Buckeyes’ Football Coaching Staff Q&A – Ohio State Buckeyes
9/2/1998 12:00:00 AM | Football
September 2, 1998
Quoting Coach Cooper
On the WVU passing attack:
“I think West Virginia has a very, very good offensive footballteam. Certainly we respect Amos Zeruoue. He’s one of the betterrunning backs, not only that we will face this year, but probablyin college football. He’s been a great player for West Virginia thelast couple years. He will be their all-time leading rusher. I knowDon Nehlen very well, and Don has spoken about him, even before wethought about playing he’s each other. So he’s a good back. Theprobem that they present to us is that you can’t gang up on him.
We’d love to play an eight man front, a nine man front, get those safeties up in the allies and take the running game away from West Virginia. But we feel like their wide receivers are very talented football players, and their quarterback is a good football player, so we’re going to have to start off in a base defense. If we can stand up in a base, we’ll continue to do that. If they’re hurting us running the football, obviously we’ll try to cheat somebody out of the secondary and try to stop the running game. I don’t think we can set back and let them control the tempo of the ballgame and run the football against us, and have a chance to win the game. But we’ve got so much respect for their passing game, at least we’re not going to start off trying to gang up on them.
Do they remind you of anyone else in the Big Ten that you’ve faced?
“I think the Big Ten is similar. There’s a lot of team’s in our league that throw the football very well. There’s enough good coordinators, offensive and defensive coordinators, around the country and certainly in our league that you cannot be one dimensional, in my opinion, now in college football and have a chance to be successful unless you’re just far superior than the other team. I think those days are over with the numbers game we’re all playing. Michigan is the same way. Penn State is the same way. Penn State hurt us last year running the football. But if we had ganged up and crowded the line of scrimmage, they had the ability to throw the football equally effectively. I don’t think anybody, including Ohio State, has a monopoly on offensive tendencies. I think you have to show balance. I think you have to be able to run the football. I think you have to be able to throw the football.
Is it an advantage or disadvantage to have Mike Jacobs, the former WVU offensive coordinator, on the OSU coaching staff?
“I don’t think it’s an advantage, and I don’t think it’s a disadvantage. If it’s an advantage for us, it’s because I hired Mike away from Don. He coached for Don Nehlen for 15 years, and obviously I thought he was a good football coach. In terms of what West Virginia’s doing now, I don’t think it’s an advantage. They’re like Ohio State or any other good football team. They change from year-to-year. You stay ahead of the trends in college football. They’re doing some things now that they didn’t do when Mike was over there. In terms of what they’re doing with their audible person, that doesn’t worry us a whole lot. We’ve studied their film, we know what they’re going to do. At least we think we know what we’re going to do. They know what we’re going to do. It’s a matter of going out and taking care of the little things and executing that’s going to win the football games.
Coach Nehlen has closed the WVU practices the last few days. Does that signal anything to you about surprises?
“Not really. We’ve closed our practice sessions for the obvious reasons. I don’t think that comes as any surprise. When you’re playing team as close as we are, it’s pretty common to close practice sessions for obvious reasons.
Can you comment on Joe Montgomery?
“Joe is our number two running back going into this ballgame, behind Michael Wiley. I believe he’s about 95 to 97 percent recovered from the knee surgery. I’m not sure you ever get 100 percent over that. Joe has probably worked as hard or harder than any football player we’ve ever had reconstructing that knee. It was a very serious injury, as you know. He’s healthy. He went through spring practice with us. He’s been here working out over the summer, and he hasn’t had any problems at all this fall. He should be ready to go.
Does Montgomery give you any kind of a different look than Michael Wiley does?
“I don’t think so. He’s a little bigger than Wiley. But we don’t change of our offense when we have Michael in the ballgame, or Joe in the ballgame, or Derek Combs in the ballgame. We still run the same offense.
Can you talk about the WVU kicking game?
“I would love to have (WVU kicker/punter) Jay Taylor kicking for me. If I had him, he’d be doing probably all of our kicking over here. We feel like our punter, Brent Bartholemew, is a very good punter, but any time you can have one man do both, obviously you’d prefer to do that. It’s unusual. We have not had that happen since I’ve been a head football coach. We’ve always had a punter and also a separate place kicker. But if you’ve got one guy as good as Jay Taylor, obviously you take advantage of his abilities”
Talk about Joe Germaine.
