Football: Transcript from Coach Tressel Weekly Press Conference – Ohio State Buckeyes
9/2/2008 12:00:00 AM | Football
COACH TRESSEL: Happy post Labor Day to all of you. Hopefully you got to labor on Labor Day like we did. Coach Bruce used to say this is my whatever straight year of laboring on Labor Day. We had a nice hot one yesterday. We were excited we got to play the game on Saturday, it seemed like spring practice and all the preseason, I can’t imagine what all the guys were thinking with the time they spent in the weight room and out on the field on their own and so forth, it was good to get out there and see what we could do.
It’s so different from practice in that after each play almost there’s corrections going on and all those things and then you get into a game and you wait until you get to see the film and sometimes you don’t realize some of the things that need to be corrected, and so it’s a great opportunity for us, for a lot of guys to get on film.
Our defense probably didn’t get as many snaps as you’d like in an opening game, but they did a good job with seven three and out and we talk a lot about getting take aways and so forth and we didn’t quite get the number of take aways that we would like to get but on the other hand, when they’re going out three and out, there’s just not as many opportunities to get those, so there were a lot of good things that we saw.
There were some very, very good performances. Weren’t quite as many winning performances as we’ve had in some ball games. I think our coaches and our players are setting a standard for themselves that they want to be very, very good and so the performances were solid, but I don’t know that they were extraordinary, so now we have a chance to get out on the field and see if we can get better at a lot of things. And we did have some players of the week.
Ray Small was the special units player of the week. Ray can be a real exciting punt returner if we wouldn’t have penalties and it’s about his third long one that’s been called back in the last seven or eight games, and so he was our special units player of the week.
The offensive player of the week was Rory Nicol and Rory really has had a solid preseason camp, an excellent leader, been an excellent performer. He made a nice catch for a first down there. Marcus Freeman, I think even though he only played 20 some snaps was the defensive player of the week, had four or five tackles and a couple TFLs and quarterback hits and so forth and really looks good and is moving fast and is also providing excellent leadership.
The Jim Parker offensive lineman of the week was Alex Boone. Alex graded 89%. I think Alex looks very good. He looks trim. He’s in the best condition he’s ever been. He feels better than he’s ever felt and I think he’s one of the real good offensive linemen in the country.
The attack force player of the week was Nader Abdallah and Nader has been a guy that’s steadily gotten better and better and better and contributed more and more and he’s doing so as a leader as well. So Nader was the attack force player of the week.
There were four nominations for the Jack Tatum hit of the week. I don’t know that any of them really warrant Jack Tatum’s moniker on them, but Malcolm Jenkins won the applause meter, but the applause was not resounding for any of them, but there were four nominations and Malcolm was the recipient of that.
The scout team guys did a good job. The first week of scout team, I think, is a little bit more difficult. You go all through spring practice and there aren’t scout teams and everyone’s getting reps. Throughout most of the preseason, there aren’t scout teams, everyone’s running our stuff and all of a sudden you get to our first game and you put that opponent’s jersey on and you’re reading off cards and not really in the feel of what we need to get done so it was good. We did a lot of rotating on who played on scout teams.
A lot of the guys you saw in the second group probably spent a third of the practice on scout team because we tried to rotate and give as many guys opportunities with our offensive and defensive game plan. But there were some outstanding performances, James Georgiades was the outstanding player of the week. He’s going to be a good player here one day. The scout defensive player was Zach Domincone from over in Beavercreek. He’s going to be a good safety. He can double as one of the hybrid guys or even has the range to play some linebacker guys when formations are spread out and Schuck is going to be very, very good. And Ryan Schuck walk-on wide receiver did a great job on the offensive side. We made some progress.
