August 5, 2025 • 12 mins
Fighting Hawk Radio Network Color Analyst Mike Berg joins Tim and Paul to discuss UND Football's early practices during fall camp.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the program, the Hall of Famer, the coach.
It's Mike Burt.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Good morning, Mike, gentlemen, good morning.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
Good morning, coach. How are you today?
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Oh? I dandy.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
We didn't have some rain go through, but practice must
go on.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Yeah, it's actually I am out in that area right
now and it's still raining a bit. But I don't
think this will affect practice. And there's always the indoor
facility if it gets down to it, right, Yeah, exactly,
go ahead.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Options options, say, we got all the takes so far
from Tom Miller, and just wondering if you had any
other takes that we may have missed from Tom. Oh.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I put my stamp of approval on everything Tom has said.
He is, he sees it, and you know he's there,
doesn't miss a thing. I think he highlighted a few
things that I would agree with. I do believe we're
seeing more speed out there. There's probably more depth in
a couple of those positions, and what we've seen wide
(01:06):
receiver wise, I think that's that has a chance to
be real good. In the running back room, I think
is good. It's just things seem to be I think
the guys that are handling the ball or the guys
on the corners and at the safeties, they just appear
to me moving faster than maybe what we've seen in
(01:27):
some cases in the past.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Well instead of oh, go ahead, uh, I was going
to say, is any of those wide receivers and even
standout guys are just a lot of a lot of
guys that are just doing the job.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
It's you know, to me, everybody looks good when you're
playing on air or you're playing in shorts, and it
looks like a pe class full of real talented kids.
So when they start playing football, and you know, I
mean a big part of that is being in the
right place, how you how you operate in space when
(02:04):
you're getting hit, how you block. And so I'm not
ready to write me tickets to the Hall of Fame
yet for any of them, but I like what I've seen.
And you know, these first these first couple of weeks
of practice, actually is it's just getting acclimated and trying
to figure out who's who's going to be taking those reps.
(02:26):
What I said, it's been good.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
What I said to people about receivers, I said, I
don't see a next Noel Wonsick. I don't see a
next Bowl belquiz, but you they can can be a
pretty good receiving cores As a group, I think they
have a plenty of guys to pick from that if
they're playing really well, I think they'll they'll do just
fine well.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
And that's in this day and age of football, with
the multiple wide spread formations and empty looks and all
the movement in motion. I think receivers have to be
pretty versatile and you're trying to just basicy find ways
to get matchups in your favor and so and I
think they do have guys that can do that. And
(03:07):
there's a couple of proven guys in there. I think
Nate Demotinax back now mis's the spring, but he's back,
looks good. Sam Strandal AND's talking guys that we know
were there, Dennis Cayden, Dennis, these guys are very familiar.
And then you've got some new guys that have come
in that are definitely going to play. So I think
(03:28):
it could be a very exciting offensive football team.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Defensively, you mentioned it, and here is my takeaway and
a couple of practices that I visited as compared to
the spring, and I felt like this this coaching staff,
with coach smidt At taking the lead on the defensive side,
I think the idea is that to get them to
play fast. And while this defense may be different in
(03:54):
the way that they are going about it rather than
the three four to a four to two, and it
will have different looks at times or whatever, but if
they're able to understand kind of the premises and the
rules of the defense, I think their idea is to
get them to play as fast as they possibly can
out there. And actually, I've seen a few of the
plays from that defense. A couple of times I'm like, Oh,
(04:15):
that's just guys making plays, playing fast, and I think
if they're able to do that, that could you could
see an uptick in how this defense performs this year.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Well, you don't play fast if you're not confident and
know your assignments. And that's the part now that you're
trying to learn is it's honestly, it's not way way
different than what we've seen people are jumping up and
down about. It's an entirely new defense, yes, and know
(04:45):
a lot of the concepts are the same and we
often last year saw you and d lineup in a
Nickel with five defensive backs, and maybe the Nickel guy
wasn't doing as much as what we're saying now from
the Nickels. But uh, the edge player we call them
edges now they used to be defensive ends and they
(05:06):
have their own names for them. But I agree with
you play fast, but you don't do that until you
know what you're doing. So I was actually in a
meeting this morning with the cornerbacks and for them, not
a lot has changed, accept you know, identifying formations and movements.
