Transcript From The September 13th Football Press Luncheon – Ohio State Buckeyes
9/13/2005 12:00:00 AM | Football
Sept. 13, 2005
TRESSEL: Well, haven’t seen you since about midnight on Saturday, and initial impressions after the ball game were our kids played extremely hard and played tough and we didn’t do some of the things that you need to do to take advantage of in a tight ball game and have a chance to win a hard-fought ball game.
As you watch the film, there’s a lot of the same emotion, but you get to see it from even more detailed fashion. You get to see it from the end zone and side line and get to replay it and ask yourself why and how could we have taught it better and what could we have done from a planning standpoint better. But I would say that there’s no question, as we mentioned Saturday night, our kids played hard. Both teams played hard. I think both will end up being good football teams at the end of the year. I think there will be people saying, those are two good teams, those are two tough teams, and I think our guys will learn a lot from this. We all will.
I mentioned I was on the air with Paul Keels and Jim Lachey last night and we were talking about some things and they asked some things, how would you evaluate the quarterback play, and we talked about the fact that, I guess, prefaced it by saying, I don’t want to infer at all that the quarterback play was the reason we came up short in the football game. And with that being said, though, we did not grade winning performance at that position for, I’m sure, a variety of reasons starting with what we asked them to do, starting with how well they did it, starting with the people that were around them, whether they did exactly what they should or not and they followed up with, well, you know, what do you see going forward from that standpoint? And I shared with them, and I know Steve released yesterday, that we’ve made a decision to have Troy get the bulk of the work and probably 75 to 80% of the reps in practice with preparation being the key word there, and not making reference to the fact that Justin did poorly and there was a big difference in grades from the standpoint as you watched the film and watched who we are and what we accomplished and how we can go about it, we think the best decision is for Troy to be the quarterback and get the bulk of the work. Obviously you have to have more than one guy ready to go and we’ve said many times that we haven’t been around many championship teams that two quarterbacks haven’t had a significant impact in the course of the season, but as we move forward today, actually as we moved forward yesterday in practice, that was the direction we went.
Going back a little bit to the Texas game and talking about the indicators as to whether or not you’re going to win a football game, we didn’t have as many guys grade a winning performance as we did the week before. We didn’t have as many potential awards in the kicking game. Most of the ways that you can get a Buckeye leaf in our system is through unit participation and kicking game, and there weren’t as many of those that would have been won.
Our punt unit did meet the criteria we set for them. Our delta force return unit on kickoffs did an outstanding job, but had a penalty that was a little bit costly. But we weren’t really difference makers in those special teams areas. We did award players of the week. It just so happened that Santonio Holmes won both the special teams and offensive player of the week.
No surprise that A.J. Hawk was the defensive player of the week. He had a great performance and Coach Bruce used to always say that the great players step up in those types of environments, and A.J. Hawk did, 10 tackles, four assists, 10 tackles for loss, sacks, interception, leadership. When you’re standing in A.J. Hawk’s huddle, you’re not going to do anything other than play because he’s that type of leader and he’s going to bring that out of you.
The Jim Parker offensive lineman player of the week was Robbie Sims, who graded 93%. We think that having him in the middle has given us a chance along with Nick and T. J., to get a push in the middle of the football field which has a lot to do with your ability to build a running game. The attack force player of the week was Bobby Carpenter. He too was active, double digit tackles, sacks, pass break-ups, did a great job flying around the field and playing until the final whistle and he was the attack force player of the week. We had scout players that were honored and listed, Anderson Russell, Austin Spitler did their jobs and were given their units scout players of the week.
But we did not have enough performance across the board to win a football game. Some people like to point to this guy or to that guy or to this play or that play and that’s, to me, what’s beautiful about football is we know that that’s not the case. It’s a collective thing and how everyone can contribute their role or maybe contribute a little bit better, that’s how you win, and we feel good about our guys and their passion to become a great team, and what’s beautiful about it is that we get to play again Saturday.
We get to play against a team who’s 0-2, who is young, and we’ve played San Diego State twice, and the thing that our guys will tell you about them and I know our coaches will tell you about them is they play the game. I mean, they come out and get after you. They don’t care if they’re in Ohio Stadium. They don’t care if it’s the Big House where they could have won last year. They’ll go anywhere anytime and play like crazy. They’re very physical, very skillful. They lost a number of guys off their defense, I think three or four of them are in the NFL right now, a couple of them starting, and they’re younger in some areas, but they’re very talented.
