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2009 JT Press Conferences

Weekly press video. I'll add the transcript after it's posted later.

Official.site.video

COACH TRESSEL: Welcome all. It was a little bit different ball game than I think any of us anticipated. We knew Wisconsin was a heck of a football team and we knew we were going to have our hands full. We felt they had a very, very good offense with a quarterback who was playing well, playing tough, and my opinion of him didn't change a bit. He stood in there under a great deal of duress. Defensively we thought that they were a high-pressured defense with a lot of guys that could run around and that Number 50 would probably cause some havoc, which he did, but the good thing is, is that we came up with some plays that are game changers. Obviously Kurt Coleman's play and the pressure that was put on the quarterback, his being where he was supposed to be, and then I thought the execution on the interception return was outstanding. You always say when an interception is thrown, if you can block the intended receiver and you can block the quarterback and then get everyone else running down the side line, you have a chance and they did that just as you would hope they would do. And the same thing occurred on Jermale's excellent play and then of course Ray Small's kickoff return. The execution up front, what Ray did was great, he was like a bullet coming out of there.

The double team was great. The guys did an excellent job on their aiming points and took their cover guys where they needed to be taken. And the off returner did a good job of leading up through and was able to distract the kicker. Usually you count on your kicker to the a least turn the ball back into the rest of the pursuit and the off returner did a good job with that, so the execution was great. It led to us not being on the field offensively for about an hour, which I guess you'll take, but I think it was a little bit before 5:00 when we scored at the end of the first half and it was right around 6:00 when we took the field again and ended up with, I think, about 32 gradable plays. Which to me the downside of that is, whereas Number 16 for Wisconsin had a chance to experience 47 throws and the line got to experience 47 pass protections against very, very good people, that was something that we didn't get a chance to do, which was part of the situation, but we had a number of our defensive guys grade a winning performance, we had eight of them. They played 89 plays.

Fortunately we substitute a lot, so there weren't too many of our guys that played the whole time. I think Kurt Coleman and Chimdi Chekwa and Ross Homan and B-Rolle, but the rest of the folks were able to roll in and out, but they got a heck of a day's work and they were sore on Sunday, I can assure you that. Offensively we had only one winning performance, Brandon Saine, we thought did a very, very good job. Ray Small was our special units player of the game. He had a great punt return, unfortunately we made a critical error with a block in the back that really didn't even need to happen on his 30-some-yard punt return. And of course he had the long kickoff return and did a good job back there on punts in general and so he was our special units player.

I think Kurt Coleman was the defensive player and very productive, you know, good leader out there, gets us lined up. Wisconsin gives you a million formations, the motion and shift, and he does a good job in the back end making sure that we adjust very well, and plus he makes plays, and so he was the defensive player.

We didn't really have an offensive player of the game, nor an offensive lineman of the game, just didn't feel as if there were enough snaps graded to the point with a high enough grade and so forth to have those awards. Ross Homan was the attack force player, was very, very active. They have a tough run game and even when you meet them in the hole, that John Clay is something now, and Ross Homan did a heck of a job there. In fact, I thought I just heard on the Big Ten call that he was the defensive Big Ten player. I think that's true. He was the defensive player in the Big Ten, and then our guys did a good job getting us ready, which you never want to ignore that fact. Every week it's a different scheme you're playing and that Wisconsin scheme was a lot different. We even had some of our top tight ends, Jake Ballard and Jake Stoneburner and Reid Fragel, we were down working with the defense just so we could give them as good a look as we can and special teams-wise, Ricky Crawford did a good job getting our special teams ready. Spencer Smith wore Number 89 all week and really did a great job emulating the Graham kid, who is a very, very good player. And then on the offensive side, it was Taylor Rice who did a nice job, their secondary play was a little bit different than some and he did a nice job of emulating that and doing -- sometimes when you ask kids to do things that are a little different than the way we teach them, it has to be a quick learn and some film study and those kinds of things and Taylor Rice and really rest of the defense did a good job there.
Obviously when you're at the midpoint of the season, it's interesting in that our guys work out all year long and they're halfway through the season and yet there's only about 40 days or 30 some days left that's going to really decide what kind of football team we have. And the next thing we need to do is go on the road. I think a very difficult situation, because if you really study the film, I've been through all the films including last year's with the exception of half of the Minnesota game and if you watch the film, if Purdue doesn't have a turnover here or a turnover there or a special teams problem here or there, who knows what their record is, and we've got to make sure that we attack this challenge the same way you do any other and that's simply by film study. They're a very veteran team. I think I wrote down just sitting there having my Dorito lunch there, they've got 11, looking at their newest two deep, they've got 11 seniors starting on their first unit when you take offense/defense, plus you add a senior punter, so 12 of the 24 are seniors, eight of which are fifth-year, one is sixth-year, and two are fourth-year. And then they have a couple backups who are seniors. So they're a very veteran team. They've played us before. They know they've gone toe to toe. I think our last two games have been 16-3 or something and 23-7 or 10 or something like that, so they know what is ahead and we're going over to their place and we've got to make sure we do a great job of staying rested, getting rested first especially from a defensive standpoint, but preparing extremely hard. Whenever you face a senior quarterback who now has had a chance to throw a whole bunch of balls and who leads our league, two weeks in a row now we're facing the guy that leads the league in passing. So our challenge, I think, is great.

Going on the road in our conference, each time you do it is a heck of a challenge, but as I look at our team after the midpoint here, I love the way we prepare. Our guys prepare extremely hard. Defensively, as many things as Wisconsin gave you, and then they would go to the next thing, if the first thing wasn't quite what they needed, they would go to the next thing and our guys would adjust to that, I thought they did a heck of a job doing that.

Offensively, I think our guys have done a good job of preparing. Where I really think we need to get better preparing from an offensive standpoint is understanding that what we study and prepare for all week long may not be what you're going to get and then adjusting in the midst of the flow and that's why it's disappointing when you only get 30-some snaps, to make those adjustments and learn those lessons and so forth, but it is what it is and we've got to improve from that standpoint in my opinion, and so we're right in the meat of the schedule. We're right in the heat of it, getting ready to take the road and looking forward to it.

REPORTER: When you say the offense needs to adjust in the flow, is that the players in the game? The coaches?

COACH TRESSEL: All of us.

REPORTER: Specifically who are you referring to?

COACH TRESSEL: If you study all week long, here's what they've done, here's what we're going to do and so forth and then what they're doing is not exactly what we have rehearsed, we've got to, from an immediate standpoint, say, okay, I see what they're doing, now here's what we've got to do next. The problem is we were three and out three straight times to start the game and the one touchdown drive we had was only like five plays, so it wasn't like, okay, we've figured this out, we'll do this, do that, do this, we figured out what they were doing a little bit and happened to hit some big plays, we won't turn down those interceptions for touchdowns, we won't turn down those big plays either, but from a consistency ability to really hang our hat on the fact that, okay, I know exactly what they're doing, it was a great experience for, I thought, for those two young tackles.

Jimmy Cordle should be back a little bit this week. I don't know if we would get a full practice week out of him or a full game, but three, the really three young tackles had a chance to see if they could deal with Number 50 who was very, very good. Their other end was very, very good and so there were good experiences, unfortunately only about, I think, Marcus might have had, I don't know, 15 snaps and J.B. 20 some, and we just need to work to get better and understand, hey, here's how they're trying to attack us.

REPORTER: For example, what did they switch up, Jim? Give an example of what --

COACH TRESSEL: They played a lot more people up in the box and played us a little bit different in the secondary, which allowed them to shift their linebackers, when you drop a guy in the box, shift their linebackers and they did a good job. You could see that their plan was, most people are going to have two people on the quarterback when you're doing some of the things we do. They had about two and a half. They were not going to allow the quarterback to get outside and hurt him and so forth. And they did a good job, I thought, of allowing their ends to freelance a little bit because they had an extra guy in the box if he would lose contain, there was always a guy behind him. So it really made it -- if you didn't kick, set, and square as an offensive tackle, you were going to have a chance to get beat inside, which sometimes you don't worry about if there's no one out there to contain because the quarterback can -- and then hurt him by breaking contain. So there were some good lessons of someone who just said, hey, look, we're not going to let you beat us this way.

REPORTER: When you looked at Terrelle's game, obviously there's very few plays to grade and stuff, did you see, was it more of an offensive problem than a Terrelle problem?

