Football: Video and Transcript from Coach Tressel Weekly Press Conference – Ohio State Buckeyes
9/30/2008 12:00:00 AM | Football
COACH TRESSEL: It’s good to get a victory in the Big Ten and hopefully make some progress. I thought as the coaches graded the film, there were some things that we made some progress in and there were some guys that got into the game and got some experiences because as you enter Big Ten play and you have the grind each week of having those physical games, usually the team that ends up at the top is the one that, A, stayed healthy, or, B, if someone got banged, they had someone who could step in and do what needed to be done.
We had a few more guys grade winning performance, I don’t know the exact number, but it was a little bit higher than in the Troy game, maybe eight or nine, so I think we’re progressing from a consistency standpoint a little bit there. We still have some guys with just a little bit of increased focus on things could step into that winning category and that’s where we’re hoping to go.
We did have some outstanding performers. Etienne Sabino was the special units player of the game, did a good job. He’s really about a part of a number of those special teams and takes it very serious, studies it, is a smart football player and going to be a smart defensive player as well, and he was the special units player.
The defensive player of the week was Anderson Russell. Anderson’s one of our leaders, one of our veterans back there. Minnesota gives you a lot of problems with what they do and those guys in the back end have to be able to play run-pass and all that and he did a great job in that back end and was the defensive player of the week.
Offensively Brian Robiskie had eight catches and graded very well and seems to be a lot healthier than he may have been a couple weeks ago and that’s a good thing as we enter the meat of the schedule, and so Brian Robiskie was the offensive player of the week.
The attack force player of the week was James Laurinaitis. Again, the linebacker corps really gets stressed in the spread-type approaches because sometimes they’re pass defenders, sometimes they’re option defenders, sometimes they’re run defenders, sometimes they’re man defenders, sometimes they’re blitzers and you really have to be at the top of your game and James does a great job of getting us lined up and in the right place and makes plays of his own and continues to be very, very consistent and he was our attack force player.
We did have four nominees for the Jack Tatum hit and now that we’re on a little different calendar where we didn’t practice yesterday but we’ll be back today, so the players will vote today, Etienne Sabino, Cameron Heyward, Boom Herron, and Terrelle Pryor all were nominated, and so it will be interesting to see who wins. Just so you know, you have to know where the buck stops, Coach Heacock in the case of ties has the winning vote and so that’s just, you know — I’m sure sometimes you’ve scratched your head wondering how someone ended up with it, now you know the rest of the story.
Our guys have really worked hard the last two weeks in particular on the scout teams. They’ve done a good job of coming in, watching film, trying to do everything that needed to be done to get us prepared and we feel good. We did have three award winners there, Joe Bauserman did a great job. That Weber kid at Minnesota is a great player and we needed someone to be able to run and throw and put pressure and stand in there and do all the things that Weber does and Joe went over and really did a nice job with that. K. C. Christian did a nice job with the special units and Garrett Goebel who I think is going to be a good interior lineman who at the moment is redshirting, but redshirting is a day-by-day thing, but I think he’s going to be a very good defensive lineman and he did a nice job of playing inside. Minnesota had four big guys that they rotated in the middle and played a little bit different straight technique than some people and Garrett did a good job of emulating that and so we had a lot of guys putting into the effort to see if we could get a little bit better.
Obviously we have to get a lot better. We’ll need more improvement this week than we made last week. As you go on the road in the Big Ten, we say it a million times, but if you don’t go on the road and be superior in your special units, you might have a hard time coming up with a win, so we’ve got to continue our focus and work extremely hard to make great things happen in the special teams. When you’re away from home, it doesn’t matter what’s going on, that defense has got to play and play and play because there’s no question the home crowd at times gives energy and excitement to the home offense and so forth and might get a play here or get a play there, it doesn’t matter from a defensive standpoint, they have to be relentless. And then especially on the road, and we talk about it and talk about it and talk about it, we’ve got to make sure you don’t go on the road offensively and make errors, and when you do get your chances, because you will, it’s the nature of the game of football that you’re going to get some chances, you better take advantage of every chance, so that’s always been our Big Ten road formula to go on the road and we have often believed that Big Ten championships are certainly won on the road. There’s no way you’re going to win a championship if you can’t go on the road and come up with a big victory. So it’s a huge thing for us.