Offensively, they get the running back back, Lynell Hamilton, who was a 1000 yard guy, you remember him from our stadium a couple years ago, a very, very good player. The guy that filled in for him last year is also back, Webb, the good receiver is also back. Their quarterback is young, big, tall, strong, does a lot of the quarterback run things that you’re seeing throughout the country, which makes you account for him just like you had to account for Vince Young. You have to account for our quarterback when you’re defending Ohio State. You have to account for their guy. They throw it all over the place. Their specialists are back, their kicker/punter/long snapper, so they’re going to come into our stadium not happy about being 0-2 because they’re competitive kids, you can see that.
Tim Beckman told us as he was talking to Urban Meyer, who he had worked with at Bowling Green, that Urban thought that was the most talented team in their schedule a year ago, and as you watch them on film, you can see that type of thing. So our guys have to focus in — when I say our guys, it starts with the staff — have to focus in on who it is we need to be and how we need to best do it and what we need to correct and go out and play a much better game three than we played a game two or one. And that’s the fun of the beginning of the season, watching a team grow up through the good times and through not as good times, but that’s the fun of growing as a football team and I know our guys are anxious to do that. Questions?
REPORTER: Do you sense — you always say young kids are resilient, do you think they’re still deflated? Does that loss take more out of them than another game or do you sense they’ll be right back?
TRESSEL: You know, I wouldn’t use a word as strong as deflated. I think they’re disappointed and what I like about them is every person from coach to player is disappointed about maybe what they could have done that would have made that one little bit of difference that could have turned it into a game that we were capable of winning. Those types of things, if you’re a competitor, irritate you, that you didn’t do everything.
So I wouldn’t call them deflated. I think they care about each other too much and care about becoming a great team to be deflated. At least I know this, with what, 30 seconds to go, the ball’s on the half yard line, we’re down by a point, looking like the game’s over, and our guys on defense played as hard as I’ve ever seen the defense play, flying around, and kept them out of the end zone. That’s not deflated, and I think that’s the way they’ll keep playing.
REPORTER: How do you, given that, and everybody saw that emotion on Saturday night from the defense especially, how do you guys recapture that throughout the rest of the season? I mean, can you get back to the level that we saw on Saturday night, which I think most people would say is almost unlike something most college football fans see on a normal basis?
TRESSEL: There were two teams out there playing with great emotion and great passion, and great respect for one another, and to me, that’s the secret of playing. That’s why this game’s a little bit different than baseball or the NBA where they play 82 games or that type of thing. You only get so many chances and that doesn’t make it easy to be at the best emotional position you would like to be, but that’s the challenge and that’s the fun of it. And I think that a lot of that has to do with your leadership, and I feel really good about our captains and our seniors and our older guys. It’s about their team that’s important to them, and they’re disappointed. I don’t know if it’s deflated, but to me that’s the fun and the challenge is to make sure that you play this game, which needs to be played with emotion every time you go out there.
REPORTER: In their schedule with those guys last week, I thought I saw a quote in the paper about, if you had it to do over again, you would have given more snaps to one guy than the other, what made —
TRESSEL: I don’t remember that. Was that in the discussion, Paul?
REPORTER: I don’t think so.
TRESSEL: No. What’s that?
REPORTER: That isn’t what it said.
TRESSEL: Oh.
REPORTER: Basically the quote was, you basically were talking about splitting time in practice last week. You were going to give Troy 75%, 80% of the snaps this week. I don’t think you ever said Troy is going to start, but obviously Troy is going to start, right?
TRESSEL: Yeah, I think I said that last night.
REPORTER: I don’t think the actual word “start” came out.
TRESSEL: Troy’s going to start.
REPORTER: The question is, does Troy represent where you want to be, where you want to get to as an offense? A lot of us were looking at that game going, it’s kind of hard to tell the difference of the two from a production standpoint.
TRESSEL: I don’t think we’re going to change who we are and what we would like to be. I think the number one thing that a quarterback needs to be, as you look at the make-up of our offense, is make sure that guys like Santonio and Teddy and Gonzo and Antonio and Roy and so forth get the ball in their hands to make plays, and of course the quarterback has to make plays. That’s a major task.
Second major task, and maybe more important than the first one I discussed, is they’ve obviously got to make good decisions. Now, that helps get the ball in the right people’s hands and so forth, but got to make great decisions with the football and get it to the people that we think can do good things with the ball. So, no, you won’t see a difference — we’re not all of a sudden going to come out and run a different offense or something like that. I don’t know that it was that different when the two of them were in. There might have been a couple more quarterback design runs, but there were only two or three of those.