COACH TRESSEL: Oh, yeah.

REPORTER: How do you deal with him? He's getting a lot of criticism out there in the public and stuff and from the media.

COACH TRESSEL: Sure, sure.

REPORTER: But how do you deal with him this week kind of like settling down?

COACH TRESSEL: I think the thing you do with any of us is understand that when things go just right, I probably didn't do it by myself and when things didn't go the way you'd like, it probably didn't have everything to do with me. Now, that being said, what is it that I can do better, whether I'm a coach or I'm a quarterback or I'm a left tackle or whoever I am. Do you like it when it doesn't go quite as well as you want it to? Absolutely not. But you know, that's one of the great lessons about playing this game or playing that position or coaching this game or whatever and so you have to -- we will all say one of our fundamentals is whether it be in football or life, you've got to handle adversity, which I think is a little bit instinctive to do, and you also have to handle success, which sometimes is a little harder to do.

REPORTER: How much harder is it to make those adjustments when you do have a sophomore quarterback, three sophomores playing on the offensive line and do you maybe expect defenses to continue to try to do things they haven't shown before maybe because you're young in some of those spots?

COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, I think defenses are going to -- football is a game of pressure, just like our defense, they made things a little bit hard on 16, it was a tough day when you throw two picks for touchdowns, that's a tough day. You can have all the completions you want, but you're probably not going to overcome two touchdowns thrown the other way. That's what defense is all about, and that's what offense is all about is you're either the guy getting pressured or you're putting pressure on them. We didn't do as good a job, other than, you know, we scalded it down there that one drive real quickly. Outside of that, we didn't put the pressure on their defense, then all of a sudden you have the game that's the score that it was and you have to make those decisions as to what is it you want to do, practice or win the game? And we're always, I hope, going to err on the side of trying to win the game.

REPORTER: Boom got dinged up in the game and Jamaal didn't dress, where do you stand at that running back position going into the week?

COACH TRESSEL: Well, we've got Brandon and Jordan Hall and then Tim
May is the third back.

REPORTER: Now you're in trouble.

REPORTER: Is Boom --

COACH TRESSEL: I don't think we'll have Boom this week, I think we probably got set back a week or two and Marcus Williams was kind of the old steady, he knew everything to do, he probably wasn't going to carry it a bunch for you but he could do some things. Jermil Martin is a guy that has to step up. I'm the eternal optimist, I keep waiting for Jamaal Berry to be healthy because when he's been healthy he's been very, very good, but right now it's Brandon and Jordan. But Jamaal Berry has been back, got a lot of reps. He had to run a lot of John Clay last week but he got some of our stuff. And we're just going to have to share. We have to get our defense ready, but we also have to have three tailbacks ready, so at least we know we're in that situation. The hard part about the course of the game is all of a sudden Boom was in like his third play and he was out and Jermil didn't have that many reps. I guess the upside to the less plays was that's less plays at the tailback that particular moment as well.

REPORTER: How is Andrew Miller doing?

COACH TRESSEL: Andrew should practice today. He worked out Friday for about 20 minutes from a cardiovascular standpoint. He worked out Sunday, everything everyone else did, which wasn't a whole bunch, but he should be back. And Jimmy Cordle should be back. I'm trying to think who else has been out. Dex won't be back. Boom won't be back. Tyler Moeller, of course. Who else have we been missing? Not too bad.

REPORTER: Any other flu cases or anything like that?

COACH TRESSEL: One popped up today, but, you know, it's Tuesday so hopefully that won't lead to two and three and four. You have to get them away from the crew and get them healthy and get them rested. We're hoping, what Dr. Kaeding told us Sunday was, as he's talked to the team physicians of the Big Ten schools, which most of the Big Ten schools are semesters, so their flu started about two to three weeks before our flu started and they're finding on college campuses both with the general student body and the student athlete population is that there's a spike early in the term and then it gradually goes down. For instance, Wisconsin's team physician told Dr. Kaeding that they were virtually a hundred percent healthy for the last couple three weeks, whereas we're the a the other end of that thing and hopefully ours will start going the other way.

REPORTER: I want to ask about the fake field goal. Is there ever a time to just play that safe? What was the call on that? Were you trying to block the field goal?

COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, we always put pressure on the side. The lesson is the guy that was in charge of containing needed to have a little bit more width, but it was a great lesson. It was something we talked, interestingly enough we talked about Friday is that we have never seen them fake a field goal, which is all the more reason why we thought they might because they came in two years ago, if you recall, and did two fake punts. One they hit us and the other one was 24-17 and they did it on their own 25 and all of a sudden and we stopped it and it was 31-17 and different ball game. So that's their nature, so we really felt like it was coming and we just got out-flanked a little bit and Jermil was fighting hard to get out there, and Spit, but didn't quite have the leverage that he needed, so the correction obviously is better leverage. The correction then leads to, okay, what's the thing you do against the people that have more leverage, what other kinds of things do you do, so it's an ongoing thing but the thing that we won and it happened, it was a good thing that that ended up being the difference in a loss, I guess you could say it's a good lesson, but we don't like lessons like that.

REPORTER: You talked about making the end game adjustments like you've been, how much of that falls on your center? Is that a big deal? Line calls and stuff?

COACH TRESSEL: Really from a center standpoint we were in pretty good shape. We didn't have a bunch of missed protection calls or anything like that.

REPORTER: Jim, when there's eight in the box and I think you mentioned two, two and a half linebackers dedicated to Terrelle, is that an indication that opposing defenses want you to beat them through the air?

COACH TRESSEL: Oh, sure.

REPORTER: And how much of a concern is the development in that area?

COACH TRESSEL: Well, I think when you talk about beating someone in the air, you have to talk about the whole picture. You have to talk about the protection, the routes, the quarterback play and so forth, and so when you have more people in the box, there's a few more protection issues and so that's what you work against when people are bringing extra folks. And we probably would have thrown the ball down the field a great deal more had the game been a little bit different, but each time we got the ball back after the long lull, the last thing in your mind was, hey, why don't we go three and out in 42 seconds. You know, you weren't going to think that way. And even though they might have had eight guys up there, we had to figure out a way to see if we could move the chains. I think the drive down for the field goal gave our defense a chance and so forth. I wish we'd have driven down for a touchdown, but it, A, burned up X amount of minutes and got us to a three-score game. Someone asked in one of the earlier things about the intentional grounding thing, didn't we think that Terrelle should have thrown it out of bounds. And I told them that I thought he was covering me knowing that Pettrey misses those close ones, so he was just trying to move it back into makeable range, might have been his thinking, I don't know.

REPORTER: After a game like that, just in general, do you come out of
that with more offensive concerns than you had previous or because it was such a strange game as you've talked about, do you just kind of --

COACH TRESSEL: You probably come out with less and I'll tell you why. If you play 70 plays, there's 70 plays worth of concerns because we evaluate them independent. You come out of there with 30 and it's like, okay, these six things happened or these nine things happened and so there's less to learn from and so to me the biggest concern is we didn't get the kind of practice that you need. Wisconsin got a heck of a deal. They got 89 plays, however many rushes Clay got, what did he have, 25 or so? Yeah, he got 20 reps at a very difficult situation. Quarterback had 47 throws, not to mention the times he didn't get to throw it, so he probably dropped back 50 some times. So you can learn a lot from that. So I don't know if I have more or less concerns or whatever. I have less data.

REPORTER: Is there anything that you can do this week at practice, maybe one on ones to kind of make up for the lost reps?

COACH TRESSEL: One on one against our defense? We probably won't do any more of that than we normally do. We normally have full team. On Tuesday we'll probably have maybe 18 snaps against one another. On Wednesday, very similar. Thursday, none at all. We probably won't do more than that because our defense needs time working on Purdue. We'll have some inside drill where it will be nine on nine kind of thing or we'll have some perimeter drill, seven on seven against one another. But our defense just had 89 plays. They've got to get ready to handle Purdue.

REPORTER: How much has Purdue changed under the new regime?

