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One of the biggest pieces of early college and pro football sloppiness has been in special teams play, whether it's in missed field goals, blocked punts, or teams even forgetting the rules of the onside kick. This is something Cal special teams coordinator Charlie Ragle has taken note of, and I spoke with Ragle about the state

TT: Early on in the football season, I've seen plenty of sloppiness in the special teams game, what's the first step you take as far as addressing that?

CR: I think when you look at that, you’re talking about plays that cover long distance, plays in space. I think as you practice, that’s certainly something you have to be cognizant of. Everybody, as you get back into it depending on where you’re at, plays that are chunk plays where you’re running a lot, coaches want to stay away from that early on as you try to build your players back into shape.

For us, it’s going to be challenging, there’s no question about that, but we’ve put an emphasis early on on our cover units, to make sure we try to do everything we possibly can to give ourselves the best chance to be successful when we play here in November.

TT: What you guys do have is six or seven guys who have taken over 200 reps on special teams over their careers, how much does that kind of experience help, especially when you have a shorter prep time?

CR: We just broke as a specialist group a minute ago, and that’s what we were talking about, the more experience you have, the better you are at anything. We were talking about this with the Bruce Lee quote, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” With those guys, they’ve taken a lot of snaps and have a lot of experience, and that’s very beneficial because when they get out there, a lot of that stuff’s like riding a bike. They’ll pick up from where they left off

There’s certainly the conditioning and things of that nature, but the actual skillset, why they’re out there, they have that. It gives you a sense of relief that those guys have that many snaps.

TT: Cal brought in Drew Schlegel during the offseason, and Musgrave called him a 'special teams ace,' have you been able to see that at work already?

CR: We haven’t seen that here because we’re not into that phase. I watched his film before we decided to take him and certainly thought that he could be a huge attribute for us. He definitely plays with a lot of effort, an effort guy for sure, and a lot of times when you’re talking special teams guys that get onto the field, (they’re guys that) want to be there and are going to give you that effort. He’s certainly that, and that’s a part of his job as a fullback, doing the dirty work, and we expect him to be in that core four (Punt block and return, punt coverage, kickoff return and kickoff coverage) for us as we get into game time

TT: What were you guys really able to do during this quarantine time as a unit of specialists?

CR: Really not so much, they really knew when we broke in the middle of spring ball, we had a routine. Those guys, that was on them when quarantine hit, guys were home and went to different places, guys were at home maintaining workouts, some guys were here maintaining workouts. That was on them following through and we met at least once a week on Zoom, sometimes twice a week and we talked about those workouts and how we tweaked them. They continued with the workouts that we were adhering to in spring ball.

From there, now that we’ve gotten back, we’ve just gotten into our cohort. Obviously we’ve got to work with our cohort, we’ve been able to start getting work with the specialists, it’s been good to see them taking steps toward getting game ready.

TT: You do have a challenge in replacing guys at punter, place kicker and on kickoff, who are the guys who could slot in to those spots?

CR: We’ve got some good talent, obviously bringing Jamieson (Sheahan) in to punt, Christopher Abbes is a local product here from De La Salle, who spent a year at junior college and has come in, (Dario) Longhetto has some experience at punter, so we’ve got some guys there to get good work and compete, we’re excited about Jamieson and what we think he brings to the table.

Kicking, whether it be placekicking or kicking off, we brought in a preferred walk-on in Ronan Donnelly, Tommy Christakos has kicked as well, so between those two, Nick Lopez, and Dario Longhetto, we have some talented guys and we’re going to get a guy, whoever we run out there in November, that we feel pretty confident in.

TT: This is a relatively young group as well with most of those guys you mentioned being in their first or second years in the program...

CR: It is, but I think that the fact that Jamieson is a little bit older brings some maturity to the group. You’ve got to remember, Slater is in his third year, that does provide some maturity in the room, our backup long snapper, Daniel Etter, he’s been around here for several years as well. There’s some maturity in the room that balances out some of those young guys, and I’ve been here long enough that they know what I want, what’s expected, and those older guys set the tone, Jamieson’s been good about helping to push the agenda. I like the group we have, but we’re going to have to get into game ready shape quick, and we’re ready to attack that challenge.

TT: To change gears, as a whole, the Cal staff has relied a lot on face to face conversations in building relationships with recruits over the time you've been here. During a time when you haven't build able to do that, what have you focused on to jumpstart some of those relationships?

CR: That’s where you’ve got to rely on previous relationships that you built to say ‘you may not know me, but you know this guy, call this guy up and find out what I’m about, what we’re about at Cal. You have this relationship with so and so, I’ve known him for 15 years, find out why he sent his kid here.’ It’s what you do when you build those relationships and those networks, sometimes you have to rely on those networks to help you.

That’s been a big plus in having that experience in Arizona, it has come in handy for us time and time again. The other thing is to get on Zoom, there is a personal piece to that. It is over a phone or iPad or what have you, but you still see the other person, you can start to build those relationships. The good thing for us with the guys we recruited in this ‘21 class, we had started building those relationships before the quarantine hit, it was a matter of deepening those relationships, having some honest talks with those kids, getting those guys to be able to commit was huge because of that. It also had to do with the relationships we had with the coaches and people associated with those recruits that were able to say ‘hey we know this guy, we sent out son there,’ or whatever it is, (the recruits) were able to call those people and validate those relationships.