REPORTER: Going back to what you were talking about a minute ago, though, Jim, did you feel almost forced to get two guys ready last week, I mean, based on the way things had gone, the dynamic of the situation at quarterback, with Troy not being able to play?
TRESSEL: I don’t know about forced.
REPORTER: From a fairness standpoint.
TRESSEL: From really where we were standpoint, in Troy’s not grading a winning performance, I don’t think you can lose sight of the fact he hadn’t played in two games. Troy’s a competitor. He was excited out there. He’s the kind of guy who wants to make something happen and wants to — I don’t know if the word is make up for the time he missed and give back to his teammates for the time he missed and those kind of things. He was fired up and that type of thing, but, no, I didn’t feel forced. I just thought based upon who had had preparation over the course of time and where we were and what we were doing that both guys could contribute to a win. And as it turns out, you know, if you put the film on, that could very well have happened, but it didn’t.
REPORTER: Jim, Ted Ginn had only three touches on offense. How did the drops factor into that in terms of confidence in him or was it more the way they schemed him or was there a conscious — or is there going to be a more conscious decision to get him the ball more?
TRESSEL: As I pointed out, what do we need from our quarterback, we’ve got to get the ball to people who can make plays with it. Teddy’s certainly one of them. The beautiful thing about Teddy is, he would have liked to have touched it more, but what is most disconcerting to him is that he sees the guys that he loves like A. J. and Nick Mangold and Robbie Sims and Bobby Carpenter and them not have an unscathed senior year. That’s what he wants for them. Is it going to be a conscious decision to give Ted Ginn the ball? Of course. And it is Santonio and it is Antonio and it is Gonzo. We want to get it to who’s open. In fact, that’s the beauty.
I was just talking to the quarterbacks in the weight room earlier. The beauty of watching Alex Smith, who was the first guy picked in the NFL draft, is why he delivers the ball where he does. You can see that he understands. Can anyone name any of his receivers last year? It didn’t matter whether it was Teddy or it was — their Teddy or their Santonio, it was the guy that based upon what the defense was doing was open. And that’s where you need to get. He’s a great guy to study. I believe you study the best. You go study the best coaches, the best players, the best schemes. You have to say, how does that relate to me? I don’t necessarily have to be like Bear Bryant, but you want to study him. And what is it that has made him successful? You study Alex Smith and he gets it to the guy and knows why, and to me, that’s the mark. If I was an NFL player personnel guy trying to decide between Alex Smith and someone else, I’m watching that film. He clearly knows why he went where he went, and that’s where you have to get to have excellent production.
REPORTER: Jim, the coaching staff reviews players and grades them; how would you grade yourself in the coaching job Saturday night?
TRESSEL: It wasn’t a winning performance. I don’t really give a letter grade or a percentage. There was some times when I didn’t execute. You can’t leave yourself out of the formula. In fact, you have to start with yourself in the formula and I certainly didn’t grade a winning performance.
REPORTER: Do you think that the rotation of the quarterbacks, you’ve second-guessed yourself on that perhaps?
TRESSEL: As to who and when?
REPORTER: Yes.
TRESSEL: No.
REPORTER: Jim, when you made the decision to go back to Justin early in the third quarter, Troy had gotten five scores in a row and I know some of them were field goals on possession that started deep in Texas territory. Was there a particular mistake on Troy’s first series of the third quarter that led you to go back to Justin, and also if you could discuss what your reasoning was for bringing Justin out with 2:37 to go?
TRESSEL: Kind of the same answer, is it just felt like that was the best thing to do at the time. Very seldom do I like to make a decision based on one play, like, oh, gosh, so and so angled to the wrong gap, get him out of there type thing. So I would say in both cases, as we talked, we have the luxury of having three or four people on the communication at one time is what’s the best thing that the team needs right now, and that’s how you make those decisions.
REPORTER: Is that the same as right now?
REPORTER: Is that your logic on picking —
TRESSEL: Oh, absolutely. Gosh, I hope that’s how we always make those decisions. You sit down and you say, okay, what is it that our team needs right now. We always keep in consideration the individual. There’s no question feelings and all those kinds of things, but ultimately what’s most important is what does the team need and that’s how you go about it.
REPORTER: Why do you think Troy is what the team needs?
TRESSEL: Why do I think he is? I think that throughout the course of time, it’s demonstrated. Had lots of practices, lots of games. It’s not like we’re guessing on some people that haven’t been around for a while.
