Transcript From The September 6th Football Press Luncheon – Ohio State Buckeyes
9/6/2005 12:00:00 AM | Football
Tressel Luncheon Opening Remarks
Tressel Luncheon Q and A
Sept. 6, 2005
TRESSEL: Last week had access, this week even more access. This week as I was coming in, he said go a little faster so we have more time with the players. He’s a tough guy to please. When your SID is in the Hall of Fame, you have to listen and go from there. An exciting game for us. I thought you are guys last week did an excellent job of staying on task and focusing in on what we had to do to play against a good Miami football team. You know, there were a lot of things that we did well. We had a number of guys grade winning performance, I think 12 or 13 on each side of the ball. A lot of guys got to play and experience an opportunity in Ohio Stadium which is special in its own right, and they did, I think, a very good job of saying, hey, what’s important is Miami of Ohio and we’ll go to work on Texas shortly thereafter.
We had some guys have extraordinary performances. Special units player of the week, I think you got a release, was Josh Huston, and Josh did an excellent job on his kickoffs. He hit all his extra points. Hit both of his field goals and none of them were real long, but the good thing about them was they were all hit very well. We take a special look at not just whether they go through the goal post, but just were the mechanics good and so forth, and we thought he did an excellent job and was the special units player of the week. On defense, Donte Whitner, who obviously made what I thought was a turning point play in that game. 13-0 score shortly before the half probably was something that if I’m Miami going into the locker room and it’s 13-0, I feel I’m in good shape. When you’re going into the locker room 20-0 and the time of possession was what it was and the yardage was what it was, I don’t know that you have as good a mindset. So I thought Donte’s play there was exceptional and his play all afternoon was exceptional and he had 19 production points with tackles and tackles for losses and sacks and passes broken up and so forth and was the defensive player of the game.
And the offensive player was Antonio Pittman. Antonio had 100 yards rushing, did a good job on his pass protection, did a good job when we threw it to him, converted the first down. We thought that he played a good football game and he’s going to continue to get better and we think Antonio Pittman is going to be a good back as we go.
The Jim Parker offensive lineman of the week was Nick Mangold. Nick graded 93%. He and Robbie Sims and Kirk Barton and T. J. downing and those guys up front did an excellent job from an efficiency standpoint and Nick was awarded the Jim Parker offensive lineman award.
A.J. Hawk was the attack force player of the week. A. J. had seven tackles, I think, and three assists and a tackle for loss and a sack and a pass broken up and just did an excellent job and was mad at us for taking him out. He likes to play every snap and he just loves the game and has been doing a good job as a leader as well.
The Jack Tatum hit of the week was Mike Kudla. Had a big hit on their quarterback. I thought our defense did a good job all day long of getting hits on the quarterback, none of which were lay hits, just did a good job of affecting him. I thought Betts was a good quarterback, they had a good scheme, they’re not afraid of throwing it around and I thought our guys did a good job of affecting it. Mike Kudla did a good job on one of those times we affected it.
Our scout special teams did a good job. We need to get a little better. Some of our young guys need to continue to grow to believe how important that is and I think they’ll do that. Our scout special units players of the week on the special teams Anderson Russell did a great job, a young safety from Georgia who’s going to be very, very good, a great effort guy, a lot of talent. He did a great job on the scout special teams.
Over on the scout offense, Tyler Whaley did a good job on the offensive front, and on the scout defense, Andre Amos did an excellent job as a corner. Miami’s corner technique was bump and run all day long and Andre did a great job of getting our receivers ready for that particular technique and he was awarded the scout defensive player of the week.
As we move forward to play Texas, we don’t need to say much more than we’re playing Texas, one of the great programs in the history of college football. They’ve got things rolling there right now extremely well. They have outstanding coaching staff. I’ve known Coach Brown for quite some time and what he did at North Carolina and what he’s done at Texas have been two programs that we’ve studied. We’ve tried to pick their brain and pick their methods and so forth and happen to know their defensive coordinator who just came over from Auburn, Chizik. I remember back when he was at Steven F. Austin, played against him when he was at Central Florida, and just an outstanding coach. All of you who watched Auburn’s defense last year know that they’ll be picking up a great coach there and have known a lot of their coaches. Cleve Bryant happens to be on their coaching staff. Many of the Ohioans remember him, a former Ohio University football coach. They’ve got an outstanding coaching staff and outstanding players. They’ve had outstanding recruiting classes and sometimes you don’t know how those rankings are until you see them play in college and now that you’ve seen them play in college on Texas’ team, they were ranked right where they should be. Excellent size. Great speed. Tremendous effort. A thing I like to gauge is when you watch the special teams and you see the kind of speed and intensity and concentration that is put in their special teams, you know that’s a talented football team. Their specialists are back, their punter and their kicker, their snapper and their return guys and so forth, so they have a tremendous group of specialists.
