Coach Tressel Weekly Press Conference Transcript/Video – Ohio State Buckeyes
9/21/2010 12:00:00 AM | Football
COACH TRESSEL: One of the neat things about being in college athletics and particularly the game of football is you have an opportunity to bring awareness to a lot of neat things and one of the areas that I think the American Football Coaches Association does a good job is lending their support and their podium, if you will, to raising that awareness.
And I can’t remember what year number this is for us, but it’s been really neat to see some of the responses and the letters and so forth that we’ve gotten as a nation in the football world about our Coaches for the Cure Saturday.
And it’s really neat, I just got a nice letter from a family in Chillicothe who this particular disease touches their family and they’re so excited and they’re doing it now with their high school, with their coaches for a Coaches for the Cure Program. So, Charlie, we’re excited you’re here, man. Thanks for coming in. And if you don’t want to, you don’t have to listen to all these silly questions I’m going to get. You can even come answer some of them.
I did want to set one record straight. There was a rumor floating around that Rufus the Bobcat went to Lori Schmidt’s sorority formal with her and that is not true, Clay, so make sure that that word is out. That was a different one. I was standing at the National Anthem and I heard some of our guys talking, hey, did you see that mascot? And I’m thinking, you’re thinking about the mascot? I didn’t know it was live mascot week and I really didn’t, beyond that first little gibberish at the beginning, I didn’t hear much about it, then I was alerted to the fact that it was kind of why the fellow tried out, I guess, was to get a shot at Brutus. And I saw Brutus over at the Block O event last night and asked him if he was going to be ready for Saturday, and he’s probable from an injury report standpoint. But at any rate, speaking of injury reports, we probably will lose Donnie Evege for a significant number of weeks. Travis Howard maybe for a week or so. Dorian Bell maybe a week, he and Travis would be the quickest back. We’ll have Andrew Sweat back. Carlos Hyde is now pretty healthy and tonight we’ll be able to see just where he might be able to help us out. Is there anyone else I’m missing that’s been banged? Corey should be back. You know, Corey could have played last week, but we just thought it was at that danger moment where he was feeling pretty good and he had practiced, we call it the thud, it’s not full, it’s not getting all the torque, and we just thought it would be smart and Scott Sika does a good job so we felt he would be ready to go, so, yeah, Corey should be ready to go.
REPORTER:: How about Coach Dantonio?
COACH TRESSEL: I talked to Dino this morning and he’s obviously very grateful that he had the great care right there and he was smart in that he wasn’t feeling right and he decided to go over and have it checked out, but he’s doing okay. And someone just asked on the Big Ten call about that and I think all of us know cognitively that you need to take care of yourself and this is a high stressful situation and all that, but you probably know it a little more clearly when it touches someone closer to you, and he’ll be out there on the sideline again, I’m not sure when, whenever it’s appropriate. He’s been fortunate that his staff has been together since three or four years there at Cincinnati and all three years — three or four years, fourth year at Michigan State, so they’ll carry on business as usual and he’ll take care of himself and he feels very fortunate that they have great care.
Let’s go backwards for a second and talk about the Ohio University game. I thought our defense, again, set the tone not simply for the fact I think we had eight three and outs, which our goal for a game is five, if we can get five three and outs with our defense, that’s almost like a turnover, and we had eight, and we had five turnovers, and so when you have that type of production from your defense — offensively we did a little bit better job of scoring in the red zone, still had to kick two field goals, I think it was.
Special teams-wise, I thought we made a couple steps. We had the one long kickoff return, which we had one lane that wasn’t really filled just right, and then the other push in the back, then all of a sudden it was out the gate. But as the kicks went on, I thought our fundamentals and techniques got a little bit better there. We had the blow on the punt protection, when you let a guy run free, we had a little bit of confusion, and they did a good job. They had a little bit of a delayed rush, and we didn’t quite have the poise to just let it come to us and so it was a great lesson from that standpoint because typically you can’t survive punt block for nearly a touchdown.
