8/6/25: Mo Egger with Chad Brendel

Chad Brendel of Bearcat Journal joined us to discuss the Bearcats halfway through fall camp, which takes place during the summer. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Twenty minutes at before. This is ESPN fifteen thirty. I'm olegger.
Chad Brindle is going to be sitting in this seat
tomorrow and Friday. Bearkatcharnl dot com covering UC sports typically
joins us on Thursday. But because he's going to be
here and I won't have a chance to talk with him,
I wanted to talk some UC football with him. So

(00:21):
here he is. Hi, Chad, how are you? I'm doing
really well?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
What's up? Oh? I was just before Taron called. I
was listening to Rich rot say the only reason that
West Virginia has had any injuries is because they have
too many trainers, And if they didn't have any trainers,
they would have less injuries.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Is this kind of like we we have too many
COVID positives because there are too many people testing for COVID.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yes, it's exactly, that's exactly what I Yeah. Yeah, if
we didn't, you know, if they didn't have anybody to
go to, we probably wouldn't have any injuries. But there's
thirty trainers at West Virginia and that's why so many
guys are getting hurt at camp.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
So Rich Rodriguez two point zero in Morgantown. That era
is off to a great start.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
It going swimmingly well.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
Sounds what have we what have we learned about the
Bearcats through a week and a half or so of
fall camp.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
I'm excited about one thing, though, and that is that
camp has stoked pretty even. Looks like there's been plenty
of good moments for the offense, but also plenty of
good moments for the defense. So for me, I've been
doing this, and this is my nineteenth season on the

(01:40):
Bearcats beat. I feel a lot better about camp when
one side is not kicking the other side but all
over the place. Unless you have like a top five unit.
Right when that defense was top five, you walked in
going to offense. Probably, I have a rough time today
throwing the ball on soft to Kobe and Brian Cook.

(02:02):
But I feel like, you know, it's been a it's
been a boxing match. We're halfway through essentially today, halfway
through camp. I feel like the scorecard is tied after
you know, six rounds. I think that's a good thing.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Yeah, I would agree with that. I think the biggest
question that a lot of his head defensively was what
are these guys going to do in the secondary and
I think for some like who are these guys specifically
that unit? What have we learned?

Speaker 2 (02:33):
I think Matthew mcgoom has a chance to be really,
really good as advertised. I think he's had a really
strong camp. I feel better about Cornerback two with Logan
Wilson than I have since. You know, I don't think
Logan Wilson is going to win the Thorpe Award, but
I feel really good about Cornerback two for the first

(02:54):
time since Kobe was here, like that, it's felt like
Cornerback one has been not great but solid here, but
the second guy has has gotten picked on and and
kind of abused a lot. That hasn't been the case
this camp and safety is going to be interesting because
I don't know. I don't have a great feel yet

(03:15):
for how it's gonna shake out because there's six or
seven dames. I mean, we talked about this on the
Nightcap on the Bearcat Journal YouTube the other night, Like
they keep bringing in guys to pass up Antoine Peak,
and anton Peak just keeps making plays like that. You know,
there they've risen the level of competition, and he had

(03:38):
stepped up to that level every time they presented a challenge.
So I'm excited about the safety position. I'm just not
sure how it's gonna shake out yet.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
Compare Brendan sorosby this time of year ago to the
guy you're watching now.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
Much more confident, much more in control of running the offense.
And I'm sure some of that has to do it.
It certainly appears he has a much better wide receiver
room than he did a year ago. But he's acting
like a guy that you can always tell when they

(04:13):
switched to being a bit more comfortable in front of
the microphone, you know, a bit more like open and
not robotic when they're answering questions from the media, that
you can tell that they they feel a lot better,
a lot more settled in the situation. And you know

(04:35):
he is. He's had a couple of days that maybe
weren't outstanding, but he's also had a couple of days
where you're like, man, he is cooking. Now. To be fair,
you could look at that and say that was the
problem last years. There was days that it felt like
he was cooking, and then there was days that it
felt like he was still running the Indiana Playbook. But
nobody had Cincinnati knew it.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
That's that's very well put. Every time I read a
dispatch or hear something from whether it was higher ground
or now back on campus, the name Jeff Caldwell pops up.
I see Bruce Feldman's luster, freaks of the athletic. Uh,
you know, should I should I be jaded because he's
coming from a D two school, or should I be

