Coach Tressel Weekly Press Conference Transcript/Video – Ohio State Buckeyes
10/26/2010 12:00:00 AM | Football
COACH TRESSEL: Well, the Buckeyes are 6-0 and Paul Keels is 1-1. It’s good to see Paul back and we missed him, but glad he’s feeling well and the Ohio State Hospitals could be there for him.
It’s good to have a homecoming. I think anytime you’re really anxious to get back out on that field, it’s nice that it’s your own field and I thought our guys prepared well after, you know, a significant disappointment the week before and we were most interested in trying to get better. And I thought we had a good week of practice. I thought Purdue helped us by kicking it out of bounds, and that just is another reminder of the impact that the special teams have, not just in the simple field position, but in the emotional flow of the game, gave us great field position. Now we’re in a situation where we’re 60 yards away from points rather than maybe 80, and I think your percent chance of scoring is, like, maybe 20 to 25 percent higher just between those two field zones. And then they had the error on their punt return and all of a sudden it was 14-0, and we were at home and they were young and they had been through adversities of their own with injuries to their great receiver and their quarterback and tailback, and then I think later in the game the quarterback got banged a little bit, so it was an adverse situation for them and a situation that turned out such that we could play some guys and, again, get a little bit more depth built and see if we can enter this final third of the regular season with good health and good play and momentum.
And now we need to go on the road and play better than we’ve played on the road. We head to Minnesota and it will be the first time for any of us on our team to ever have seen the stadium let alone play in it, so that will be exciting for us. And it’s an evening primetime game, and our guys will get excited about that. So now we’ve got to go back to work and understand that we’re facing a veteran quarterback in Adam Weber. We had him in youth camp. I thought he was outstanding then, and 10,000 yards later I think he’s still outstanding. And I think the school career passing record for us is a little over 7,000 and he’s got 10,000, just to put it in perspective what he’s been able to accomplish and he’s a heck of a player. He’s a competitor. He’s a senior. You can just hear in his comments that he doesn’t want to hear about coaching transition or this or that, this is still the 2010 Minnesota Golden Gophers and still the same team it was at the beginning of the year who has a passion to get some good things done, and through his leadership, you can be sure that they’ll never stop, and that’s the kind of leader that you want to have. And he leads a young group of receivers who I think are getting better and better and they’ve done a good job of giving you a lot of different formation looks, a lot of different personnel groupings.
It will be a good challenge from a linemen assignment standpoint, to begin with, for our defense, and they’ve moved the football. I think they had 27 first downs last weekend. Normally you’re going to win if you have 27 first downs. So they’ll give our defense every challenge we could possibly want. Over on their defensive side, they were very young when they began, now they’re eight or nine games into it and they’re no longer — you no longer talk when you talk about a team of so and so had this many starters returning because that’s irrelevant now because they’re going into this point in the season.
And they seem to have dialed up a little bit more of their pressure package in this last game or so than they did earlier in the year. They did a similar amount against us a year ago, so it’s not like we haven’t seen it. It’s not like it’s anything brand new, but they are bringing good pressure. I think they’re playing a little bit loose and getting just excited to go out and hit somebody and see if they can create turnovers and so forth, so it will be a great challenge for us.
Special teams, we always say, is the key when we go on the road and I think if anyone has an interest in Big Ten football and doesn’t think that the special teams had maybe the biggest impact on last weekend, Wisconsin’s fake punt was probably the turning point in that game. Michigan State’s fake punt was probably the turning point in that game. I think Iowa missed a field goal, which was big, and an extra point, perhaps. The Cleveland Browns, I didn’t see it, but the little reverse pass or whatever they did was huge in their game, and on and on and on. Missouri, I think, didn’t they bring the opening kickoff back?
So special teams is something that we’ll never stop talking about and you’ll never be able to convince me of its relative impact on the emotion of the game, and football is an emotional game. And so we’ve got to make sure that despite the fact that we’ve had to go with a lot of different lineups due to injuries in the linebacker and DB areas, we’ve got to get better at special teams, especially on the road. It’s a huge impact. Purdue found that. Go full circle, Purdue found that out, coming over here, you can’t make two big special teams mistakes and think you’re going to win in someone else’s stadium.