The defense turned them away, so I thought there was some improvement. There was certainly some opportunities. We got to do a little bit of a two-minute right before the half. It went pretty good moving down the field and then we made the poor decision on the throw that cost us a turnover, but there were a lot of things that we can continue to build on and I do think it was an improvement week, and that’s what will be key with this week. We’re going to need to improve beginning today. It’s a different week for us. School begins this week, so there were a number of activities here in the last days that our guys are out getting their books and academic freshmen convocation and academic kickoff meeting with the counselors and so forth and classes begin tomorrow, so we’ve got to make sure that we can handle one more thing that’s a part of reality. I think really our players are looking forward to it. I think they get — they’ve been here training since June 18th, and I think there’s just a certain energy and electricity that’s on the campus when the students come back, and I could tell with being with the Block O, all those freshmen and sophomores that sit in Block O, last night you could just see how excited they are to some of them have their first game in Ohio Stadium and a lot of them, that was one of the things that helped them choose Ohio State was the thought of that experience, and so we’ll feel a good electricity with the students being here, but we have to make sure that our focus is on becoming a better football team, each guy becoming a better player, and some say it’s difficult from a standpoint of Eastern Michigan has not had great success. The thing that I think will be very good for us is Eastern Michigan has — they’re slowly trying to upgrade their personnel, only has one speed, and it’s fast and it’s straight ahead. They are going to blitz you like crazy when you have the ball. If you’re punting, they’re going to send 10 or 12 guys, it looks like. They’re going to do everything a hundred miles an hour, and so you are going to have to be prepared for everything that they bring at you.
And what’s most critical to us is we’ve got to become a better team every time we touch the field in practice or every time most certainly when you touch the field on a Saturday afternoon and, again, as I’ve said before, I have a lot of confidence that our older guys understand that, and I think our younger guys are growing to understand that.
One of the keys to this season is going to be how well we develop into a whole team and fortunately some guys had 20 to 25 snaps on Saturday that didn’t get those kinds of snaps the week before, and so I think we’re making a little progress and they’ll continue to get a lot of good repetitions this afternoon. And it’s a nice, hot day, probably our 20th 90-degree practice or whatever, but that will be a good exercise to see just how well we can focus on the task at hand and get ready to play an Eastern Michigan team that we know Coach English, he knows us better than his players know us, having been on Lloyd’s staff for all those years, coaching the secondary there at Michigan, and he knew the challenge when he took over.
I like the fact that as I looked at their games from a year ago, the majority of them were decisive losses. If you look at the first three games this year, fairly tight ball game with Army, ahead of Miami in the fourth quarter, took a half step back when they lost a three-touchdown or four-touchdown game to Central Michigan, but you can see some progress from year one to year two and I’m sure Coach English can see a lot of progress simply on the practice field and understanding of his guys, so he’s going to bring a team over here that’s better than we’ve ever seen, and to me that’s real.
And now we’ve got to be a better team on Saturday than anyone has ever seen of us, and that’s how we’ll attack it as we go to work this afternoon and I feel good about this group’s willingness to do that.
REPORTER:: Coach, Terrelle Pryor, the segment where he had those completions in the first half, was there a consistent theme to what you saw there? It seemed like he was being very patient, even dumping the ball down on multiple occasions, those are things maybe he didn’t do two years ago that maybe he’s picked up on or —
COACH TRESSEL: Well, I think it starts with the fact that we did a real good job with protection, and that gives you that ability to have patience. The first pass that we didn’t complete in that stretch, the 17th pass, they brought an all-out blitz. We had a seven-man protection and picked it up, boom, boom, boom, every one was picked up and Dane broke up the middle and Terrelle just didn’t let it loose. He, I think, was being careful and sometimes when you’re careful, it doesn’t work out as well as you’d like, but, yeah, I think he was patient. I think he was focused. I think he was understanding where they were coming from and they were bringing a lot of different things. He’s really going to have a good challenge this week because there’s a couple formations that you’re in that Eastern Michigan will be 75% blitz, so the recognition and awareness and patience and rhythm is going to have to be there and I don’t think any of us knew we had a consecutive string going, but we felt good that we were moving down the field and we felt good that we had a chance to do a two-minute type of situation with a minute something to go in the half at mid field, so we’ll be able to learn from that, but as we’ve said to you all along, every one of these game experiences, Terrelle’s getting a little bit better and a little more experienced.