If you talk about their defensive football team, it’s speed and size and depth. They’ll rotate guys in up front. It will be as big and strong a front as we’ve, perhaps, ever seen. Their linebackers have great speed. Their corners are excellent cover men. Their safeties come flying into the box and they’re very sure tacklers and so forth. They are what they should be, an outstanding defensive team. Then when you talk about their offense, you know, it starts with Vince Young. He’s a guy that every time he’s got the ball in his hands, something’s going to happen. He may run with it. He threw the ball extremely well in their opener. I know he’s worked hard on that. It’s been much talked about that as he’s grown in playing the position that, like any great player, he wants to get better at everything he does and he’s not just a runner, he is a quarterback. And it starts there in the leadership category. You can see the type of leader he is.
They did graduate the great back in Benson, so when Young has come along and stepped in, they’ve got a freshmen that came and rushed for 135 yards. Their receivers are young, but I think very, very talented, and when you’ve got a lot of attention on the run game, you’ve got a lot of attention on the quarterback. The receivers can make a difference, then their big guys up front, veterans, All-American candidates, huge, talented, a good football team. They’re what a top-five football team should look like, extremely well schooled and they play with class. They play hard and that’s just — what more could we ask for than to play a football team like Texas in our stadium in front of the nation, and I know our guys are excited to do that. Questions?
REPORTER: Coach, who’s your starting quarterback this week?
TRESSEL: Ours? Wanted to clarify. We’re going to play both Justin and Troy. Exactly who will play when, obviously we’re not going to outline for you today, but I think Troy’s performance in the ’04 season, his performance in the spring and his performance in preseason warrants him deserving to play. I think Justin’s performance in last season and this spring and this preseason and now game one of this season warrants that he should play, and they’ll both play.
REPORTER: How comfortable are you in using both quarterbacks?
TRESSEL: Very, if they’re two good ones like that.
REPORTER: How much of an advantage is it for you not to know who they’re playing at quarterback?
TRESSEL: I don’t think they’ll all of a sudden change which defense they’ll call. Like you’ll hear our defense out there, they’ll always want to talk about who’s the quarterback, when we’re working against them, 10’s at quarterback and that type of thing, because they know the idiosyncrasies of each guy, what they like to do, that type of thing. I don’t know that it’s a huge advantage. Vince Young is going to throw the ball like anyone else does and he’s going to run the ball too, and our guys are going to throw it like anyone else does and run the ball too. So I don’t look for that to be a huge issue.
REPORTER: Whomever you go with as a starter, if things are going well for them, will they remain in there or are you committed to playing both?
TRESSEL: No, we’re planning to play both guys. We haven’t practiced in pads this week, we haven’t had all of that to evaluate. But our intentions are to go in — but let me give you a good example. Our intentions were to play Todd last week on the fourth series. On the third series, Justin threw an interception. To me, that would have been the wrong message to Justin to say, hey, let’s take you out of there. And so it didn’t work that way and it worked that Todd didn’t get in until the middle of the third quarter or thereabouts and then played the rest of the way. We had kind of planned on playing him a little bit in the second quarter and a little bit in the third quarter and see how things were going. But our plans are to play both Justin and Troy.
REPORTER: In the spring Joe Daniels said that —
REPORTER: Will the reps in practice be split evenly?
TRESSEL: Yeah. Fairly evenly. The question was were the reps in practice split evenly.
REPORTER: Joe Daniels said, all things being equal, basically you all were looking at Troy as a guy coming into this game like a guy coming off injury, he would see it as the guy would still be your starting quarterback. What has Justin done to kind of mix it up a little bit or has it ever been mixed up?
TRESSEL: You might have to ask Joe that. I don’t know exactly what he said to you.
