Spring Insider: Q&A with Coach Jeff Brinkley

Comments |

Recommend

One-on-one with Newport Harbor coach Jeff Brinkley:

Question: Tell me about your team.
Jeff Brinkley: We have some skilled guys coming back. Our quarterback, obviously. Our wide receivers. We have a couple offensive linemen coming back. Offensively, we’ll probably be able to do a few more things with Andrew (McDonald) at quarterback. Defensively, we have six of the seven perimeter guys back, three of the linebackers and three of the secondary guys, plus linebacker Ned Lyon, who played the majority of the year. The front defensively is going to be all new.

Q: What are your goals for the spring?
JB: We come out and practice like we’re in gear. We just don’t tackle. What we’ve done is this first week we’re installing everything offensively and defensively. As we get into the spring we start picking out three teams and we practice just like we’re going to play that team. We run their offense against our defense and what they do defensively and how we’re going to attack it with our offense. We’re going to make sure we get ready for three teams we think we have to beat to win the championship.

Q: Has there been a lot of talk thus far about winning the league title and advancing past the second round?
JB: We’re always trying to play for the league championship. We’ve got a great tradition here. The expectations are very high. We put them on ourselves as coaches and the players put them on themselves. Since coming into the division we’ve gotten better each year. The first year we had a chance to win the league and we fell two points short and didn’t even make the playoffs. Last year we went to the second round.

Q: Do people still see you as an underdog in the division and even the league?
JB: I don’t know about that. I think we’ve had enough success and they know our program well enough that they don’t look past us. I think they know we’re going to be competitive.

Q: What’s the next step for quarterback Andrew McDonald?
JB: We’ll open it up more with him. We’ll throw the balk more than we didn’t last year. He threw over 63 percent and he had a good touchdown-to-interception ratio. He’s proven to us that he can do it. He’s had a great offseason. He’s gotten a lot stronger, a lot more arm strength. He’ll give us the ability to balance (the offense.)

Q: How do you plan to use linebacker/receiver Cecil Whiteside?
JB: We’ll use him like we did last year. He’ll be a slot receiver for us on offense. Defense, we can either play him inside or even move him outside. He plays pretty well in space.

Q: Is stopping the run going to become more of an emphasis?
JB: It’s always an emphasis. The two things you have to do in football is run the ball when you need to and you need to be able to stop the run. It’s a long night of football if you can’t stop the run.

Contact the writer: amaya@ocregister.com