REPORTER:: Jim, you guys are getting sort of banged up in the secondary, who are some names that you think are going to have to step up in the next week and in the coming weeks?
COACH TRESSEL: I’m trying to think, corner-wise, Dominic Clarke has been a guy that’s been fighting to get that done. Corey Brown got probably 20 snaps, so those would probably be the two from that standpoint, corner standpoint. Orhian Johnson has to keep getting better and he played pretty well. He played pretty well there. Aaron Gant’s going to have to be able to do some things and Nate Oliver’s going to have to be able to step in. Christian Bryant’s got to keep coming along at that star position because he probably hasn’t had quite as many reps. Tyler probably took an extra series in the course of that game and he’s got to come along a little bit there. Losing C. J. and now with Travis out for a week or two, that’s two of your Top eight, so numbers nine, 10, they’ve got to step up. We ask a lot of that group on special teams, so those guys have got to fill in some spots whether it was the starting group or the back-up group special teams-wise as well.
REPORTER:: Jim, you were talking about the blitz possibilities a lot from Eastern Michigan, with your offense, with where the offensive line is with their protection and with what Terrelle is able to do with ability to get away from pressure sometimes, how do you think this offense handles teams that want to blitz and bring a blitz and does that — sometimes is that one of your best chances to maybe pop something?
COACH TRESSEL: I think we’re getting better at it. I thought at the front half of last year we struggled a little bit because we just didn’t communicate very well up front because we hadn’t been together, and the quarterback couldn’t solve some of the problems and make some of the changes at that point. Now we have kind of a fail safe, the linemen have been together and the quarterback knows, maybe he can see a little bit further, and he can help if they don’t get things headed in the right way, so I think we’re much better from that standpoint. I think people will still try to bring — what you’ve seen probably in the last year and a half is that the solution seems to be bring outside pressure to see if you can somehow keep Terrelle inside the pocket and he’s hurt them a little bit by stepping up and going and get the inverted rush and all of a sudden he’s out the gate, but I think we’re better at it than we were, but people will keep bringing it.
REPORTER:: When you have a quarterback like that, is that in the game plan in terms of Terrelle, we might see this kind of blitz, but you’ve just got to get away from this guy or because he has that ability you have to —
COACH TRESSEL: There were three plays in the game last week that you would have thought that’s what we taught because we let guys run right in there, and he did avoid them, but, no, that wasn’t by design, but it’s funny one of the coaches says, why don’t we start designing them that way.
REPORTER:: But it must change things when you have a quarterback who has that ability as opposed to a less mobile quarterback.
COACH TRESSEL: Oh, sure. Usually what it changes is the speed at which people come, because the worst thing you can do is run past a kickoff return, a punt return, or a quarterback in the pocket. You run past them, you’re dead, so some people that will slow down and they’ll be a little bit more under control. But defensive guys are defensive guys. When you call a blitz, all of a sudden the fangs grow and they’re just thinking about sick ’em and you’ve got to be a little bit careful when you’re going after a mobile quarterback.
REPORTER:: Jim, would you rather not play an opponent like this that’s got a 15-game losing streak and they’re like 112 in the country against the run? There’s all these reasons why it looks like a mismatch, how hard is it to sell —
COACH TRESSEL: It’s not really a hard sell because we don’t assess the schedule from the standpoint of, oh, I wish it was this or I wish it were that. You know me, I wish there were 11 games, but there are 12, and for good reason, to fill an inventory of 12 games and to fill an inventory of 36 sports, it’s just the reality we’re in. We didn’t know when we were scheduling this game that it was going to be these numbers, but, you know, in some ways it’s a good challenge. If you’re going to be affected by that in game four, then how might you be affected by something else much further down the line?