REPORTER: He basically said Troy wasn’t going to lose his spot in line, which appeared to be at the front of the line.
TRESSEL: Well, we’re going to play both of them. I don’t know if that’s losing your spot in line. He’s still in line and still going to play.
REPORTER: But the starting quarterback, everybody kind of defines as the as a resulting quarterback. Do you feel now you have two starting quarterbacks?
TRESSEL: You know, in this football game as we stand right now, yeah, I’d say we have two starting quarterbacks.
REPORTER: Jim, could this be the toughest match-up speed-wise, your wide receivers, their backs, the Griffins, those guys, is this speed on speed, this match-up?
TRESSEL: There’s great speed, I think, on both sides. I feel good about the speed of our football team. I see the speed of their football team on the video. Yeah, it’s a match-up from that standpoint and I think it will be fun to watch because I like the way both teams play. I like the way we play defense. I like the way they play defense. I like the way we’re playing offense. I like the way they’re playing offense. So to me it’s going to be a lot of fun to watch and I think it will be a fast game. I think there’s no question about it.
REPORTER: What frames your decision of who to play at quarterback? Is it 100% at practice or is it wanting to award Justin for doing things right on and off of the field? See what I’m saying?
TRESSEL: I think everything is a part of everything. I think you take all things into consideration when you make decisions, and at a given moment you say, what’s all involved. So you say what’s the best thing for all involved. You put in all the data you can from a year ago, from spring, from preseason, and make decisions from that standpoint, so I’d say, yeah, everything’s in.
REPORTER: So some of it might be beyond the field?
TRESSEL: Some of it might be beyond the field?
REPORTER: Some of your decision on who to start at quarterback might be beyond the practice field?
TRESSEL: I don’t know that I would say that. We would be —
REPORTER: Isn’t that a part of everything?
TRESSEL: Okay. A small sum, I guess. I don’t know that that would be your lead decision-making.
REPORTER: Jim, in the past you said you didn’t like having a two-quarterback system. Will you be looking for definition out of this game, to have a guy the rest of the year or could you be comfortable doing —
TRESSEL: If we do well, I could be comfortable doing just about anything. So again, if it’s the best thing for our team to play two guys at left guard, we will. If it’s the best thing for our team to play two guys at quarterback, we will. Boundary corner, we will. So it could go this way the whole year, it could emerge elsewhere, and that’s part of the fun of it.
REPORTER: To whom would you compare Vince Young?
TRESSEL: Wow, you know, he’s hard to compare. I don’t know exactly how fast he is, but I’ve never seen anyone keep up with him. He’s a big, tall guy. He’s a competitive guy. I think he may have been a state champion kind of guy. He’s done it across the board. I don’t know offhand who I’d compare him to. He’s a special guy.
REPORTER: Bobby Carpenter said, our goal is when Vince Young leaves here, he won’t be a contender for the Heisman —
TRESSEL: You can’t hold me responsible for what Bobby Carpenter says. I don’t know if I know you, but that’s one guy saying something.
REPORTER: What’s your general reaction to statements like that game week?
TRESSEL: That wouldn’t have been my first choice of a statement. Again, I can’t have it back, so I didn’t choose to be five-nine, I told these guys that, but I’m five-nine, let’s go, I’ve got to go.
REPORTER: How rare is an intersectional game like this one? We can’t afford an early season loss, so maybe back in the ’70s and ’80s, with these two teams meeting, how rare of an opportunity is it to see these two teams play?
TRESSEL: I think it’s a great opportunity especially because they’re Ohio State and Texas, two great schools that if you had to pick two you’d want to see play, if it’s the last game you’d ever want to see in your life, it might be these two and that makes it special, two great football states, two great schools, two of the largest alumni in the world. The interest level is tremendous. How unusual is it? Someone just asked me that question on the Big Ten conference call and I told them that, philosophically, the way we feel about scheduling is this: We understand that we have to sponsor 36 sports, we feed as many home games as we can get from an institutional, departmental standpoint, but philosophically, we would like to have a home-at-home with Texas and nine and 10 with USC that’s coming, and 11 and 12, the home-at-home with Miami Florida that’s coming, some years have eight home and some years have seven home, and be able to do all the things we need to do as a department. So for us, that’s just kind of the way we’re going institutionally. To me, when you create an excitement and get a chance to play here against Texas and a year from now there against Texas, shoot, those are memories that Ashton Youboty and Anthony Schlegel and all the guys that grew up in Florida and Ohio and everywhere else will remember forever. There’s a lot of value there.