I think the thing that’s clearest to all of us that are there every day is that we need to make some more progress. Ohio U comes in here, I was impressed with the battle they staged out of Wyoming. That’s a tough situation going clear across the country. They lost a tough ball game but really if you look at the game, I think they were in command a good bit of the time. A couple costly penalties against them on that last drive really made the difference and Ohio U is going to be like their coaches. Coach Solich is one of those guys. He was a 150-pound fullback and that tells you enough to know what he’s all about and his team plays that way. Extremely competitive on special teams. They ran another kickoff back for a touchdown. I think they were fifth or sixth in the country last year in kickoff returns and they ran another 100 yarder back last weekend. They really put a lot of pressure when you punt. Defensively, they’ll blitz all over the place. Bo Pelini one of our graduate’s brother Carl was on our staff for years and now joined Pelini at Nebraska, but you can see a lot of what LSU does in the way they fly around on the offense. And over on defense, they have their good receivers back. They did lose their all-star tailback.
The quarterback is one of the dual purpose guys that in this particular game against Wyoming, he threw it more than maybe he has in past games and ran it maybe a little less, but he’s got the ability to do both. So our guys are going to work on preparing for the Bobcats, but what’s most critical in our eyes is we’ve got to make the Buckeyes better this week and they’re working hard at it.
REPORTER: Anything you know about Beanie’s injury that you didn’t know Saturday?
COACH TRESSEL: I would have said when we had our trainer’s report. Kind of labeled them as doubtful for Saturday, and then he should be in good shape and then I saw Beanie about 10:30ish in the training room and he said he felt great, so I guess I didn’t know either of those things since we last talked.
REPORTER: Jim, are you ruled him out for this week though, regardless of how he feels?
COACH TRESSEL: No, I have the third vote. The first vote is the young person because if they don’t want to play, and I haven’t found too many of those guys. Most of those guys are saying, I feel fine, but then the medical people have a major vote and how you practice has a little bit to do with it especially as you get into the back end of the week. That Wednesday-Thursday practice are critical, not that today’s practice isn’t, but when you have a veteran who’s had a lot of snaps and so forth, it’s not quite as critical, but I’ll have that third and deciding vote, I guess.
REPORTER: What you know now, this is an injury that doesn’t appear to be that debilitating?
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, I would say that, in a nonmedical way of saying things, that would be fair.
REPORTER: He said after the game that he felt a pop, he thought, a play or two before that. Had he expressed anything to anybody on the side line?
COACH TRESSEL: That was the first drive of the third quarter and we went down and I think it was, I don’t know, 10 or 12 plays and I think the first anyone heard of that was when they brought him off and so it wasn’t like he felt it and left the game then went back in or anything. In fact, the way I heard it, and again, I probably haven’t probed him with quite as many questions as some have, is that he felt that the play before he went out. That’s the way I heard it, but —
REPORTER: Jim, the fact that he played through an injury last year, a couple injuries, does that make you feel a little better about the situation, he had such a good year last year fighting through those injuries?
COACH TRESSEL: Oh, yeah, Chris Wells loves to play the game. When you’re a big back like he is, you’re going to get whacked around a lot and your wheels have a big load on them. He’s a 240-pound load on those feet, so he’s going to — he’s passionate about playing the game, but we’re also going to be smart and medically sound and understand the need for practice and all the things.
REPORTER: How would you describe his injury? What have you been told? What is the injury itself? Do you know anything?
COACH TRESSEL: I really don’t. I can’t even think of the word, if I’ve even heard some fancy word, you know, his foot’s hurting. A lot of times you hear like brachial plexus and all this stuff. It used to be, you know, my shoulder’s hurting me, now then it became a brachial plexus. I’m still back in the his foot hurts era.
REPORTER: Is it fair to say it’s like a sprain?
COACH TRESSEL: I don’t know. You’ll have to interrogate the medical people on that and then they’ll plead the fifth or whatever.
REPORTER: What did the MRI say? You said the x-rays after the game were negative.
COACH TRESSEL: You know, there was a coach at Ohio State at one point that could read the x-rays and the MRIs.
REPORTER: Who’s that?
COACH TRESSEL: He’s sitting in the third row. I remember sitting in staff meetings occasionally where he summonsed the x-rays and said, let me look at that. I do not have that ability, so I have no idea what the MRI said. I wouldn’t know an MRI if it was here.
REPORTER: Coach, you guys mentioned on Saturday that it was kind of hard for the offense to get in a rhythm with all the changes, you played more consistently the ones to kind of get that rhythm against Ohio. Will you play the ones more this time?