Wisconsin, obviously, is coming off a tough ball game last week, they had the game well in hand, and just like it can happen when momentum shifts, it’s hard to get it stopped and that’s just going to make a very good team a much better team as we go into their house. And we’re looking forward to that challenge. They’ve got a mature team. They’ve got six seniors starting on each side of the ball, so I’m sure those seniors are going to take charge of that group and make sure that those guys understand that they can’t allow momentum to happen as it did.
So we understand the level of improvement we’ve got to move to and we’re looking forward to that and it’s a fun environment. Our guys have never played there. I think knowing our guys, they’ll be energized by the atmosphere because it will be loud and it will be fun and the hitting will be stepped up just because of all the energy that will be translated or transferred into the people on the field and I think they’re going to enjoy the experience of playing. That’s the fun — we always talk in recruiting about if you come to the Big Ten, not only do you, if you come here, get to play in Ohio Stadium which is extraordinary, but you get to go to places like Camp Randall, so our guys are looking forward to it. Questions?
REPORTER: Coach, how do you feel about Terrelle Pryor being on the Tatum list, on the hit of the week list?
COACH TRESSEL: That’s good, I’d rather have him be there than on their Tatum list. He likes to play football.
REPORTER: Is there any down side to that? Is he asking for reprisals when he makes a move like that?
COACH TRESSEL: I’m not sure I know what a reprisal is.
REPORTER: Showing up another player maybe a little bit on the sideline, are other teams going to be looking for him a little bit?
COACH TRESSEL: I’m sure they’re going to be looking for him reprisal or not, but he likes to play the game.
REPORTER: Talk about the atmosphere, what do you remember specifically about the Jump Around and were you cognitive of that and what’s it like on the sidelines when that happens?
COACH TRESSEL: Well, the thing I remembered the most, I just was asked this on the Big Ten call, what did I remember most about the last time we were there, which was ’03, the thing I remember is the rain was going sideways, and it was a neat atmosphere, it was loud and it was full, and I don’t remember the Jump Around so much because it was in middle of the game and I was working, but it’s a great atmosphere and people are having fun and players are having fun and everyone’s up a notch, but again, I remember it more from when I was assistant coach and I don’t know if it was a Jump Around, but when I was working for Coach Bruce I was up in the press box and when they switched from the third quarter to the fourth quarter, all of a sudden that press box started swinging, but I don’t know if that was Jump Around or what that was. Again, I was working and I might have even been getting yelled at through the headset, I’m not sure.
REPORTER: Due to the fact it’s been five years since you’ve played in Madison and a lot of guys haven’t really experienced that atmosphere, how do you prepare the guys to get ready for that kind of atmosphere being the first time they’re going to experience that?
COACH TRESSEL: Well, it’s something that we do all the time, whether it was last year getting ready for The Big House or Beaver Stadium or whatever it happens to be, every Thursday, we practice with noise, understanding that if we’re playing at home even, we’re probably not going to be able to hear and that the focus is going to have to stronger, the visual signals, the wristband type things, you’re going to have to utilize things other than sound.
So we’ll continue to do that as we get ready for this one and, you know, I think our guys are going to get energized by the fact this is a great environment. That’s why they came to Ohio State was to be in things such as Camp Randall and Ohio Stadium and all the rest.
REPORTER: You said you were going to use this last game to gather more data on the offensive line. What is Steve Rehring’s status and how do you see the starting lineup shaking out?
COACH TRESSEL: We were told this morning in the medical report that we thought that Steve could probably go this week, that we should be a little bit careful about the volume and practice today, especially until we see just how good — you know, today’s really the hardest workday of the week, so what I envision is getting a little help from Steve exactly where and what, I think, is going to be determined how he looks. Steve is a guy that has the ability to play both guard and tackle.
As far as gaining more data on the O line, I think every snap a guy like Michael Brewster gets helps him because he’s very talented, got excellent feet, plays with velocity, but obviously needs more experience. And so I don’t know how many plays he got, let’s say it was 50, it was a great — it was very valuable for him. Jimmy Cordle got more time at guard. Kyle Mitchum got back in there, which adds to our depth, it’s good to get him back. So if we get Steve back full speed ahead and maybe Andrew Miller, that’s kind of up in the air, I think Steve’s more possible than Andrew, but we’ll see, you know, we’ll have a chance to keep competing up there and keep trying to find what the best mix is.
