Coach Tressel Sugar Bowl Press Conference Transcript/Video – Ohio State Buckeyes
12/14/2010 12:00:00 AM | Football
COACH TRESSEL: Hello. Am I supposed to have an opening statement?
REPORTER: How about Legends and Leaders? Your take.
COACH TRESSEL: You know, I just heard about that last night. I’m not sure which one we are. We’re leaders?
REPORTER: Jesse Owens wasn’t a legend apparently.
COACH TRESSEL: I don’t know. I mean, it’s great. I don’t think we could do it geographically because it’s not a geographic division, so I honestly hadn’t given it much thought. Like we always say, tell us what time we’re playing and who we’re playing and we’ll be ready to go.
REPORTER: Anything about Arkansas?
COACH TRESSEL: You know, the thing I’ve been impressed with, and I haven’t watched as much film as the staff has, we’ve been in and out of the office recruiting, which really starting today we’ll be back in the office primarily, but excellent quickness. There are teams with great speed and there are teams that have the quickness that goes along with it. They just look to me to be exceptionally quick.
Obviously on the offensive side, that quarterback, Ryan, has got — he’s got a lightning-quick release, spins the ball as well as anyone we’ve seen. He’s got great weapons to go with him. I just think the quickness of their football team. They are a quick, tough, football team and they’re battle tested. Look at the people they’ve played and gone toe-to-toe with, everyone on their schedule, and it will be a great challenge, of course.
REPORTER: Are there any similarities between what they do and anyone you’ve faced this year?
COACH TRESSEL: Oh, you know, in this day and age, everyone does so many of the same concepts. Defensively they’re going to play base defense and play zone, but they’re also going to zone blitz you. They’re going to come after you and play some man, not unlike most everyone. Offensively, they probably — we haven’t faced anyone that’s thrown for however many yards that is per game, 300 plus yards per game, so they may throw it a little bit more, but they’ve still got a 1000-yard back and you better not just go double team every receiver or they’ll be scorching you down the field in the run.
They don’t run a bunch of options, which some teams we’ve faced were option teams. But when you have a four-week time period you better expect some unexpected. Primarily we will face what they do well, but we’ll get some unexpected, so it’s a good opportunity for us to go back to the fundamentals and work on ourselves, get some young people some work, develop our own plans based upon what we think has been a part of our evolution on both sides of the ball and special teams and then get some wrinkles ready to see if we can apply a little bit more pressure in each area, but I don’t think they’re exactly like anyone we’ve played, no.
REPORTER: Interesting difference in getting bowl preparation, it’s a team that kind of has a blank slate obviously, even with Texas you had played them kind of recently a little bit and, you know, conference teams, they may be a little different year to year, but what’s the difference in terms of both your preparation and the kids too, if you can kind of comment on ground zero.
COACH TRESSEL: I think there’s some novelty and excitement just like there was a year ago playing Oregon. We hadn’t played Oregon and we hadn’t been to the Rose Bowl for a long time. We haven’t been to the Sugar Bowl. We’ve been to New Orleans a few years ago, but we haven’t been to the Sugar Bowl, per se, in a long time, so there’s some exciting novelty to that. Of course you’re not going back and saying, well, the last time we played them, let’s go study that. So I’m sure we don’t have a feel and that’s why the thing that jumps out to me is we better be ready for their quickness because they look to me like they’re exceptional in that area and we better be preparing ourselves for that.
REPORTER: Jim, you’ve faced some pretty interesting offenses in bowls the past couple years, what Texas did, what Oregon did, what’s your defensive staff like, what are Jim and Luke and those guys like when they’re planning for some of these great offenses you’ve faced? What do you see from them in bowl prep?
COACH TRESSEL: I think the thing that every time we get ready for a game is the first thing they do is say, okay, what do they do best? What does it look like they hang their hat on in those key moments, those key down and distance situations, when they’re up against it a little bit? What is it that they really always go back to as a base, just like I’m sure defenses do that with us. So, you know, in this day and age of computers and video breakdowns and so forth, you have a pretty good handle on what they like to do against what.
