Transcript From The October 17th Football Press Luncheon – Ohio State Buckeyes
10/17/2006 12:00:00 AM | Football
Oct. 17, 2006
COACH TRESSEL: Our guys did a good job going on the road in the Big Ten, which is difficult and physical. I thought Michigan State was a very physical football team and as you watch the film and you talk to our guys, they’ll echo that, that they’re a physical football team. We went and put ourselves a little bit behind in the count there in the beginning and thought they did a good job of taking the field defensively and just doing what they rehearsed and preparing and came up with a big sack and forced the punt, which I think emotionally was huge for both teams. And then I thought from that point on we took control of the tempo of the game and had a good decisive win.
We had a number of guys that played consistently. I think 11 guys on the defense graded winning performance, eight guys on the offense. I thought the play was sharp and not many missed assignments. We did have some procedure things and so forth that we’ve got to make sure we eliminate.
The consistency, I thought, was pretty solid from a technique standpoint so we had a number of guys grade well. The players of the game on the special units, Brian Hartline, who’ll be here a little later, had three tackles on the kickoff, he’s done a nice job on that unit. On the punt return that Teddy had for a touchdown, he had a key block and his execution was outstanding and he was the special units player of the week.
The offensive player was Troy Smith. Troy did grade a winning performance which is difficult at that position. His footwork was good. His decision making was good. He made some big plays, which is kind of his trademark and just continues to work hard on his game and work hard on his preparation, and I think that trickles across the board to the rest of the guys, and he was the offensive player.
Quinn Pitcock was the defensive player of the game. Quinn is an outstanding player, puts pressure on people. I’ve been saying for seven or eight weeks now that we really think that the two inside guys we have in Quinn and David are outstanding players and as good a duo as there is anywhere. David’s coming along well. Probably list it day-to-day, if there was such a listing, probably won’t know until Thursday for sure as to whether or not he’ll be ready to go, but our trainers and doctors feel good and so forth and we’ll just have to see how he progresses the next few days and make sure he’s prepared.
The Jim Parker offensive lineman was Kirk Barton, graded extremely high. He’s kind of shaken his little foot injury that he had and Coach Bollman talks about he thinks he played with more power this past weekend than he’s been able to do for some time and continues to get better and better as he feels much better.
The attack force player of the week was Jay Richardson. Jay, I thought, showed up, made plays, created problems for the Michigan State offense and was awarded the attack force player of the game. The scout team guys, all of them seemed to have a little story. They all did a great job getting us ready. Special units are always huge on the road and the guy that was the scout special units player of the game was Dan Potokar. And many of you remember Ed Potokar, the great wrestler, and this is Eddie’s son, and Danny is just like his dad. He’s ferocious. He’s tough. He just came off a separated shoulder or something like that and missed three or four weeks, and he’s back two weeks early, and just a tough kid that is going to be a good receiver, good special teams guy, and I think a good member of our track team coming up here as he gets a little bit older and ready to go there, and he was scout special units player.
Scout team defensive player was Grant Schwartz. Many of you remember his dad played, I think, two years for Woody and two for Earl and from Southern California. And his son, ever since he could remember, wanted to come back this direction and play for the Buckeyes like his dad did. And Grant Schwartz is going to be a good player as a safety for us. And then Bryant Browning was the scout offensive player and I think I mentioned to you before, and I don’t know if there’s been a release out or whatever, but Bryant Browning is one of the four student athletes in the country selected to be in New York City in December to see who’s the outstanding scholar athlete in the country from last year’s high school senior class, which is an extraordinary award, and Bryant’s going to be a good offensive lineman and had a great week last week and was our scout offensive player of the week.
As we turn our sights toward Indiana, you’ve all seen what they’ve done, especially the last couple weeks. Coach Hoeppner missed a little time in the beginning of their season, and it might have been reflected in their play. As you watch them on film, I think they’re a lot like their coach. They’re tough. They’re courageous. They go as hard as they can possibly go. They don’t care what anyone thinks about their chances. They just play and play and play. And it’s fun to watch them on film because they do it with great effort. And I think as I watch their defense that they’re probably doing a few less things than they did a month ago and doing them much, much better.