But still you still need you're playing defense. If you're
(05:29):
in the secondary, you still need to cover, you need
to play in space, you need to tackle. And the
guys up front, there's still six guys up there and
the and the Nickel brings the seventh guy lots of
times that uh, you know, you're gonna you're gonna be
expected to stop the run. Everybody wants to run the ball.
So I'm curious. I'm anxious to see them in live
(05:52):
football action, right, and we'll get a better look of
tim go ahead.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
We won't know much until they get into live football action.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
But yeah, yeah, you know, I mean this, everybody looks good.
You could go down and I don't watch anybody and
against against other guys wearing shorts and running around out there.
Nobody's getting hit, nobody's dropping the ball because they've they've
been hit, you know, nobody's having to go up and
make a play. It's it's you don't want to get
people hurt. At this time, you're still learning. So they've shown,
(06:26):
they've shown on film. They wouldn't be here if they
haven't shown they could play real football. And so that's
a term they even use themselves in their meetings and
at practice. Is Hey, for this segment, we're going to
play real football and go for me. And I guess
maybe that's a that's an example of being around for
a hundred years. I'm I'm anxious in real football, touch football,
(06:50):
flag football, bumping into each other, thumping into each other.
Football doesn't do much for me anymore.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Well, well, you're saying with with the football media day today,
the most popular question will be who's going to be
the quarterback? Right?
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Well, I'm not asking that question. I promise you that
I don't care. You've got four guys in there to
me any one of the four that I'm not counting
the freshman, any one of the four could go in
and execute this offense. And the biggest key to me
is if you're the quarterback, do you take care of
(07:30):
the ball? If you even if you throw a pass
that's not a beauty, you get another down or you
send your punter out there. But do you take care
of the ball and we count on you at the
end of this series of plays, do we still have
the ball and we're either scoring with it or we're
punting it, but we are deciding what to do with
(07:50):
the ball. We're not giving it to the other guys.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
Well, yeah, I think that's probably You know, that philosophy
has been there, you know when when coach when coach
Bubba was there, when coach Muss was there before that
Dale Lennon that.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Was there, when Jerry Olsen's Franks exactly. No, that's football, though.
Take care of the ball. We can't do much if
we keep putting the ball on the ground or thrown
it to the wrong guys. So take care of the ball.
And you do that again when you know what you're doing.
You're comfortable with the offense. The guys that were here
last year are more comfortable with the offense than the
(08:31):
new guys. So is there an edge somewhere? Ye be
if they're you're looking for an edge, maybe that's the edge.
But they can all play. Again, the difference between what
the level of football they're playing right now, and you know,
and this will sound like a condemnation of Division two,
is there's not a guy out there at these practices,
(08:54):
on this roster that can't play at this level. They
don't make they don't bring guys in and hope they
can play. If they haven't shown they can play, they're
not here, so they'll they'll sort it out. And that's
why I don't care. I don't don't worry about it
that I know when they take the field in that
first game, the guys in the white jerseys are going
to have their best people in all those positions.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
All right now. The last thing I was going to
ask you is we know that Malachi McNeil. Obviously he's
earned one of those single digit numbers. He's been back
in that inside linebacking corps and played a lot of
meaningful game reps the opposite spot next to them. You know,
they they went through even some of the players that
(09:37):
played last year, those guys have graduated moved on. Who's
going to be the guy that stands next to him
to be that other inside linebacker. How many guys they
got vying for that opportunity?
