Wisconsin offensive line coach A.J. Blazek spoke to the media during fall camp for the first time since the spring. The first year coach touched on a myriad of topics from new on-field offensive line coach Casey Rabach to keeping his players healthy leading up to the season.

Here's everything Blazek said at his availability:

*Authors note: Some questions and answers are rephrased for clarity.

"I'll tell you what...we played against each other. We were both centers, same time. And we're from the same era. We're like step brothers that are working together every day. So it was fun as (head coach Luke Fickell) came to me with the conversation to really help him continue his career too, man. He's a hell of an O-line coach, and we have a lot of fun together like a couple boy scouts hanging out everyday, figuring out what we're gonna do. And then we've got (graduate assistant) Zach Heeman who's kinda our partner in crime learning the way, so three of us is fun."

"I think, detail-wise, things are staying very similar. We'll tag team, we'll go right and left some days, left and right. We're coaching everything; I don't think there's like a split assignment...The classes in recruiting have been pretty dang good, and he's gonna oversee all the personnel, like a lot of the scouting, that stuff. We'll tag-team recruiting. Really, it's just a two-man tag team...we'll jump in the ring with anybody with two o-line coaches."

"I'll tell you, yesterday, I don't know if we took advantage of a day to get better. And better now than practice 27 or something, the first game week. But we responded back. We bounced back today, and we've got a group that likes to work. We challenge them a little bit, and that was probably vocally too."

"Just our body language. We had hands on hips a lot, we had guys that, the play was halfway over, we're not in full pads, we're not in shoulder pads. But you're five, six, seven steps in and the throttle comes off, you're just wanting yourself for bad habits two days from now or tomorrow when we're in pads. You're gonna be in a situation to compromise your health a little bit."

"Well, he's a guy that obviously I've known him a long time, and what he can do in game situations. He just gave us a lot of freedom to move some guys around. That's our goal, to figure out who the seven or eight are as we get into these next two weeks."

"Well I think it's twofold. As you guys get to learn Leyton over his time here, he's coaching already. He's gonna be a coach someday. He's played tackle on both sides, he's played guard on both sides. He's jumped in and helped the Heywood's, the (Colin) Cubbery's, the Ryan Cory's, the (Emerson) Mandell's. And he's close with them; he lived with Joe Brunner all summer. Those two are really close, they're the same in age. You talk leadership in the future; his human nature is leadership and teaching. And he's done a great job teaching, but as far as challenges, I thought James Durand has bounced back from where he finished spring ball. You see him get more reps with the two's right now. And Barrett Nelson is a talented kid. Him and his brother are two different bodies, they're just brothers. That don't mean they're gonna be the same guys comparatively. But he's twitched up, very smart. Likes to be physical. And he's put on, he's 300 pounds now."

"You say about 23. Usually that means you know it's 23. I see a group of guys, we're just in the middle of work. We haven't even picked our head up and said, 'hey, where are we at?' Put your head down and go right now. That's pass pro, that's run game, that's everything we're doing from tempo to cadences. Everything we're doing is work. We're kind of in the Crucible of fall camp, which is put everything in and let it melt. We're gonna forge over that second week and getting into game week, but right now it's hot metal and we're going to work every day."

"My dad and grandpa coached, I don't know. I'm probably a better relationship guy than I am a scheme guru. And if you know what's important to kids, and that don't mean you're not pushing. There's times Jack and Rip are two of our kind of horses that are tougher to tame at times, but you've gotta hit em right between the eyes and when they eyeball you, you're looking right back at them. 'Okay, I've got you coach.' They chuckle as they're running off, but I think if you can coach the best players really hard, everybody knows you're in it for their interests. Not degrading, not calling the same guy out every day. We know older guys are doing the same stuff."

"The shape him and Riley Mahlman are in, the way they practice, the walkthroughs at night. It's full speed, it's definitive, it's precise. They went down to that (offensive line summit) Masterminds this summer, and I just think you hear pros talk about how to train...They've learned how to keep crafting their game a little bit, and I've seen it show up here in the first two days. Whether its the pre-practice stuff, the walk-through, the (individual drills). Whatever it is, they are dialed in right now. His energy and effort, he runs hot now. He's a dragster, he ain't a long-distance racer. He's dialed in pretty good right now at an even keel."

"It was (Jake) Renfro, (Joe) Huber and Mahlman. And I think running around with those guys, they heard a lot of stuff, took a lot of notes. We come back and digest it a little bit and what that feedback was."

"The three guys that got here in the summer, (also) Evan Brown, a walk-on that joined us in the spring. It'll be a cool story a couple of years from now. He was a student we didn't have room for in the fall, they just had his name on a list. We were short numbers and, 'hey, you wanna come out? 'Yeah, I'd love to come out.' His parents knew coach Haynes' wife, that's the connection. He's a Florida kid. So how do you find a walk-on at Wisconsin from Florida? That's how. Relationships, again. Brown is doing a great job athletically. But really, the three young bucks that have come in. Emerson, from a size standpoint, is ready to get in there. It's just football IQ. And he's a smart kid now, but he's coming from a triple-option, four-point, never pass set. So there's a lot of fundamental stuff; and then while you're learning that you're going against (John) Pius and (Leon) Lowery and Turbo (Thomas Heiberger) and all of the guys we have on the edge. It takes a little learning curve, but man, he's progressing quick. Ryan Cory is as tough as we thought. There's a reason why he was one of the top defensive players in Pittsburgh. He just takes rip after rip...he's very similar to Mahlman in that way. And then Derek Jensen is gonna be, when I say developmental, he's a heavy-handed, physical, violent kid that's still thinking a lot. Comes from a good program at Arrowhead, so he knows everything. He can pick it up fast. But going to do it, the tempo of things, it's just finding the right spots to get him in there."

"He's a really smart kid. Big and strong. Working on his hips and fluidity and athleticism. But the big thing with him is he knows all five. So kinda like Leyton played four, we force-fed Cubberly at center this winter not knowing what his future is gonna hold, like Ryan Cory. But he's a center/guard in the long haul. He played tackle this spring because he played it in high school. I said, 'hey, you wanna jump out there?' Jumps out there and does it without panicking. Anytime you can slow down, and for most of them, it's whatever they played in high school that's the slowest right now."

"I think the biggest thing is we have numbers. So we drill, we rep. When you watch the first 20 minutes of practice, that's our most physical part of the day right now, till we get into the padded team. Our guards will play tackle, you saw that in the spring a little bit. Brunner slid out when Jack's hip got sore in the spring game. So we're working kinda our game rotations...but it's work right now for these two weeks. It's go. Because the system is still a year and a half in, the guys you're playing next to are still kinda new, it's work. I'm not worried about that right now, we've got enough guys and enough people getting reps. Luke scheduled practice really well from a ones, twos, threes standpoint. It's go time, so right now it's head down and go to work."

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