So we’re looking forward to preparing. I don’t know today if we’ll be inside or out. It looks a little nasty. I worry about our cameramen, their well-being up there 50 feet in the air. So we’ll see how that goes, but we’re looking forward to it.
Health-wise, Christian Bryant is still in the hospital. His foot’s doing good. The effects of all the medications and so forth, still haven’t released him yet. We hope here today or tomorrow, last I heard. But his foot’s doing fine. I’m sure it will be six weeks or better before he can play football.
Ross Homan, I think, will do a little land running today. He’s been running in water a lot. I don’t think there will be any way that he would be ready for this weekend. Who else am I missing? Corey Brown’s going to be out for the year and the spring.
REPORTER: Dorian Bell?
COACH TRESSEL: Dorian probably won’t make it for this week, but we’d like to think that he’ll be back sooner than a week ago. He’s not going to be — it will be close probably for — after the bye week, yeah.
REPORTER: Jim, I’m wondering, when you have a bye week, obviously you want the people to heal, get a little bit healthy, but when you’re laying out your plans for practices, is there anything that you say, look, we’ll address this when we have an opponent, but when we have an extra week, this is something we need to get into, but from a coaching standpoint, how do you use that extra week that you have when you’ve got a bye week?
COACH TRESSEL: We haven’t had a bye week a whole bunch around here. In my nine years, we’ve probably had it half the time maybe, I’m guessing. Sometimes it’s been early. Sometimes it’s been late. I think, as you say, your health is first, catching up academically is second, just less time for them in football. And then what happens sometimes you say, you know what, we need to start doing this or that and now we can get some rehearsal on it, but that is way ahead of Minnesota. What you didn’t want to do, you just did.
REPORTER: Purdue said that they basically went back to basics and started hitting a little bit more and they changed their entire plan during the week they had off.
COACH TRESSEL: I see.
REPORTER: I’m wondering as the week progresses, do you say this is something we don’t have time now, but we’ll address this later?
COACH TRESSEL: I think an early-in-the-year bye week is different than a late-in-the-year bye week, and I remember, Jim, were you still — no, you weren’t still on the team when they played Alabama and then they had two weeks off?
JIM LACHEY: ’86, I think.
COACH TRESSEL: That was ’86, but they went back and kind of had another training camp because it was so early. We kind of did that in ’02 when we played Texas Tech and then Kent and then a bye and then I think Washington State, but we kind of went back to the basics, but I don’t think you do that in late October, early November, and I don’t think you make the plans for it until you know what your scenario is, the health and all those things. As you said eloquently, Minnesota is what it’s all about.
REPORTER: J.B. Shugarts, it seems like he’s trying to cut things out as much as he can with his foot. Is this a game where he may not play a full game? Last year you rested Boren in one of the games, is this a potential? Would that help him to have two weeks of rest leading into your final? And the other part of this is what is the push/pull for this, he gets beat in a sack in the game on Saturday, is that potentially because he’s not a hundred percent?
COACH TRESSEL: You asked a few questions there.
REPORTER: I’ve got a lot of them in here.
COACH TRESSEL: The one time that 94 ran around him, he just had a poor kick slot, just poor technique, got off the ball a little bit late. If you get off late on 94, I don’t care if your feet feel good or don’t feel good, you’re not going to get him. As far as feet, I’ve said to you before, I don’t know if he’ll ever have good feet. We were hoping to get 25 plays before it got too inflamed and that kind of thing and we got 39, I think, before it was just — all of a sudden he couldn’t do the job. I thought he did the job pretty well. In fact, I think he graded a winning performance in the ball game.
So, no, we wouldn’t go into this game saying we’re going to rest anybody. This game obviously has conference implications and everything else. And I think the game Justin might have sat out was New Mexico State, and probably if it was a conference game, you would have wound it up and so forth. But he’s hurting. And like you say, he’s just trying to fight through it.
REPORTER: Has Andrew Norwell been a pleasant surprise especially coming off such a serious injury? Obviously you like him, you recruited him.
COACH TRESSEL: I don’t know about a surprise, because you think you’ve got a good one, how’s he going to adjust, how’s he going to be away from home, how much is he going to know about pass protection. High school guys usually are pretty good run blocking because the guys against them aren’t quite as big and all that, but he’s got very quick feet. He’s very instinctive. Got a long way to go, but the experiences he’s getting now, we’re lucky he’s as good as he is, and the experiences he’s getting are tremendous, but he’s still a freshman playing a very difficult position, but we’re happy he’s a Buckeye for sure.
