To be a contender in the Big Ten a squad must have a solid player at every position.
They say that when it comes to the depth chart, it can change any day and that we dictate how the depth chart goes. If one person has a great day, he might be going with the 'ones.' If a person slips up a little bit, he might be going with the 'twos' and 'threes.'
Trying to build a team over the course of the winter to put on the field is really just half the job. Because if your best players go down, it's not so much him going down as who you replace him with, which ultimately might have the biggest impact on how you end up finishing. So you want to have both a belt and suspenders for support.
WIth football you can have up to 28 guys you consider starters, and if they can pick up the slack when some aren't playing so well, you don't have to turn those two game losing streaks into six-game losing streaks.
We know there are a lot of good secondaries out there. We are just trying to focus on what we can do to get better. We've got some new, young guys coming in and we are trying to catch them up to speed. We are trying to make sure that we have depth, making sure the guys behind us know what is going on. We are going to keep pushing each other to raise the standard for our secondary.
As a football team, we don't have any backups. We don't consider anybody a backup.
Guys get... benched, replaced. They get injured; another guy comes in and becomes the starter. That happens all the time.
Having been through some adversity, starting from different points and having to work through the depth chart on many occasions, it's definitely helped my story.
That's one thing that you see across the league with backups. You're only one play away from getting in there, so you'd better know what you're doing.
I think you build a team and a roster around the depth. That's what makes a team really good.
When you bring in two wide receivers, it makes everybody say, 'OK, all right, there's a little more competition in this room,' which is good.
You have to understand that in this league, we are all one play removed from being the starter or from being the backup, in any game.
I can't think of any NBA team over the last few years that lost three starters. And we replaced them basically with three guys who really haven't played in this league.
Of course I want to play every game, but only 11 can start.
Manchester City seems to have unlimited spending restraint and are attempting to have all-star quality at each position - two deep. That will be hard to beat.
Guys that are playing in the preseason are one play away from being a starter.