REPORTER: Is Brewster your starting center from here on out?
COACH TRESSEL: There’s nothing from here on out, we’ve been through that, but today’s practice, he’ll be working with the first group.
REPORTER: Is that a concern, I guess, with the atmosphere up there, the noise, Jim’s handled that situation, I know he’s helping Mike, is that as much of a concern as it would be?
COACH TRESSEL: I don’t know, we’ll find out. It’s a concern whether it’s a fourth-year starting center, you’ve got to do it well that night in that crowd, but I don’t have any feeling as if he won’t.
REPORTER: Pryor was sort of talking after the Minnesota game about people, Mark May singled out whether he could do it on the big stage, it almost seemed like he had a chip on his shoulder. Is there a temptation to try to do too much if you do it that way?
COACH TRESSEL: I know this much about Terrelle and maybe some of our guys that don’t get a chance to be interviewed as much, they’re anxious to compete, and Terrelle’s the kind of guy that, someone asked me on the Big Ten call, do you like that maybe he’s a calm guy out there and that’s all I’ve seen. Whether it was the first scrimmage, he was calm. He lined up against the first defense, he was calm. First game, Ohio Stadium, he was calm. Now, maybe inside he was dying, who knows, but outwardly and performance-wise, he was calm. I thought at the Coliseum, he had command. Has he been perfect? No. Has he executed everything exactly right? Absolutely not. Every experience is going to be a valuable one for him and this is up another notch.
REPORTER: It seemed like you were a little bit disappointed in the passing game and the way it’s progressing, could you talk a little bit about that, what you think you need to get to to balance offense passing and run?
COACH TRESSEL: I think the whole key to the passing game is consistency in your protection and the thing about pass protection is it’s usually five guys, six guys, seven guys that are all a part of it and you can’t have any breakdowns whatsoever. So the consistency of protection, I think, is the first thing you always address and then if that’s in good shape, now it comes down to what is the guy with the ball in his hand and what are the guys running the proper routes and effecting the things they’re supposed to effect and the decisions being made. We want to be a balanced team. I think we called maybe 27 or 28 passes last week, only threw 22 of them, but we’d like to be a team that can do both because defensively, I mean Anderson’s here to talk with you in a little bit, Anderson will tell you that defensively they have defenses that they have too many in the box for you to legitimately run and if you can’t pass, you’re dead, and so you never want to be in that situation.
REPORTER: You said after the game that you’ll look at — you’ll use whoever you need to in order to improve that. Were you referring more to the offensive line or the quarterbacks? Is that something more you expect Terrelle to go into that role of being a better passer or the two series that Todd got, is that more of an indication of —
COACH TRESSEL: No, I expect Terrelle to continue to grow and become better and better. We need Todd ready to win the Big Ten conference. You have to have two guys ready. Some years it takes two. I remember when Scottie McMullen had to go in and win a game. We didn’t end up winning the Big Ten conference but the game he needed to go in and take us on a long drive, he did it. So I was referring to everybody. However we’ve got to get better offensively up front, the backs in their protection, the receivers in their route running, the quarterbacks in their decision making, the coaches in their design, we’ve got to get better in every phase.
REPORTER: How did Chris Wells come out of the game Saturday and do you feel like he’s to a stage where maybe you can lean on him a little bit more this week than 14 carries or whatever he had?
COACH TRESSEL: Well, I think he came out of it pretty good. I’m sure he was sore. Everyone who was in the game was probably sore. It didn’t seem like I heard any different. But I think that was a hurdle we needed to get through. He felt good about getting in there and being banged around, now we do need to lean on him, but not necessarily in the last phrase you used, not necessarily more carries, he needs to be great with the ball, however many that is, and he needs to be great without the ball, pass protection, route running, faking, you know, all those things. So, yeah, we do — now it’s no longer is he going to play or isn’t he going to play, as of this moment, things, you never know, now we’ve got to make sure we take the next step from a progress standpoint.
REPORTER: Jim, as you’ve watched him run, what sets him apart? Clearly he had some pops even Saturday, it looked like a little bit of rust too, but over the last couple years, what have you seen that sets him apart from those other guys?