COACH TRESSEL: They've probably lined up in the eye with two backs a little bit more. If you had to say what's their primary formation, it would still be three wides and a tight end, which when they had Dustin Keller and those kind of guys, that was their base. I think the kid threw it almost 50 times Saturday, didn't he? Against Minnesota? So that's not far from what they've typically done. Defensively, I don't see them being a whole bunch different. Now, the coordinator's new, but three of the position coaches are the same. So I don't see them changing a whole bunch and I don't know how many of the offensive guys are new. Maybe two. That's one of the pluses of the coach in waiting thing that you're not bringing in nine new people. Especially, teams are about relationships and they've got, like I mentioned, all those seniors and juniors and stuff and they had relationships with their coaches and really at the end of the day how good you are at something is going to be based on how good your relationships are, so if nine guys him could in, it's a little bit harder to develop those relationships, so I don't see them being that much different.

REPORTER: You talked about watching Purdue and some of the turnovers, I think Joey Elliot's thrown nine picks, I think Ricky Stanzi at Iowa has thrown eight, Daryll Clark has thrown nine, from what you're seeing are the quarterbacks putting more pressure, we talked about Terrelle's picks, but it seems like a lot of guys are throwing picks this year.

COACH TRESSEL: I noticed this weekend -- I don't get to watch games much, but I try to catch some highlights and even in the NFL, I saw a guy from the Cardinals take one back, I saw another guy from there take one back. The first play of the game, I think, in the Iowa-Michigan, one went to the house, I'm not sure why. I don't want to join that club because just like in our jersey scrimmage which you all poke fun at me that you can't figure out the scoring, the scoring is 12 points if you take back a turnover, the defense gets. That's the kind of impact it has on a game, emotionally. Offense is not going and getting plus points and defense is going and getting points the other way, that's double jeopardy. Why there have been so many, I'm not sure, I couldn't answer that.

REPORTER: On what you've scouted on Purdue, are people getting pressure on the quarterback, is there decision-making there that you've seen?

COACH TRESSEL: I haven't watched a whole bunch of their offense and the special teams ones have been just someone getting the ball knocked out of their hands. I'm trying to picture, I haven't watched enough of their offense to see why the picks occurred, but chances are this: One is that protection broke down; two, there was a route adjustment problem; or, three, there was an ill-advised throw and I'm sure that's the case.

REPORTER: What was Terrelle's? Was there a route problem on Terrelle's
pick last week?

COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, probably was not a great call to start with. They'd been playing on third and long that coverage the last two times and as we looked hindsight, probably wasn't the best position to put him in. Two, if he was going to throw it to that guy, then it needed to be done without a hitch. It needed to be as soon as it hit his back foot, he needed to go, but we hit the back foot and we hitched a little so it made it that much too late. One thing that you try to do with your quarterback is talk about who can take the play away. We don't worry about what the other nine guys are doing, who cares, who can take the play away, and that's the guy we've got to keep the ball away from and that was the guy that could take it away if not thrown on time. But it wasn't -- it wasn't the play that you would love to have versus that coverage.

REPORTER: After the game Terrelle was talking about what happens when you guys are aggressive. He was specifically talking about the score before halftime, is that a mindset that the offense has to have and how do you get them to be that way more often?

COACH TRESSEL: Typically offenses, if they'll get a spark, can catch fire. Our first play of that long touchdown drive, we cut back, not by design, right thing to do because they had so overplayed things that all those white jerseys were there and the right thing to do was to cut back and you cut back one gap even further and now all that pursued and now we've got a 20 something yard play and, boom, we hit something that sets fire and then we hit a nine-yard play and then we hit a 22-yard dig route and all of a sudden it's a touchdown.

A similar-type thing happened when we started that long drive against Indiana after it was 10-7, boom, you hit a play and all of a sudden, you catch fire. That's putting pressure on the defense. That's what you'd love to do every drive. That's when you're good: if every drive's about a four-play, 80-yard drive, then we'll be in good shape.

REPORTER: With a young offense and quarterback that's going through ups and downs, do you worry about confidence, like with Terrelle and the offense going through growing pains?

COACH TRESSEL: Sure.

REPORTER: And how do you combat that?

COACH TRESSEL: I think anytime you're doing something that isn't going exactly the way you'd like is that's a moment in time where you have to say, okay, how can this go the way you want it and typically whether it's life or football, you go back, what simply are the thing we've got to do better? You better set square when 50's rushing, because he doesn't care whether he's contained or not and he's got extra people up so he's got the free -- so we better set square or we better do a better job or I better not plant my foot and hitch once before I -- you know, all those kinds of things. We better not put a guy in a situation where, hmm, that probably was a tough split second decision to make, what else could we be doing at that moment. So you have to go back to the fundamental things and I don't worry about the belief that our kids have in themselves, but now you have to have 11 guys and five coaches and everything doing it in conjunction and that's what growing up is all about.

REPORTER: Jim, who would you describe is the emotional leader of this team, in the past we've had guys like Alex Boone or Barton, guys that wear their hearts on their sleeves, who is that guy this year?

COACH TRESSEL: The emotional leader of this team? I'm not sure I would have used those two examples that you used, but I'm not writing the story, so you've got it written already, but I would say Kurt Coleman obviously has done a great job. Austin Spitler does a heck of a job. Dougie Worthington does a heck of a job. They have a lot of confidence. They have an understanding of what they need to do. They've had a lot of growing. Doug's a fifth-year guy, Austin's a fifth-year guy, Kurt's a fourth-year guy that's played a whole bunch. So I would say those would be the guys that I would think would have that type of influence.

REPORTER: Let me clarify this for you. Is there an emotional guy in the locker room, a guy that gets a little fiery like a Boone or a Barton used to get, maybe you didn't always approve of it, but you'd know how they were feeling because their heart was on their sleeve?

COACH TRESSEL: I think you talked to them after the game.

REPORTER: We don't see a guy like that now.

COACH TRESSEL: After the game?

REPORTER: Yeah, a guy that comes out and lets you know --

COACH TRESSEL: Good, we've progressed. We're getting better.

REPORTER: Coach, with Purdue having the 1-5 record, how much of your job this week is selling how good they can be as opposed to schemes and match-ups like you would every other?

COACH TRESSEL: I don't think you have to sell, but you better make sure that your guys are watching plenty of film like they always do, because if you're watching film, and especially if you're watching cut-ups and situational things and so forth, you say how in the heck did they not win this game? If you watch the flow of the game and you see a turnover, you say, well, that's how they didn't win the game. But as long as we prepare with the same type of intensity that our guys prepare, I'm not concerned about that.

REPORTER: You mentioned something earlier about practicing versus
winning. Are there certain things that you just don't feel comfortable calling because they don't put your team in the best position to be successful on Saturdays?

COACH TRESSEL: Depends on which Saturday and it depends on how we're doing against what or whatever, but, yeah, I think the primary responsibility of an offense is to never put their defense in poor position. You know I've felt that for a thousand years. And also to make sure that you take opportunities to score points. So with as much as our defense was on field, as well as they were playing, the score of the game, yeah, there would be some things I probably -- I wouldn't do a double reverse pass, you know, with 11 yards deep in the back field with Lamaar Thomas throwing it who's thrown zero passes in his life, that type of thing, but, no, base stuff, there wouldn't be -- but the thing that we thought was critical, again, because of the numbers of minutes our defense was on the field the last thing we wanted to do was send them right straight back out there, A, with a turnover, B, with a minute and three second drive, we just thought that was -- made sense.

REPORTER: Can you talk about your philosophy for when to call a coach's philosophy, they're supposed to call a play dead and review it automatically, there was a play in the Purdue/Minnesota game, Tim Brewster got it overturned. Is your philosophy don't use it until the fourth quarter, might you use it earlier in the game? I know you only get one, even if you use it right, you lose it.

COACH TRESSEL: About the only time I would consider using a challenge, because the officials do a good job. Even if I tell them I want a challenge, they won't allow me to burn my challenge until the very last second waiting for their buzzer to go off. So the officials are good to you from that standpoint. The only way I would burn a challenge was if somebody that was out in that field knows for sure, because we have no playbacks in the booth. We have, as it's going along for 30 seconds or 15 seconds while you're waiting, what do you guys up there think, was he out of bounds? Was he in bounds? Coach, I don't know. Can you see a monitor? We don't have a monitor. Well, go down the hall. I mean, but I need to know in 10 seconds. So unless someone on the field or unless someone can tell you that they'll stake their life on the fact that, hey, that was out of bounds or just like that one hit or the team that glanced off the glove there on the left-field line, you guys watch any baseball? Too bad they don't have replay. But unless you can verify, we probably won't use a challenge.