REPORTER: Terrelle said something after the game about how the starters haven’t really gotten to play the whole game very much this year, and I know after Wisconsin, he thought that was one advantage they had on you guys, their guys had gone a full game and you guys hadn’t. Is that something that concerns you going forward that you’ve had a lot of games wrapped up early and haven’t gone the distance?
COACH TRESSEL: Our first conference game was Illinois. I’d say we went all the way there. Miami wasn’t a short one. We have had a couple, there’s no question. I guess you could look at it one of two ways. It could end up being a detriment to you. It could end up if you go a bunch of long games and a bunch of guys get hurt, and, oh, my gosh, it might have been nicer if we didn’t have so many plays. Again, you know, who cares? We’re playing Minnesota, here’s the guys that — here’s what we’ve done before and here’s what the schedule is, here’s what the open date is, here’s what time they’re telling us to play. Now, what you do in that game is going to determine whether or not you’re successful.
REPORTER: Jim, you talked about going on the road and stuff. Are you disappointed with the way your team’s responded to the first few trips on the road? Did you think a senior-laden group like this would be —
COACH TRESSEL: We’ve played two pretty good teams on the road, so I don’t know if I’d use disappointed. Do we need to play better? Yes, absolutely. We’ve especially got to make sure we understand we’ve got to do even better in the special teams on the road, but, no, I haven’t looked at our two trips and said, oh, gee, I don’t think they were focused or I don’t think they understood or they let the crowd get to them or nothing like that, but do we need to execute better? You know, for sure. And we’ve had the good fortune, and maybe it’s a negative that we had all the home games, I doubt it, but do we need to play better on the road? Absolutely. It’s hard to win on the road. And do we thoroughly understand that? You’d think we would at this point, but we’ll find out when we take the road again.
REPORTER: Is there a real apprehension because you’re going to a new venue simply because, I don’t know, a different dressing room, maybe how you get to the field, all that? It might be minor, but nobody’s had any experience with it.
COACH TRESSEL: Interestingly enough, in between away games, you’ve probably got a 60 percent turnover in your team. That’s just the way it is. About 37 new guys this year that had never been to training camp, let alone been to Illinois or — so you’re probably a third of your guys have been somewhere before. So, no, we’ll go over there Saturday morning and we’ll get a good walk-through and all those kind of things. We can’t let that be something. We’ve got to — when the whistle blows and the ball’s inside those stripes we’ve got to do those things and try to have everything else shut out, and I hope a bunch of red shows up in that stadium. I like those. Mr. Hall?
REPORTER: Have you gotten wind of these proposals by the NFL, the NFLPA and I guess Jim Delaney was involved in some discussion that they’re moving forward and they would penalize players in their first — in their rookie season in the NFL so there would be a little more liability?
COACH TRESSEL: Are you talking about the agent things?
REPORTER: And they’re supposed to meet, I think.
COACH TRESSEL: There’s been a couple meetings in regard to the agents illegally meeting with college players and inducements and fringe benefits and all that. We had two or three conference calls in July and August. There was a meeting, I think, in Indianapolis, September 14th. I think there’s been a follow-up meeting. There’s been a lot of discussions. The point you bring out about potential penalties later on is one that we as college coaches really promoted because it’s difficult if there are no consequences for poor behavior. And will that occur? You know, we’ll find out. I haven’t been in the two meetings. I was on the conference calls. I’ve been briefed as to what went on in the meeting, but the neat things is, is that all the parties are in the room. We’ve got the NFLPA, the NFL, there’s a group of agents, there’s the NCAA, the AFCA, everyone in the room is trying to figure out what’s best for the kids.
REPORTER: The thing that floated out there was there was a six to eight-month suspension.
COACH TRESSEL: I have never heard any length or whether it would be monetary or games or — now, again, I wasn’t in the meetings, but I didn’t hear any of that from the summary of the meetings either. That’s someone probably prognosticating, I’ll bet you it’s this. I have not heard that.
REPORTER: But that’s progress for your side?
