Transcript From Coach Tressel Weekly Press Conference – Ohio State Buckeyes
9/25/2007 12:00:00 AM | Football
COACH TRESSEL: Without question, it’s not as much fun coming in when we have to lead off with something that is not what we enjoy. I’m sure most of you got the release. We had a problem arise yesterday, and Antonio Henton has made an error, I haven’t had a chance to talk to him, as mentioned in the release. Obviously we’re disappointed, to say the least, and we’ve got to first and foremost do what we have to do to make sure that Antonio (Henton) is well cared for and then of course there are privileges and responsibilities and so forth, and he will be suspended indefinitely, and obviously he will not travel to Minnesota and beyond that, I haven’t had a chance to talk with him, nor do I know much about — any more than you do perhaps, but those types of things, I think in my mind, feel worse than the good feeling you have when you come and win games and get to talk about someone’s great performance and that nature, but that’s just the nature of the way you feel and we’ll handle the situation and do what’s best for the young person, and obviously what’s right for the team. Any questions on that before we get to talk about other things?
REPORTER: Jim, I think he entered or his lawyer entered a not guilty plea, does that change anything about this?
COACH TRESSEL: You know, I didn’t know that. So in my mind right now nothing changes anything until I know something, and as always, we defer to the legal process and then adjust accordingly, if need be, but at this point, what I know is what I know and what I think needs to be done, we’ll do until I find out otherwise.
REPORTER: Have you taken steps to speak with him?
COACH TRESSEL: I have. I’ve just not been able to connect.
REPORTER: What is normal procedure in a case like this? Does the athlete stay suspended until the legal proceeding is completely done or are there cases where you could reinstate before it was resolved?
COACH TRESSEL: I would think in most cases you need resolution to situations, but I don’t know about every case, but obviously until we get a much greater feel for what it’s all about. I guess what’s most disappointing to me is that our guys, I think, know deep down what is expected, and when we err, whether it’s a player, a coach, whomever, that’s disappointing.
REPORTER: Will (Joe) Bauserman move up?
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, Joe will travel with us.
REPORTER: Was Antonio making strides on the field that you saw?
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, I think he has been.
REPORTER: Are you saying that your lows are lower than your highs are high as a result of things like that, in your opening statement?
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, I get more disappointed about lows, I guess, than I do excited about highs, so I guess if that’s what you said, yeah.
REPORTER: What will you say to the team about this?
COACH TRESSEL: We’ll tell them what we know and unfortunately, they hear things before — you can’t collect them all together, we’re not in preseason camp staying in a dorm together, but we’ll address it first and foremost like we’re doing here and then move on which we have to do and handle it as it goes, but we’ve got tasks to handle.
REPORTER: There had been — obviously this is the first incident in a while for you guys along these lines —
COACH TRESSEL: Which is too many still, but, yeah.
REPORTER: Do you feel that from what the program had gone through several years ago that progress had been made or things had changed that guys were staying on track better?
COACH TRESSEL: Well, I think anytime you’re doing what ought to be done, you feel that’s progress, and then the moment that you don’t, you feel you’ve regressed, so we don’t like to regress.
REPORTER: Was Antonio running scout team or was he taking snaps?
COACH TRESSEL: He was about half the time on scout team.
REPORTER: So Joe takes over that role?
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, Joe had about half the time on the scout team and Antonio had the other half, so he’ll carry the load there for sure, and then obviously be our third quarterback and travel with the team.
REPORTER: How did you find out about this, Coach?
COACH TRESSEL: Got a call from one of our administrators who got a call.
REPORTER: Jim, when you say suspended, does that mean from the team as a whole or from just playing and practicing or what does that mean?
COACH TRESSEL: As I mentioned in the release, we never take away academic privileges or tutors or all those kinds of things. Exactly what we’ll do athletically in terms of practice or whatever, don’t know the answer to that, know that he’ll lose the privilege of playing on Saturday, which is definitive, but we’ll work through the other.