REPORTER: Is there anything about that last drive before halftime that you saw that you could use more, more hurry-up, more whatever, you know what I mean? Terrelle said he not only liked the aggressiveness, he liked the play calls.

COACH TRESSEL: I liked the ones that worked too. I told those guys that too. The things I liked best about it is our guys understood why we were doing what we were doing and the fact that we did this, did this, okay, now, we did this twice, so they're going to overpursue this so let's do this. So they knew why we were doing what we were doing, which I think is a helpful thing.

REPORTER: Is there such a thing as tailoring your offense as to what your guys like to do?

COACH TRESSEL: Oh, sure.

REPORTER: As you go along. Are you slowly getting there?

COACH TRESSEL: Slowly.

REPORTER: Jim, does it make any sense then that the fans and the media can watch the replays and you can't?

COACH TRESSEL: Do they put them on the Jumbo?

REPORTER: No, I mean at home.

COACH TRESSEL: Oh, at home?

REPORTER: Or in the press box.

COACH TRESSEL: Does it make sense? That's a whale of a question. If I lost sleep over everything that didn't make sense, I guess not.

REPORTER: Would you reiterate about your offensive philosophy, number one is don't put the defense in a bad position, does that in any way conflict with the skills that Terrelle brings to playing quarterback, what he brings to the table, what he can do best?

COACH TRESSEL: I don't think so, because one thing, he's been pretty careful with the ball over the course of the time that he's been here and that's why he's been relatively up there in the efficiency ratings and so forth. No, to me the thing that is probably the number one trait I see in Terrelle, first, is he wants to be on a winning team. So if you're doing what might lead to winning, that's number one. I don't think Terrelle would enjoy rushing for 110 and throwing for 300 and being 1-5, being 2-4. I don't think that would interest him. And I'm not saying that -- now, here's what would interest all of us, run for 110, throw for 250 and be 6-0. That's what the second half of the season goal is and we'll see if we can go after it.
 
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REPORTER: Jim, who would you describe is the emotional leader of this team, in the past we've had guys like Alex Boone or Barton, guys that wear their hearts on their sleeves, who is that guy this year?

COACH TRESSEL: The emotional leader of this team? I'm not sure I would have used those two examples that you used,

This has to be one of the funniest quotes by Tress ever for so many reasons!
 
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REPORTER: Let me clarify this for you. Is there an emotional guy in the locker room, a guy that gets a little fiery like a Boone or a Barton used to get, maybe you didn't always approve of it, but you'd know how they were feeling because their heart was on their sleeve?

COACH TRESSEL: I think you talked to them after the game.

REPORTER: We don't see a guy like that now.

COACH TRESSEL: After the game?

REPORTER: Yeah, a guy that comes out and lets you know --

COACH TRESSEL: Good, we've progressed. We're getting better.
Master of subtlety. What seems like a side-step is actually a very large message imo about doing it on the field instead of just talking.
REPORTER: As you go along. Are you slowly getting there?

COACH TRESSEL: Slowly.

REPORTER: Jim, does it make any sense then that the fans and the media can watch the replays and you can't?

COACH TRESSEL: Do they put them on the Jumbo?

REPORTER: No, I mean at home.

COACH TRESSEL: Oh, at home?

REPORTER: Or in the press box.

COACH TRESSEL: Does it make sense? That's a whale of a question. If I lost sleep over everything that didn't make sense, I guess not.
:lol:
REPORTER: Jim, who would you describe is the emotional leader of this team, in the past we've had guys like Alex Boone or Barton, guys that wear their hearts on their sleeves, who is that guy this year?

COACH TRESSEL: The emotional leader of this team? I'm not sure I would have used those two examples that you used, but I'm not writing the story, so you've got it written already
This has to be one of the funniest quotes by Tress ever for so many reasons!
agreed, I liked the last little part as well I included above.
 
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COACH TRESSEL: About the only time I would consider using a challenge, because the officials do a good job. Even if I tell them I want a challenge, they won't allow me to burn my challenge until the very last second waiting for their buzzer to go off. So the officials are good to you from that standpoint. The only way I would burn a challenge was if somebody that was out in that field knows for sure, because we have no playbacks in the booth. We have, as it's going along for 30 seconds or 15 seconds while you're waiting, what do you guys up there think, was he out of bounds? Was he in bounds? Coach, I don't know. Can you see a monitor? We don't have a monitor. Well, go down the hall. I mean, but I need to know in 10 seconds. So unless someone on the field or unless someone can tell you that they'll stake their life on the fact that, hey, that was out of bounds or just like that one hit or the team that glanced off the glove there on the left-field line, you guys watch any baseball? Too bad they don't have replay. But unless you can verify, we probably won't use a challenge.

Coach Tressel in classic stream-of-consciousness mode.
 
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My favorite was this one:

Someone asked in one of the earlier things about the intentional grounding thing, didn't we think that Terrelle should have thrown it out of bounds. And I told them that I thought he was covering me knowing that Pettrey misses those close ones, so he was just trying to move it back into makeable range
 
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I have mentioned this before but It seems as if he has loosened up a bit this year. More sarcasm especially with the media. Even in the postgame presser when the captains sat down he said..."I'll let you talk to these HOMBRES". Maybe it's the youth on the team... i don't know. But he's seems like some pressure is off somehow. Not to blame on the great seniors that left, but maybe having them here put pressure on him to have a title contending team and he doesn't feel that pressure this year. Either way, I like Tress in this form.
 
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Video and a transcript of today's presser.

Official.site

COACH TRESSEL: I don't see Todd sitting out there and he spent the whole time on the Big Ten conference call. Couldn't talk to Dwayne from Erie and so and so from the Star Tribune as much. Well, obviously it was a tough one for us to go drop a game on the road in the conference, but that's exactly what happened. We didn't do the things that you need to do to be successful and what we asked ourselves and our team to do was first and foremost as they studied the film and as they reflect and think about it and our guys think about it all day long, I'm sure, just like we do, is to first think about what is it that I could do better and I know from a coaching standpoint when young people decide to come to Ohio State and we convince them that this is a great institution and so forth that one of the things that we want to know for sure is what is it that you're interested in doing individually, collectively as a team, obviously a million things outside of football, and then you go about trying to coach them, aid them, teach them and so forth in what it takes to accomplish that. And probably the first reflection that I have personally is that I've certainly got to do a better job of helping this group understand what it takes to do the things they would like to do. Haven't done as good a job as you need to do.

You know, we talk constantly about when you go on the road in the Big Ten, for instance, you better do a great job on your special teams. And historically we've probably done a pretty fair job with that. I was a little concerned that we didn't do a wonderful job against Indiana, but happened to survive, and then as you go back and evaluate that component of our game, great lessons to be learned. Each time our kickoff coverage team, for instance, did what we set as our standard which is make the hit inside the 25, a couple times one was on the 11, one was on the 19, but we feel as if we've done a pretty good job with kickoff coverage if we can tackle them inside the 25. Every time we did it to our standard, Purdue ended up punting because of its effect. Now, the kickoff team had nothing to do with making the punt directly, but indirectly doing a great job makes it more difficult on the offense and all the rest. And the two times that we didn't meet the standard that we feel as if we need, one led to a touchdown drive and one led to a field goal drive. Now, the kickoff team wasn't on the field for the field goal drive and the touchdown drive, but their impact was real from that standpoint.

We did a fairly good job punting at times. One time we hit a punt that could have buried them down in and maybe made the play that could set the field position to turn the tide and so forth and didn't get that done and they ended up going down and missing a field goal after that one, but it didn't turn out to be that game changer that we would like. So we've obviously got to do a better job. I've got to do a better job of helping us understand the inner relation between all of the units. Football is an emotional game. It's an attitude game. It's a game that's affected by everyone else within your group and we've got to do a better job of making sure we understand that. And likewise, within your own unit.
Obviously you can have discussions on the things that are the obvious and that people know a little bit about, but we've got to make sure we understand that there are 11 guys on every defense, there are 11 guys on every offense, there are X number of coaches deciding what those 11 guys should do on every given time and we've got to do a good job of making sure we really, really know what it takes to win, in this case on the road in the Big Ten.