COACH TRESSEL: You never know. A couple years ago when we were preparing for such a hot game in Texas, we just think the smart thing to do is to do some rotating early so we’re fresh late. We also do like finding out more about people and how they can contribute, so I think keeping those things in mind, we don’t ever feel bad about playing 17 to 20 guys no matter what the game holds because we do the same thing on defense constantly and no one even notices, no one even discusses it. It is a little different at quarterback when you’re going in and out and that kind of thing, but we’ll — and maybe if you’re working with different guys. We tried to make sure when Todd was in, he was always with the ones and the guys he was working with all summer. We wanted Joe and Terrelle to have a chance with the second group and the first group, so we got that done. And then we’ll just have to see how practice goes and what are the things that we need to do, but you like to stay as fresh as you can and get as much experience as you can.
REPORTER: So a little more time for Todd this week or are you going to go three quarterbacks before halftime again?
COACH TRESSEL: I don’t know that yet. Check with me Thursday.
REPORTER: Did you have any opportunity to, first of all, to see any games at all other than your own?
COACH TRESSEL: On Saturday I did. Yeah, I watched the end of the Utah and Michigan game and I thought Michigan showed a lot of stuff that they just — they went after them. I didn’t see — I just got home and the part I saw, they were fighting like mad. I saw the Michigan State-Cal game because that’s some of my guys on that staff and it seemed like every time we had it going the right way, something went the wrong way, but I thought they played like crazy. They’re clear out there in Berkeley and they didn’t get back until 8:00 in the morning the next day and I just thought they fought like crazy and I watched the rest of the Missouri-Illinois game. And throughout the whole course of the game, people were counting them out, oh, this one’s over and here comes Illinois storming back. So I happened to watch those three games.
REPORTER: Was it —
COACH TRESSEL: Wait a minute, I watched a little bit of SC, yeah, I did, I watched a little bit of SC and Virginia in the second half.
REPORTER: What were your impressions?
COACH TRESSEL: They dominated the game.
REPORTER: The Big Ten had three big opportunities they could show better preps, but nonetheless losses in all three of those games.
COACH TRESSEL: I think that’s true, we got three losses in all three of those games, but I don’t think we have to apologize for how our teams played. I thought they played extremely hard. Those were good games, good teams. I think people will find out Utah is a good football team, Missouri is a good football team and so is Cal, we didn’t do what we needed to do but we played like crazy.
REPORTER: Did Southern Cal do anything that surprised you?
COACH TRESSEL: It’s impressive when you can go all the way across the country, it’s a good football team, I didn’t see the beginning of the game, by the time I saw it was 24-7 or something like that, but to dominate a game in the way that they did, that’s impressive.
REPORTER: How did Todd grade out?
COACH TRESSEL: Todd was just a shade under winning, you have to be over 85% and he was just a shade under that.
REPORTER: Can you tell us anything about why Terrelle came into the game before Joe Bauserman?
COACH TRESSEL: I guess the only thing you can read is that was our opinion, that that’s what we should do at that moment. I think as you’ve watched 20 some practices, he’s done an evolution. For a freshman to come in, we haven’t said, okay, we’ve got these five plays and that’s all he has to learn, he’s learned the entire situation and he’s done a good job and we thought that that was the best thing.
REPORTER: Does that mean that he’s your Number 2, clear cut?
COACH TRESSEL: Clear cut? Well, if he goes in second Saturday, he will have been for that game, but, no, we like competition continuing. I don’t know what clear cut means. Does clear cut mean it’s clear and cut and it’s never going to be attached again?
REPORTER: If Todd were to go down with injury, would Terrelle be your quarterback?
COACH TRESSEL: If the game were today he would.
REPORTER: The first play of the game, did that kind of make you smile? What was your reaction to that?
COACH TRESSEL: It just shows that he’s comfortable knowing that we made a mistake and he’s comfortable covering for us, which I appreciate. But we wanted to send him out there with some thinking to do, because sometimes you forget about being nervous if you’ve got to concentrate on something.
REPORTER: For these first two couple games, obviously the players aren’t back in school yet, do you notice you prepare for practice for that week’s game a little differently?