Now, typically you comb through all the films and say, okay, which team are they attacking who deploys similar to the way we do, what’s their conceptual thinking against our style of defense or our style of offense, so you have a little bit of time to do that. It’s been a little fragmented because our guys have been off the road and really the offensive staff will really be the first time they’re all in here together. Defensively, from Wednesday on, they’ll all be in here together and they’ve watched film independently and each individual position coach has got some thoughts. Now, you can bang them off each other and talk about why you think this and why we should maybe consider that, but first and foremost, I think you have to try to get a feel for them.
REPORTER: Anything you’ve done defensively against Texas, Oregon, the past couple bowl games you’ve been pretty happy with?
COACH TRESSEL: I’d say we’ve done pretty well. I can’t think of too many times over the course of the years I’ve been disappointed how we’ve done defensively period. I thought we had a good plan for Oregon. I thought we had a good plan for Texas. I thought we had a good plan for LSU. I’m just trying to backtrack through the games. I haven’t been disappointed in any way. I think anytime we’ve had points scored against us, there’s been a contribution that wasn’t solely defensive.
REPORTER: Last year, Terrelle got much healthier between the end of the season and the Rose Bowl, had a big game. This year, do you think he has a chip on his shoulder from kind of being overlooked or dissed or whatever you want to say on the All Big Ten awards?
COACH TRESSEL: You know, I haven’t checked his Twitter because I don’t know how. I don’t know. He’s a competitive guy. So when you have a month or so to think about, okay, what is it I’ve got to do better and what is it that I’d like to establish in my play, in my game. If you’ll look at it the right way and outline the time, which historically he’s always done that, if you look at from an off season to the next spring and then spring to the next fall, most recently from the end of last season to the Rose Bowl, and then the Rose Bowl to the start of the season, so I’m sure he’ll use this time well and he’ll have that competitiveness to it. I don’t know if I’d call it a chip on his shoulder, but he would like to be very good.
REPORTER: Robinson was 7-5, Persa, that was a seventh-place team, Tolzien, they were very good, but they were basically a running team too.
COACH TRESSEL: Do I think? Yeah. The two guys I thought that deserved recognition in Big Ten at quarterback were Tolzien and Pryor. You can’t leave Cousins too far behind. We didn’t play him, so he’s not as near in my thinking, but because of what we believe, the quarterback is evaluated by how a team fares one loss-wise. And I think TP knows that and feels that, feels comfortable with that.
REPORTER: You’re aware of the comments he made in the Chicago Tribune last week where if he was running this offense or this offense he’d be — did you take umbrage with that or have you talked with him about it or do you understand what he meant?
COACH TRESSEL: Well, usually when you look at comments extracted out in the midst of a long discussion, if you take umbrage to one, you’ve probably not felt the whole context. Probably my discussion, if I were in those shoes would have been the discussion which was part of it which, hey, I’m happy with titles, I wouldn’t trade my championships for any honors or statistics or whatever and left it there. But, you know, I’m more experienced.
REPORTER: Jim, can you use Ohio State’s record against the SEC in bowls as motivation just that this team could end that drought?
COACH TRESSEL: Well, I think you have to be a little bit careful of what you major in because the thing we’ve got to do, really focus in on, is what it’s going to take to play Arkansas who we didn’t play in any bowl games in our history and not get too caught up in irrelevant things. But on the other hand, you do like to accomplish things and a great performance in a bowl game the magnitude of this against a team who’s very, very good and happens to be in a very, very good conference, of course you use that as a tremendous goal.
REPORTER: I think a lot of you came out against Oregon last year and tried to pummel them because they looked small.
COACH TRESSEL: They didn’t look small to me.