As you look at their offense, they have a lot of weapons. It starts probably with their special units because their returns are so outstanding. They lead the conference in kickoff returns. They’ve had three for touchdowns. That Thigpen kid, he’s a tremendous threat. They get good field position with him. Their young quarterback, I think he’ll be in his fifth or sixth start as he comes in, you can see he’s a red-shirted kid who has learned his lessons well. And every game, as I listen to the defensive staff, you can see him getting better and better.
They have great receivers. They have a good run/pass balance, and I just think that they’re a team on the rise and they believe that and they’re playing like they’d like to be, but again, I go back full circle. I think they’re playing with the toughness and the passion of their coach, and he’s a special guy and gone through some difficult circumstances along with his own health, losing perhaps his best friend in Randy Walker, and you have to admire the job that Coach Hoeppner is doing over there, and we know when they come over to the Horseshoe, it’s a huge ball game for them. They’ve got a lot of kids from this geographic area and would like nothing more than to come over here and represent themselves well with a lot of toughness and class. And obviously our task at hand is we’ve got to get better every day.
We’ve been saying that from the beginning of the year on and we’ve got to get better today in practice and there’s a lot of things we have to do better than the way we’re doing them. The score looked fine Saturday, and I think if someone would have asked would we like to leave East Lansing 38-7, we would have said, that’d be fine, but then you watch the film and there’s a whole bunch of things we need to do better than we’re doing them, but that’s football. There’s a lot of plays in a game and you’re going to have some things you need to get better at and I like to think our guys will go to work hard this afternoon and try to get better at them.
REPORTER: You said Indiana is a team on the rise. Is your team, even though it’s number one, do you feel it’s on the rise?
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, I’d like to think so because some of the things we’ve tried to correct from past games, you see some improvement in. I think anytime you get into league play and so forth where people know you and people have ideas of how they want to attack you and so forth, for instance we were kind of laughing as an offensive staff that we spent a whole bunch of hours in the film room this past week, and the stuff we watched Michigan State do, they came with a whole different look from a position standpoint. Conceptually, it wasn’t dramatically different, but who they had doing what was a little bit different. But that’s what being a part of a conference is, that’s what playing people year after year after year, you’re going to find ways that they think they need to get after you, but I think we are seeing some things on film that we want to get better at that we are, and far be it from being where we want to be.
REPORTER: Jim, could you lay some of those things out? What do you think you have to do?
COACH TRESSEL: Oh, I would rather not.
REPORTER: What do you need to improve on?
COACH TRESSEL: You always have to get better tackling. Until we get down to zero missed tackles, we’re not going to be happy. Obviously if you took each and every special team and divided it by 11, whether it be your punt return team, we need to do a better job holding up, or your snapper, the ball needs to be a little bit tighter in the window. Rather than six inches off, it needs zero to three or whatever it happens to be.
Offensively, name the position. And the consistency. The level at which we would like to be leaves room for improvement. Everything we do. I can’t say to you that there’s anything that we can say, gosh, I hope we stay the same because everything we’d like to get a little better.
REPORTER: Coach, with what happened to Adrian Peterson late in the game, does that change your strategy for taking out Troy Smith and the rest of the starters like last weekend?
COACH TRESSEL: Well, Coach Bruce used to always tell us that if you’re up by 28 points with less than three minutes and you’ve got the ball, maybe substitute, isn’t that right, Coach?
COACH BRUCE: Right.
COACH TRESSEL: Coach Bruce is still in the room, so I’m going to follow instruction. I don’t know that we had guys in long, someone else asked me that earlier today, and I think with 12:42 in the game, we had our seconds in. And the games are short to start with. And I look at the grade sheet and there’s guys with 33 plays. So do I hope nothing unfortunate happens like happened with Adrian? Of course. But we can’t run scared. We’ve got to make sure we do what we’ve got to do to get better. I didn’t feel comfortable in East Lansing until we scored that last touchdown.