COACH TRESSEL: Beanie has great vision. When his shoulders are square to the line of scrimmage, his ability to cut laterally for a man his size is, I think, outstanding, and then he’s hard to tackle. A lot of times, you can ask Anderson that, I’m sure Anderson is, in scrimmages or whatever, all of a sudden he sees this hole and here comes this guy through the hole and it’s like, okay, what do I do? Do I go after his ankles? Do I go after his thighs? Do I go after him up top? You know, what is it?
So he adds that dimension, but he’s not a guy that will just run straight at you and run you over. He’s got excellent lateral quickness. He can go sideways and accelerate for a man his size about as well as I’ve seen.
REPORTER: Did you see most of that again Saturday as you watched the tape?
COACH TRESSEL: He did, he made some really good cuts. He made some good vision moves and there were some times in the game that I felt a little bit like it was at the beginning of the year and that he was so anxious to get the ball that he didn’t have quite the patience at the outset, but as the carries mounted, you could see that he got more comfortable and a little bit less excited and a little bit more cerebral about what he was trying to do.
REPORTER: After the fumble, he didn’t go back in the next series. Was that a message or was that just a rotation?
COACH TRESSEL: Maybe both. I can’t remember. But say the message, because we can’t fumble.
REPORTER: Rory Nicol, update on him?
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, Rory will be out. We won’t have Spitler. Hopefully get Steve Rehring back. Tyler Moeller should be back. He was at about 80% but played some, we’d like to think he’ll be at 100%. Who am I missing there?
REPORTER: And Andre Amos?
COACH TRESSEL: Andre Amos is out for the year. He had a surgery.
REPORTER: Mo Wells?
COACH TRESSEL: Mo Wells should be back. In the medical report today they said Mo would be back, which should be helpful for us. Denlinger should be stronger. I hope we’re now past that plateau. You have those ankle injuries and you get a little bit better, but then you just kind of stay the same for a little bit and then you break through. I hope this is Todd’s break-through week. Jamario O’Neal, his has been more of a sickness thing, so I think he’ll be okay.
REPORTER: One of the papers had Terrelle and Beanie listed as the dynamic duo. What do you get now to do with Terrelle with Beanie in the background that you didn’t have when Beanie wasn’t there? And secondly, when Todd is coming out to these post-game news conferences, is that something he wants to do or is that just part of being a captain?
COACH TRESSEL: Well, I’m not sure after a game anyone wants to. I mean, you want to go home. Nothing personal, but you want to go home. You’ve been nervous all day and you’ve played or coached hard or whatever and it’s not like, oh, wow, I get to go out to the press conference, but you feel as if that’s part of the game. That’s part of your responsibility, part of your obligation. A lot of people would like to have a little bit more insight on what went on in the game and how you felt about it and all those things, so I think Todd’s sense of obligation is such that that’s part of his job and I think he handles himself admirably and he’s a good captain, good person, and does it well.
Now, as far as dynamic duo-type thing, we don’t run different plays when there are different tailbacks or quarterbacks in the game. You might feature something a little bit more than another thing, but Danny Herron’s going to play. I think getting Mo Wells back will give us a little bit more steam there. If you looked back at the ’07 Minnesota game, as we were preparing for the ’08 Minnesota game, Mo Wells had a big part of that second half of keeping that lead and keeping the ball and as I was watching that the whole week, I was like dying because I’m thinking, we don’t even have Mo and who knows how much Beanie will be able to go, you don’t know until a guy’s out there, so I’m excited to have Mo back.
REPORTER: After playing so many spread teams, do you look forward to sort of playing an old school offense in Wisconsin and what’s the mindset your defense needs against that type of team?
COACH TRESSEL: Well, hopefully our defense has had enough work against that over the course of the spring and the fall and the years and so forth that they understand what needs to be a little bit different when you play against different styles of offense and sometimes there’s a little bit of personnel shifting. Sometimes against the spread teams you might put your bigger defense ends inside and bring in your smaller defensive ends to run the field and all those things and maybe you go the opposite, I can’t even tell you, you’ll have to ask the defensive coaches what their plans are, but there’s a little bit of different needs by everybody and will our guys look forward to it? I think there’s no question. Our guys love the competition, they love the challenges, and they know full well that Wisconsin’s going to come right at them and do a great job with their play action game and it’s not like they don’t play well, they’ll get Beckum back and the other tight end back, we’re going to have to be ready for the whole package, but our guys will work hard to be prepared.