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Well, how many guys, I'd say there's or candidates, probably,
I would think, And again I I don't know that
there's an actual depth chart. There's a local young man
that I think a lot of people would be familiar
with named Payne Parks, who played at the Red River
(10:10):
that gets a whole lot of reps for those number ones,
and so I would expect to see him in there.
There's a another young man from Crookston Ethan Bowl who
to me looks good. But again I have I have
(10:32):
not sat in on a meeting in the linebacker room,
and I'm like Tom or anybody else that's out to practice.
I kind of watch and you don't know what their
rotations are. They're mixing it up, they don't have a peer.
This is the ones, this is the twos. They're mixing
it up. And so guys are in and out all
the time. And so if I had to take a
quiz on who's the number one or whatever in a
(10:55):
lot of the positions, I would I would be a liar,
or I would just fail to quiz. But you're right,
Malachi McNeil's a number one where wherever he is, he's
the number one. We can count on that.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
We know that much.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Yeah, yeah, we know that, we know that so well.
But again, uh, there's a lot of time between now
and that opening game and then things change. So and
you want that way. You want every guy out of
that one hundred and eight guys that are there right
now coming to practice daily thinking that they have a
shot to be the guy on that depth chart. And
(11:30):
so if you've already determined as a player that, well,
I'm way down here. I'm just going to drag drag
myself through practice and you know, get through this. You're
not the guy for this football team. Awesome, there are
places for you, but not here.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Sure, gotcha, And I guess say, we'll continue to sort
through it, sift through it. We're not going to hold
you to anything here, at least I'm not tim said
he might, but so far, we'll wait to get you
more locked in as we get closer to it, and.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Even okay will come. I'm not hiding. I don't have
any answers either. So when the time is right, I
will be. I'll throwing out there and we'll see how
it goes.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Sounds good. Have a great rest of your day with
practice and some media day. We'll see out there in
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Okay, sounds good, Thanks guys.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
All right, There goes Mike Berg. He's our color analyst
for the Fighting Hawks radio network for you Indy football,
joining Tim and I here this morning as he does
on Tuesdays.
Welcome to the program, the Hall of Famer, the coach.
It's Mike Burt.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Good morning, Mike, gentlemen, good morning.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
Good morning, coach. How are you today?
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Oh? I dandy.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
We didn't have some rain go through, but practice must
go on.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Yeah, it's actually I am out in that area right
now and it's still raining a bit. But I don't
think this will affect practice. And there's always the indoor
facility if it gets down to it, right, Yeah, exactly,
go ahead.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Options options, say, we got all the takes so far
from Tom Miller, and just wondering if you had any
other takes that we may have missed from Tom. Oh.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I put my stamp of approval on everything Tom has said.
He is, he sees it, and you know he's there,
doesn't miss a thing. I think he highlighted a few
things that I would agree with. I do believe we're
seeing more speed out there. There's probably more depth in
a couple of those positions, and what we've seen wide
(01:06):
receiver wise, I think that's that has a chance to
be real good. In the running back room, I think
is good. It's just things seem to be I think
the guys that are handling the ball or the guys
on the corners and at the safeties, they just appear
to me moving faster than maybe what we've seen in
(01:27):
some cases in the past.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Well instead of oh, go ahead, uh, I was going
to say, is any of those wide receivers and even
standout guys are just a lot of a lot of
guys that are just doing the job.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
It's you know, to me, everybody looks good when you're
playing on air or you're playing in shorts, and it
looks like a pe class full of real talented kids.
So when they start playing football, and you know, I
mean a big part of that is being in the
right place, how you how you operate in space when
(02:04):
you're getting hit, how you block. And so I'm not
ready to write me tickets to the Hall of Fame
yet for any of them, but I like what I've seen.
And you know, these first these first couple of weeks
of practice, actually is it's just getting acclimated and trying
to figure out who's who's going to be taking those reps.