COACH TRESSEL: I think our guys probably have a little bit more time to rest and a little bit more time to study film. We talk about it a little bit as an advantage, that, hey, this is an advantage for you, you get to rest a little bit more than those days when you are getting up, going to study hall, going to class and all the rest. Plus you have this advantage that, hey, you have more time to study your opponent, study yourself and all that, so I’m sure there are a number of people that take advantage of it, and I’m sure there are some guys that get a little lazy during this time, but hopefully more take advantage of it.
REPORTER: Can you talk about the decision to send the six freshmen out there together, Pryor, the two linemen, the three wide receivers, kind of what went into that, were those guys all bracketed on that unit?
COACH TRESSEL: We were going to send the second group in on the third or the fourth series according to what we felt would be the best in the flow of the game. I can’t even remember which series it ended up.
REPORTER: It was the third.
COACH TRESSEL: Was it the third? Okay. And they just happened to be in that group. But that’s a little frightening now that we think about it, we sent six freshmen out there at once?
REPORTER: And you were only up 10-0.
COACH TRESSEL: I’m glad we didn’t talk about that.
REPORTER: When you guys got into the pistol, though, did you sense a freshness or did you kind of like the way that different look kind of came across on a Saturday?
COACH TRESSEL: We didn’t execute it as well as we would have liked to. There were some things that we’d never really been out there in a game on it. I think it gives us a little something, but again, how much and all that, you never know, but I think anytime you can add something to your attack, it’s a good thing.
REPORTER: Did you study anybody else in the off season, did you go and pick somebody’s brain even more about that?
COACH TRESSEL: A couple years ago we had Ball State in here visiting with us and they had studied with Nevada, who I think was kind of one of the original pistol folks, but, no, I don’t think we went anywhere.
REPORTER: Jim, how did Terrelle grade out? And I think he had 20 snaps and I think it was eight runs plus the sack and six throws, I mean, that balance of run to pass with how that worked out for him, were you happy with that? Is that how you would see his balance going forward?
COACH TRESSEL: I don’t know about going forward, but anytime the quarterback has to make some decisions, that’s a good thing, and so if the ball’s in his hands, he’s got to make some decisions and if he’s got to throw it, he’s got to make some decisions. To turn around and hand off, there’s not that much decision making to it, so the fact that he got to do some of that is a good thing. I think he ended up with less plays than Joe as it turned out, but he did have a lot of what I would call a point of attack play where your decision is at the point of attack, it’s a good thing.
REPORTER: Had the two of you talked about that getting that first completion, because I think his first two passes were for completions, did you talk about that at all and did you get the kind of output from the team you wanted in the red zone?
COACH TRESSEL: Well, I’ll answer the second one easy. There were, at least twice, maybe three times, that we had first and goal around the 9 or the 8 and we didn’t score touchdowns, which you’ve got to talk about that being a hundred percent. So it wasn’t quite as good as we’d like. What was the first question?
REPORTER: Did you talk to Terrelle at all about —
COACH TRESSEL: About completing the first one? No. We just kind of had fun when we were talking before that first one like, you know, are you going to go out there and be nervous and, no, no, I’ll be fine and just go out and execute. But no, we didn’t say, now you have to hit that first one because all of a sudden if you don’t hit that first one, it’s like, oh, so —
REPORTER: How good was the kicking game?
COACH TRESSEL: It was solid, we hit a couple deep ones there. I’m not sure our mechanics and time is exactly where we need it, but we made them. I’ve got to get one over here.
REPORTER: Back to Beanie, people seem crazy about it. Have you had people email you or home remedies for his foot or fascination?
COACH TRESSEL: I haven’t had too many home remedies, but I’ve had a lot of people that are experts on feet with their degree.
REPORTER: You’ve conferred with them.
COACH TRESSEL: I didn’t do much conferring. I forward those to the medical people.
REPORTER: Unsolicited they called?
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, I don’t solicit a whole bunch of calls.
REPORTER: Jim, when you have such a big game coming up next week, you talked about USC and they’re heavily favored this week, how much does that play at all in your thinking of how to treat Beanie this week in terms of playing time?