REPORTER: When you’re coaching against a team and you see them lose a disappointing game as it was with Wisconsin, do you anticipate a different team than you might have faced had they not had a problem? Do you anticipate that the coaches will really be on them this week, they’re going to be down, so they’re going to put even more emphasis perhaps?
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, I think when you’re playing a good team that didn’t play as well as they could the week before, you’re going to get a better team than maybe you would have if everything was just wonderful. I think that’s the way life is. It’s our instincts to want to do better when we didn’t do as well, even though you’d think, well, our instincts ought to be I want to do better when I just did well, I’m not sure that’s as human as the former.
REPORTER: We always talk about redemption for players when they’ve lost to a team the year before or whatever, this is the only Big Ten school that has a winning record against you personally. Do you have any more fire in yourself when you go up against this team, particularly Wisconsin?
COACH TRESSEL: I don’t know. I hope I have a lot of fire against every one of them, whether we’ve ever played them or we’ve won more than we’ve lost or we’ve lost more than we’ve won. The Ohio State/Wisconsin game since I’ve been here has been with two of the better teams in the conference, both of those teams probably ended up in the upper half of the conference, so they’re big games.
And, I don’t know, maybe the years we beat them, we won the conference, I can’t think. ’02. ’07. So I guess if you want to win the conference, you better beat Wisconsin and they are probably just the opposite, if they want to win the conference, they better beat Ohio State.
REPORTER: Last year P. J. Hill didn’t play in the game and he’s been relatively healthy this year. Talk about what kind of a factor he’s going to be in this game and how much they rely on him?
COACH TRESSEL: He’s a great running back. He’s a load. Every time you hit him, he wants to leave a little bit of, as we would call it, a cumulative effect. So, I mean, he’s a tough one, but whoever’s playing tailback for him, whether it’s John Clay or Zach Brown or P. J., you better be ready to tackle.
REPORTER: You rotated a lot of wide receivers Saturday.
COACH TRESSEL: Like 12 at a time.
REPORTER: You said you weren’t necessarily happy with all the passing game. How do you evaluate how those guys did if you didn’t throw maybe as much as you would like?
COACH TRESSEL: Outside of a couple substitution errors, which when you’re playing that many guys, sometimes it’s going to happen. “I thought it was my turn” type thing. I thought there was valuable experience for the guys that hadn’t had as much. We went into the game thinking that maybe we had been overplaying the first two guys and that maybe they just didn’t have the steam they needed down the stretch and maybe 50 some plays when you’re running as long and as fast and so forth isn’t the best thing and so we just felt that that was the thing to do for the moment.
As the games get a little cooler, I think in early going, sometimes I think back to Chris Gamble played 128 plays a game one year, half a year, but it was the back half of the year, it was the cooler time in the year, and then the very next year, he wanted to play every play. And we got through about preseason camp and the first two games and he was like, yeah, you know, maybe I don’t need to play as much offense, because it’s just a different world.
It was valuable, I think, for our guys to get in there, and I can’t remember a whole bunch of things that the younger receivers didn’t do well that caused us major problems, so hopefully they can be counted upon.
REPORTER: Do you see that much liberal substitution going on the rest of the season?
COACH TRESSEL: Well, we’re going to have to do it better than we did it, because not only did we get two penalties, we were warned, hey, you know, you’ve got like 15 guys out there at a time. And I told the ref, I said, obviously it’s not to deceive them, because we’re deceived, we’re not even sure who’s supposed to be out there, but we’ll just have to see.
REPORTER: Is Laurinaitis having another award-winning type year and if so, is he doing it against greater odds or if he’s not up to standard, is it because he’s getting more?
COACH TRESSEL: Oh, he’s definitely playing as well as he’s ever played. He’s so disciplined. He’s so instinctive. He’s right where you want him to be. It’s hard to double and triple team, whether you’re double and triple teaming a linebacker, that means about three other guys are killing the linebacker. Guys have said why don’t you double and triple team Minnesota because they don’t throw it as well. It’s not that easy because those other guys, I imagine if no one’s around, they’ll throw it to them.