REPORTER: Jim, I believe when Dr. (Gordon) Gee returned to the university (as president), he mentioned something like a zero tolerance policy when it comes to some things I guess along these lines. Is this all your decision in the football team or is the university, Dr. Gee, involved in anything like this?
COACH TRESSEL: I haven’t spoken with him. I’ve spoken with Gene Smith (director of athletics) from what we understand the offense was, in terms of what it was called, we were told it was called a misdemeanor. Now, I don’t have any factual — within our athletic department policy, we do not have defined sanctions for a misdemeanor. Those are usually left up to the sport, but what action we’ve taken thus far has been solely football initiated.
REPORTER: Coach, would he be better off with the team with resolution being something that you want in this incident, going in there and pleading guilty and getting it done very quick, which you can do, versus having a trial which would drag out, you know, which would be better football-wise?
COACH TRESSEL: I can’t give guys legal advice and I know you’re asking football-wise, but I think you always have to take care of things legally the best way, and so I would leave that up to the experts.
REPORTER: Jim, from your past experience, how does anything like this affect the other players, affect game preparation or game performance?
COACH TRESSEL: I think guys who generally care about each other, which I think our guys do, I think it can’t help but affect them. It affected me as I was trying to continue to watch film last night and all those kinds of things, but you’ve got to make sure that you let it affect you as little as possible, like any other adversity you face.
REPORTER: Coach, I know you were happy with Joe Bauserman in preseason camp, you liked the way he arrived on campus, do you feel like if that emergency situation came up in Minnesota, that you would have confidence to put him in a game?
COACH TRESSEL: Absolutely. I think Joe’s really coming along. He hadn’t thrown a football for three years, so the first week or so was a little different, and he didn’t look like a guy who threw a 90-whatever-mile-an-hour fast ball, then all of a sudden, when he got his experiences back there, you can see that he’s got a great pop in his arm. How about if we move on to the task at hand, okay?
As I watched the Big Ten opener unfold, I thought it was a little bit of a situation where a young home team with great energy in the stands and the students back and all that stuff got off to a fast start and just allowed that momentum to continue. On the other hand, a young visiting team was all of a sudden in someone else’s stadium and things weren’t going their way, and that’s hard to turn that around, and I think that’s why you saw the result of that ball game.
And it’s just a great reminder for our guys that when you go away from home and you know that the energy in the stadium is going to be on the other side, you better make sure you do some things to not let that momentum get too strong. And I thought it got strong on Saturday. It gave a lot of guys a chance to play. Some guys will be able to say they played in a Big Ten game, which there aren’t too many Big Ten games come up that your back-ups are getting significant playing time and hopefully the guys that needed to grow got enough experiences in that game so that we could take the next step.
Some guys had outstanding performances. Brian Rolle was the special units player of the game. He’s done a great job with his energy and his speed and his desire to cover kicks and punts and all those types of things, and he was the special units player.
Over on defense, Vernon Gholsten continues to get better and better and better, and not only did he have the defensive score, which was the obvious, his play was excellent and he’s becoming the guy that we’re hoping that he would.
Offensively Todd Boeckman was the offensive player. His consistency, I thought, improved, which going into the game that was something we talked about, was that one of the next steps we have to make day after day and week after week is that consistency step, and I thought his consistency improved. He made the big plays. He knew what was happening out there, and he got us into the right things, and Todd was the offensive player of the week.
The Jim Parker offensive lineman was Alex Boone, and Alex had one of the best games else’s had that I can recall. I thought he played very, very well. He graded up near 88%, which is difficult up front there, and was our Jim Parker offensive lineman.
The attack force player of the week was Marcus Freeman. Marcus was kind of thrust into a situation where he was going to play more than normal. Normally he and Ross Homan kind of shared time and they were each sharing 30 snaps or so, and Marcus ended up taking the bulk of the work until the back-ups went in. Ross was a guy that was a little banged up, was ready to play, could have played, the game unfolded the way it did and we felt as if the best thing for him in the long run was to keep him out and Marcus Freeman took advantage of that, got more snaps, more reps, more production. I really thought he flew around the field and that was the best I’ve seen Marcus Freeman play and he was the attack force player.