(02:26):
What I said, it's been good.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
What I said to people about receivers, I said, I
don't see a next Noel Wonsick. I don't see a
next Bowl belquiz, but you they can can be a
pretty good receiving cores As a group, I think they
have a plenty of guys to pick from that if
they're playing really well, I think they'll they'll do just
fine well.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
And that's in this day and age of football, with
the multiple wide spread formations and empty looks and all
the movement in motion. I think receivers have to be
pretty versatile and you're trying to just basicy find ways
to get matchups in your favor and so and I
think they do have guys that can do that. And
(03:07):
there's a couple of proven guys in there. I think
Nate Demotinax back now mis's the spring, but he's back,
looks good. Sam Strandal AND's talking guys that we know
were there, Dennis Cayden, Dennis, these guys are very familiar.
And then you've got some new guys that have come
in that are definitely going to play. So I think
(03:28):
it could be a very exciting offensive football team.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Defensively, you mentioned it, and here is my takeaway and
a couple of practices that I visited as compared to
the spring, and I felt like this this coaching staff,
with coach smidt At taking the lead on the defensive side,
I think the idea is that to get them to
play fast. And while this defense may be different in
(03:54):
the way that they are going about it rather than
the three four to a four to two, and it
will have different looks at times or whatever, but if
they're able to understand kind of the premises and the
rules of the defense, I think their idea is to
get them to play as fast as they possibly can
out there. And actually, I've seen a few of the
plays from that defense. A couple of times I'm like, Oh,
(04:15):
that's just guys making plays, playing fast, and I think
if they're able to do that, that could you could
see an uptick in how this defense performs this year.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Well, you don't play fast if you're not confident and
know your assignments. And that's the part now that you're
trying to learn is it's honestly, it's not way way
different than what we've seen people are jumping up and
down about. It's an entirely new defense, yes, and know
(04:45):
a lot of the concepts are the same and we
often last year saw you and d lineup in a
Nickel with five defensive backs, and maybe the Nickel guy
wasn't doing as much as what we're saying now from
the Nickels. But uh, the edge player we call them
edges now they used to be defensive ends and they
(05:06):
have their own names for them. But I agree with
you play fast, but you don't do that until you
know what you're doing. So I was actually in a
meeting this morning with the cornerbacks and for them, not
a lot has changed, accept you know, identifying formations and movements.
But still you still need you're playing defense. If you're
(05:29):
in the secondary, you still need to cover, you need
to play in space, you need to tackle. And the
guys up front, there's still six guys up there and
the and the Nickel brings the seventh guy lots of
times that uh, you know, you're gonna you're gonna be
expected to stop the run. Everybody wants to run the ball.
So I'm curious. I'm anxious to see them in live
(05:52):
football action, right, and we'll get a better look of
tim go ahead.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
We won't know much until they get into live football action.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
But yeah, yeah, you know, I mean this, everybody looks good.
You could go down and I don't watch anybody and
against against other guys wearing shorts and running around out there.
Nobody's getting hit, nobody's dropping the ball because they've they've
been hit, you know, nobody's having to go up and
make a play. It's it's you don't want to get
people hurt. At this time, you're still learning. So they've shown,
(06:26):
they've shown on film. They wouldn't be here if they
haven't shown they could play real football. And so that's
a term they even use themselves in their meetings and
at practice. Is Hey, for this segment, we're going to
play real football and go for me. And I guess
maybe that's a that's an example of being around for
a hundred years. I'm I'm anxious in real football, touch football,
(06:50):
flag football, bumping into each other, thumping into each other.
Football doesn't do much for me anymore.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Well, well, you're saying with with the football media day today,
the most popular question will be who's going to be
the quarterback? Right?