So I don’t know that James is getting — now, maybe people are real anxious to block him. If I was an offensive lineman wanting to scoop up, if I can get after 33, I’m going to get noticed or whatever. James is playing extremely well. Leading extremely well. Preparing extremely well. He and Malcolm, everyone talked about those were the two that might have left and all that stuff and sometimes you wonder, gosh, I hope they’re even half as good as they were before, they’re both preparing and practicing and playing even better than they’ve ever been and it’s great to see.
REPORTER: Could you comment on Brandon Saine’s progress and where he stands?
COACH TRESSEL: Brandon lost some reps because Danny Herron got all of a sudden ahold of the ball and Brandon was on the sideline for 20 some practices and it’s hard at that position. If you don’t get your rhythm and get rolling and get opportunities and so forth. I thought Brandon did a good job bringing kicks back on Saturday. He got in a little bit on the offensive side. We continue to talk about how we can utilize him, but right now with all of a sudden Beanie getting back, and Boom, I think, doing very well, the tailback reps become even more rare.
REPORTER: What is that like when you’re on the road? You mentioned earlier how momentum got away from Wisconsin up in Michigan. When you seem like you’ve got control of a game or you’re comfortable where you are and the home team kind of makes a run, how do you counteract that or what do you do? How does that feel on the side line when that happens to?
COACH TRESSEL: The thing you better not be doing is looking up at the scored board to see if that clock’s ending because that tells you a little bit about what’s going on in your mind. To me, momentum is a mindset. As Coach Bruce would say, you’re going down because I say you’re going down, or we’re keeping momentum because we decide we’re keeping the momentum or changing the momentum or whatever it happens to be. You see sometimes teams try to hold on, and that’s not the way to stop momentum. If that snowball’s rolling down the hill, you don’t hold on to it, you run around in front of it and you stop it. To me it’s a mental thing.
REPORTER: Do you think you’re back into the national title with all the upsets?
COACH TRESSEL: That’s probably why there are upsets because people talk in September about whether they’re in the National Championship picture. You better be in the picture that’s in that frame right now and the one that’s in the frame right now is Wisconsin.
REPORTER: We saw Nathan Williams more on Saturday than we’d seen before. What has he done to get himself on the field?
COACH TRESSEL: He’s done a good job. He’s still got a banged up shoulder, and this won’t be the kind of game for a guy with a banged up shoulder, but he’s got good instincts. He’s got excellent speed. He’s the kind of guy that can put some pressure on you off the edge. He’s going to be a very, very good player.
REPORTER: Can you talk about Mark Johnson leaving the program, Jim?
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, he made a decision he wanted to go somewhere else to get a little bit more playing time and wanted to do so before school started so he could get enrolled somewhere.
REPORTER: The good news is, I guess, it opens up a scholarship for you guys. Is that the one good news about something like that?
COACH TRESSEL: If there is good news. Hopefully the good news is he gets somewhere and he’s happy and he continues to progress for his degree and maybe he will get more playing time. That’s what you hope the good news is. I guess the real news is that that opens up a scholarship, but quite honestly in recruiting, when you start talking about how many you’re going to scholarship, you always build in the thought that there’s going to be some attrition, whether it’s an in injured guy, medical, a guy leave, so it’s not like there’s this new-found scholarship out there. I’ve got to go with Emily because I’ve got to let you get with Anderson Russell. Clay? What’s your first name?
REPORTER: Dionne.
COACH TRESSEL: Dionne, go. She saved you, Emily.
REPORTER: Can you talk about the sloppy play in the last quarter and a half against Minnesota, how do you address that especially with what you said about momentum and being on the road and that sort of thing?
COACH TRESSEL: We’ve got to make sure that we do a good job of not letting it start to go south. Sometimes it’s from substitution and all of a sudden that guy wasn’t in there recognizing what they’re doing to us and it’s hard — you ask them to do that on the side line, you ask them to be focused in because you might be in there next and you’ve got to see what they’re doing to you and those kinds of things, so it’s just a matter of if and when we substitute, the people that we substitute have to be ready to pick up and carry on right where the guys were so that there is no momentum shift, and that’s difficult sometimes, but you weigh the risk versus reward.
We thought the reward of substituting was to get some guys into the game, because they might be lined up some game that makes all the difference in the world and we want them to have been in there. Thank you much.