So in some ways, the mental exercise of seeing if you can really convince yourself that you really believe that what we do is what’s most important and us getting better is what’s most important and the opponent doesn’t really matter, which is what was being said against Miami, you know, this isn’t the ’02 game, this isn’t about them, this is about us, which is the truth, that’s the way everything should be. So to me it will be a good mental — and I’ll have a lot better feel as to how we’ll handle it about 5:15 tonight, so I don’t spend much time wishing things weren’t so. I’ve given you I wish I were six-three before, I’m not.
REPORTER:: Do you like not getting rid of the nonconference games, the New Mexico State game?
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, that wasn’t wonderful, because somebody dropped us or I forget what happened. But again, going into that year, which was what, last year or the year before, one day the schedule’s set, let’s go, I mean, we didn’t spend any more time and energy wishing it weren’t so. We have to spend all of our time and energy trying to get better. And I feel as if these guys will do that. Now, let me reevaluate that for two days and we’ll reconvene this group on Thursday and see if it felt like we went that way.
REPORTER:: Coach, Dionte Allen was named scout player of the week, what did he bring and is there some sort of advantage of having a guy that has that type of college experience but haven’t had the time of learning Ohio State schemes in replicating other programs?
COACH TRESSEL: I think the biggest thing in having a guy like that, he’s been around long enough to know how important that scout team player is. Sometimes when you’re a little bit younger, you feel relegated, you know, I’m relegated to the scout team. When you get a little bit older and you’ve played some and you’ve really needed a good look from somebody and it’s been good that you’ve gotten a good look because it’s helped you get better or you’ve seen what they’re going to do, then you understand that. Dionte understands that better than Bradley Robie who just got here.
REPORTER:: Do you get the sense he also wants you to know he’s for real?
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, he’s a competitive guy, I don’t think there’s any question about it, because anytime you walk into a new group, you feel as if that group’s sizing you up and you want to show people what you’re made of.
REPORTER:: When classes start, obviously, I would assume your guys have less time for football, how do they adjust to that or how do you strike that balance, I guess?
COACH TRESSEL: Well, depending upon where they allot their time, I don’t know that while we weren’t in school that our guys were working on football eight hours a day. They probably had a little bit more of a leisurely pace, they could take their time a little more in the weight room, they could take their time in the film room, they could sit around the locker room, now they’re going to be much more on a boom, boom, boom schedule, which in some ways I think will be good because we’ll get into a flow. I worry about that two or three weeks before school starts when we’re not practicing two times a day of getting in the habit of I’ll stay up late and then I’ll sleep in because I don’t have to be at the facility until such and such. So the discipline guy, the efficient guy, I don’t think we’ll see any difference.
I’ll tell you who the guy is the most difficult in the way we do things is the freshmen, because we have so many things we have the freshmen do extra from mentoring programs, to study table programs with more hours, there’s a lot asked of our freshmen and we see our freshmen in that early November area a little bit kind of like, whoa, I’ve never gone at this pace for this long, dating all the way back to June, through there, but I think for the veterans, it will just force them to be a little, just a little more efficient and they may even have a little more bounce in their step, because they’re sitting around a little bit less and get their thumbs off those deals and their rear ends off those sofas so it might be okay.
REPORTER:: How do you feel about the running game so far, specifically the run out of your tailbacks?
COACH TRESSEL: I think B. Saine and Boom have been very solid. I think Jordan is, I don’t think what the situation is, if he’s in the game he’s fine. Jamaal Berry is coming along, he’s getting some reps in practice and also has been fortunate enough to have some snaps in games. Carlos has been down a little bit with an ankle, which I think he’s going to be very good, I was hoping he was going to make a difference for us, as I watched in the spring was the special teams, he was a good cover guy, a good blocker on some things and I hope he can get back to that, and then Rod Smith’s been here a short time and been very impressive, so I think they’ve been fine.