We had four nominations for the Jack Tatum hit. We didn’t meet with our guys yesterday. Once school begins, Monday is their day off to take care of the academic things and so forth, and so we’ll do the voting on the Jack Tatum hits this afternoon, but there were some pretty good hits so it will be an interesting voting.
And then of course our attention turns to going on the road in the Big Ten. They talked a little bit on Sunday when we met with the guys about the fact that we are still experiencing some things we haven’t experienced. We haven’t been on the road yet in the Big Ten. We haven’t been on the road yet in the evening game. We haven’t been on the road yet when we’re in school and there are more things vying for our time and energy and so forth and we have to make sure we stay on top of those things. So we’ve got to make sure that the next new experience that this young team handles, we handle it properly and it starts with great preparation with practice today.
The first time you go from giving them Sunday off to giving them Monday off, the Tuesday practice is kind of interesting, because they feel like they’ve been gone a long time and I don’t know how it is in your world, but sometimes when you give people time off, they don’t come back with the same velocity that they left with, so we’ve got to make sure that we don’t come into practice today with anything less than what’s needed to prepare for the Gophers.
I really like this quarterback that the Gophers have. He throws the ball around. He’s tough. He runs. To me, the play that really marked who he is, is when they were down by three touchdowns with about seven or eight minutes to go and he’s coming around the end on the two yard line and he was not going to be denied getting into the end zone. Three people hit him and he split them and scored, and that’s just the way he plays.
They seem to have found an additional running back. The kid came in and had a big second half, so they’re back to having that stable of running backs. Their receivers are very, very good. They have five fifth-year starters on the defensive side, and I think about three fifth-year starters over on the offensive side, and they’re a new program, developing a new identity, spread formation. Their kickoff coverage is the best we’ve seen in large part because their kicker has not been affected by this 30 yard line thing, he’s hitting it up in the air about 4.2 (seconds) and landing it on the one yard line and they’re covering like crazy. And their punting game has been a little bit suspect and the punter returns, and so I’m sure he’s got the maturity to get that turned around. But they seem to be playing hard and I think they’ve outscored their opponents almost double in the second half.
They’ve not gotten off to a couple good starts. They’ve had some things happen that allowed them to get behind, but as you watch the second half of every game, they are storming all the way to the last play of the game, which tells you a little bit about what they’re all about. So we’re anxious to get up there and line up and see if we can continue to progress.
REPORTER: What have been their problems on defense? They’ve had a lot of difficulty.
COACH TRESSEL: I think defensively, in the early going, they got hit with some — in some blitz situations and some people threw some balls in there against man and all of a sudden there was nobody there in pursuit, gave up a lot more big plays in the beginning in the first couple games. This past weekend, they gave up a return and an interception return. They gave away 14 points of returns. So that — sometimes the defense takes an unfair hit on those kinds of things. But I think early on, they just got hit with some blitz cuts that really affected them and you can see their evolution is growing from those things and five of those kids on that defense are fifth-year kids, so it’s not like they don’t know what the Big Ten’s about.
REPORTER: Coach, what about this team specifically that you don’t really need to motivate them, they motivate themselves and you mentioned a lot that they have an eagerness to get better.
COACH TRESSEL: Our team?
REPORTER: Yeah, your team.
COACH TRESSEL: Absolutely.
REPORTER: What specifically about that characteristic kind of defines them?
COACH TRESSEL: Sometimes that’s youth because everything’s so new. Now we’re going to get to go on the road in the Big Ten, which a lot of our guys in a real role haven’t done that. They might have gone along on the trip, but now they’re going to get to go to these stadiums and be counted upon. And I think part of it is the responsibility they feel to uphold the excellence that Ohio State has had for many, many years and I think they’re good, quality people, they want to be the best they can be, and I have not felt at all that we’ve ever had to push them and so forth. They seem to prepare and they seem to want to get good and they’ve had people before show them the work habits that it takes to get good. Now, the key is, it’s a long grind. Can you do that for 12 straight weekends?