REPORTER: Is it a relief at all to be number one, just that you control your own destiny so to speak in the BCS?
COACH TRESSEL: I know this, with the difficulty of the league we play in, if you earn the right to win your outright championship and are undefeated, you’re going to be in the BCS game. Now, it would be amazing to me if you weren’t because of difficulty of the schedule. So, no, it’s no relief. I mean, the only relief we’ll ever have is for 30 seconds if we reach our goal and then you get ready for the next game. But our guys know we’ve got a long road ahead of us, and our league is one that, just look at it, there’s a whole bunch of losses, people back and forth that people didn’t think they’d lose to, so there’s really not a whole bunch of relief, not a whole bunch of discussion about it in our room.
REPORTER: Coach, it seems like with the quarterback change they made it has in a way sparked their team and I don’t think that’s just considering who they play. Iowa, obviously, you saw them firsthand. What does he do, other than we see him throw touchdown passes, but what does he do on tape that has not only sparked their team, but has lifted them emotionally as well?
COACH TRESSEL: The very few plays, which isn’t many, he does a good job of keeping things alive, and when you keep things alive, that’s huge. The thing Gene Smith mentioned to me, after he watched a good bit of the game this weekend, that he was amazed at the poise such a young guy had. In a tough, hard-fought game, the thing that’s impressive to me is they’re down 23-7 to Ball State and win. They’re down 25-7 against Illinois and they win. And they’re down 21-7 to Iowa and they win. That tells me somebody’s got to have some poise and usually it starts with the guy that’s got his hands on the ball all the time. So the little bit that I’ve watched him, he does a nice job of keeping things alive and he’s very accurate and he uses his weapons. I think they’ve got outstanding weapons.
REPORTER: Did you analyze Ted’s punt return and I was just wondering who else had some big blocks?
COACH TRESSEL: Larry Grant was very good. Of course it started with Gonzo. He had a good block. And then there were four guys that almost set the ball in the middle and it was just like magnets, boom, boom, boom, boom, they hit each one, and it was over after that. I know Larry and Brian, I wish I knew the others, but I don’t.
REPORTER: Jim, on, I think it was the last touchdown pass Troy threw to Robiskie. He kind of shook off a sack attempt and kind of settled himself and threw the touchdown. Can you just talk about Troy in those situations? It seems like when he’s under pressure he’s still able to stay pretty calm and collected in the pocket like that.
COACH TRESSEL: I think that’s one of his strengths is that when things break down, obviously you have to survive, which is part of it, but survive such that your eyes are still down the field and you still have your wits about you, and I think that’s what he does. And I don’t know that everyone does that. In fact, you look at a lot of quarterbacks, and when things break down, you all of a sudden see their head looking to the ground. And Troy just has that ability to keep his head high and have a little bit of confidence that something good is going to come out of this and I better find it.
REPORTER: Do you work on that a lot in practice?
COACH TRESSEL: You couldn’t invent those situations. Someone would get hurt trying to practice things like that. Now, we go against our defense a lot and you’re under duress, so I think part of that type of development is the fact that he’s faced our defense now for five years, and you never get to just stand there and throw it.
REPORTER: Jim, what do you think of the sort of mild uproar there is of the game only being on ESPN-U, does that surprise you at all?
COACH TRESSEL: No, it doesn’t surprise me, because people love watching the Buckeyes. You go to Spartan Stadium, and I don’t know what the numbers were, but, gosh, it looked to me like a third of the people were ours or better. When you go to Texas, it looked to me like, I don’t know where they got those tickets, but there was a whole bunch of scarlet and gray there. And you go out to the Fiesta Bowl and — so the interest level in Ohio State football is tremendous. So the disappointment in not getting to see it, my daughter who’s away in college in New York, I mean, she’s — what do you mean it’s not going to be on? So, sorry, and, no, I won’t buy you that subscription or whatever, but, you know, people love to watch their Buckeyes.