We’ve probably had a little bit better run/pass balance than maybe sometimes when the run got 75% or 85% of the reps, so if you’re looking at pure numbers, we’re probably, I don’t know how many yards a game we’re averaging, but there have been years we’ve ended the year with over 200, and we might not even — I don’t know where we are now, anyone know?
REPORTER:: 206.
COACH TRESSEL: Okay. But I think that’s going to be fine.
REPORTER:: When you’re game planning, how much do you think of Terrelle as a run option maybe now compared to even maybe a year ago?
COACH TRESSEL: Well, we would like five, six times, seven times a game for him to end up running when we call a pass, simply giving credit to the fact that people might drop more folks than we’re sending out and there might not be anyone open. And then if we have five to six designed quarterback runs in the game, now we’re at a dozen, that’s where I’d kind of like to be, things evolve, things change. I think he had 20 against Miami, somewhere in there, and probably around 10 in the other games, I’m guessing, I don’t know. But we want them somewhere in that 10 to 15 range.
REPORTER:: Was it the same a year ago?
COACH TRESSEL: Was it? I don’t know. I can’t answer. He went about three games where he couldn’t run at all, so I can’t remember leading up to that. That was a long time ago, but —
REPORTER:: When you were looking at the roster this year, what were your realistic expectations for Tyler Moeller?
COACH TRESSEL: Well, when he left here the spring of ’09, we assumed he’d be a starter and we always say that a guy never loses his position in our minds with an injury, now of course he has to put it on tape when he gets back, but we expected him — we weren’t sure how it was going to play out, we didn’t know he was going to be in the back end and Jermale be the nickel or he was going to be there and Jermale back and we got into those discussions of who do you want in the box and all those kinds of things and we really didn’t know how the C.J., Orhian Johnson, Aaron Gant, who was going to be a good high safety and all that, but we expected him to play and we expected him not only to play on defense but to come back into our special teams.
REPORTER:: Did you expect the impact that he’s been able to give you so far?
COACH TRESSEL: He’s an active guy. If you remember back to the ’09 spring game, I don’t know who graduated after ’08, but all of a sudden he got more reps and graduated into a role, that ’09 spring game you’d have left the stadium saying he may be one of the leading tackles next year and that was after James and that bunch left, right, Marcus and all those guys, so we were hoping he would do that.
REPORTER:: He was sporting a lit bit of a mohawk today, I think he’s worn that from time to time.
COACH TRESSEL: Is that a mohawk? I think that was a fast shower. Yeah, a Moeller hawk, there you go. A fashion statement, Tyler probably doesn’t spend much time thinking about.
REPORTER:: Back to the health issue with coaching, I’m sure whenever something like this happens like with Mark you get more aware of that, but how much can you really change in your profession to make it healthier?
COACH TRESSEL: Eliminate the media? No, I don’t know. I got half laughs and half boos here.
REPORTER:: You can’t cut back your hours really too much.
COACH TRESSEL: And it’s got to be the same in your worlds, technology has added to your life as far as demands, and so as we get all these creative things, it’s just adding more things to do. We can study so many things nowadays because the way the computer — just sort them in your computer and, poof, here comes a personnel of we’re in green personnel and it’s third down and it’s raining on the left hash and your eyeballs fall out and you’ve got to try to be disciplined.
I mentioned on the Big Ten call that we have a saying with our players that nothing good happens past 10, and that’s fairly well-documented. We have a saying with our coaches that any idea after 10 won’t work, and that’s pretty well-documented. So we try to not ever go past 10, but I guess like anything else, you’re sitting and there’s a table full of food, you have to decide how much you’re going to eat and you eat too much, it’s unhealthy and the same with your 24 hours in the day and as I say, you hear of — all you need to do is go to the hospital once a week and see people from all walks of life, but that’s not like when someone in your family all of a sudden is affected, you go, whoa, that type of thing, and all of a sudden you’re going to get the film in for the next week and you’re going to dive into that table full of food, but we try, it’s hard. Someone asked me to give a good idea of balance of life. I’ve got the worst balance of life in America, how can I help them with that, but go ahead.