REPORTER: Is the fact that flip-flopping them loses some rhythm?
TRESSEL: I don’t know if it’s rhythm. We’re most concerned about preparation and that’s — there’s some school of thought out there that the only guy that gets reps is the number one guy. Some places you’ll go — I think pretty much, I’ve never coached or played in the NFL, but as I listen to NFL guys, they’ll tell you the number two quarterback, the only scouts he gets is in the number two team, in that world. We have a little different world. But I think preparation is what’s critical. Especially when you’re not quite as efficient as you’d like to be. There were some times if we were more efficient at that position and others, we would have been better off, so what I think is most important for a coach is to give a player or a team a chance to be successful and it really begins with preparation.
REPORTER: Jim, like Doug has said, though, what is it that Troy gives you that the other guy doesn’t? I mean, can you explain, is it that special quality? Is it — what is the —
TRESSEL: You can’t have two guys at the center at the same time, so you have to make a decision, who’s the best for the situation and I don’t know that you can list a whole bunch of factors, but I think based upon what I’ve seen and experienced, that’s the way I think it’s best for the team.
REPORTER: After the game Coach Bollman said the reason that Troy went back in when you were at your own half yard line was because there were questions about whether Justin was healthy, he was afraid that his knee was hurting him.
TRESSEL: I wasn’t a part of that discussion, but I would say in my mind, Troy can throw it a little further, and we had to go — we had to try to get it up in the air, at least half the distance of the field. We didn’t, obviously, but that was my thinking. I wasn’t part of any injury discussion, but that may be true.
REPORTER: So Justin is healthy now?
TRESSEL: Yeah.
REPORTER: Are you committed at all to playing Justin on Saturday, like last Saturday, you played both quarterbacks.
TRESSEL: I wouldn’t say necessarily, that hasn’t been a discussion. At times you have those discussions saying, you know, by the third or fourth series, Steve Rehring is going to get a chance to be guard or so and so, or Todd Boeckman is going to play, but we haven’t had that discussion. I’m not saying it won’t happen, by the way.
REPORTER: Talking about feelings being part of the discussion, how did Justin react to the situation you just explained and how do you expect him to handle himself?
TRESSEL: I expect him like he always does. He’s interested in our team. He wants to do all he can to help and it’s harder to do it when you’re not in the game, obviously, but watching his immediate reactions or what people say, quite honestly I don’t put a whole lot of credence in. I like to watch their long-term. I thought his practice demeanor and habits and intensity was just fine.
REPORTER: Coach, the red zone, two games settled for five short field goals, what can we do to maybe move it into the end zone? What do you see as you evaluate both games?
TRESSEL: I think two things. The obvious is we have to execute better, but maybe the less obvious is that we’ve got to do a better job teaching and conceptually help ourselves so that we will execute. It’s easy to say we should have seen that guy open or should have protected better or should have cut the guy so he couldn’t block the pass or all those things, but you better, especially down in there, get real good at some things, and right now I would say that that’s not necessarily the case.
REPORTER: You didn’t have much of a pass rushing when you blitzed.
TRESSEL: As we blitzed or as we pass rushed? To me that’s the beauty of what Vince Young brings to the table is that you better be aware that he can run it and you better not overrun him because he’ll hurt you more then when he throws it, and you have to throw some people in the box to stop their run combination things which makes it a little more difficult on their secondary. They do a good job of putting you in precarious situations. We did do a good job affecting him. Forced him into some turnovers that we capitalized, we might not even be talking about how much pressure we did or didn’t have, but again, that’s the fun of it. It’s tough with a four-man rush to get pressure on anyone if you’re facing a good offensive line, add to it that the quarterback is a run threat. I thought our defensive staff did an excellent job of mixing in some things. I thought our kids put pressure on him. I think if you asked Vince Young, he’d tell you that he had a challenge.
REPORTER: Jim, you mentioned that there were a couple of design quarterback plays last Saturday.
TRESSEL: We had maybe three.
REPORTER: So can we infer from that when Troy ran where he wasn’t sacked, that he was calling his own number, and if that’s the case, would you like to see him spread the wealth more often and be a little less hesitant to —
TRESSEL: I can’t remember how many times he took off from a passing situation, maybe I should, but I’ve got San Diego State on the brain.
REPORTER: It was twice.