REPORTER: I’m just saying, Glen Mason — this isn’t here or there. But as you go into a bowl game, are you compelled to change things because you know they’ve got a month to get ready for you, from an offensive standpoint, are you —
COACH TRESSEL: Not really. We’ve always believed that we’ve got to figure out what it is we do best. We’ve had a whole season to evolve. And then of course you’ve got to see what health you’re in because many times you can look back at what you’ve done well and all of a sudden two or three of the guys that have been doing it are banged up or whatever. But, no, we won’t change dramatically, we want to run it. I thought we got better this year, the better job we did running it, but we also want to apply pressure with the pass.
If we can be balanced and do a good job of possessing the ball like we have done, which I think has helped our defense and do a good job taking care of the ball, which we’ve done a pretty fair job of and it’s helped our defense, and do a good job with our special teams and all the rest, we won’t change dramatically.
REPORTER: Do you all look a lot at Auburn? You’ve got a quarterback that looks a lot like him and they scored 65 on these guys. Do you look a lot at that game and how Arkansas had tremendous problems?
COACH TRESSEL: We’ll study that one for sure because we always love to steal ideas from anybody and most especially when you think you have similar capabilities and so forth, but we’re not going to go and get a highlight film of things that have worked for other teams against them and put all those in because the reason they worked is because Auburn is good at them and we’ve got to decide what we’re good at.
REPORTER: On the flip side of Ryan being a less than mobile quarterback, there’s five Razorbacks with 500 yards, six that have scored four touchdowns this season, how are you inclined to approach this team defensively?
COACH TRESSEL: They do a good job of getting a feel of how you are going after them defensively and then because of their versatility, they can say, okay, they’re trying to stop this and we’ll go to that. And they do spread the ball around. Ryan is a veteran guy.
I think just systematically, and I’ve watched probably more of their offense so far in this early time than I have of their defense, systematically, I think they do a great job of knowing what you’re trying to do and attacking you with the thing they know hurts those coverages or those deployments or so on and so forth. You better not go in there with just one thought because they’ll figure it out and they’ll adjust and they’ll stall you pretty good. So you better, in my mind, have a lot of different things ready to go and then get in the midst of that chess match. And what’s fun about games is some games you’re out there and you’re always a step ahead of them and then there’s other games that, man, it seems like they’re always a step ahead of us, and that’s football. You want to be the one applying the pressure and the indecision and those kinds of things. And our defense does a wonderful job of that, so I would expect them to have that ready to go.
REPORTER: You talk about taking care of the ball, you’re going to knock on wood here, but you have only lost two fumbles this year.
COACH TRESSEL: We lost one this morning and one on whatever the last day we practiced, Saturday morning.
REPORTER: You’re getting them all out in practice then. Is there a common denominator for that?
COACH TRESSEL: I’d like to think it starts with our guys’ belief factor, how important that is to the team, is that if we don’t turn it over, if we take care of the football, we don’t throw interceptions, and we put our defense in good field position, our defense will do a good job. If we leave our defense in poor field position, then the emotional flow of the game goes against them, it’s harder to play good defense, and that’s why we’ve never really gotten too into the discussions about what are our defensive numbers and what are our offensive numbers, because they’re so interconnected with one another’s part of the deal that we’ve had great defenses, but they’ve been helped tremendously by good turnover margins and good special teams and all the rest.
So why has it been that good? I don’t know. I’m happy. But it better stay that way if we want to have a chance to compete in a game like this.
REPORTER: Have you ever seen personally any of those pig snout hats the fans wear or ever heard thousands of people yelling —
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, the hats? I mentioned that to the group. We went and visited when Coach Holtz was there and Coach Pagac, Sr., bought one and the whole way home on the bus he was wearing one and we were passing people by and he’d be standing in his window with his hat on and people almost getting into wrecks and that’s the only time I’ve seen it. But one thing, the little bit I was there for two or three days, they love their football and they love having fun.
REPORTER: It’s quite a thing when thousands of people are making that chant.
COACH TRESSEL: It’s awesome.
REPORTER: Do you have any juniors filling out paperwork?