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Well, I'm not asking that question. I promise you that
I don't care. You've got four guys in there to
me any one of the four that I'm not counting
the freshman, any one of the four could go in
and execute this offense. And the biggest key to me
is if you're the quarterback, do you take care of
(07:30):
the ball? If you even if you throw a pass
that's not a beauty, you get another down or you
send your punter out there. But do you take care
of the ball and we count on you at the
end of this series of plays, do we still have
the ball and we're either scoring with it or we're
punting it, but we are deciding what to do with
(07:50):
the ball. We're not giving it to the other guys.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
Well, yeah, I think that's probably You know, that philosophy
has been there, you know when when coach when coach
Bubba was there, when coach Muss was there before that
Dale Lennon that.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Was there, when Jerry Olsen's Franks exactly. No, that's football, though.
Take care of the ball. We can't do much if
we keep putting the ball on the ground or thrown
it to the wrong guys. So take care of the ball.
And you do that again when you know what you're doing.
You're comfortable with the offense. The guys that were here
last year are more comfortable with the offense than the
(08:31):
new guys. So is there an edge somewhere? Ye be
if they're you're looking for an edge, maybe that's the edge.
But they can all play. Again, the difference between what
the level of football they're playing right now, and you know,
and this will sound like a condemnation of Division two,
is there's not a guy out there at these practices,
(08:54):
on this roster that can't play at this level. They
don't make they don't bring guys in and hope they
can play. If they haven't shown they can play, they're
not here, so they'll they'll sort it out. And that's
why I don't care. I don't don't worry about it
that I know when they take the field in that
first game, the guys in the white jerseys are going
to have their best people in all those positions.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
All right now. The last thing I was going to
ask you is we know that Malachi McNeil. Obviously he's
earned one of those single digit numbers. He's been back
in that inside linebacking corps and played a lot of
meaningful game reps the opposite spot next to them. You know,
they they went through even some of the players that
(09:37):
played last year, those guys have graduated moved on. Who's
going to be the guy that stands next to him
to be that other inside linebacker. How many guys they
got vying for that opportunity?
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Well, how many guys, I'd say there's or candidates, probably,
I would think, And again I I don't know that
there's an actual depth chart. There's a local young man
that I think a lot of people would be familiar
with named Payne Parks, who played at the Red River
(10:10):
that gets a whole lot of reps for those number ones,
and so I would expect to see him in there.
There's a another young man from Crookston Ethan Bowl who
to me looks good. But again I have I have
(10:32):
not sat in on a meeting in the linebacker room,
and I'm like Tom or anybody else that's out to practice.
I kind of watch and you don't know what their
rotations are. They're mixing it up, they don't have a peer.
This is the ones, this is the twos. They're mixing
it up. And so guys are in and out all
the time. And so if I had to take a
quiz on who's the number one or whatever in a
(10:55):
lot of the positions, I would I would be a liar,
or I would just fail to quiz. But you're right,
Malachi McNeil's a number one where wherever he is, he's
the number one. We can count on that.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
We know that much.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Yeah, yeah, we know that, we know that so well.
But again, uh, there's a lot of time between now
and that opening game and then things change. So and
you want that way. You want every guy out of
that one hundred and eight guys that are there right
now coming to practice daily thinking that they have a
shot to be the guy on that depth chart. And
(11:30):
so if you've already determined as a player that, well,
I'm way down here. I'm just going to drag drag
myself through practice and you know, get through this. You're
not the guy for this football team. Awesome, there are
places for you, but not here.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Sure, gotcha, And I guess say, we'll continue to sort
through it, sift through it. We're not going to hold
you to anything here, at least I'm not tim said
he might, but so far, we'll wait to get you
more locked in as we get closer to it, and.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Even okay will come. I'm not hiding. I don't have
any answers either. So when the time is right, I
will be. I'll throwing out there and we'll see how
it goes.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Sounds good. Have a great rest of your day with
practice and some media day. We'll see out there in
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Okay, sounds good, Thanks guys.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
All right, There goes Mike Berg. He's our color analyst
for the Fighting Hawks radio network for you Indy football,
joining Tim and I here this morning as he does
on Tuesdays.
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