COACH TRESSEL: Oh, it’s progress — well, our side is the kids. So it’s progress for helping kids have the right kind of behavior.
REPORTER: Jim, do you see anything on film — is Minnesota any different at all since the coaching change or are they doing the same thing?
COACH TRESSEL: As I mentioned, I thought they brought a little more pressure on defense than they had earlier in the season, but no more than they brought against us last year. So we look at those things: A, how did they play us in the past; and, B, how have they been playing lately? So we’re expecting a very aggressive, hey, let’s go after it mentality. And offensively, I think you’ve seen an evolution, they’ve had — I don’t know how long Tim was there, four years? Five? Four? I think they’ve had four different offensive coordinators. So there’s an evolution in every offensive coordinator and if you have them late in the year, you can really kind of read it. If you have them early in the year like we had Illinois, they’ve only played a couple games and they weren’t sure exactly where they were heading. But you can see the evolution that Minnesota’s doing a good job of using the personnel that they have. Those two receivers, you know, they’ve really — you can see they’ve really gone to featuring them. They’ve got the two good backs. They know they’ve got a veteran quarterback. So I think you’re seeing a natural progression. I don’t think we’ll see a drastically different defense than what we’ve seen. We’ll see one that comes after you.
REPORTER: Jim, with all the injuries at defensive back, you have three senior starters on the field and also just mentoring and helping the other guys coming in.
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, those three veteran guys have really been — have been special because not only have they been good mentors and not only have they had to worry about they themselves playing their position well, but they’ve had to take an inordinate number of practice snaps and that’s what I get a little bit nervous about. Same thing with special teams. It’s like, okay, we’re going to have a group, we’ll be all right. All of a sudden you get worn out a little bit because you’re practicing so much. So we as coaches, we’ve got to get a look at this and we’ve got to get a look at that. We’ve got to be smart about taking care of their bodies, so those guys have carried a lot of the weight of the group.
REPORTER: It sounds like Jermale, a lot of guys coming in talk about Rolle helping them, has he stepped up in a way?
COACH TRESSEL: Jermale is the kind of guy that whether you want his help or not, he’s giving it, you know what I mean? Because he wants a good team and he wants — he doesn’t care how young you are, he expects you to be in the right place. Jermale’s a good football player. Jermale’s a good leader, there’s no question.
REPORTER: Did you have a sense that Philly Brown could be this kind of player? What was your sense of him when you signed him on tape, I’m not saying he fell through the cracks shall but he didn’t get that big belly who like some of the guys did, but what did you see about him that told you —
COACH TRESSEL: Well, often early commits don’t get big Bailey who because everyone knows where they’re going and you guys all want something that’s new, that’s why they call it the news. He was special. When we got a commitment from him, it was like, woe, this guy’s special. Now, how is a guy going to adjust — when you need a guy to run the ball, when you need a guy to kick it to, he caught it, how is a guy going to adjust to — we’ve got to figure out where does he fit best, where can he compete. When he first got here, I always take a little bit of direction from the older guys when they have their little seven on sevens and stuff and I like hearing them talk about who’s pretty good. I remember Terrelle telling me one day, he said, hey, that Philly Brown is the truth, you know. Now, he didn’t have to know any coverages and he didn’t have to know any plays. He was just out there. His ability was the truth. Well, how fast can you learn things? He really learns football. He has a good sense of it. We have felt that he was going to progress and he has.
REPORTER: Do you see him more and more on the field as the season goes on now?
COACH TRESSEL: I think he had about 30 snaps and Taurian had about 21 and prior to that, it was probably the other way as he was learning and so forth. But you never know. We need them all, because you never know who turns an ankle and you never know who does what, but I hope he’s healthy and in the game because Philly’s going to be a good player.
REPORTER: You talked about Minnesota evolving offensively. From your standpoint, it seemed like Saturday you were under center a little bit more than in the past. Is that something was Purdue specific or do you feel like there’s something there that you’ve got?
COACH TRESSEL: I think a little bit of all those things. One, based on what they did, we thought that that was a good way to deploy, based on the way the game unfolded, that was good then for us to do. Like anything else, there’s a little trial and error in everything. You think this might be fine and then when it isn’t, all of a sudden, it’s like, whoa, see you later with that. But if it is fine, let’s build on it, but it’s always — the I-formation to the field is Jim Bollman’s base formation, everyone knows that. It’s so easy to read what’s coming blitz-wise and coverage-wise, he’s always had that philosophy, and I’m sure we’ll continue to do it.