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah.
REPORTER: Could you tell us who they are or how many?
COACH TRESSEL: I could, but I can’t remember for sure. I don’t want to leave — I think I’ve sent four and I’ve got one I’m just waiting for the transcript because we requested by the NFL to send the academic transcript along with it as well, so I’ve sent — I’ve sent one time three, and the next time I’ve sent a single one, and I’ve still got a form filled out on my desk.
REPORTER: So a possible five?
COACH TRESSEL: Possible five.
REPORTER: When you look back on this time last year, compared to the Rose Bowl and obviously the outcome there, is there anything that you draw from your preparations or even within that game that you use this year that you feel like could be an advantage?
COACH TRESSEL: I think we think back to every bowl game we’ve been to and we think back to why we’ve evolved to deciding how we’re going to prepare, but it still goes back to, we want to have the right blend of time off, fundamental time, young kids getting time, film study time, adding a little bit of time, but really honing the things we do well, and in this period we’re not in school, so we like to add some things to it with our kids going out to hospitals and the food bank we’re going to tomorrow and doing some different things. We’ve had the military in every day, various military folks. And today, this morning before practice, we did shout-outs to send overseas for the holidays.
So you just try to fix everything in there, but we don’t really go back to our notebooks from last bowl games and look at what we did because we’re a different team than we were a year ago and it’s a different calendar, we’re playing the 4th, not the 1st. Hopefully we’ve learned every time we’ve gone to a bowl.
REPORTER: What do you think went right last year as you built to the Oregon game, as you look back on that?
COACH TRESSEL: We knew it was going to be a whale of a game and we knew we needed to do a good job offensively, so as not to put too much pressure on our defense because we knew how great their offense was. I think the fumble they had going inside the 20 was a good thing, impactful, probably as impactful as think calendar decisions we made leading up to the bowl, those types of things, guys making plays, Jake Ballard jumping up in the air and catching a ball that was out there, but our guys were focused on trying to be the best we could be, which, again, I have not been disappointed from that standpoint in our guys’ bowl preparation over the years, they’ve worked hard to see if we can match up.
REPORTER: Is there such a thing as when you turn on a tape you see a team and you know they’re from the Southeastern Conference the way they play and does Arkansas kind of fit that bill?
COACH TRESSEL: Most of the films we’ve turned on with Arkansas, they’re playing each other, and there’s two teams whacking each other, running fast, and great football, and I think everyone in America knows that’s a great brand of football, but you turn on a great Big Ten game and they’re whacking each other. So I haven’t watched too many game copies yet, I’ve just looked at some cut-ups so far, and what I like to do once I get off the road and start watching is I like to watch the continuous game and get a flavor, a flow, for what’s this team about. So I could probably answer that better after I have a better handle it on, but there’s no doubt, the SEC teams we’ve played against, I don’t remember South Carolina that well because that was 100 years ago, but the Florida team we played was great athletes, a lot of them still playing, and the LSU team we played, I mean, I loved their make-up, they had all those fifth-year seniors and fought the fight, lost a couple games and still were there hanging at the end, never going to put their guard down. Thus far what I see about Arkansas is that they’ve been that kind of team that’s just been a battler and you can’t end up 10-2 in that league without being battlers.
REPORTER: Is Terrelle one of the five who sent in the paperwork?
COACH TRESSEL: I can’t answer that.
REPORTER: You really can’t?
COACH TRESSEL: I can’t.
REPORTER: Why not?
COACH TRESSEL: I just don’t feel like it. I don’t know. I can’t bring myself to, how’s that?
