• last year
UW coach Kalen DeBoer talks about Josh Cuevas and his tight end skills.
Transcript
00:00 Could you talk about Josh Cuevas's upside?
00:03 You've talked about him as a blocker,
00:04 that he's got some skills there.
00:06 But it's been a few seasons since we've
00:08 seen a guy go 60 yards from that position down the field.
00:11 Yeah, I think that's what we have seen, too.
00:14 I mean, this spring, it was--
00:16 honestly, what we saw in the game on Saturday
00:18 is what I was thinking we were getting more of.
00:20 And then in the spring, we really
00:22 saw him and his physicality being even better
00:27 than what we expected.
00:28 Just those blocks in the interior against defensive ends
00:31 and blocking up front against linebackers there.
00:34 But the play he made on Saturday doesn't surprise me at all.
00:38 He's got an explosiveness to him.
00:40 He's really smooth.
00:42 That was apparent to our guys, even
00:45 when they were doing player run practices.
00:47 And they'd come back and tell us, hey,
00:49 Cuevas is a pretty good guy with his hands.
00:52 And that was exciting.
00:54 And we saw what we saw building off that in the spring.
00:57 And now he just happens to be in the right place.
01:01 I mean, there's other guys that we had
01:02 that were ready to run that play, too.
01:04 But he got thrown in the mix on that one.
01:06 And the ball ended up in his hands.
01:09 There's multiple guys that that play could have gone to.
01:11 But he made the play when the opportunity came up.
01:13 So I think about the route down the sideline
01:16 that Dimo threw him early in the season for a touchdown.
01:19 He's that type of playmaker.
01:21 So that's exciting for the future.
01:23 So how did you find him in the portal?
01:25 I know he puts his name out there.
01:26 And how do you find a guy from Cal Poly that's
01:29 kind of got something special, but maybe it's not widely known?
01:33 Yeah, I think just I credit our recruiting staff,
01:38 both sides of the ball.
01:39 But in this particular case, the offensive staff and Coach
01:41 Sheridan, just not--
01:44 leaving no stone unturned.
01:46 And it isn't always about the higher profile guys.
01:48 It's about the guys that you think are really good football
01:51 players.
01:52 And you just dive into their past history
01:55 and find out, hey, they're not reached their peak yet.
01:58 They're developing.
02:00 This guy can grow into even being bigger and stronger.
02:03 And just getting him right in the right spots
02:06 and utilizing him in our offense.
02:08 And he fits what we want to be and what type of player
02:11 we want in that position.
02:12 So credit to our recruiting staff on not just looking
02:16 and seeing, hey, we want this guy from this spot,
02:19 the higher profile guys, and taking Josh.
02:22 And once we really dove into it, we saw a lot of potential.
02:26 And we were very excited.
02:28 Was there any previous connection?
02:30 Does anybody recruit him off your staff?
02:33 There might have been.
02:34 There might have been.
02:35 Maybe that's even how it started in some case,
02:37 but nothing that we've discussed or that I knew about.