REPORTER: How many people think it’s your fault from your emails?
COACH TRESSEL: I don’t know. You know what? I haven’t gotten a whole bunch of emails about that. They save it for play calling, my emails. They send them to Steve Snapp. Steve’s got a few scalding ones that I was copied.
REPORTER: Coach, after Penn State you came in the next week and talked about a need to focus and stay focused on getting better. Through two weeks of that stretch, how do you feel your team has responded to that, just focus-wise?
COACH TRESSEL: I think the only indication you can have on that is how do we do in meetings in practice and then how do we do in a game? And I thought we’ve done a good job. In our meetings in practice and in the last couple ball games, I don’t think there’s been any lack of focus. We haven’t been perfect. And I would expect today that we’d have excellent focus, and then I think it starts, and as I’ve said for weeks, it starts with the maturity of those older guys who have seen so much and learned so much.
People see Troy Smith working on his footwork like crazy or they see Quinn Pitcock living in the film room watching every move that every lineman makes, I think that makes a difference.
REPORTER: How thankful were you, though, that Indiana did pull the upset last week and did that turn some heads around? Maybe you guys were starting to get a little too comfortable?
COACH TRESSEL: Didn’t give it much thought going into the game, didn’t really talk about it or think about it, and then when we came out of the game, it was like, whoa, this will be interesting to watch because we had a lot of respect for Iowa, and we hadn’t seen Indiana, hadn’t seen them on crossover film, hadn’t seen them period.
So I don’t know about being thankful because I have nothing against Iowa, but there’s no question about it. In fact, Kirk Ferentz had a good statement that said, hey, you better be ready to play against Indiana because they’re passionate, they’re prepared, and they’re well schooled and that’s a pretty good compliment for someone that’s just played a team.
REPORTER: They’ve had dramatic highs and lows, losing and getting pounded by Wisconsin at home, but still they win the last two games on the road. I’m just wondering, do you have any idea what to expect from them?
COACH TRESSEL: I think Iowa was on the road.
REPORTER: Well, they’re 2-0 on the road is what I meant to say
COACH TRESSEL: What do I expect from them?
REPORTER: Yes.
COACH TRESSEL: At the outset, I think they’ve lessened the amount of things they’re doing and they’re doing them with a lot more speed and effectiveness and efficiency. That’s what I would expect. I wouldn’t expect to come into the game and have four defenses I’ve never seen, and I think that’s led to their success. And if you look at their special teams, they’ve been good all along, kickoff returns against U-Conn, you go through Western Michigan, I think they had a long touchdown, they had three touchdowns. So their special teams have been solid. I can’t speak really too much to their highs and lows on their offensive side. You can get our expert, who’s our expert this week? It’s in the book.
STEVE SNAPP: It’s Joe Daniels and Tim Beckman.
COACH TRESSEL: So Tim Beckman will be able to tell you a little more about their evolution from that standpoint. But they’re just a team that, I think, is living by something that I hope many of us believe in, that if you keep busting your rear end and you keep playing like you believe, then you’re going to get better.
REPORTER: Jim, one of the plays you’ve gotten better in is short-yard situations.
COACH TRESSEL: Not that first one.
REPORTER: Well, that’s true, but with like Chris Wells, I’m wondering what that’s done for you.
COACH TRESSEL: I think Chris will be an outstanding short-yardage back because sometimes you get so many guys in the box that you’re going to have to break a tackle. And he can break a tackle, but it starts up front, and I think we have improved there although we missed one at the end of the Bowling Green game. We didn’t get — our goal is to be a hundred percent in short yardage. I think of the seven ball games, we’ve only been a hundred percent like four times, so we’re not there yet.
REPORTER: How do you decide when a guy fumbles if he’s going to go back in right away or if he’s going to sit out for a little while and think about it?
COACH TRESSEL: I haven’t done a whole lot in my career about sitting out and thinking about it unless it’s their umpteenth time, including practice. Practice is part of what we do. I can’t recall there being a whole bunch of that type of — if a guy is prepared and we think he’s the right guy to have in that game that day and a ball comes loose, we might not be able to overcome it, but we don’t know that until the game is over, and if he’s the best guy at what we’d like to do, we’ll typically stick with that.