REPORTER: Ted Ginn got a lot of attention in the game, they made it obviously a priority to try to keep him contained. He did score a touchdown. Do you expect that to continue throughout the season and how does that change your offensive philosophy if teams try to take him away?
TRESSEL: Well, you know, the beauty of anytime someone does something different within their package toward one phase of your game, then that’s going to open up other things, and Santonio Holmes lived through that. All of a sudden they were doing things and maybe if they’re going to change what they do on Teddy’s side, all of a sudden Anthony Gonzalez has got opportunities, Antonio Pittman, Justin Zwick, Troy Smith, Santonio, you know, so we’ve got to be astute enough to know what people are trying to do to take away what people are doing and then make the proper calls and execute that. But I like having guys that they have to take a special look at because I think that helps us.
REPORTER: Jim, looking at Texas’ defense, how do they match up in terms of being able to maybe play Ted more straight up and not have to give him special —
TRESSEL: Well, the Texas guys, to me there’s two things they have going for them. One is that they’re tremendous at what they do at their positions and they’re veterans. Those guys in the back end, they’ve been there forever, unless for like four years everyone’s been wearing the same number type thing. So they’re not going to change who they are as they come in to play Ohio State, just like we are not going to change who we are. We still have to be Ohio State and then do what Ohio State does best to see if we can handle Ramonce Taylor and Vince Young and the backs and all that stuff. And they’ll do the same. I don’t think you’ll see any tremendous change in what either group does.
REPORTER: What did you get out of watching their Lafayette game?
TRESSEL: It reaffirms what you thought you knew. Lafayette couldn’t match up, but you could tell there weren’t that many mistakes, so they were focused on what they were doing and that’s the mark of a mature team. They had a game to play. It was on the schedule. It was Louisiana Lafayette. I’m sure in some ways they’d rather it was Ohio State and they were anxious to do that. And our guys the same, but the mature group says, hey, today we’ve got to take care of this, and I thought they did that well. And that just shows you the type of team they have.
REPORTER: For those of us who don’t get a chance to see you in person a lot, how would you describe the development of your offense as you’ve been here and what it’s become now, diversified?
TRESSEL: Well, I would hope what you do is you assess who you have and then build what you do. I’ve been a head coach for 20 years and some years I’ve been a pure option team and another year a dropback pass team and another year just runoff tackle until everyone gets mad at you. I think you have to figure out what you have and what do they do best and try to feature that. And based upon who we are and who we have, I like what Jim Bollman and Darrell Hazell and Joe Daniels and that group is doing from an offensive standpoint and I think every season you search to find out who you are, and this is a tremendous opportunity to find out even clearer because you’re going against a group that doesn’t give up many yards or points.
REPORTER: Was there a point where you said we’ve got to spread it out more often or did that just happen by itself?
TRESSEL: I think it’s an evolution. I caught the tail end of the Miami/Florida State game last night and was watching them play and I thought, I remember them playing them three years ago and I would have never been lined up in an I-back trying to run the ball right at them. We were in one back, we were in empty and we felt that was our best opportunity type thing. It’s an evolution as to what you’re doing right now and what can you best do.
REPORTER: Is having two guys having started games and games five and four, wherever we are, is that a luxury now or is that a little bit of a hindrance?
TRESSEL: I think it’s a luxury. I’ve said many, many times over the years that if you have two quarterbacks capable of being champions, you’ve got a chance to be a champion and I think we have that.
REPORTER: You mentioned earlier, though, you talked about the interception thing wasn’t the right time to take Justin out, but considering where they are in their careers, isn’t that fragile that you have to worry about how they’re going to proceed? I’m sure they’re not going to split time evenly.
TRESSEL: I always sense that people are fragile, even if they don’t act that way because we have a philosophy in our staff room that you treat everyone like they’re hurting. That’s just the way we treat people. Now, if they shouldn’t be fragile, so be it, but we’re still going to treat them that way.