Is he ready to assume this No. 1 spot at quarterback? “Absolutely. He’s our team captain. He’s played for us the past two years. I don’t want to say he’s been the backup quarterback. He’s probably played as much as Stan Jackson did the last two years. He’s thrown 31 touchdown passes. He’s been very efficient for us. He was the Most Valuable Player in the Rose Bowl game two years ago as a sophomore. Obviously he’s matured. He’s more physical now than he’s ever been. He’s more confident now, running our offense, than he’s ever been. We haven’t changed, we’ve kept the coordinators that last couple years and I think that’s help him. He’s got the same receivers back. I have every reason to believe that if we can give him time to throw the football, Joe Germaine will have a great year for us.”
Quoting Joe Germaine:
Talk about the WVU crowd.
“We hear it’s a pretty hostile environment. They’ve got some rowdyfans and things like that, which is good atmosphere for collegefootball. We don’t know exactly what it’s like until we get there.But we’ve heard a lot of good stories about it.
WVU has made several changes on defense.
Has that made it difficult to prepare for them? “I don’t think so. I think personnel can change, but one thing that remains constant is their scheme. We’re trying to get a feel for what kind of scheme they’ll be running against us. The good thing about their defense is that they have a lot of veteran players, and they know how to work well with one another. I think it doesn’t matter who will be in there, they’ll be good.
Talk about the WVU secondary.
“I think the strength of their secondary is their experience. They’ve played with each other for quite a while. That means an awful lot. That means they can disguise better and they know how to work well off one another. That would be their biggest strength.
Quoting Rob Murphy
Talk about WVU’s defensive line.
“They’re a veteran defensive line. They have three or four startersback and they seem to rotate around and bounce around a lot,especially the guy that I go against- Jon Thornton. He was all-BigEast last year. He’s a very good football player. It’s going to betough. They’re big and strong and they move a lot. We definitelyhave our work cut out for us.
Is this line typical of what you see in the Big Ten?
“Yes. Everyone thinks the Big Ten is a big power conference. We do go against big, strong guys, so it’s definitely not something we’re not used to. We face the Penn State’s and Michigan’s week in and week out. We’ve had a real good week of practice, practicing for West Virginia. There shouldn’t be a lot of surprises.
Are you glad that gameday is almost here.
“Absolutely. They’re talking about it a lot here, and from what I’ve heard, in West Virginia. I traveled through West Virginia a couple months ago, and scanning through the radio stations they were already talking about it. So I guess it’s a pretty huge game to them. Three days away, I can’t await.”
Has it been difficult for you to prepare for WVU’s defense with all the personnel changes they’ve made?
“Yes, it has. But at the same time, speaking as an offensive lineman, you can pick the guy you go over and, based on the scheme of the defense, you’re going to know what they’re going to do technique wise. But it is difficult personnel wise to get a good look. A couple of their defensive line guys have moved from defensive tackle out to end, and with the linebackers, one guy moved from strong safety to linebacker. So that’s a little difficult. But at the same time, we’ve watched so much film, we’re real confident that we’ve seen everything.”
Talk about Joe Germaine.
“He’s always been real calm and cool the two years that I’ve played with him. The one thing that I’ve noticed is that I think he’s playing with a lot more confidence. You can hardly get him to say anything about himself, but when he does, you can tell in his voice that he’s a lot more confident. He’s one of those guys that leads by example, not by his voice. Everyone on the team looks up to him. He’s a great guy.”
How is the offensive line coming along? Have you had an outstanding camp?
“In fact, we have. The four guys one the line, besides myself, they’ve really gelled together. We were just in an offensive meeting last night and coach Cooper said that Tyson Walter, Kurt Murphy, Ben Gilbert and Brooks Burris have all had great fall camps, not to mention spring campaigns. We’ve gelled and we’re ready to go. We’ve been watching a lot of film, and we’re very confident that we can get the job done and run the ball on these guys.
Quoting David Boston:
Can you comment on Joe Germaine’s leadership qualities and how he’sbehaving now that he has the job to himself?
“I think he’s handling it real well. Everyone out there hasconfidence in him. He’s done a good job leading us and doing thethings he needs to do.”
Talk about WVU’s secondary. Can you comment on Nate Terry and is it difficult to play against a secondary that you haven’t gotten a chance to see. “We are firm believers in adjusting. We have to adjust to secondary. We’ve never seen some of the guys, they’ve been shuffled around a lot. No. 28 (Nate Terry) looks pretty good. I’ve watched a lot of corners and I certainly have a lot of respect for him. He runs really well.”
Talk about WVU’s top two receivers – David Saunders and Sean Foreman.
“I’ve watched Saunders. It’s natural for receivers to watch other receivers around the country. I definitely have respect for their game.”