REPORTER:: You’ve always said you have no trouble sleeping at night.
COACH TRESSEL: No, I’m exhausted. I have trouble driving home.
REPORTER:: But have you always worked to try to find a balance there?
COACH TRESSEL: You try to exercise a little bit and try not to overeat, which as the season goes on, I think I’ve mentioned this before in here, as the season goes on, that becomes harder because you’re in game 10 and you’ve got nine films of that opponent and you think, I’ve got to go back to game two because they might have run that triple reverse pass that we better practice against, so as the season goes on, it really gets harder. And certainly the ability of — in the recruiting world for kids to gain information earlier and, therefore, start making decisions earlier, all of a — in the old days, we’d play the season, season ended, go out to a high school, hey, you got any players? Well, you know, the world has changed from that standpoint, so there comes a point in time you say, enough is enough and you go home and sit and think about football.
REPORTER:: Do you wish the recruiting thing could go backwards now where — I mean, in other words, has it gotten too early?
COACH TRESSEL: That’s your second wish question.
REPORTER:: Well, wish is not the right word.
COACH TRESSEL: I don’t wish. I don’t wish we didn’t play certain games and I don’t wish that things go back because they’re not. It is what it is and you’ve got to find a way to get things done and prioritize and we do a lot of stuff, I don’t want to sit here and say, woe is us, because we waste a lot of time. I mean, to sit and talk about personnel and the kickoff cover team for as long as we do, you’d think we were trying to solve the economic problems of the world, but we want to get it right and we want to be fair to the kids and so on, but I’m sure we could do things more efficiently and that’s what you’ve got to try to figure out a way to do.
REPORTER:: How much does the incredible pressure to win add to it and maybe you could refer back to Earle’s staff and whether it’s the same here now.
COACH TRESSEL: It is mild here now. Didn’t you guys hear a week or two ago that Hurricane Earl was coming in? It came in every day at our place.
REPORTER:: But there’s so much focused on every minute of every day now.
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, it is, but that’s the way the world is, and I tell our players all the time, they’re entering a world that’s a heck of a lot more competitive and spinning out of control than the world I entered, but I guess the winning and all that stuff adds more to it, but the fun thing — and I’ve got to get to Lori’s question because my guys are out there waiting, I told them I’d go short. Now I lost my train of thought. We were talking about the — because I had a good point. Oh, no, the fun thing. The fun thing. The fun thing about what we do and maybe what you do is if you go and win every game and everyone’s wonderful, if it doesn’t work out that way, everyone’s not wonderful, then all of a sudden you start again the next year. At some point in time, the calendar turns and to me that’s kind of a fun thing about what we do and maybe in some ways lessens the pressure because you do get to — you get beat in a game, you get to go play another game. You don’t have the kind of season you want to have, you know what, you go have another season. You have too many of those seasons, you get to go have another vacation, but at least you get to start over, so I think that maybe alleviates a little bit of the pressure. Lori?
REPORTER:: A couple of your guys after the Ohio University game said this is the best start to a season that they could recall and it’s more than just the 3-0 record, it’s the way they’re approaching games, the comradery, everything that surrounds the team. I’m wondering if you share that assessment and if you think it’s a good thing that they view it that way.
COACH TRESSEL: I think there’s some truth to that. That’s the good news. The bad news is, that truth can end if all of a sudden you’ve arrived, but I think there’s a lot of truth to that. I think the guys have kept good focus on whatever it was that we were to do that day or whatever the task at hand was, whatever the challenge was. I think they genuinely enjoy being with one another.
I think there’s been excellent leadership. We always say leadership’s not tested until you’re behind. And we were behind a couple different times I think at Miami or close, something like that, and you didn’t see any cracking in the leadership, so I think we do have a chance with a good start from all those stand points, but it’s got to be every day and that’s probably the fun of the challenge. Charlie, thanks for being here, man, we appreciate it.
