Q&A: Incoming freshman OL Desmond Holmes ready for leap to Penn State

HARRISBURG, Pa. – Practice was over for at least 30 minutes and the rest of Pennsylvania’s Big 33 representatives went to the locker room and left with their host families.

The coaching staff for the annual Pennsylvania vs. Maryland showcase game was gone too and still out there on the practice field was Desmond Holmes, sprinting back and forth and up and down the hill. He was willing his 315-pound body through another sprint while the 90-degree heat left him drenched in sweat.

“I was pissed off about practice,” the Penn State signee told DKPittsburghSports.com. “I usually work out after practice a lot and if I get beat or something, even just on one play, I have that motivation that something pisses me off and I feel like with my game I try to dominate every play and when I don’t dominate I get mad.”



So who got the best of the soon-to-be Nittany Lion newcomer? That’d be none other than his future Penn State teammate, defensive lineman Damion Barber.

“He’s a player,” Holmes, an offensive tackle, said. “When he gets the best of me it’s that competitive edge where I was gonna run after, but the number of runs I do goes up and up every time. Sprints and hills.”

There will be plenty of sprints and hills in Holmes’ future once he arrives at Penn State in two weeks and begins working in Dwight Galt’s strength and conditioning program. He’s eager to get ready and step into those grueling college workouts that he’s heard so much about, adding that he can’t wait for them to begin because those are the types of workouts that will transform his body.

I caught up with the former Cardinal O’Hara three-star prospect during Big 33 practice this week where we discussed numerous topics ahead of his arrival on campus.

Q: How excited are you to get up to Penn State and get college started?
A: Holmes: “I’m going up the 24th I think and I’m just excited to get up there and see how they groom me into the best player I can possibly be. It’s just a major blessing that I can soak up information from all those great players and you see where we’re at in the country right now and coach Franklin is doing an amazing job building a strong bond and trying to make the best football team in the country and we always try to say we’re the best football team in the country and we’ll see.”

Q: Did you figure out who you’re rooming with yet and all of that fun stuff for the dorm room?
A: “Yeah, yeah, I’m gonna be with Donovan Johnson the cornerback from Cass Tech. He’s an awesome dude. I wasn’t sure who I was going to be paired up with because they told us to give a couple suggestions and I ended up with him and he’s another player I’m really interested to see next year because he got like a laser 40 [yard-dash] in like a 4.35 or something, which is just ridiculous for a high school guy who hasn’t done any next-level training.”

Q: Where are you at weight-wise now and how does that compare to where they want you at?
A: “I’m at 315 and I don’t know exactly where they want me. I’m just trying to keep shedding and I think if you have more speed – and that was part of that running out there – if you have more speed that can help translate to them putting more muscle on you, but if you’re a stiff guy that’s not going to be good as an offensive lineman at all.”

Q: You had your pick of schools and heard from plenty of head coaches and position coaches in the country. The more you get to know your position coach Matt Limegrover what do you like about him and why do you think he’s a good fit for you?
A: “I look at the competitive aspect, the technique aspect and then just them helping me grow as a player. I look at all those and while meeting with coach Limegrover he made me really, really interested in the technique factor because I’m not afraid to admit things about myself and I think I’m coming in kind of raw and I think he can get my technique together and put everything together to get me as sharp as I possibly can and then with the speed training and the weight room I can really grow into being a next-level player.”

Q: You said that you think you’re kind of raw. Why do you say that? Did you get started later in football?
A: “I started in 7th grade. I was playing like not AAU, but like travel football and then 9th grade I played offensive line but they didn’t really coach me up on technique that great and then in 10th grade they started coaching me up on technique better so I kept getting better and better and my technique is getting better, but I think I’m raw to a certain extent. You see those guys in the NFL, guys I look up to like [offensive tackles] Tyron Smith, Trent Williams, Jason Peters, guys like that. … Nothing is ever perfect, but to me watching those guys it looks perfect and that’s what I always strive to get.”

Q: Does it help or factor in at all when you see younger linemen at Penn State like Ryan Bates and Connor McGovern who were able to come in and play early? Obviously Penn State has more depth up front now than they did in the past, but did that play into your decision at all?
A: "That really does helpe me because it shows me that coach Limegrover and those guys can groom those young guys to play and seeing guys that are young coming in and playing excites me even more because it feeds me and those are some guys who are really amazing. I’m going to try to do everything I can to pick their brains when I get up there and those are two great young players.”

Q: And given some of those younger guys and that depth how patient of a person are you since most guys coming in end up taking that redshirt right away, especially in the trenches?
A: “It doesn’t really bother me. I’m going to come in with that competitive mindset and when coach Franklin recruited me he thought I was a guy that should come in with the mindset of thinking that you can take your time and grow and learn and stuff – which isn’t bad because it’s a great thing. But, he obviously knows that coming in we want to play and we want to be the best so he stresses competition every time I’ve met with him and yeah, if that were to come to be the situation and obviously I’m going to come in and work my butt off and see, but if that were to be the situation I’d have no problem learning from older guys and soaking that up because that will just help me become a better player.”

Q: How would you describe your game or your style of play to Penn State fans who maybe didn’t see you play a whole lot leading up to you getting to campus?
A: “I just try to make somebody quit. If I get my hands on you, if I know I can get you tired, if I know I can get you to a certain point where I can dominate you every single play of the game I will never give up on somebody. If I can dominate somebody and if I can put them in the dirt on every single play that’s what I’m going to do. I really pride myself on being nasty because you need to be nasty.”

Q: Where’d that nastiness come from? Have you always been like that?
A: “When I was younger, when I first started playing football, I had an uncle who played in the NFL and he told me my freshman year, ‘You don’t look like your mean streak is that great right now’ so I really took that personally. I’d go work out with the older guys and just go work on my mean streak and it just kept getting better and better to the point where you get the mindset that you want to be completely nasty and you want to dominate somebody. You have to have that crazy mindset, but off the field I’m not that.”

Q: Who is your uncle that told you that?
A: “His name is Charles Holmes and he played way back in the 60s. It’s actually sad because he had an injury in camp so he didn’t get to play that long, but he had that experience. He knows about going from one level to the next and being the best back in high school and then college and then going to the NFL. Anybody in my family who can do stuff like that it’s a studying aspect for me. One of my uncles who lived in Alabama he was one of the first black owners of a huge bank corporation so that’s great to have those kinds of people in my family.”

Q: That’s really neat to have that kind of background. Have you decided yet what you want to major in?
A: “Right now I’m going in undecided, but I’m looking into marketing, finance and entrepreneurship because I have a lot of business ties in my family background and I’m interested in that.”