REPORTER: You always have a countdown to Michigan, you know the number of days to Michigan, was it your success in one double A that led to your embrace this big of a game? Can you discuss that?
TRESSEL: If you have a passion to become the best in a given year, you’ve got to die to play the best teams because you know you’ll get better by playing them, and the only way you get ahead of them, be listed at the end of the day ahead of them, the end of the year, is if you have a chance to play them, play them. Plus our guys love it. Our guys love playing a game like this and they just can’t wait.
REPORTER: I’m trying to think of a quarterback other than Philip Rivers who came in and had a game — it seems like guys come in with big billing and don’t play as well. Is Vince a different animal because he’s a pass guy or how do you view that?
TRESSEL: Vince Young has such tremendous balance in what he does that it’s a great challenge. There are a lot of guys that come in here with great challenges and some of them we did a good job and some of them maybe not as good as we’d like. This is a great one, and again, I think our guys are anxious to compete against the likes of Vince Young.
REPORTER: What’s the biggest difference you notice with a night game in the Horseshoe versus like playing in the afternoon? What do you expect Saturday night to be like?
TRESSEL: I think from my standpoint, you might want to ask the guys, and we’ll get them up here in a minute, but from my vantage point, we play more day games, so there’s a little bit of a special novelty, however you want to put it, makes it different. That’s the good news. To me, the bad news is, when you wake up in the morning, you’ve got to wait all day. The worst part about the game is the fact that you’ve got to wait for it. And when you play at noon, you wake up and you’re about ready to play. But again, it’s an opportunity to be on a national stage against a great program. A lot of interest. A lot of institutional interest, not just in the football sense of things, but institutionally we’re so similar and all those things. Culturally we’re so similar. Probably no better time to have it than 8:00 at night.
REPORTER: Does it seem crazier? Does it seem louder?
TRESSEL: Does it seem louder? Gosh, you might have to ask those guys. I wear ear muffs, so —
REPORTER: Jim, what’s your back rotation?
TRESSEL: I would say our rotation, if we had a game today, would be much like as we went into the game last week, Antonio Pittman, Brandon Schnittker and Mo Wells would be the first three. We do have an opportunity in practice this week to show if one deserves to maybe jump into that group.
REPORTER: Everyone talks about Vince Young’s running game; is that the primary thing, to try to pick that off?
TRESSEL: Defensively our first thing is to stop the run period, whether it’s the quarterback or running backs. And if we have a chance to stop the run, we’ve got a chance to make someone only have one attack at you. You know, where it’s tough is where a team becomes balanced and that’s what Texas has done. That’s the greatest challenge and that’s the biggest thing that we’ve got to face is the fact that they’ll be a balanced team. They’ll run reverses. They’ll throw. They’ll run the quarterback. They’ll run power. They’ll do it all, and I think our guys enjoy challenges like that, but it’s going to be a challenge.
REPORTER: Discuss Marcus Freeman and what happened with him over the weekend, would that factor perhaps as someone that would help you contain Vince Young?
TRESSEL: Marcus is going to be out for a couple weeks, he’s a guy in our two deep that we wanted to play in the rotation when we thought it was right, but really I think the only guy that we’re missing that we had a week ago, so can’t complain, and I don’t think it’s a tremendously serious injury, so he should be back pretty quickly.
REPORTER: Is it his knee?
TRESSEL: Yes.
REPORTER: How do you go about simulating a practice before a game like this?
TRESSEL: Well, in the spring I put the number 10 jersey on and ran around a little bit, pulled a hamstring, and then like Coach Bruce did one day, tried to race Lachey. We won’t get into that. All spring and all preseason long, our guys compete against each other, and Justin Zwick can run fast. Troy Smith can run fast. You don’t want to run into Todd Boeckman, you know, you’ll get a bruise. So we do the best we can to help one another.
REPORTER: Is there anything Pittman that you’ve seen so far this year can bring to this game?
TRESSEL: I think Antonio Pittman is gaining experience and gaining knowledge of what’s going on and can be a very efficient running back. He’s a second-game sophomore coming up and I think every day, you’d like to see him grow and, in fact, Doc Tressel said last night in our meetings, he said, I’ve seen him growing every day, which to me that’s what life’s all about. Steve, we better get these young guys here or they’ll never be at our meetings. Thanks very much.
