John Cooper Luncheon Quotes – Ohio State Buckeyes
8/23/1999 12:00:00 AM | Football
Aug. 23, 1999
On the starting quarterback…
“Austin Moherman will be our starting quarterback against Miami unless something happens during practice this week. Steve will be Austin’s backup. Both will probably play, but we will not change the quarterback from one play to the next play. Instead Austin will play a series of plays and then Steve will come in.”
The starting quarterback decision…
“We evaluate the quarterback every day. We keep charts on them in every practice. Austin looks like he started each scrimmage better than Steve. He has more experience and a better grasp of the offense. What it boiled down to was neither one really separated themselves from the other. We had to make a choice, so we decided to go with the one with more experience.
“Steve is the better athlete, however, he has not demonstrated that in our scrimmages. I have not seen him run the football well against our defense. He didn’t make the big plays and you have to judge a player in what he has done in practice.
“Now, if Austin is playing well, we will keep him in there. We are going to find every possible way to win this game. If Austin is not doing well and it looks like Steve can step in and help us to win the game, then we will go with Steve.”
On the Miami Hurricanes…
“Miami is a talented football team. They have a lot of skilled athletes…some great wide receivers and a couple running backs that I have been told are as good or even better than our Michael Wiley. This will be a huge challenge for our young team, but we look forward to it.”
On Miami’s defense…
“They have a 4-3 defense, which I don’t see them changing even though they have a new defensive coordinator. They may bring more pressure, because of the style many college football teams are going to. They have a veteran secondary and an outstanding linebacker corps that can run.”
Camp questions…
“We have the same amount of questions that I thought we would have. The biggest question that you always have is who is going to replace the veterans. We lost a great amount of good players last season and now we have some guys who want to step in there like Ken-Yon Rambo and Reggie Germany.” On playing an early game…
“I actually like playing an early game. It allows us to have 10 more days of practice and also gives us great exposure. It also helps in the accumulating of stats. In the end of a season if we are pushing for one of our players for all-Big Ten, that extra game can give them better stats. It helped Eddie George and his Heisman year, the last time we went to the Kick-off Classic.”
-GO BUCKS!-