REPORTER: You look at some of the players and it’s hard to believe that Darren McFadden and Felix Jones were all in the same —
COACH TRESSEL: Glad they’re not now, although nice, and all those guys are pretty good. Arkansas historically, you go back to Frank Broyles, they’ve had great teams. They always will. They have a proud tradition for the state of Arkansas, just as proud as we do for the state of Ohio. And as someone asked earlier, is it unusual that we’ve never played them in all these hundred years of football, and it really is, because we’ve been to a lot of bowl games, more so from the ’70s on because of the rule change, but I think it will be an exciting thing. I think that’s why there’s a lot of interest in the game from our fans and their fans. I think that’s why New Orleans was interested in having those two teams in there, because there’s a heck of a lot of tradition when you look at those two teams.
REPORTER: Brewster was named All American Football Writers —
COACH TRESSEL: So was Chim, I think.
REPORTER: Talk about both those guys. What did they get done this year that they got that recognition from your vantage point?
COACH TRESSEL: You know what, those two guys are good players. I don’t know how all the different All American teams — I know how the Coaches All American Team is done, we have a committee and we put in players and other teams put in players that aren’t on your team and there’s a system, and I don’t know exactly how the Football Writers do it, but I’m impressed with the fact that those are two guys who really didn’t get that much hype, but really were very good players this year, and those writers must have been doing their research because those are two good players and if you match them up on film, they match up favorably against anyone.
REPORTER: Finals were last week and how are you looking academically, and will you give us an injury update?
COACH TRESSEL: Well, finals-wise, I don’t know. Usually the grades come out Tuesday or Wednesday. Let’s see, finals ended Friday, so we should have them here. I just got back about 12:30 last night, so I haven’t had too much interaction with anyone. We should get our grades here in the next day. I haven’t heard any crises, which is usually a good thing. Injury-wise, I’m trying to think about who is —
REPORTER: What about Christian Bryant?
COACH TRESSEL: He was back there practicing a hundred percent. He was scrimmaging. He’s back. Back a little quicker than I thought he might have been. So his Twitter might have been right that I missed.
REPORTER: All kinds of changes, we talked about the new division, did you see the new logo? What do you think of that? And 18 new trophies you guys will be playing for.
COACH TRESSEL: I haven’t seen any of those. I’ve heard of the Leaders and the Legends, I haven’t seen the rest. Trophies for what?
REPORTER: Like MVP of the game.
REPORTER: End of the season punter, receiver.
COACH TRESSEL: I didn’t have a vote and I haven’t gotten to my email. I’m sure we’ve been communicated with, but we’ve been scrambling. There’s certain times when we’re allowed to do certain things and the last few days, we had 19 recruits or 18 recruits in with their families all weekend, they left here 3:00 in the snow on Sunday and I left at 3:15. So I really haven’t seen any of that yet.
REPORTER: With Pryor there seemed to be some doubt before the Michigan game with his shoulder. Where is he at right now? Is he a hundred percent? Is he going through everything right now?
COACH TRESSEL: I asked him last night when I was driving to the airport how the guys’ workout was yesterday and he thought it was good, and I said, how was your workout, and he said, I did all the upper body lifts for the first time since early November, and he said he feels good, so he hasn’t shown any hint of not doing anything in practice, so —
REPORTER: What about the guys who didn’t get much hype, Brewster, what is it about Chimdi that he hasn’t gotten that?
COACH TRESSEL: He’s a workmanlike guy, just a quiet guy that is always where he’s supposed to be and doing what he’s supposed to do and studying like crazy because he’s an outstanding student, but he’s just a focused guy. And exactly why he hasn’t, I don’t know, but I think he’s deserving of the recognition that the writers saw in him.
REPORTER: With Brewster, did you get the pay-off of him being a third-year starter this year?
COACH TRESSEL: Oh, gosh, yes, from a knowledge standpoint, huge. And the two things for Michael that were huge were he was healthy all year, which most of last year he wasn’t, so he was out there trying to do all the mental stuff along with being physically handicapped in a way, so he had all that knowledge and he had good health and he had the same guys next to him since spring ball, so there wasn’t any new learning curve or telling the other guy, the new guy next to him what to do and all that stuff. But experience, how many times have we said it, you can’t buy it and when you don’t have it, you’re nervous.