Turnover-wise, perhaps we talk about it so often that it becomes a little bit, "well, yeah, I know." We've got to do a better job of making sure that we know, not that we know, but we really know. I looked back at our last 20 Big Ten road games and 16 of them we've won and four of them we've lost and in the 16 we've won we've had 20 turnovers. Which it's about 1.25 per game. And in the four we've lost, we've had 14 turnovers, which is about three and a half a game. So we've got to do a better job of understanding the importance of what makes the difference in games. Those are some grand scale things.

Obviously every position individually, we have to know that the three-inch gap makes a difference, this gap makes a difference, this zone makes a difference, whatever it happens to be. So as you reflect as to what you can do better from a coaching standpoint, we've got to do a better job of making sure that, A, we understand what it takes, and I think too, I think we've got to do a good job of understanding the difficulty of the challenges that you're taking on.

There were really three groups that I felt a little bit concerned last week when I stood in front of, there's the quarterback club over there that meets every Tuesday and I was talking to them about Purdue and, yeah, right, uh-huh. And then there's this group that was not all that interested with our upcoming opponent and then there was -- those two groups really have nothing to do with what we can do, but then there's the third group I wasn't totally convinced that I was getting across to the group that we're going to line up on the field the extent of the challenge and that's our job. That's not your job. That's not the Quarterback Club's job. That's our job. Is to make sure that we can get across the difficulty of the challenge and that things don't just happen, you make things happen. And every year at the beginning of the year we set goals, shoot, we always do. That's in our mission is to be the National Champions and the Big Ten Champions, that's the way it is. We've got to make sure we understand when you set that or just like individually our kids want to be all Big Ten and they want to be starters and they want to go to the NFL and we've got to make sure we do a good job of helping them understand, here's what it takes to do that. Yeah, there's been a National Championship here in the last 30 years. Yeah, there's been a dozen or nine or 10 or whatever Big Ten Championships here in the last 30 years but here's what it took to do those. This is the kind of play we need. This is the kind of coaching we need and so. So those are all the reflective things that you think about, and then you can take it down by every individual position. Hey, defense, you've got to do this or that. Hey, O line, hey running backs, hey, quarterback, hey receivers, hey, coaches, hey -- on and on and on. So to me, that's one of the great things that you love about coaching is that there's always ongoing challenges. We've got great kids. I don't worry one bit about our kids and the passion that they have and we're going to keep loving these kids like there's no tomorrow. The record really doesn't have much to do with that, but we've got to get better and because every one of us from the people that write about us, talk about us, cheer for us, anguish with us, every one of us has a set of standards that we believe we're capable of reaching and I believe we are too, and that's the challenge and the fun of coaching and going to work and see if you can get there and this is a good group to do it with because they're anxious and they're interested in the same things. And you go day-by-day and you go challenge by challenge. And Minnesota, a week ago we were watching them on film spanking Purdue 35-20, so they're a good football team. Maybe the best receiver that you can face in Decker. I love their quarterback. We had him in youth camp. He's just a great person, great kid, great competitor, great passion. Defensively they're really big up front. They might be the biggest front, do a great job with their pressure game. A lot of familiar faces. As you turn on the film you say oh, man, he played last year, he played last year, he played last year, he played last year. Their kickoff return guy is electrifying. We were in a special teams meeting this morning and after Coach Haynes' presentation of their kickoff return and our kickoff unit was made, one of the coaches said, so you're telling me he's better than that guy the a Indiana? And Coach Haynes not pretending to know said, I hope not, but it looks like it. He's good. Stoudermire is a good one. We've got a tremendous challenge. We always believe it's Souhern Cal, Purdue or Minnesota or whomever, what's going to be most impactful is what we do, but obviously we've got to become experts on what they do and how to attack them. And the fun begins this afternoon and we'll go to work.

REPORTER: Offensive line, a lot of problems last week, five sacks, five penalties against Wisconsin wasn't all that much better, what can you do at the midpoint of the season, you're getting Cordle back and maybe Miller back at some point to reenergize that unit and get those guys back where they need to be?

COACH TRESSEL: Andrew has practiced a little bit and I hope he can contribute. This will be an important week of practice to see if he can get some weight back on and get some strength back and so forth. Jimmy Cordle, we tried to get him into the game Saturday and he just isn't quite ready. It's one thing being able to be able to go through a practice tempo and it's another thing to be able to do it on a Saturday. I like to think he'd be a lot healthier because we kind of took a step back with him. We didn't leave him in so long that he got banged up. So what can you do? You can go to work. You can start working to become better. You start with what are you going to ask them to do? To me that's critical. I've also believed that as much of a success of any unit is making sure they're capable of doing the things you're asking them to do against the people you're playing against and hope that you learn lessons along the way. I have a lot of confidence that our young people will improve. I'm not worried about that much we just need to get better.

REPORTER: Jim, last year USC, http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059330http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059330Todd Boeckman had a real bad game turnover-wise and the next week you made the switch at quarterback. What is the difference between that scenario, and I think Terrelle had four turnovers he was responsible for on Saturday, a couple more could have gone the other way, what's the difference there? And do you have any plans to maybe use http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1175673http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1175673Joe Bauserman a little bit just to spruce it up a little bit or give Terrelle a break or what are your plans there at quarterback?

COACH TRESSEL: I'm not sure that they're comparable at all. They don't feel to me as being similar situations. Do we have any immediate plans that we've sat down and said, okay, now we're going to put Joe in at this point in time or we're going to commit ourselves to putting him in the game, haven't had that discussion. Don't believe at this moment that that would be the best thing for the team and ultimately you make all your decisions based upon, okay, what does the group need and so at this moment, we've got a lot of practice and a lot of work to do, but at this moment, I wouldn't say we would be.

REPORTER: You're committed to Terrelle, obviously, we're getting emails, ridiculous, what is it about him that you see upside that people aren't seeing, you think, and from the standpoint a lot of people think he hasn't progressed like maybe you thought he would this year, what do you see there?

COACH TRESSEL: From the film grade standpoint, he probably had less minus plays than he did in the past couple weeks. Now, that's the good news. Here's the bad news. The minuses that we had were those triple minuses, just so happens in our grading system that it's one thing to get your job done and handed off or block one guy or whatever, but you have a missed assignment on the offensive line, that's, like, worth three pluses, you get three minuses. Just the way we weigh it mathematically. So his total grade didn't end up better, but the numbers of plays where he had positive grades were higher than they've been and that's the reality and the beauty of what we do is that you can have 72 great plays at corner and you get beat over top and you probably didn't have a very good game. You didn't have a game good enough to win. So what is it that we see that maybe someone else doesn't? We get to see him every day, so I guess my answer would be a lot. Are we committed to Terrelle? Yeah, just like we're committed to http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059472http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059472Todd Denlinger or Rob Rose or http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059435http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059435Anderson Russell or whomever to do whatever it is we think is the best thing for the team.

REPORTER: You said the situation you think with last year at quarterback
is not similar.

COACH TRESSEL: Right.

REPORTER: Why?

COACH TRESSEL: We felt at the time last year that the best thing for the team in order to be successful was to make the decision that we did.

REPORTER: But why is that not what's best for the team right now when you have a quarterback who's making turnovers like that?

COACH TRESSEL: Because I don't know that it's the similar situation. I don't know that it -- that you have the same data as you've watched practice and you've watched development and so forth. Again, you make decisions on what you decide to write about and because you think that's the thing to do, which some people agree, some don't, some read it, some don't, we do the same thing when it comes to personnel. And there have been times when you say, you know what, so and so was just getting ready to come along and then it didn't happen, maybe we should have made that change before and I don't mean quarterback, but any position, but you have to take what you have to work with and make decisions and hopefully you make more good ones than not good ones.

REPORTER: How different has Terrelle looked in practice as opposed to in games?

COACH TRESSEL: Well, games and practice are a different world.

REPORTER: Obviously you use one to evaluate the other.

COACH TRESSEL: You use games to evaluate at the highest level, but everyone is playing in the same medium in practice and the games are a different medium. How has he looked differently? He hasn't been perfect in practice, but he's come along in practice. He hasn't been perfect in games, but he's come along in games. Now, did we have three or four moments that were impactful, there's no question about it. Did any of those things rear up in practice that gave you the exact same scenario? Not really.

REPORTER: When you got together and evaluated the film from an offensive standpoint, anything different this week as opposed to other weeks when you look at it in terms of moving forward? I'm not saying scrapping everything, is there a sense of we've got to start over, we've really got to find what's best from here on out?

