Winston DeLattiboudere believes Jah Joyner is just 'tipping the iceberg'
Last season, one of the best defensive ends in the Big ten was Minnesota's Jah Joyner. The 6-foot-5, 250-pound junior out of Danbury, Connecticut led the Gophers with 7.5 sacks.
That number tied him for third most in the Big ten as well alongside the likes of Penn State's Adisa Isaac, Illinois's Jer'Zhan Newton, and Purdue's Kydran Jenkins.
Both Isaac and Newton will be day one or day two draft picks in this year's NFL Draft while Jenkins is well on his way to hearing his own name called at the NFL Draft in the future, and so is Joyner.
But Minnesota defensive line coach Winston DeLattiboudere believes that Joyner could be just "tipping the iceberg" when it comes to his potential.
"I think he's just tipping the iceberg of what he can be," DeLattiboudere said on Monday during a meeting with the Minnesota media. "Now that doesn't mean that all of a sudden he's going to wake up tomorrow and be a 14-sack Jah."
"I don't think that. I think there's a lot of small details that he needs to work on and I'm hard on," the Gophers second-year defensive line coach added. "I think that you should be. When you really love somebody that you're working with. When you love young people you want to be real with them, you want to be honest with them, and you want to be able to demand the development they want to happen in their life."
While being characterized as small details, there is still plenty for the Gophers' sack leader to learn this offseason.
"We've been working on a lot of little details. But also being able to go ahead and increase his rush IQ," DeLattiboudere said.
"How can you match up rushing coverages? How can your rush different in certain situations? Whether it's a green zone or a red zone situation, or backed up coming out or whether you want to go ahead and rush just in the logo zone, right? We take all those things into account and we make sure that this guy is equipped to go ahead and be a better pass rusher than he was last year."
There's no doubt that Joyner is a talented defensive end and will be playing on Sunday in the near future but DeLattiboudere and his teammates make sure to keep him in line.
"Jah is kept very humble in that defensive line room," DeLattiboudere said with a smile. "Not only by me but by his peers because everyone knows in that room, he has a lot of room to grow."