COACH TRESSEL: You’d love to have him for every game. We’d all be lying if we didn’t talk about being excited about playing Southern Cal and one of the challenges, just like we talked at the beginning of the year, one of the challenges is being able to put away any of those distracting thoughts of ‘oh, you’re going to be good’ or, ‘oh, you can’t win the big ones’ or any of those distracting thoughts and work on the task at hand. So our focus is hopefully on the task at hand. Would we make a flat-out decision as to play or not play simply on what lies ahead a week from now? No. Because you might, as Coach Bruce and I were talking, if all of a sudden the guy is dying to play and you don’t let him play, there’s a little seed of doubt in his mind, in others’ mind, oh, I wonder if — so if he’s ready, he goes.
REPORTER: Coach, last week you talked about car keys with Doug Worthington, is he going to have earlier access to the car keys this week?
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, he’ll be in the rotation. I don’t know whether he got, you know, 12 snaps or something like that. Defensively we didn’t get — I don’t know what our number was, but it wasn’t high and the total number of snaps in the game was significantly lower, but absolutely.
REPORTER: Talking about the red zone and having to settle for field goals, looking back was there any common denominator with the problems inside the red zone?
COACH TRESSEL: There were the typical problems. The first one was we had an off-side penalty and all of a sudden we’re second and whatever, 14, which it’s a little more difficult to score from that vantage point. On one of them I recall, I think it was on Terrelle’s first drive, one of the plays, the receivers didn’t get the check and all of a sudden they were running a route and he was running the ball and there were the three guys that were supposed to be blocking right there, but mistakes, penalties, it’s usually the case. And you’ve got to give credit to the other team, they made the plays that forced us to go for field goals.
REPORTER: If Beanie’s out, what do you have to do changing your offensive game plan?
COACH TRESSEL: Someone asked that on the conference call. We can’t change our offensive game plan with the change of one or two people, even if it’s your tailback. I mean Brandon Saine, Mo Wells, Danny Herron, they run the same plays that Beanie Wells runs. They know how to run them. They know how to do them, they know how to pass protect routes, so we’re not going to change things that the other 10 guys have been working on forever when there’s someone not in the game.
REPORTER: So it doesn’t matter if they bring different aspects to the table for all different kind of running backs?
COACH TRESSEL: You like to feature what guys do best, but again, there’s only so many kinds of plays. There’s plays where you block them man, there’s plays where you block down and kick out and there’s plays where you try to trick them and so, they can do all those kinds of things.
REPORTER: For Terrelle, what’s the next piece of progression you’d like to see?
COACH TRESSEL: Consistency. That’s the key to anyone’s progression is to, okay, we’ve done this, now we’ve got to get to this and we’ve got to grow on awareness of that, but that’s — you know, Brian Robiskie, he and I were sitting in my office last night after practice looking at one play where a little bit greater awareness, he could have made a little adjustment and maybe Todd could have delivered him the ball. It doesn’t matter how far along you are, it’s just growing in your consistency, your awareness, your ability to execute.
REPORTER: You mentioned Robiskie, he kind of landed on the shoulder.
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, he did.
REPORTER: Is that just a fluke thing or are you concerned at all that this could be a lingering thing for him?
COACH TRESSEL: Brian could have come back in the game. That was one of those he landed on it. It was one of those, you know, it stings for it while, but we didn’t let him go back in the game.
REPORTER: Is it fair to characterize it as a stinger?
COACH TRESSEL: No, no, I said it stings a little bit. I don’t get into those medical terms. It hurt a little.
REPORTER: Is Kurt Coleman available this week?
COACH TRESSEL: He may be. He’s practicing, so we’ll have to see how well he practices.
REPORTER: Is Boom the starter Saturday if Beanie can’t go or is that so close to call that you won’t?
COACH TRESSEL: Oh, I don’t know. In a perfect world, all three of those guys will carry the mail. In a pool carry it the first time, I guess I don’t know, I guess we could settle it out there with empty and not start any of them, but I don’t know, we’ll see.
REPORTER: Boom says he thinks he’s a similar back to Beanie, not as big, but the style is similar. Is that a fair comparison?
COACH TRESSEL: That sounds like Boom because he’s a downhill guy. He’s a physical runner. He’s a tackle-breaking guy, and that would be a good description of Beanie as well, so he’s a good back.