TRESSEL: Was it twice? The thing that I engrain in the quarterbacks and go watch, again, the Utah/San Diego State, if you step up and run on pass, that paralyzes a defense. In fact, I remember watching a little bit of the Notre Dame/Pitt, the difference in that game was when Brady Quinn did a great job of getting three or four third down conversions, broken play with his feet. So I never discourage a guy stepping up and going, in fact, Craig Krenzel was one of the best I’ve ever seen at that. Now, not at the expense of if a design route is open, throw it, absolutely. So I hate to be greedy, but I want to do both. When Santonio is open or Teddy or Gonzo, I want to have the great execution or great feet to do that and when they’re not, I want to be able to go.
REPORTER: It seems like a lot of times it was just snap the ball and, boom, take off.
TRESSEL: Those might have been draws, I can’t remember. I don’t know, Steve, I don’t know how many carries he had? SNAPP: Four, I think, three or four?
TRESSEL: Of which he had a couple sacks in there. So I don’t know how many of them were which.
REPORTER: One of the criticisms of the university has been when you get in the red zone a little bit it gets kind of hard to operate, did you notice that Saturday night, did you pay the price Saturday night being against a really fast defense?
TRESSEL: The field shrinks. If you’re playing against a good defense, it is harder. Playing against our defense, I think Texas had some moments in the red zone that weren’t as nice as moments out in the field. When you’re playing against a good defense, it is tougher in the red zone, the field shrinks, they’re running forward. I have heard that criticism, you know, versus the spread. I don’t know if it’s warranted or not, but I think you have to run the ball to win and most especially if you can run it in the red zone, then I think you really have a chance and that’s why we would like to be both. We would like to be a team that can be a spread team and a conventional team.
REPORTER: If you’d ask the players what their goals were this year, one of the very first things would be we want to play in the National Championship.
TRESSEL: Absolutely.
REPORTER: Do you have to preach to them that that may or may not be off the table, but you still have to keep your sights on what’s ahead?
TRESSEL: Well, we start our preaching early. We have the guys fill out goal sheets and they all want to go to the NFL or they all want to be starters, they all want to be Big Ten, and I’d be disappointed if they didn’t have those. But that being said, you still have to work on today and I think our guys have a handle on the fact that while the National Championship is a goal, what work you do today determines whether you have a chance at that or not and so I think they’re a pretty focused group on living for the moment, getting better, and I don’t concern myself with that at this moment. At least it doesn’t feel that way.
REPORTER: Is Bobby Carpenter going to be able to play this week?
TRESSEL: Bobby was flying around and it was a physical game, but he’ll be fine.
REPORTER: Anybody out?
TRESSEL: We won’t have Marcus Freeman back probably until next week. It doesn’t look like Rory Nicol or Jimmy Cordle are still a ways. I think somewhere in between Marcus Freeman and Jimmy and Rory, we’ll get Andrew back, I don’t know where exactly, but beyond that I think we’ll be in good shape. Was that the last question? Was that a trick? Okay, because I don’t want my guys to — I’ve got Quinn and Santonio and Robbie here, so we’ll go one more and then you get the last question, Marla, because I’m superstitious.
REPORTER: Is it correct to say that one or two plays Saturday would not have affected the big picture in terms of Troy getting the majority of snaps, in other words —
TRESSEL: Yeah, I would say that’s true.
REPORTER: In other words, if Ryan catches that ball you look beyond that, you look to a bigger picture?
TRESSEL: Yeah, you evaluate your entire production and if we would have caught that ball and won by nine points or something, I don’t know that we would have been sitting there saying we were perfect and we don’t have to get any better and this would have been fine. You still have to figure out, how can we be the best we can be? So it’s a play here or a play there. We’ve had — you know, I remember talking to you a week or so ago about how do you make your decision, we had the data of a year ago and we had the data of spring practice and we had the data of preseason and we had the data of the first game and now we’ve got the data added to our amount of information of this game and you have to make decisions and I’ve never pretended that every decision I’ve made was right and been reminded of that, so you make decisions an you go. Last one, Marla?
REPORTER: Is Ted getting used to being the focal point of a defense? They were saying he didn’t have very good routes, now is he handling that better than he has been?
TRESSEL: Ted is a second-year receiver who kind of turned the world upside-down from a return standpoint and so forth and I think has been getting better every day in all phases. When you’ve got Teddy back there and Santonio back there, I don’t know which way you kick. We’ve got a good situation there, but we need to get better and Teddy hasn’t played as much wide receiver as Roy, Tone, or Gonzo, but he’s a good one and he will keep getting better. With that, we’ve got Quinn, Santonio, and Rob Sims.