REPORTER: You guys do different things on offense, but at this point in Terrelle’s career, what is it that you think he likes best or does best or have you had a day where you said, Terrelle Pryor, you’re calling all the plays today, what do you think he would lean toward?
COACH TRESSEL: He’s starting to call a few more of them now. He came to us at one point in him game and said, here’s the way they’re playing this, we’ve got to throw this and all of a sudden he hits a 19-yard dig route, he had it cold. And all of a sudden he came back and called the next play and I’ve got, man, we’ve got all you other guys up there, what do I need you for? But understanding is greater. Are we to point yet where we say, hey, we’re just going to give him a formation and you’re going to take over? Probably not there yet. Will we ever get there? We’ll see. We study things in the pass game by protection because that’s what it’s all about and which things do you do best in protection and in fact we’re right now in the midst of a pretty intense study of ourselves by protection, by quarterback in this case, although we were teasing Terrelle that if you take Big Ten stats original, Terrelle’s fourth in the league in passing efficiency and Bauserman’s first. So we’ve had fun with that all week, believe me. Right now, as we look at our various protections, which ones are we executing better, numbers sometimes lie, so the first thing you do is you get the numbers, and then you go back and look at the film and say, did we execute this because of protection, because of the actual design or in spite of the fact, you know, he dodged three people and jumped up in the air and threw a pass and that type of thing, but you know right now, I think the fact that he’s been under center a little bit more and done a little more throwing from under center than he did early in his career, I think he’s becoming more comfortable in that and that’s something we want him to. I think he’s comfortable with the five-man protections where he’s got to do more Q throws and all that and I think he’s also comfortable with the seven-man protections where he knows if they green dog someone, he’s going to be protected or if someone has poor technique and they beat us around the corner. So I think comfort level is coming along in all those things. And I think I said on the Big Ten call, someone asked me about Terrelle and where you really have an appreciation of his growth is when you’re getting ready for a team, we’re getting ready for Minnesota, so you watch him last year against Minnesota and you’ve been watching him every day now, he’s like a different guy. Now, that slant throw that he misfired and was picked, he couldn’t sleep for two days, but he knew exactly what he did. Two years ago, you might have that same issue, and you don’t even — you had no idea why because we were just trying to get the ball out of our hand, that type of thing. But we’ll just keep grinding away at that. And I don’t even remember the question.
REPORTER: What does he do best?
COACH TRESSEL: Okay. How about that the Ken?
REPORTER: That’s pretty good. We liked it.
COACH TRESSEL: All right. We’ve got — I’m sorry.
REPORTER: He also looks comfortable out on the edge a couple times Saturday.
COACH TRESSEL: Oh, yeah.
REPORTER: Do you see him as an ultimate threat when he gets out there.
COACH TRESSEL: That’s one more threat. There’s no question. To me, wherever he is, he’s a threat. For instance if you watch the Northwestern, Minnesota game, the key to that game is when they decided they really had to play man under, so forth, that quarterback went running like crazy because there was no one assigned to him. Terrelle can do that when he’s in the pocket, he can step you and go to really be a threat. But when he’s out on the edge, now you’re a zone defender and you’ve got to decide, do I have to stay back here under this receiver or who’s going to tackle him. We have to pressure from a lot of different places. The thing I never want to get caught in is, we only launch from one point because if you only launch from one point, you know, that — what did Macarthur say, he said if they know where we are, they’ll blow us up and the same thing true for quarterback.
REPORTER: You were talking about the protection — the five-man protection versus seven-man, as your tackles have gained experience just like everybody, are you able to do a little bit more without keeping as many guys in because Mike is older, Mike is more experienced?
COACH TRESSEL: Oh, I think our tackles have come along. I think we pass protected Wisconsin pretty well and Illinois and Purdue. Now, were we perfect? No. And in those kind of games, it might be one play that tip the scale and we’ve faced some good ones. Watt and Kerrigan, there are some good ones in this league. No, I think we’re getting better and of course that helps. I could stand back there and complete some balls if there’s no one in my face. It’s all about protection. Ashley, we’re putting you in the group here.
