kept waiting for somebody to go all right, back with the twos, and it didn’t happen. So I just kept going out there.
Nobody’s ever actually said the word to me. Which is fine. It’s fine.
Is that, did that answer it?
What’s your role in this offense?
Um. I do a couple things.
Jayden, I’m going to need you to keep going.
Yeah, no, sorry. Sorry.
So like, okay. There’s a bunch of stuff where I’m out there and they don’t know yet if I’m blocking or if I’m going out. That’s kind of the point of me? I think. That’s what they’ve told me anyway. They put me somewhere and the other team has to pick, and honestly after that it doesn’t super matter what I do, because they already picked.
Which is cool. I like that.
Was that too much? That felt like too much.
You’re a redshirt freshman running out into a full stadium Saturday. What are you actually nervous about? Not the football answer.
Honestly? The anthem.
Because there’s nothing to do. That’s the thing. At practice there’s always something happening, you’re going somewhere, somebody’s yelling a number at you. And I’ve watched it on TV my whole life and everybody’s just standing there, and I keep thinking about like what do I do with my hands, and how long is it actually, because on TV it feels like nine seconds and I know it’s not, and —
Sorry. That’s dumb.
It’s not dumb.
My brother said the same thing you just said. He said look at the flag, it’s four minutes, you’ll live.
So that’s the plan. Look at the flag.
Jayden, you’re catching passes from a guy playing ahead of a veteran a lot of people think earned the job. Has any of that landed on you? In the room, on your phone, anywhere?
Leo’s really good, though. Like I don’t think people, um.
Okay so Tuesday he put one on me where I hadn’t turned around yet? Like my head wasn’t even there and the ball was, and I caught it and I was just like, oh. Okay. And then in the meeting he apologized to me for it, which, why. It was a great ball.
So yeah. He’s good.
That’s not what I asked you.
...Sorry, what was it?
Who’s coming Saturday?
Oh, everybody. My mom’s got like—
(counts on his fingers, out loud, twice) Eleven? I think eleven. My aunt’s driving separate because she won’t ride with my mom.
She keeps asking me what time to get there and I keep telling her the same time and she keeps asking. It’s whatever. I’m just gonna, yeah.
Jordan, the thing this defense hasn’t done is play. And the first thing it plays is an option offense that does one thing all afternoon and does it well. What does that ask of you?
Do your job. I know that sounds like nothing, but this week that’s actually all of it.
Every play I’ve got one thing. If I do my one thing it’s two yards. If I don’t, it’s forty and everybody’s looking at me. That’s the whole afternoon, over and over.
And they don’t have to be better than us either. They just need one of eleven guys to be wrong one time, and they’ll find him. That’s what that offense does, it finds the guy. So, yeah. Do your job.
You’re playing lighter personnel, five defensive backs, against a team that wants to run it every snap. Is that a problem Saturday specifically?
It’s a trade. Every defense makes some version of it, it’s not a secret.
In a bigger front, if I’m wrong there’s a body behind me and nobody ever finds out I was wrong. You don’t find out. Fans don’t find out. In this one, if I’m wrong, y’all are watching a dude run eleven yards on TV and then you’re writing about my room. So it costs more.
I’ll take it. I’d rather be fast.
They made it small for us this week, too. Two questions a look. Not a binder, two questions. That’s been different from how it’s been around here.
What has to be true for this defense to be hard to play?
We gotta tackle. That’s it.
In August you told this room you’d know what kind of coach you had on the Monday after a bad day, and that you hadn’t had one yet. Does Saturday tell you anything?
Saturday’s not supposed to be a bad day, so probably not, no.
First game does do something, though. All camp we’ve only been going against us. So we don’t really know anything. We’re the best defense we’ve seen because we’re the only one we’ve seen, if that makes sense. Saturday somebody who doesn’t care about our summer gets a look at us. That’s all it is, really.
Jordan, straight question. Is that locker room fully behind the quarterback decision?
Fully? (laughs) Man, nobody’s fully behind anything. I’m not fully behind my own haircut.
We’re fine. I don’t know what’s going on in twenty other dudes’ heads and neither does anybody who tells you they do. I know what guys say to me and guys say the right stuff. Whether they mean it, I can’t tell you that. I’m not going to sit here and act like I can.
You’ve run out of that tunnel a lot of times. Is Saturday going to feel different?
Probably, yeah. It’s been pretty quiet in there the last couple years.
It’ll be loud Saturday because it’s September and everybody’s hopeful. We haven’t done anything to get that, they’re just giving it to us for one day. I’ll take it.
Leo, first career start, home opener, in front of your own crowd. How do you feel?
Excited. Grateful for the opportunity.
I’ve got a lot of trust in the guys around me, and Coach Sheridan and the staff have had us in a really good spot all week, so I just want to go play for those guys and take care of my job.
What does the offense have to do well Saturday?
Take care of the football. Stay on schedule. Let Cam do what Cam does.
Leo, that’s the answer every quarterback in America gave this week.
Yes sir.
Anything specific you’ve seen from their defense?
They’re well coached and they play really hard. We’re going to have to earn everything we get.
How much of this offense is actually on your plate Saturday? Is it the full menu, or has it been narrowed for a first start?
That’s Coach’s call. My job’s to know all of it and run what they give me.
The thing I’ve been thinking about, actually, is the first time I have to change something at the line. Because in a walkthrough everybody’s already looking at me, it’s quiet, it’s easy. Saturday I’ve got to get eleven guys to hear me over, and I’ve never had to be that loud in my life, I don’t really know if my voice—
(stops)
Sorry. Um. Our communication’s been really good this week. That’s something Coach Sheridan emphasizes a lot and I think you’ll see that show up.
Slightly stupid question. Do you have a song? Like is there a thing you listen to before you play?
A song. No.
I don’t listen to music before games. I never have.
Never? Like ever?
No. It makes me feel like I’m at somebody else’s thing.
In high school I used to just go sit in the equipment room, because it was the only place in the building that didn’t have a speaker in it. And everybody thought I had some kind of routine going. I wasn’t doing anything. I’d sit in there for like forty minutes.
That’s it. That’s the answer.
Leo, the guy you’re playing ahead of isn’t at this table today. What’s your relationship like right now, this week, game week?
Alessio’s been great. He’s a great teammate, he’s helped me a ton, I’ve got a lot of respect for him.
That’s almost word for word what you said in August.
It’s still true.
Last one, Leo. Everybody connected to this program has spent two weeks saying the goal Saturday is to look normal. Do you know what normal looks like for you?
I think, yeah. Kind of.
(pause) Probably nobody has to talk about me Sunday. That’d be normal.
Which, obviously we want to play well for our fans, and there’s a lot we can clean up still, so I don’t want it to sound like we’re just trying to get through a game. We want to be really good. But, yeah. That’s, yeah.
The full availability ran thirty-one minutes. Michigan State hosts Grambling State on Saturday at noon. The Spartans are 0-0.