Jim Leavitt Q&A: Powered by Pepsi

When the 2015 season ended, how did you go about evaluating your defense, both as a unit and evaluating the individual players? What type of process is involved with that?

Jim Leavitt: "Our defensive staff looked at every defensive call. We looked at every play. We wrote down notes on the secondary, linebackers and defensive line. It is exhausting. It takes a long time. It takes probably about three weeks of really hammering away at it. And then it is quality control, we write down what the bad things were, things we have to work on with our defense. We had about 53 calls last year so it took a long time to go back through it all. And then we evaluate the players. We put it in parenthesis if one player is making a mistake over and over again.

"And then we put together summaries: a summary for our base defense, a summary for our nickel defense, a summary for our penny defense, a summary for our dime defense, a summary for our goal-line defense, a summary for our red-zone, for third-and-short, for under three-yards. And then we have third-and-medium, third-and-long, all those for field position. We look at two-minute. We look at all of those things. And when all of that is compiled, then we put down objectives of what we want to do in the spring to improve in those areas that we found were weaknesses."

Based off that, what were the objectives you entered spring practices with?

"There are about 20. It is too long to give you. But there are a number of things. The main thing is we have to tackle much better. We have to have better pursuit angles, force angles, we have to hit, we have to wrap. That is probably the No. 1 thing we have to be much, much better at as a defense. If we're not, then we're probably not going to have a lot of success."

You said many times last fall the defense's improvement was a work in progress... how much do you feel you accomplished in your first year here?

"I was proud of our guys, because they kept getting better all the way to the Utah game. I don't focus all the time on wins and losses. I focus on trying to get our defense playing great, because if our defense plays great, the wins will come. So that is my focus. I was proud of them. I thought they did better. Most coaches will always say the same thing about having a ways to go, and there is no doubt we do. But if we keep making the steps that we made and keep the positive direction we made going, then we'll be fine."

Was the Pac-12 like you anticipated it was going to be in terms of how to prepare for the other offenses in this conference?

"I wasn't really surprised by anything. It was about exactly what I expected. I didn't get surprised much."

Addison Gillam has had back-to-back rough seasons here with injuries. Do you almost have to play part-time psychologist with him to make sure he is staying positive?

"No. He stays positive, I don't have to do any of that. He is a great guy. Things are coming along good for him. We fully expect him to play a lot of football this fall."

N.J. Falo came in as an outside linebacker but had to move inside during his true freshman season. Where is he factoring in now?

"He is a very versatile, gifted athlete and we expect N.J. to be a big player for us this year. We're playing him mostly at outside linebacker right now. We moved him outside, where he played in high school. Last season was hard for him, we played him outside and inside, we had to, we had so many injuries last year. So we are going to keep him outside now. We are going to keep Christian Shaver outside and let those guys compete."

Colorado fans get a kick out of your tweets about Pepsi. It seems like they should reach out to you to be a spokesman for them..

"No (laughing), they could get a lot better people to endorse their product than me. I just enjoy drinking it."

You tweeted that you were trying to go cold turkey and quit drinking Pepsi the other day... there are worse habits to have, no?

"I tried and it lasted about 45 minutes because when I left the office here, I drove by 7-Eleven and I had to go in and get a Pepsi. That 45 minute stretch was hard, it was as long as I could go. I had to have a Pepsi."