REPORTER: You mentioned Coach Hoeppner in your opening remarks. With what he went through in the spring and then this fall, how impressed are you or what kind of respect do you have that just a couple weeks later he’s back coaching, and as you said, they seem to be getting better and better?
COACH TRESSEL: What’s healthy in life is if you do have some examples around you who just represent toughness and handling adversity and you start talking about Terry Hoeppner and Joe Daniels, I’m thinking, shoot, any day that I’m tired, shame on me, those guys have been through it. And it’s got to be rubbing off on his football staff and his football team that, hey, this guy cares, and I think if everybody around knows that the head coach cares, you’ve got a chance.
REPORTER: How’s Antonio Pittman? Any lingering effects at all?
COACH TRESSEL: No. You never know with running backs. They’re like greased lightning when they’ve got the ball and the other 23 and a half hours of the day, they’re slow. I hope there’s no former running backs other than Lefty Bruce out there. So I think he’s fine. I don’t know otherwise.
REPORTER: Coach, the Buckeyes’ focus this week is obviously on Indiana, but there’s already a tremendous amount of hype going into the game against Michigan; what have you seen so far from the Wolverines?
COACH TRESSEL: What have I seen from them? I saw their offense play against Michigan State and they’re outstanding. Beyond that, I haven’t seen anything. As the season goes, we get to see crossover games in our league, and Michigan has not played Indiana, so I won’t see one snap of Michigan this week, but you don’t have to see much, they’re 7-0.
REPORTER: It seems like a lot of the Heisman candidates have fallen by the wayside or they’re drifting, whereas Troy’s consistency keeps him as the so-called front-runner. You talked about his escapeability. Is there one thing or is it just his entire game or his entire package that has made him that guy right now?
COACH TRESSEL: I think the one thing is his team is undefeated. As I mentioned yesterday, the evolution that the Heisman Trophy has taken over the last couple years, is that the focus seems to be on guys on teams who are doing the best, and I think that’s wonderful because that’s what it’s about. And I think one thing that has kept him in the limelight, if you will, is that his team has done well. Now, he’s been a big part of that and he does a whole bunch of things like his escapeability and his consistency and so forth, but I think it starts with your team.
REPORTER: Is that the best campaign? I understand you’re sending something out here in the next week or so as a reminder.
COACH TRESSEL: I would have to defer to the marketing mastermind to my left, your right. I’m not sending anything out, so there’s the man. But everyone has a role and Steve’s is marketing and mine is making sure that he has good footwork.
REPORTER: What do you think about Heisman campaigns, though? What’s been your view of certain schools in the past that bought billboards in New York or —
COACH TRESSEL: It’s okay. They can have some liquor up there instead of that, so I’d rather have a college football player. I hope there’s no liquor people here, but I mean, it’s not bad. College football exposure is good.
REPORTER: Coach, beating teams by an average of 25 points a game this year, have you — you told me the other day that you wake up every week and it’s like Thursday all of a sudden, it’s going by so quickly, do you ever get a chance to sit back and enjoy this journey you’re on, this perfect season you’re having?
COACH TRESSEL: No. I mean, it’s enjoyable, every day is enjoyable. The large scope isn’t enjoyable, the fun is in the process. I’ve always felt that way. I’ve coached a lot of 15-game seasons and people say, oh, man, 15 games, how do you do that? It’s so much fun, really at the end you’re disappointed because it’s over. You never get a chance to be with those people in that setting again, but to me it’s a lot of fun. We’re so myopic and focused and we allow other people to enjoy looking at the big picture, but I hope we don’t.
REPORTER: And do you compliment your players a lot or how do you, in practice, because they’re having such a good year or do you keep them grounded with the stuff you say, how much they have to improve, how do you combine that?