REPORTER: Thank you.
COACH TRESSEL: Dionne is kind of under the weather a little bit.
REPORTER: My question was that Ohio State is first in the Big Ten for turnover margin and they’re obviously first in the NCAA for points in the game and sixth in the NCAA, how do you keep them focused and not overlooking an opponent like Minnesota who’s 0-4 in the Big Ten?
COACH TRESSEL: If you look a little deeper into the statistics, we’re not first in the Big Ten games in turnover margin. We all if you take all however many games we’ve played, but if you just take the four, three — four Big Ten games we’ve played, we’re, like, fourth in turnover margin, maybe second in scoring and so we keep the realities in front of our guys. I do want them to know how we match up nationally and how we match up with all the games we’ve played because those games count too and wasn’t easy getting first downs against Miami or whatever. But I also want the reality of, okay, right now we’re in the midst of the Big Ten season, here’s who we’re competing against, here’s the guys you’re lining up against, here’s where they’re ranked and I want reality and awareness, so I think our guys do a pretty good job, not perfect, but a pretty good job of honest reflection of where we are and where we aren’t and, now, maybe not all the guys, but in general, I think pretty good. All right, Natalie, go ahead.
REPORTER: One of my favorite things you said post game, said Boom was electric, he came on the field and just lights it up, I’m curious, we always talk to Dan and he is very soft spoken and don’t get to see that side of him. Is he electric more because of his performance on the field or is he electric stepping up kind of as a leader on this team?
COACH TRESSEL: We always talk about an impact player being someone that can just do their job, but they can raise everyone else up. And we don’t even know for what reason. He just has a presence. We always talk about good leaders have what we call a sense of impending greatness. If you stick with me, something great’s going to happen. Boom has that. Boom has that presence. And I think in part because he practices that way every day and he’s in class every day early and he does everything you’re supposed to do and he’s full speed ahead and he loves contact, and this is a contact sport. So he just has that ability to lift up everyone. Now, you can’t do that if you’re not doing your job well though, and he happens to be doing his job. You can be an electric guy and really someone that people want to follow, but they’ll stop following you if you don’t produce, and Boom Herron produces. All right, Lori.
REPORTER: Two things that we saw against Purdue that I’m wondering if we’ll see them long-term. One, you going into a game expecting only limited number of reps from J.B. Shugarts, is that something you see playing out, and, two, the pooch kick on a kickoff, is that a solution long-term, or is that just something you did to try to contain the Boilermakers.
COACH TRESSEL: Well, let me take the last one first. We mishit that kickoff. We were trying to kick it deep. That was not a pooch kick. I apologize. It was disguised as a pooch. So long-term, is pooch kicking the answer? It can’t be. You cannot give people good field position all the time. Can you do it occasionally? If there’s a wind situation, in Minnesota which I’m told the west end of the stadium is the open end and if there’s a wind, it’s very real one way or the other, it can be something that is somewhat of a solution, but consistency is the solution to everything and Drew Basil can kick the ball. He can kick the ball as well as anyone can. Now he’s got to do it every kick, but I haven’t met a freshman who could. And I’ve had some great freshman kickers, Nugent, Jeff Wilkins, guys that — but I’ve never met a freshman that — you talk about is it different in a different stadium, well every new experience is new. That first time in the ‘Shoe. That first conference game in the ‘Shoe, that first big-stage game in the ‘Shoe, that first away game at this place, that first away game that has wind, you know, all that, so a freshman kicker has got to learn just like everyone else, but he’s going to be fine and we’re not going to solve it with pooches. J.B. Shugarts, we’re going to get as many plays from him as we can without hurting. The thing we don’t want to do is further injure a guy. Now, right now, I don’t sense from our trainers that it’s an issue of hey, it’s getting worse and worse every day. He’s just got soar feet. And they’re not going to get unsore until he rests. Well, we’re not going to be resting for a while. So he had bad feet last year and, you know, spring practice we pulled back a little. Winter training, we took a lot of load, he didn’t do a lot of things, put him in the water a lot. We’re doing everything we can. But he’s just got now — the one different thing right now is he’s into a different type of orthotic which we’re hoping can be a long-term thing so we won’t have this overuse scenario that keeps him from being able to execute. All right. Thank you.
