Watch: Carl Jones Jr., Kyle Philips Recap LSU Win, Highlight UCLA's Physicality

KYLE PHILIPS

Crunching blocks lead to attention from teammates? New nickname?

No, I haven’t earned any nickname yet, but that just kind of came from how these coaches have us practicing every day. In the past, maybe pass play happens, you don’t get the ball, we kinda would just run off the field, wouldn’t do anything, but now it’s kind of turned into we can make big plays out of anything. So if the ball doesn’t come to you, you have to go turn, look for work, find someone to hit, make a block in then – the other one that was more in the red zone, we’ve just been practicing playing really hard. Coach Kelly’s giving us more responsibility in the running game, so he’s trusting the receivers to sometimes pull around, make some blocks and it’s been fun.

Teammates’ reactions?

Haven’t really heard too much. One cool thing that happened though was Troy Aikman was on the sideline after the blocks, he kinda came up to me, said ‘Good blocking.’ I was like, kinda frozen at first, I was like ‘Oh, dang.’ It was a cool experience?

Which block was it?

Yeah, it was the one where the ball was thrown to Zach and I just kinda went upfield and made a block.

Want the pass game to break open more, get more touches?

The selfishness in me would say yes, but this team’s really been focusing on really putting the team first and focusing on winning. We’re not focused on getting stats, doing this, what we’re doing is just focusing on winning. And you can’t complain when you’v got Zach and Brittain Brown in the backfield, cause those guys make crazy plays. One thing that Jerry kinda brought into the wide receiver room is just the saying ‘Whatever it takes.’ We’re gonna do whatever it takes to win. So if we get zero balls and we can just make blocks and win the game, that’s what we’re gonna do. The team comes first and we’re gonna do whatever it takes to win the game.

What’s Jerry like on sidelines during games?

Oh man, Jerry’s a blessing. Yeah, he’s high energy, gets us pumped up. I think the best thing he does is he’s just so over positive. So let’s say maybe I make a bad play or something, it’s human nature to kind of get in your head, but Jerry’s just on your side the whole time just being positive in your ear to getting me back going. He’s helped me tremendously with that, even at practice, like something happens wrong, Jerry’s just there, getting me up, keeping me positive. It’s made a huge impact on the wide receiver room and to the team in general. We’re just overly positive all the time and energy’s high, energy’s good, we play well.

Matching up with Derek Stingley?

It was awesome to go against him. He’s a great player, we watched a lot of film on him and yeah, he’s just a phenomenal DB, he’s got great patience, he plays the ball well, he does all that. And as a competitor, I think that’s kind of what you want, you want to go against the best, you want to compete against the best and so it was just really fun and exciting to be able to go against who some consider the best DB in college football right now.

Jordan Genmark Heath reining in celebrating teammates? Impact of transfers?

It’s amazing. We’ve got a lot of transfers that kinda came in, just very mature and they seem to be just kind of that missing piece on the team for making plays and kind of taking control as well in situations like that. With them coming in, the team is just significantly better and the culture here is definitely just changing better and that’s a good example. We’re not really focused on talking trash anymore, we’re focused on, as coach K is always saying ‘Mudita,’ just celebrating each other, just the success of each other and that’s just been phenomenal for our team and just gonna continue to be great.