(05:21):
excited at this guy? Could be like a I don't know,
all league caliber.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Weigeever, he looks different in that. Here's the thing I
think that you know, not a lot of people know
about Jeff Caldwell from what he told us. He was
like five to nine going into a senior year of
high school and then I had a gross spurt. But
that Grosberg, you know, he didn't have it on tape

(05:46):
playing football. His brother went to Lindenwood. So Caldwell went
to lindon Wood with his brother to experience college football.
His brother was a year or two older than him,
and in that process, all of a sudden, now he's
six four and a half and you know, looks like
an NFL wide receiver while he was there, so it's

(06:08):
you know, it wasn't like he was this profile athletic
profile when he was high school in high school and
got passed over. He's like an entirely different person now
that he was when he was a senior in high school.
So I think that explained some of it. And he
stayed until his brother graduated. He stayed loyal to his
brother and stayed there and put up great numbers at

(06:31):
the FCS level, and it so far has translated. The
one thing I've been impressed with most of him, oh,
is it's not been like one or two routes. You know,
it hasn't just been he's tall and fast, so we're
just running among go routes. Just seeing him make a
lot of catches over the middle. You know, he's running

(06:52):
drag routes. He's doing some stuff underneath the defense and
making plays. He caught a slant from Soresby today that
he took forty fifty yards. So that's the thing that's
impressed me the most about him, because a lot of
times like that, a guy with that freakish nature that's
coming up a level is kind of a one trick pony,

(07:12):
and so far he hasn't been that. And then you
put Cyrus Allen on the other side, of him, and
all of a sudden, you know, it feels like you've
got two explosive options at wide receiver that you know
hasn't happened here for a couple of years.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
Every time I've talked to you throughout the offseason, I've
asked about, like how this is going to work on
special teams with a special teams coach that got hired
after spring camp. They they obviously have to be much
better in that regard. They were a disaster toward the
end of last year. What has fault Camp told us
about those units?

Speaker 2 (07:47):
They're spending a lot of time on it. We talked
to Jeff Luke Pasco yesterday and I'm impressed with what
I've seen from them so far. Does it you know
he a special team savant like Brian Mason was. I
guess we'll find out in a couple of weeks. But
it seems more organized, it seems more detailed, and it

(08:10):
doesn't hurt that I think they're going to have a
top five punter in the country. Max Fletcher is unbelievable.
Like I think he was physically trying to put a
hole in the roof of the indoor practice facility yesterday
and that roof is pretty high, and I asked him
about it today and he kind of was mad at

(08:32):
the roof. He was like, man, a couple of those
balls were sixty yard kicks, but they hit the roof,
so I didn't get to see him go sixty yards.
So I'm just going to keep trying to put a
hole in it. And I'm like, okay. And Stephen Rustick
has been really good place kicking. The second day of
Higher Ground, he pushed two balls just right. And I

(08:54):
think I've seen him as one kick in the six
practices since, so he didn't miss last year. He was
perfect on field ball attempts, perfect on extra points. He
made one. I think the longest I've seen him go
is fifty three. Now, if it was fifty four, it
probably wasn't good. But he did get it in from

(09:14):
fifty three. But just that alone, and then whatever they do,
they have to be better than they were at the
end of the season on punt and kickoff return because
that stuff can't happen. I mean, I think we talked
about this. Everybody talked about Oh, Mason Fletcher made a
huge hit in the West Virginia game, sure forty yards downfield.

(09:39):
The HiT's great, but they returned the punt forty yards. Yeah,
that happened way too often where teams were just eating
up chunks of yards in the return game and Cincinnati
was getting nothing in the return game.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
You're exactly right about that, all right, man. Thank you
was always well, we'll be listening tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
Thanks very much, all right, appreciate it. You enjoy a
couple of days off.