Oregon linebacker Devon Jackson discusses his growth entering his third year of college football.
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00:00What has been your point of attack of the spring, what are you working on the most?
00:05Working on the most is just like keep working on my development, attacking every day.
00:09Don't stop, just keep going.
00:13But big thing of mine is like blitz timing, specifically me and my coaches.
00:18My coach is personally the blitz doctor, that's what we call him.
00:21So just working on him with that, we're better at that.
00:24V-Mic's a good sign?
00:25Yes, sir.
00:26Should have talked to you before we talked to you.
00:28Yes, sir.
00:29How much can your speed help, especially coming off the edge or wherever you're blitzing from?
00:34Helps a lot, but just working on the techniques that I need to work on every day,
00:38you just keep starting to get better at it.
00:40For you, when you do have, I'm talking to Coach Michalowski,
00:44when you do have the natural gifts you have,
00:45what's been the process of kind of becoming a complete linebacker and not just relying on,
00:49I can run faster to that point?
00:51Knowledge, knowledge is a big thing we work on.
00:53So like one of our pillars for ILB is getting the defensive line adjusted.
00:58So just knowing what we've got to do to get the defensive line adjusted.
01:00If you don't know what to do, you can't be an ILB.
01:02So having knowledge of where you're supposed to be, you can get others lined up.
01:06So really just having knowledge.
01:08How much growth has there been there from when you got here today?
01:11It's been a lot, man.
01:12I remember two years ago, I got here two years ago this time,
01:16and I didn't really know much.
01:18When you realize, going to a defense like this,
01:20Coach Lenny, his knowledge, Coach McCoy, his knowledge, and even V-Mic, his knowledge,
01:25just to learn the game of football, learn how to be a true inside linebacker,
01:30it just keeps staggering.
01:31So a lot has grown over the past two years.
01:33Fans here, stuff like that, definitely, they wonder what exactly goes into the learning process.
01:39Obviously there's a lot of complicated stuff with calls and verbiage,
01:41but bring us into a little bit of some of the finer points,
01:44like when you talk about lining up the D-line,
01:46like over and under and whether or not the center alignment and blocking down.
01:51You know all these things, but it takes time to get there.
01:54It does.
01:55How would you describe the gap from whatever you did in high school
02:00to learning this as a freshman, learning this in a second year, now a third?
02:04That's not even a gap.
02:06To me, it's like outer space.
02:07It's not even completely like what we learned in high school.
02:10So when I got here, I had to go with the basics, learn the basics.
02:14I'm not going to lie, it took me a while to get there,
02:16but once it clicked, I kept building on that, keep building on that,
02:19and I can really help my team out.