REPORTER: As you stand here today, are you much more confident than you were even yesterday that Beanie’s going to be available next week? Do you understand what I’m asking for the Southern Cal game?
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, I think every time, to give it to the trainers who see him every time, is that every time they see him, he seems better. Now I haven’t seen him that much, I happened to see him in the training room and he was saying how wonderful he feels. Now, that was a lot different than when I saw him on the field that day. He wasn’t expressing how good he felt, so, yeah, there’s been a big change.
REPORTER: Is the Bowling Green-Pittsburgh game, does that provide you a teaching lesson for your players that you can’t take anybody for granted, they went in there and won by 10 points?
COACH TRESSEL: Our guys have played against teams from the mid America many times, and they know they can play. Plus they know so many of them. They played high school against them, with them, socially get together. I mean, they know the players — they could give us the scouting report. They know Ohio U and so I think there’s not a problem at all with them understanding what they’re going to bring.
REPORTER: Coach, even though you might not be watching film on SC at all this week, to prepare for the loud environment out in California, are you going to be using any sound this week?
COACH TRESSEL: We always pump it in on Thursdays when we practice because it’s loud over here and it’s especially loud in a key defensive time here and so the defense gets to practice closer to the speakers and when we’re playing on the road, the offense gets to practice a little closer to the speakers. Although it’s loud even when you’re on the other field. But, yeah, we do that all the time.
REPORTER: Ray Small had kind of obviously a rough spring/summer. How do you feel about how he responded to that?
COACH TRESSEL: I think Ray Small has had a good preseason camp. I really do. He’s been really sharp from assignment standpoint, dependability standpoint, coaching the young guys, done a good job with Lamaar and DeVier and Jake Stoneburner. He’s done a good job. I think he’s really coming along.
REPORTER: He said he wasn’t sure whether he was out of your dog house or not.
COACH TRESSEL: Well, don’t tell him either way. Just tell him he’s still in.
REPORTER: I was going to say, do you have a dog house?
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, a big one.
REPORTER: How did you come about Jermale Hines, the amount of time he had?
COACH TRESSEL: Jermale Hines is going to be a good player. He got probably 30 some snaps. He got more snaps than some of the guys. He’s a miss Cal guy. He’s an instinctive football player. He played all three linebacker positions last year without much instruction, he knew what he was doing. Jermale is going to be a good player.
REPORTER: What DeVier Posey showed you on Saturday —
COACH TRESSEL: There was a burst there, from where I was standing.
REPORTER: The more you see him, is he a guy that’s just ready to help right now in the right situations?
COACH TRESSEL: In the summertime all the older guys kept buzzing about him, whenever we’d see the older guys, we’d say are you taking care of the younger guys and they’d say, oh, yeah, that Posey can play. I remember asking Hartline one day, I said, okay, tell me one of those freshmen that’s working hard that’s really going to be good, and he said Posey, and he’s done nothing to discount that recommendation.
REPORTER: We’ve heard good things about Sanzenbacher this season, you just said Ray Small, and then Posey, when you have so many guys in that mix for third, fourth, fifth receiver, is it hard to decide who gets in?
COACH TRESSEL: Coach Hazell he will wants to go with four all the time. You never have enough of anything. You really don’t. This a physical game we play. Just watching those games, someone asked if I watched those games the other night, they were rolling in guys, you get into those dog fights and you never have enough players, so to keep guys fresh because you can put in another guy who can do the job is a tremendous luxury.
REPORTER: Can we get Chris today?
COACH TRESSEL: Can we get Chris today? I don’t think so.
REPORTER: Why not?
COACH TRESSEL: Because he’s probably in the Whirlpool. I don’t know.
REPORTER: Coach, over the weekend, some of the talk shows were kind of beating Beanie up for dropping that ball on the play he went down on, have you addressed that at all?
COACH TRESSEL: Have I addressed it with the talk shows? We really didn’t have a big discussion about that. When a guy has an injury, I’m not sure the best bedside manner is to stand over him and talk about the fumble, but he knows he you fumbled.