COACH TRESSEL: I think the biggest thing and the most obvious thing is, you cannot be wonderful, but don't turn it over and you can maybe survive, but if you turn it over, the impact that has on more than just you is tough to -- take any level of football. You're not going to be successful if you make errors like that. The question I think you ask, you have to ask yourself is, is it something we're doing that all of a sudden one of the cardinal principles that you know is true about the game, there's debate all the time, should we be doing what Georgia Tech's doing, should we be doing what Florida's doing, should we be doing what whoever's doing, that's a debate. There's no right answer to that. There a right answer to whether or not you should be turning it over, regardless of what kind of system you're using. So the question I think you have to ask yourself in the mirror, is there something we're doing that is contributing toward not being good in a critical situation, just like if you had the ongoing discussion about the guys up front. Well, the cardinal principle there is, you can't miss an assignment because what that can do to the rest of the world, well, then you know he didn't want to miss an assignment, he didn't go out there with the intention of missing an assignment, so what is it we had him thinking about or we didn't work on enough that would have led to us missing an assignment. So I don't know if that answered your question but I did my best.

REPORTER: But the turnovers, if that is your number one, I think, commandment and your --

COACH TRESSEL: Sure. It should be in anyone's.

REPORTER: So needless to say it's tried your patience, but I assume you see it more as an overall.

COACH TRESSEL: Sure.

REPORTER: Than just as Terrelle's problem.

COACH TRESSEL: Oh, gosh, yeah.

REPORTER: I mean he gets saddled with the picks.

COACH TRESSEL: That's okay, though, when great things happen, he gets saddled with the adulation, he's not naive to the reality of you're wonderful if it's going wonderful and you're the problem if it isn't. It's a very visible position. A very difficult position. And I heard one of the scouts or something that was in talking about, oh, so and so's team is playing well, I said, yeah, this is such a quarterback-driven league, that when that quarterback is playing well, you've got a chance. Well, which league is it because he's got his hands on the most valuable possession, the thing everyone came to watch, he's got his hands on it most of the day, not that that left tackle isn't important or that right tackle or the nose guard, but he's not naive to knowing that that's going to be the perception, what he's got to be clear about is what is it I can do better. Can't worry about what the kickoff team is doing better, because I'm going to assume they're over there working on it, I can't worry about what the tight end's got to do better, I assume he's working on it because I'm not the tight end coach, what is it that I can do better? To me that is what is the great challenge of coaching and the fun of coaching is how can I do a better job to make all of us focus in on what have I got to do better.

REPORTER: How do you get the point across to Terrelle, he's talked about turnovers, he hates them too, but how do you get the point across about maybe sitting down if you do another one for a while, how do you approach that?

COACH TRESSEL: I've only done that once with a young guy because I didn't think he really believed how important it was and that he -- all he could remember was the couple passes he completed. He had amnesia about his turnovers. So only once have I really felt that that's what was needed, and it worked because he didn't throw another pick the rest of the year and it was a good deal. But that's what I thought he needed. I don't think that's what Terrelle needs. As you just said, no one has a disdain for turnovers any more than Terrelle, and we've got to more deeply understand. And so Terrelle's problems are no different than the whole team's and I know you love to talk about it and that's okay, but the whole team, the more deeply you understand what it takes at your particular role, the better chance we have to being successful and that's something that you wish you could put in a computer chip or I hope that fantasy team's not working, I'm going to go hire that one or this video game, I can't beat that one, I'm going to get this one. The fun of working with people is just that.

REPORTER: With what you're trying to do offensively, do you feel like you are keeping defenses off balance with what you want to do?

COACH TRESSEL: I'm sure they've got to be a little bit off balance because sometimes we go down and score in four plays and sometimes we look as if we aren't doing so well. So they've got to wonder. I'm sure at times they've got to be sitting there saying, I hope that group that just scored in three plays doesn't show up. But I don't know the answer to your question. I know this, the few times we've talked to people after games or had people talk to people that were buddies and said, you know, they're very concerned if number two has his hands on the ball and things are in good stead because I don't know if anyone could question the explosive potential both running and passing that Terrelle brings and have we all done everything to make sure that we magnify that? Probably not. Has he done everything he needs to do to maximize that? Probably not. But it doesn't mean we won't stop working on it.

REPORTER: So is it more you need to do better what you're already doing or do you need to change more of what you're trying to do right now?

COACH TRESSEL: Do we need to do better of what we're already -- probably we need more of the first thing you said than the second thing.

REPORTER: Do you not feel like defenses are coming up and trying to stop Terrelle.

COACH TRESSEL: Oh, sure.

REPORTER: And making him throw.

COACH TRESSEL: Sure.

REPORTER: Do you feel like you've made.

COACH TRESSEL: A little bit like we did with Barkley. I mean, it's what we do every week. Every week we make sure that there's no way they can just run the ball, whether it's their quarterback who happens to be a runner or their tailback or John Clay or whoever it happens to be, you better not let them trample you with a run because then you have no answers defensively, so, no, I think there's no question about it. Minnesota does a great job of getting extra people in the box. They do a good job pressure-wise, so I'd be shocked if people didn't know what you already know.

REPORTER: Are you making them pay for that enough, do you think?

COACH TRESSEL: Have we been successful enough doing that? Probably not. I mean, I'm sure if we were, we would have scored a lot more points. I mean, you know the answer to your question.

REPORTER: How big a focal point in practice this week will be eliminating pre-snap penalties? You guys have had a lot of them this year.

COACH TRESSEL: I'll tell you what, that's -- things you can control, and I've always believed that turnovers are a thing you can control. If you really believe that that is a game difference-maker, then you have a chance of minimizing them. You can't -- hey, a ball bounces off, things happen, but if you're a ball carrier and above all else, more important than how many yards you gain is at the end of the play, that ball's still ours, and if you really believe that, then we've got a chance, and that is something that you ought to be able to do regardless of your talent level. Same thing with those penalties that you can control. Above all else, I know where the snap count is, where's the ball heading and what's my job, it's not that difficult. And that's why I say, have we made it too difficult? And so in answer to Doug's question, whatever it was, yeah, we have to get better at what we're doing and make sure we're doing what we ought to be doing.

REPORTER: The deep pass interception, when you reviewed that on film, just off the TV it looked like he had plenty of running room in front of him, is it hesitancy of his to run the ball.

COACH TRESSEL: Which pass interception.

REPORTER: The one he threw deep to Duron, is he not seeing the field? Is he hesitant to run in your study? What did you come back with as a consensus on that play?

COACH TRESSEL: On that play I think he should have run. That's my opinion. Based upon -- you didn't know for sure when you're at the game. So many times coaches will be screaming through the headset someone should have done this or that and you'll watch the film and you'll say, oh, I know why he didn't. That particular play, after I watched it on film, my evaluation was we would have been much better served running. Now, I don't remember the down distance.

REPORTER: First and 15.

COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, so you may have gotten seven yards. But that's part of -- to me, the whole key to playing the position of quarterback and I suppose any position, is know what we need. If I'm an offensive lineman, the one thing we don't need is we don't need me offside. We don't need me blocking the wrong guy. And then the hard part starts, that guy I'm blocking is pretty good so I've got to use my technique, and etc., etc.
So key to a quarterback, know what we need. Well, one thing we don't need, I know for sure, is an interception and we don't need a fumble, don't need that, no need for it. Now, it's first and 15, what do we need? Seven yards, eight yards? We're back having a chance. Sometimes quarterbacks get a little bit, oh, it's third and 14, I'll never forget, we were playing -- I think it was Illinois, over at Illinois and T-Zach (Tomczak) got hurt and Offenbecher went in and we had a corner route and a flat route and he threw the corner route, and it was intercepted. He came back, I said what were you thinking. He said, yeah, I saw the flat, but it was third and 17. Well, granted, we needed 17, but what we needed even more than that was to not throw an interception. So that's all part of you know what you have to get better at. On that particular play, I'm sure he didn't have a plus and in my opinion should have been a run.

REPORTER: You talked earlier about the three groups that you spoke with last week, was the implication that maybe the players didn't necessarily look at Purdue as a viable upset?