COACH TRESSEL: I think the only thing that works is the truth. When they do something well, I think you tell them. And if that’s the way that we need it done, absolutely tell them. And if it’s not the way that it needs to be done, even though we won by 25 points or whatever, you better not tell them anything other than the truth.
REPORTER: Jim, talking about the exposure of college football, I don’t know if you saw any of the replays from the Miami-Florida international brawl?
COACH TRESSEL: I did, I saw it one time.
REPORTER: Do you have any opinion on whether that’s a black eye for college football in general and have you ever had to deal with that as a coach, where the team you were on was involved in something like that?
COACH TRESSEL: The closest I ever came to something like that was I kind of got run over a little bit after one of our games when apparently there was some middle-of-the-field antics by a very few, but is it a black eye to college football? Anytime, because we’re so exposed, after three weeks or four weeks, there are a hundred and some college games that have been on TV and the amount of visibility we get is tremendous. And with that goes the opportunity to make great impact by the sportsmanship and the hard play and school spirit and all the rest, and it’s also an opportunity to error. And that was one that was not a good scene and it doesn’t help college football.
Someone asked on the Big Ten call about that and the only thing, I guess, that you could take away from it is a reminder that when you make poor decisions to that magnitude, that’s something that you’re going to be disappointed in for quite some time. So hopefully there’s a whole bunch of young people took note of that and said, you know what, I better make sure I’m in control.
REPORTER: After the Robert Reynolds deal at Wisconsin in 2003, what did you reinforce with your team about what you expect on the field?
COACH TRESSEL: I don’t know if there was anything out of the ordinary that was reinforced. I think teaching is just repetitive reminding and repetitive work on how something should be done, whether it’s your personal conduct or your team conduct or how to block something or how to make a tackle. There’s no such thing as right after something happens, fixing everything, because it doesn’t happen. And so we want to make sure that we do things right, period, and when we don’t, perhaps maybe we can learn from that.
REPORTER: Have you seen the Hardy kid for Indiana, he’s sort of their Teddy Ginn?
COACH TRESSEL: He’s not a kickoff return guy, but absolutely he’s a great receiver. I saw him the whole year last year. He’s got great skills. He made a great catch in the Iowa game. Great target. Competitive year. Now in his second year as a starter, so he’s even further along than he was a year ago. And you better cover him.
REPORTER: Coach, when the defense came out with its back against the wall early in the beginning, did you learn anything about how you wanted to see how they would react in that situation?
COACH TRESSEL: One thing that you saw, I don’t know if I learned it because I think it’s been the case, but you saw a group that was prepared and took the field and had a plan and executed their plan. And now granted, I think we had a good sack at the third down and I don’t know if to this moment if it was a missed assignment or something or just good scheming by us, whatever it was, but that gave us a heck of an emotional lift. But we have a lot of confidence in our defense and I hate putting them in that predicament. We haven’t done that often, and we better not do it much more, but we expect them to do what is planned.
REPORTER: Jim Heacock hates to be called a genius or a guru, he shies away from the spotlight, but what have you seen about him especially since you’ve made him coordinator that stands out to you about the way he runs things and gets things done?
COACH TRESSEL: Jim is a guy that he demands excellence first from himself, and thoroughness. And he does a great job of collective thinking. His defensive staff, he’ll be the first to tell you that there is no stamp on it, that’s Jim Heacock’s, it’s his staff, and that’s just the way he feels. And his players have input as well. He’s got a lot of great experiences. He’s been on a lot of good defenses around here at Ohio State and he’s got a lot of pride in the long tradition of Ohio State defense and you can see that in the way that he expects that of the current guys. Marla, last one here.
REPORTER: One more quick thing about ESPN-U, they’re advertising it on ESPN, “See the number one team in the nation,” do you feel used or anything in that regard?
COACH TRESSEL: Well, we all have goals we want to meet and I’m sure they have goals of how many subscribers and all that stuff, but would I rather it be for more of our fans? Absolutely. But I can’t be mad at — some people would rather we pass more or run more, so don’t be mad, just enjoy.