REPORTER: When you’ve got a veteran quarterback and there’s so much attention to a freshman coming in, that can be a problem. Can you talk about Todd’s personality and how he deals with that?
COACH TRESSEL: Todd embraced Terrelle right off the bat because Terrelle is so anxious to learn and Todd is a good teacher. His dad is a high school coach. Todd knows the game, loves to talk about the game, I think from a football standpoint, there was an immediate click. I’m sure because there is so much attention that Todd’s aware of that and maybe in some ways kind of likes it so he can just be left on his own to do his thing and not have to worry about the attention, but I haven’t seen it affect him at all.
REPORTER: Did Terrelle handle himself better than you thought he would or as you thought he would on Saturday?
COACH TRESSEL: As I’d hoped he would. Let me use that phrase, because the thing you don’t like for any of those young guys when you put them in there is to go in there and have a tough first experience and then all of a sudden lose some confidence, even though they shouldn’t maybe, but knowing whatnot doing well can do for you. So I’d hoped he would go in and learn some lessons, do some things, have some fun, and I think he did all of the above.
REPORTER: Bryant Browning had a penalty there, how did he grade out?
COACH TRESSEL: He did well, he didn’t quite grade winning performance. The penalty might have been a little costly in that. But I thought he played solid, and he got about 40 snaps as a starter, as a right tackle solely. He had moved around a little bit last year. He was kind of our sixth guy so we had to have him a little bit of everywhere. Bryant’s going to be good.
REPORTER: To ask the same question a hundred different ways, people, I think in this state have been for a couple days just waiting and wondering about Beanie. Is the main message today that Ohio State fans can go back to their lives and not be too worried about how Beanie Wells is doing.
COACH TRESSEL: Tell them to worry more about Gustav and Rita and those kinds of things. Beanie’s going to be fine.
REPORTER: You can move into the 800 win club?
COACH TRESSEL: That’s my understanding. It’s just a great reminder. In fact we talked about it with the team yesterday. To think that you’re at a place that’s had 799 college football wins, and there’s only four others that have done that, you’re at a special place and you better understand the privilege. It’s not like this place changed when any of those showed up. This place has been extraordinary for many, many years.
REPORTER: Can you give us a full injury update for this weekend?
COACH TRESSEL: A full injury update? Got one guy that had to go to the hospital last night, a potential appendicitis, Ben Buchanan. And we’re kind of waiting to see how that goes. Austin Spitler had one of those in the middle of the summer, and what they can do nowadays in medicine is amazing, he was back in two weeks. That’s the most recent one. Outside of that, from the game, the only one’s Beanie that I can think of. Anyone else go out?
REPORTER: Sanzenbacher’s okay?
COACH TRESSEL: He got whacked, but, yeah, he’s okay.
REPORTER: You all never look at the Tatum hit from the other point of view?
COACH TRESSEL: The only guy that got hit harder was Marcus Williams on a kickoff coverage, or, no, on our kickoff return when he went to block the guy.
REPORTER: First play.
COACH TRESSEL: But, no, we don’t. It does vary away from our player every once in a while. Like Doug Calland got it last year for one of the hits, but we try to find hits of our own.
REPORTER: Could you comment on the raise you got last week, how did that come about?
COACH TRESSEL: Gene called me into his office this summer and said he’d like to do that. There was no negotiation, no discussion, all I said was, wow!
REPORTER: What are you going to do with all that money?
COACH TRESSEL: Have a big party for the media. I don’t know.
REPORTER: Do you have a date on that?
COACH TRESSEL: A date? I don’t know. Just hopefully give it away.
REPORTER: Jim, the new contract has the faculty position at the end of your career if you want it, why was that important to you?
COACH TRESSEL: People always ask you, what would you be doing if you weren’t doing this, and my answer is always, I’d be teaching, that’s what I love to do, I love teaching our football class that we have. Coach Bruce and Coach Cooper, we team teach it. I enjoy teaching and that’s what I like to do.
REPORTER: What other kinds of things would you see yourself teaching, things beyond football like a leadership class? What would you envision?
COACH TRESSEL: I was certified to teach math coming out of college but I couldn’t even help my kids when they were in fourth grade, but, gosh, I don’t know.