COACH TRESSEL: The implication was I didn't think I did a very good job of getting them to really understand the challenge we had, it's hard for people to understand the depth of a challenge, but I didn't think I did a very good job as I looked out, I didn't see -- there's nothing you can put -- I can't give it an exact, well, this person did that, I didn't have a good feel, maybe I just didn't have a good feel that I was doing a good job, you know how that goes, but I didn't sense that from anyone that, man, these guys are good or these guys, man, I can't believe they're not 5-1. There wasn't any of that from any which way I looked and maybe that's just my natural paranoia because I'm always looking at the film saying, oh, man, if they don't turn it over -- they had 20 turnovers in their first five games. Well, I mean, you are all schooled well enough to know by now that you're not going to win with that, but if all of a sudden you create five takeaways and what did they have, two or three? Three. Yeah, you've got a chance. You've got a plus two in the game, you've got a chance.

So that's my implication that I'm not sure -- and that's my job, that's not your job, it's not someone else's job, it's my job to make sure we understand the difficulty of the challenge truly. I mean, honestly the difficulty of the challenge. What's the percent chances of being the national champions I don't know, what's the percent chances of being the Big Ten Champion, what are we going to have to do to do that? And I'm not sure I've done as good a job as I need to do helping us understand that those aren't just, oh, shoot, we'll be the champions. You know, that's -- there's been a lot of people come through here that have never been the champions and it's a difficult thing and you've got to understand the difficulty of the challenge.

REPORTER: There's always a lot of second-guessing. After you looked at the video of the game, did you second-guess any of your play calling.

COACH TRESSEL: Sure, absolutely.

REPORTER: Did you think that you put -- Terrelle's catching a lot of flack. Was he put in the best position with the plays that were sent in?

COACH TRESSEL: I think the combination of what we asked him to do and what the other people around him, that's always the assessment, that everyone has a part in the way someone is portrayed and in the offensive quarterback's situation, it's the coaches and whoever else was on the field with them. In the free safety's position, it's the front seven have a huge impact on what he's going to look like. So, absolutely. And what the coach asks, the defensive call and all the rest.

REPORTER: Are you concerned that if you did have to sit him down that he wouldn't be able to handle it, are you worried about his state? I think the fans want to know is how long is the leash for Terrelle?

COACH TRESSEL: I think a good easy answer to that is as long as we think he's the best guy doing the job for the team, that gives the team the best chance to be successful. So it's as long or as short as one would want to make it.

REPORTER: That's kind of what I.

COACH TRESSEL: I've got to get Lori, don't want to forget, she was mad at me.

REPORTER: How much in your decision to stick with Terrelle through the game last week and then not to quote, unquote, put him on notice to jeopardize his status this week, how much of that is concern or is there concern over what effect that would have on him psychologically or confidence-wise, is there any thought process along those lines?

COACH TRESSEL: I think you always try to keep in mind people's feelings, but not to the point where it will hurt the team. If you think something is the best thing to do for the team, I think you have to do a good job communicating with the person that might have their feelings hurt and all that, but you've got to do what you think is the best thing for the team. To me, that's what our responsibility is. Our responsibility is to the group. Now, that doesn't mean we don't care about the individual. You do all you can do to help every individual. But not at the expense of the team. Lori? Real quick.

REPORTER: You said you see a lot of development in Terrelle. Can you
give us some specific examples of things he's doing better now other than he's just a more experienced quarterback than at the beginning of the season?

COACH TRESSEL: I think that as you watch his footwork, it's significantly better. I think if you watch his progression and understanding of what we need to do and where we need to go, whether it's run check-offs or who I should be reading and so forth. Now, I think while we're progressing in that area, where we need to progress more which is probably the most difficult area is when things aren't just right, whether it's protection breakdown or route breakdown or whatever. To me, the person that really is far along in their trade is that that's where, whether they're throwing it out of bounds or running up the field or whatever, those are hard to rehearse. How do you rehearse when you -- this person had a missed assignment in their pass protection and here comes that guy running right at your nose, you know, we don't rehearse those too much, but I think that's a development in understanding, not that he hasn't progressed in that area, but that's the hardest one for a quarterback to progress in and usually the hardest ones, there's the slowest progression. But I think he's coming along just fine and as fine as I would like it to be? No. As fine as you would like it to be? No. But he's progressing.
 
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I guess after 3 days I can see some humor in this.

REPORTER: With what you're trying to do offensively, do you feel like you are keeping defenses off balance with what you want to do?

COACH TRESSEL: I'm sure they've got to be a little bit off balance because sometimes we go down and score in four plays and sometimes we look as if we aren't doing so well. So they've got to wonder. I'm sure at times they've got to be sitting there saying, I hope that group that just scored in three plays doesn't show up.
 
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Been following this over the years, and I appreciate BB73 doing this and all.

I can't help but notice how Coach Tressel's press conference at the B10 Media Day (July 27th) was long and narrow, while his subsequent pressers were much wider, and obviously vary in length. Some are longer than the Media Day presser, while others are shorter. (and some are about the same length.)
 
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Weekly presser.

Official.site.video

Official.site

COACH TRESSEL: Okay. Lori, last question. Clay, are you feeling better?

REPORTER: Feeling great.

COACH TRESSEL: Great. Okay. I've got to get my award winners, sometimes I forget to bring that out for you.

REPORTER: Oh, no, you never do.

COACH TRESSEL: It was good to get back home for Homecoming. It was good to get a victory in the conference and take a step forward. We had three award winners, special units, http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1383743http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1383743Etienne Sabino, Etienne is on three of our units, made three kickoff tackles inside the 20, he's done a heck of a job doing whatever needs to be done and keeps progressing as a linebacker as well but he was awarded with the special units player.
http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059401http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059401Thaddeus Gibson was the defensive player of the week. Thaddeus is an excellent football player and I think the conference named him as the co-Big Ten defensive player as well. And Thaddeus is a guy that he is constantly at that facility. He is studying film. He's in that weight room. He's a committed young guy. He's a good leader. He's the only member of the team in my coaching of football class and sits in the front row, so I can report to you from that standpoint. Just a good football player and was very disruptive Saturday against the Gophers.

Offensively, http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1549127http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1549127Terrelle Pryor was the offensive player. As you know, he threw for 239 and rushed for 100 and some and something that's only been done three times in our history, which a guy rushing for more than 100 and throwing for more than 200, did an excellent job. He, too, is very committed and at that facility and watching film and exceeding like crazy and was awarded the offensive player of the week.

Jimmy Cordle was the Jim Parker offensive lineman of the week. Jimmy played tackle, played center. I think he's played every position except for right guard or something he says and he would like to get a couple snaps there so he can get the trifecta, but it was good getting Jimmy back because we lost http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1383594http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1383594Mike Adams and probably won't have Mike for, I would say, at least two more games. So Jimmy stepped in and Mike Brewster had been limping around for a couple weeks so he took a lot of snaps at center and he's a smart football player and I'm glad he's with us.

Our attack force player of the week was http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059362http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059362Doug Worthington. Doug has been steady all season. I think some of the things that defensively our guys went to, to really feature Thaddeus and Doug and what they do best, http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059292http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059292Dexter Larimore, what he does best, I thought they did a good job of kind of changing their scheme, and Doug, I think, has benefited from that as much as anyone. He's been a great leader and just a very, very solid football player and he got the attack force player. The scout team players of the week, K. C. Christian on the special teams and http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...3&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=204773996http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...3&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=204773996Nate Ebner on the defense. http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...3&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=204773996http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...3&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=204773996Nate Ebner is a young guy that just came to us this past winter and has made a couple of our special teams and really a heck of an athlete and really making a consideration. He has been a big plus on this football team.

And then the offensive player scout team player was http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=3726413http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=3726413Ricky Crawford. Ricky's a wide receiver that just works like crazy and just a great kid from right here at Olentangy and just a heck of a football player.
As you know, the Minnesota game was kind of a tale of two halves. I thought we came out and did some good things in the first half but we didn't finish things. Got the ball on about the eight-yard line and drove it the length of the field and then came up empty after a missed field goal and later on in the half drove it the length of the field and came up empty with the turnover. So we head into the half with a 7-0 game.