REPORTER: Chris Wells said after the game that his ankle still bothers him when he makes some cuts, is that something that concerns you that this might linger all year on him?
COACH TRESSEL: You know, that happens sometimes. I’m sure if you talk to Archie Griffin or Eddie George or any of those guys that carried the ball a lot, they’d tell you that it’s probably Wednesday or so before they’re really feeling good and they crank it up on Saturday, and then they’re back in the tub until Wednesday, and I think that’s the nature. You get hit pretty good when you’re a running back. I’m hoping that like any great running back, that Chris is a warrior and that I’m not hoping that he doesn’t hurt, because that’s usually not the case with running backs, they hurt.
REPORTER: Would you talk a little bit about Todd Boeckman and the decision-making he’s made so far in the early part of the season.
COACH TRESSEL: I think Todd has done a good job of understanding what we’re doing and what we’re trying to teach. He sat in the classroom for all those years and I think he understood it, but it’s a little different when your hands are under the center and they’re chasing you to see if you understand it. And I think now that he’s had some experience of being under duress and still having to have a handle on what’s what, it’s helped him. He’s got a ways to go with that, which he knows and he’s willing to work on, but I think as he watches the film and he listens to his coaches tell him, hey, here’s what we’re doing, here’s why we’re doing it, here’s what you need to get us into, all of those things, he understands that. Now we have to do it on Saturday.
REPORTER: He had the interception Saturday, did he have a winning performance?
COACH TRESSEL: He did. Todd had a winning performance for the first time this season, which is hard. Coach (Joe) Daniels is getting a little soft, but it’s hard to get one at that position. But when you only have three incompletions, it’s a little easier. He didn’t need to throw it 30 times. When you start throwing it 30 times, it makes it real hard.
REPORTER: You’ve talked a lot about him taking that next step. Is that what you like most about him, he seems to be learning every week?
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, he’s very serious about it and he knows that he has to keep learning and he’s willing to do that, and I think he knows that there’s going to be tougher days ahead, and that doesn’t bother him. He’s looking forward to those tougher days ahead and he’s going to handle each day as it comes and he’s a mature guy. He’s older than I am. I think he understands that it’s going to be a long process.
REPORTER: Your running back depth with Brandon Saine out for a couple more weeks, how comfortable are you with it and how much discussion is there on a daily basis regarding Dan Herron, whether we take the red shirt off?
COACH TRESSEL: Like five times a day the discussion happens. We are we were in the special teams meeting this morning and some guys said, it sounds like Herron might get that red shirt off, can I have him at this spot or that spot? We’re going to prepare “Boom” (Herron) like he’s going to make the difference at Minnesota, and if that’s the case, then let’s go. If not — but we would really like to have at all times three guys ready to carry that thing and Marcus Williams is a guy that’s been great on special teams. He’s been a guy that could be your third guy in some circumstances, but we think “Boom” Herron, if he was thrust into a significant role, especially running the football, would be ahead of Marcus from that standpoint.
REPORTER: Do you anticipate having Brandon back for Purdue?
COACH TRESSEL: We were told this morning in the medical report it was probably 50/50 for Purdue and virtually certain for the following week.
REPORTER: Coach, speaking medical reports, could you update us on Lawrence Wilson’s progress?
COACH TRESSEL: What they told us this morning was that realistically, if we were able to earn a bowl opportunity that that would be probably the realistic situation, not that it couldn’t happen prior to that.
REPORTER: After the offensive explosion against Northwestern, now you’re facing a team that’s given up 154 points in four games. Is it hard not to expect a repeat performance from your offense this week?
COACH TRESSEL: I think if that’s all you did was look at the stats, that might be the case. I think if you looked at the film and you saw the whys and the wherefores of some of those points, I think Minnesota’s had like 16 or so turnovers, which all of a sudden now their defense is on the field back to their own 20, so I think we don’t get that far out and talk about what we expect, we look at every look, look at every formation, say, okay, what do we do that we think we can be successful with and go down by down. I know that’s a cliche, but we’re way far from saying what we’re going to have by the end of a game.
