| Making His Presence Known |
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| Written by Sam Finley | ||||||||||
| Thursday, 08 November 2007 | ||||||||||
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The senior is having a breakout season. It can be argued that Jeremy Gibbs personifies the difference between the past two seasons for Oregon football. Last season, much like the team, Jeremy got off to a great start…only to have a foot injury slow him down the rest of the way. This season, however, he’s got three sacks and 19 tackles for the third-ranked Ducks. Yes, the 6’3, 290 pound senior defensive tackle from Stillwater, Oklahoma has made his presence known to opposing defenses this year. The fact that he is clearly in much better shape has certainly helped his game…and it’s made Oregon fans glad that he chose to don the Green and Yellow over his original choice of Sooner Red.  Gibbs is a force to be reckoned with.
MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT
DI: What’s your biggest memory here so far?
JG: “I’d have to say when we beat Oklahoma after Blair Phillips blocked the field goal…because it was such a big game back home, and it just felt good to beat them guys.” ADJUSTING TO DIVISION I BALL DI: You played two years of junior college ball at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M before coming here…What is the difference between playing at that level and at the Division I level? JG: “The speed of the game…there are a lot more plays to learn at this level…as well as how much you have to do within each play…It’s a big difference…I mean, junior college is a lot more like high school, and D1 ball felt like the NFL when I got up here last year. The playbook was so thick that I didn’t know what to do with it…because it looked like a schoolbook to me.” GETTING PUSHED INTO SHAPE DI: We’ve talked a little about how defensive line coach Michael Gray pushed you to get into better shape…what exactly did he tell you? JG: “Coach Gray got on me…He used to call me up and ask me what I was doing…and I’d tell him I was watching TV…and he’d say ‘It’s time to go run.’ So I had to go out and run by myself…He just stayed on me and told me how it important it was going to be this year and how much better I could play if I took it seriously.” ON THE PROGRESSION OF THE OREGON DEFENSE
DI: The defensive line lost Darius Sanders and Matt Toeaina after last season…how did you guys adjust? JG: “We stepped up…it wasn’t just one player that stepped up, but the whole unit stepped up. We realized that people were looking at us like we were the weak link of the defense, and we took that as a challenge…and coach Gray told us every day that we have to stop the run and it starts with us. So we stepped up as a unit…everybody played better…and it made the whole unit strong.” DI: Going back to that USC game…on the first series when you had them 4th and 1 at your 12 yard line. The fact that the defense shut them down…is that kind of a metaphor between this season’s team as opposed to last year? JG: “Exactly…We’re a bend-don’t-break defense…we feel like you can drive it 100 yards on us, but you still can’t get past that white line…In this case that first down happened to be at the white line, and we weren’t going to let them by. We were going to step up…and that’s the difference between this year and last year…I feel like this year, we’re an elite defense, and we try to show it every Saturday.” PLANS AFTER THE U OF O DI: What are your plans after you’re done with college football? JG: “Hopefully, I’ll get an opportunity at the next level (The NFL)…but if not, I’m going to finish up school (with a sociology degree) and try to coach some football somewhere.”
The rest of the Jeremy Gibbs interview can be read in the latest edison of Ducks Illustrated.
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