REPORTER: What do you want to get done before these guys go home next week? Where do you hope you leave these guys in the next week of practice?
COACH TRESSEL: We’ve got — our defensive guys are going to spend the afternoon recruiting today, and starting tomorrow, we’re going to write the schedules, the practice schedules, for the time through the 21st. I’m guessing we’ll move a little bit more into the game-planning mode than we have been in these first four I guess we’ve had. These have really been fundamental practices and we’ve maybe spent 10 minutes each day in any type of game-play mode. We’ll probably move into that maybe as early as Thursday, maybe Friday at the latest. And then when we get done the 21st, we’ll want to have a good bit of our thinking or game planning done, and then when we come back after Christmas and spend two practices here, we’ll want those really to be rehearsal, game-plan, get-the-holidays-out-of-us-type practices, so when we hit the bowl site, we can just really just try to fine tune.
REPORTER: What’s your message to them when they go home? Do you want them to forget about football? Do you tell them to — they so rarely get to go home.
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, their message is, if you’re fortunate enough to have time to spend with family, soak it in. Enjoy it. Our guys are gone all summer. They don’t get to go home for Thanksgiving. They haven’t had much time, so we want them to go and just enjoy the heck out of it. And we hope they don’t overindulge, come back 10 pounds heavier or whatever, but we’re not going to send them home with four days worth of workouts or something like that. We just want them to go and enjoy and fill those emotional gas tanks and know that when we get back we’ve got a hefty challenge.
REPORTER: You have so many veterans on this team and this practice time, have you gotten to look at some of the younger guys, anybody that’s sticking out to you?
COACH TRESSEL: Today, the guy that had a couple good runs was Rod Smith. He went and took his team down and scored a touchdown and did a good job. He’s the first guy I can think of. That’s what will be fun is to go and watch film of these young guys, we’ve been holding cards and they’ve been running other people’s plays and you don’t get much better doing that. I saw TY Williams go up and make a really good catch the other day in the scrimmage, but it’s fun for them, running our defenses and our plays, rather than everyone else’s, because when we start moving into that game plan mode, now they’re going to be back a little bit more to that which isn’t as much fun, so we want them to be able to bang into each other.
REPORTER: Who are you going to use to simulate Mallett? Taylor Graham seems to come to mind.
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, Taylor and Kenny, they’re both wearing his number and so forth. I was just watching a little bit of that Auburn game and some cut-ups and I saw No. 8 played a lot and looked good, too.
REPORTER: Yeah, Mallett got hurt.
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, he threw it like 32 times and looked pretty good too. We’ll use both those guys.
REPORTER: With Petrino, coaches after a while develop a reputation, you know he’s going to come out probably winging it.
COACH TRESSEL: Oh, sure.
REPORTER: What sets him apart as you think about Bobby Petrino offensively?
COACH TRESSEL: Well, as I think back to his good teams at Louisville, which we saw a little bit more, is that, yeah, he was going to throw it and conceptually you could see they were very well schooled, he was going to run it, had that big old No. 10 Bush or whatever his number was, they had some guys that could run it. So he’s going to do what the defense dictates, and he’s going to do what he can to put pressure on your defense and they’ve got the comprehensive package. So they’re good at it, they’re very well schooled and I haven’t watched them that much to be able to say, here’s what they do against this or that, but they’ve got answers.
You always talk about good offensive coaches. I think good offensive coaches are ones that have answers and good defenses are ones that make the offenses guess when to use those answers and that’s the fun of the chess match.
REPORTER: Do you know him at all?
COACH TRESSEL: I really don’t. No, I really don’t. I think we’ve got all of our seniors stopping in today and then we’ve got all kinds of — I just had to turn in all kinds of — there’s a lot of availability once we get into the bowl thing, like six guys this day, that day. You’re going to end up interviewing our water guys by the end of the week. So we’ll have all the seniors. Make sure you guys get plenty of rest and have good holidays and can’t wait to get to New Orleans.
