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Josh Conklin is entering his second year as defensive coordinator at Pitt, and this week he discussed the defense's newcomers, the pass rush and more.

Do you feel like you need to spread out your pass rushing between more players than last year?
Yeah, you would like to. I think the biggest concern for us is we’d like to do it a little more in our four-man pressure. We’d like to be able to get some guys more involved. I think when you add the addition of a guy like Dewayne Hendrix at defensive end, who's got some pass rush ability, and a guy like Allen Edwards, I think that’s going to allow you to free up Ejuan Price and allow him to maybe do some different things and try to create some mismatches on the offensive line. We’re looking at some different personnel groupings and all that stuff.

To answer your point, yeah, you would. You’d like to free up some guys and not make yourself one-dimensional, when just a handful of guys get pressure. And I think sometimes that happens, maybe just by happenchance a little bit.

You mention Hendrix - he hasn’t played in a game in a long time - do you still have high expectations for him?
We do. Obviously it’s based on practice right now. But we do. We have some high expectations. And I think a guy like Rori Blair, I think he’s shown he can rush the passer as well. But we do have some high expectations for him, and hopefully as the season goes on he’ll get better.

Now that most of your roster has a pretty good knowledge of the defense are you able to add some looks into the playbook? Are you able to make any big changes?
It’s an interesting question because I think when we went back and looked at it, I think we ran - and I said this before - I think we ran too much pressure last year. I think we got to do a better job of honing in on what it is we want to run. We’ve honestly kind of scaled it back a little bit, and really tried to focus, especially this last spring. Really getting to the basics, as far as our base defense through fundamentals and techniques, and getting everybody sharp on all that, just so we get more comfortable. The ability to play our base defense and be more comfortable with it when the pressure’s on. So, they do. We’ve added a little more nuance here and there, but it's just more about tightening up what we’ve been doing.

From your previous experience, going from year one to year two of coaching a defense, what are typically some of the biggest differences you see, and where in that progression are you?
People don’t want to hear this, obviously from the outside because people want results right now, but the matter of the fact is it’s real simple: the consistency within a staff - having all your coaches here - really allows you to be able to develop all the skills you have in each coverage, in each technique, the fundamentals of any given skillset. To me, I think it’s huge. I think you’ll see marked improvement. As a coaching staff we’re seeing major improvements already in day two to where we were even in the spring.

I think the progression to where we’re at right now is pretty good, but I think the expectation is for us to be a lot tighter, and play our defense a lot cleaner than it was last year. And that’s just the knowledge. It just takes time, it takes guys getting reps at it. It’s the old adage: the more reps I take the better I’m gonna get at it, and especially if they’re reps that are real focused and we’re trying to get a lot out of those reps in practice.

How important is players getting more comfortable in your system towards more playmaker emerging?
I think any time there’s a comfort level with the players. I think any time the guys come in and they feel like they know what they’re doing, they’re not thinking, and that primary key - they see what they’re supposed to see - they react to their secondary key. And I think that allows you to make more plays and you actually put yourself in a position to make more plays. Yeah, that’s what you want to see definitely. And there are some guys that stand out like a Ejuan Price or a Jordan Whitehead, I think some of those guys will have an opportunity to put themselves in better positions just because of their comfort level with the defense.

With Jordan in particular, he said he’s more comfortable in this defense and feels like he can make those interceptions that maybe he didn’t last year. Do you feel the same way?
It seems like right now, for him, the game’s slowing down and you want to just keep getting that game slower and put himself in a position to go out and make plays.

From what you’ve seen from Dewayne Hendrix, what’s impressed you the most?
He’s added a lot to the position group. I think he was in a situation before that wasn’t a good fit for him. I think this was kind of a restart, a new start. I think he’s really enjoyed it. I think he enjoys our style of defense, and I feel like, for him, being able to come out and do the things he needs to do. He’s been productive in practice, now it’s going to be being productive in game. And that’s really only going to add to his leadership moving forward. But I think he’s got a strong presence in the room right now, which is encouraging to see.

Is that common for a fairly new player to add such a presence to a program?
It is. It is unique. I think that for him, because he hasn’t played a lot of reps, he’s handled it the right way. It’s not like he came in and thought he was the guy. He went out on the scout team and did his deal for the whole fall. He came into spring ball and didn’t expect to have a job, and just kind of kept working. I think he’s looking at this year, for him, personally, ‘this is my year to get back into the game and really kind of start to establish my mark here at Pitt.’ And then have a breakout year, half-year the year after.

Do you feel like you have the necessary speed and athleticism to really keep up with all the high-level offenses in the ACC?
I think across the board, I think there are some spots where we’ll be fine. But I think any time you put yourselves in those positions - I mean you’re facing some teams that are going to have some really, really good skills players. For us - we talk about this as a defense all the time - it’s going to come down to playing really great team defense. But, are we athletic enough? Yeah, we are. We’re athletic enough to do what we need to do, for sure. We’ve added some athleticism with our younger guys, so we’re going to be able to get some of those guys at some positions sooner than later. But yeah, we have to play great team defense, we have to go out and do a great job playing at full speed. So much of it is knowledge. Knowledge really is power. We’ve said that a lot. And putting guys in a position to make plays is a critical part of it.

The depth you have this year as compared to last year, how much does that help you when you want to play team defense and you want to kind of improve in that area?
The one thing you look at - this year especially - we’re going out and we’re facing Villanova, and Penn State and Oklahoma State. And we’ve looked at the whole schedule. There are a lot of spread teams. There’s a lot of team that are going to take a lot of reps, a lot of snaps. So you look at a position like defensive line, especially, and even linebacker and defensive back play. When I was at Citadel, we used a line change mentality of hockey, getting guys shifted in and out. We kind of want to do that as much as we can if there’s not a big drop-off between the one and the two. You know, get fresh guys out there so they can play hard and play fast. It’s going to be a huge part of it. These teams want to go fast and take a lot of plays, it just adds up.

What have been your early impressions of the freshman corners?
They’re young. Swimming a little bit mentally. That’s only natural. I think there’s a lot of athleticism there. I think they’re going to be tremendous players in the future. But it’s a work in progress. They’ve just got to go day by day and continue to do the things they need to do to get better.

Do you hesitate to put too much pressure on them?
You’re looking for the guy that that game’s not too big for, the guys that feel comfortable, that [the game is] slow for them. You feel like you can put those guys in positions. And you know pretty quickly if a guy can handle it or not.

Is Damar Hamlin one of those guys?
Yeah. I think he’s going to be one of those guys, and potentially all of them right now are those guys. As we move into practice seven, eight, nine that’s kind of how Jordan [Whitehead] did it. Eleven, twelve, thirteen, you kind of see if they hit the wall and if they can get through the wall. Where they’re at mentally, that will all be seen in the future.