REPORTER: When you’re up 40 plus points at halftime, how much does that limit you second half offensively? Are you cognizant of not calling certain plays, calling certain plays, is that a real factor?
COACH TRESSEL: Well, what we wanted to do was go out that third quarter and have a great series for our first group and then let the other guys have a chance to play. It was a little bit short-lived, that thinking, when they ran the opening kickoff back, but that was our goal was to go out and perform well, to execute well, maintain the consistency, and then feel good about the next group getting some experience, and the next group did, but I’m not sure we got it done quite as efficiently and quickly as we set goal.
REPORTER: We know with young guys, every young guy wants to play and you have to red shirt some of them and make those decisions. When you’re talking about a medical issue with a red shirt guy whether it’s Lawrence or whoever, how much input does a player have into that? Obviously it’s a different decision when you’re talking about young guys.
COACH TRESSEL: Well, the player has every impact on that. Many times when a guy is banged up, he’ll be the first to say, hey, I’d rather not spend a year with this fracture, so we understand that fully, even if maybe we could have him back for two or three games when we had that long discussion with Todd Boeckman at the al mow bowl and as far as the developmental redshirt guys who are freshmen, I think they’d all like to play, and we do have those discussions about, you know what, we’re not going to put you in just for three plays and have that count as a year. You might not understand that today, but you’ll understand that four years from now. But the player has every — I’ve had guys that say, Coach, I can’t survive in life without playing, even if I get to run down on kickoff every three games and a guy take his redshirt off and go do that, and then he comes in my office three years later and say, I can’t believe you let me do that. Well, I don’t want you to take your life. So we have a lot of discussions with them and they have the most input.
REPORTER: Have you become more of a big play offense than you thought you would or was some of the preseason talk about kind of going back to basics maybe not accurate?
COACH TRESSEL: I think you guys talked about going back to basics, I don’t remember using that phrase, but I think you have to do what the defense allows you to do, and you have to do what your guys can do, and I said all along, one thing I do remember saying in the preseason is I thought Todd was throwing the ball deep well. We’ve had a couple interceptions deep, which we’ve got to eliminate. I think you have to do what your guys do, and what your defense allows you to do. Hopefully we can stretch the field. Hopefully that is something that someone says, you know what, they’re going to go downtown if you let them, and I hope that becomes something that people are legitimately fearful of.
REPORTER: What is the mindset or whatever you guys preach for your kickoff coverage team and just what did you see Saturday in the course of the opening kickoff second half, that might have been an offshoot of guys running in, make it too hard —
COACH TRESSEL: I’ll tell you what, our kickoff guys have really done a pretty darn good job. About four guys hit that guy and we didn’t wrap up. Now, that is something that we can’t survive, but I think in general, our kickoff coverage has done pretty well. There have been some balls that weren’t kicked very high and very far and they’ve still done a solid job of covering. There have been some balls that were kicked high and down inside the five that they’ve covered extremely well, and we’ve even had a couple touchbacks, two or three. So I think it’s been a pretty fair unit, but that’s the problem with kickoff coverage units, one play can change whether you’re pretty fair or not, and so hopefully we’ll learn to wrap.
REPORTER: A guy like Brian Rolle and Eugene Clifford and those guys, do you sense they feel that’s where they could make their mark?
COACH TRESSEL: Sure.
REPORTER: What have you seen just specifically out of a couple guys like that?
COACH TRESSEL: They love to run. They love to hit. They’re doing a good job of studying what it is the teams are trying to do against them, and then each week you come in and someone has a different return for you and they do a good job of talking through it and thinking through it and saying here’s what they’re doing. I think they’re doing their due diligence with that unit as much as they are with any other defensive call or whatever it is they’re asked to do.
REPORTER: In that vain, Aaron Pettrey, is there any update there? It looks like his name’s come out a couple times.
COACH TRESSEL: We expected him as of Thursday, after practice he was going to be kicking off and then Saturday morning, he said that he just thought he was a little bit too tight to do that, so I thought Andrew Good came in and did a nice job. It was good to get him in the game and he hit the ball up there. Right now we’re making the assumption that he won’t be there, unless something happens. It’s a little different when you’re on the road. When you’re at home and a guy’s got a little bit of an injury, we say he can go if he can go, if not, we’ll be fine. Only the road if you only take two kickers and all of a sudden one of them says, I can’t go, we can’t take you. So at this moment we’re planning on Andrew Good going.
REPORTER: Do you have concerns about your snapping situation on extra points and things like that? There have been a few bouncers the last couple weeks.
COACH TRESSEL: It hasn’t been as consistent as it needs to be. Interestingly enough, Jim Bollman said we’ve probably had better protection from our snappers than we’ve had at any point in time since he’s been here. Now we have to make sure that we get the whole package and get more consistent, because that has everything to do with how good a kicker you are. If that ball’s not on the spot, your rhythm is totally off and Jon Thoma really couldn’t have had a chance. I thought early in the game it just fired Earl through his hands but it was way out of the spot and we can’t have those.
REPORTER: Can you talk about Tyson Gentry’s improved health and how you can draw inspiration on that?
COACH TRESSEL: He’s with us all the time. Someone said he was up in the game room playing ping-pong yesterday, which is pretty cool. The fact that he wants to be with our guys is an inspiration of its own. There was a young guy that came over and spent some time with him on — I think it was Sunday night, the coach over at Westerville whose son was injured, and he brought his son over to spend some time with Tyson and it was a neat thing, so Tyson’s trying to do whatever he can do with his particular situation and he has been an inspiration.
REPORTER: When you began the season, did you feel more confident with your defense than you might have a year before?
COACH TRESSEL: Well, I knew we had a little more experience. The only thing I didn’t know was from a front standpoint, did we have the experience. If you recall last year at the beginning, we kept saying, you know, we think we’re going to have a chance because it starts upfront and we had the Pitcocks and the Richardsons and the Pentons and the Pattersons and we had all those guys coming back, so that’s a good start. It wasn’t that we weren’t comfortable with our defense, it’s just the back seven there weren’t as many guys back. This year was kind of the opposite. We felt we had a little more experience in the back end, but less experience up front, but that’s college football. You’re always going to be missing some guys and I think they’re working hard to become a defensive unit. They’re getting ready to face a defense that does it all.
Minnesota spreads it out, they run the quarterback, they run the screens, they throw deep, they’ve got the good tradition of running game, they still do their run back zone running back stuff they used to do, so our guys know that we’ve got a challenge coming up.
REPORTER: When you’ve got the experienced guys in the back, does that enable you to do more things up front when you have more confidence in those guys?
COACH TRESSEL: You might want to ask the defensive coaches that question. I don’t get too involved with what they’re comfortable doing, I just want them to stop them. So I don’t know if we’ve blitzed more or less or played more or less man or not, but I know one thing, we’re playing hard. I’ve got to go with Lori, because I’ve got to get the guys in here.
REPORTER: You have Dane Sanzenbacher listed in your two deep, does that mean he’s back or is Ray Small, your third receiver, will they share that responsibility?
COACH TRESSEL: We’ll probably try to have a rotation, if we’re with two wides, it will be the Brians (Hartline and Robiskie) if we’ll be three wides, we’ll have Brian, Brian, Ray, or Brian, Dane, Ray, so that we can give those two Brians a rest every once in a while, they’ve been going a lot of snaps and they play fast and physical, so it gives us more of an ability to rotate, and then we still have an opportunity to get some kids in. The neat thing about guys like Devon Torrence and things like that is they’re really helping out in the special teams so they’re continuing to get some experience, but getting Dane back is a good thing, because Dane’s going to be good, he’s going to be a good player, and he gives you a little threat on the field.