Defensively we were playing real solid. I'm sure Minnesota was affected with the loss of Decker, and you hope that he's not out real long because he's a great, great player, but then when the second half started, just like we always talk about, the two things we talk about the most which are special teams and turnovers happened on one play. And we chose to go against the wind and see if we could hang tough for the third quarter and then gain that advantage in the fourth quarter and so we decided to pooch it up in the air and see if we could put one up there hard to handle and http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059293http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059293Aaron Pettrey put a perfect kick up. The guy he was kicking at was actually a defensive end so that guy kind of moved out of the way and the deep guy had an awfully long run in a very difficult kick and we came up with the ball. And our offense was opportunistic which was critical to get in the end zone and we got a couple turnovers and one thing after another and we had a good wind.

So it was a good step for us. I think the reality we sit in right now is here we are in late October, we have goals that we have in mind, we have progression we would like to make and we know we have a very, very short time to do that. We've got a football game here that's a nonconference game which is a little bit unusual for our guys. We haven't done a whole bunch of that this late in the season but what's most critical is starting with today's practice, we get better at what we do because we've got a short time to -- you think about our seniors and they've only got a couple more times in Ohio Stadium and four more football games and those four or five years are gone and the same is true for this team in this season. And so our guys, I think, have the right perspective, the understanding that we had a good win, it wasn't a perfect win, there's a whole lot more we've got to do better and it's got to start this week.
New Mexico State is in a transition mode. We've played a couple teams that are in that world that with the new coaching staff in the midst of developing relationships within their coaching staff and their team and New Mexico State in particular brought in a number of new players on their team so they're still growing and trying to figure out who they are and they've had two different quarterbacks playing.

I happen to be very aware of DeWayne Walker, I don't know him, but I've met him. He did a good job at UCLA. You can see as you watch the film that the guys are being taught the things that need to be done to become a successful football team. I think they have a do you mean dangerous return guys. I thought one of the keys last week was that we didn't let Number 11 make a difference in the game.

Our kickoff coverage team did a good job and we did a good job with our hang time on our punts and so forth, and we're going to need to do the same thing from a special teams standpoint this week because I think both their kickoff returner, Number 23, I don't know their names that well, and Number 10 back there on punts, our are guys that can change a game. They're guys that can give you a burst when you might need it the most. So most of our discussions begin with the thing that the team does as a whole and the staff does as a will whole and that's the special teams.

And of course defensively we've got to prepare ourselves for a group that probably deploys a little bit different than what we've been seeing. They're in two backs, two tights a decent amount. They're in two tights, two wides. They do spread it out a little bit, but maybe not as much as some teams do it. Two different quarterbacks, two different styles. So our defense has got to be on task as to what needs to be the situation and how we go after them, how we try to affect those quarterbacks.
And offensively they're a man-to-man team, pressure receivers, blitz probably, I don't know, half the time perhaps, and they like to -- they like to run, they like to do the things that Coach Walker did when he was the defensive coordinator at UCLA, so we've got to prepare ourselves for those types of things. And all the while, we've got to keep getting better at the fundamental things that will give us a chance to become a good football team.

So it's a crucial week like they all are, but sometimes when you're at this juncture in the season at this point, when you only have -- we practice three days a week, so you're down to a dozen practices or so, we've got a lot of work to do to become the football team that we believe that we can become.

REPORTER: Coach, you mentioned http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1383594http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1383594Mike Adams and his situation. Just if you could, bring us up to date on http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059439http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059439Brandon Saine, Boom Herron, http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059292http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059292Dexter Larimore, is there any hope this week or next week that they'll get back into playing?

COACH TRESSEL: http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1383594http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1383594Mike Adams, I would say no to that this week or next week. http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059292http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059292Dexter Larimore, I would say, we'll have to see how he does. He's going to be able to practice some this week. Boom Herron, we'll have to see this week. I would call him questionable for this week, which I don't know what that means for next week. http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059439http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059439Brandon Saine won't be able to have contact today. It's just part of the procedure in his type of injury. He'll be able to have a lot of cardio work and if he progresses there, I'd like to think he'll be cleared. http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1383734http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1383734Orhian Johnson is in a similar situation as http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059439http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059439Brandon Saine. Who did I miss there? I'm not smart enough to get those five-pronged questions. Did we get them all?

REPORTER: Some of your offensive linemen are a little banged up, Brewster, Cordle.

COACH TRESSEL: About the only one that isn't is http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059476http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059476Bryant Browning. I think J.B. is a little healthier, he had a bruised ankle for a while. Andrew Miller is much healthier, I think http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1383595http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1383595Michael Brewster is healthier than he was. I think http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=3725709http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=3725709Justin Boren, when they give us those medical reports, I don't know what a lot of those things mean, but then he's out there blocking, so I think they're okay.

REPORTER: That's pretty much your whole starting lineup across the front, how much has that hindered you progress-wise on the front there?

COACH TRESSEL: I think individually if you believe in practice and if you believe in being healthy and being able to do things the way that you would like to do them, then you'd like -- you'd have to believe that it's hindered the progress of those guys. I don't know if I have the ability to say how that has hindered the progress of the whole, but in spring practice, we always say, man, if you could get those 15 practices, you're going to get better.

Preseason is so critical, you have 29 practices, you have a chance to get better. When you miss any of those, it hinders your progress, you as the person. I suppose as every individual's progress is hindered, hence the group might be, but, you know, every team in America has got ankles and plantar fascia and all brachial plexuses and all the things that they tell us, Paul, you liked that one, didn't you?

REPORTER: Yeah, that was good.

REPORTER: But everybody hasn't started three left tackles, you know what I mean?

COACH TRESSEL: Right.

REPORTER: Just as a group, that's the one group I think you want to be like a kick line or something, you know? I mean a dance line, excuse me. You know what I'm asking.

COACH TRESSEL: Got me on that one.

REPORTER: Has it hurt you from a chemistry standpoint?

COACH TRESSEL: Is that why you moved over there, Ken? You're through with him? Those guys it helps to work together. I've heard Jim Lachey talk often that you get to the point where you can just feel what the other guy is going to do, even a grunt means something. So, yeah, you need as much time together -- but so do the quarterbacks and the receivers or the linebackers and the secondary. It is what it is, it is what it was, here's where we are, we've got to get better.

REPORTER: Is it somewhat difficult that your players have kind of gotten into a rhythm, you're five games into the Big Ten and caught up in a race and then all of a sudden you kind of take this race where you're not involved in a conference game, you've got those three big games waiting out there, do you think it's difficult from a player's standpoint?

COACH TRESSEL: I hope not. I wish I knew. I hope that they do understand that the progress we make or we don't make will affect the next time we play when we get back in the conference. They seem to be a group that is willing to take instruction and if it's reasonable, if it makes some sense, yeah, it makes some sense, we need to get better, well, let's go get better. I don't think that's going to disrupt us.

REPORTER: From a coaching standpoint, is it easier when you play four nonconference games to kind of build up to a Big Ten race where then you play eight in a row?

COACH TRESSEL: I suppose that would be the ideal.

REPORTER: That's preferable.

COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, that would be the ideal thing. But when they went to 12 games and all the holes in your conference and the inventory for those first four weeks, there's only so many teams and only so many games available. In our particular case, this year's the last year, but we had limited weekends, and so we had to go 12 straight weekends. So you had to find someone who could fit perfectly into October 31st, 2009, and that was hard to do. So we're grateful for the fact that we could find a game. Most especially we could find a game home, because that's critical for our athletic department, so we're not going to say we wish it had -- it were a different way. We're just going to go to work against the Aggies.

REPORTER: How much of your philosophy in terms of guys that might be borderline to play, maybe Brandon or someone else this week might be, how much do you take into effect the opponent, the fact it's an opponent you're expected to beat?

COACH TRESSEL: Not at all. Not at all. If http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059439http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059439Brandon Saine is cleared, Brandon's playing. If http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1383734http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1383734Orhian Johnson's cleared, he's going to play. If Boom Herron is cleared, he's going to play. We need -- this is an important game, that's one thing. We need to get better. That's just as important. So the best chance you have to get better is on Saturdays. Practices are critical. It's at a certain level, but it's not at the level that a game is, playing in front of the fans and the excitement and the energy, so, no, if a guy can play, if he's allowed to play, he's going to play.

REPORTER: You were critical of yourself the way the team perhaps overlooked Purdue, is that memory enough that you don't have to say anything this week around against a team that you're overwhelmingly favorites or do you maybe change anything how you do this week so that doesn't happen again?

COACH TRESSEL: Well, we have different data out there. We have the fact that maybe we didn't do as well as we could have collectively a couple weeks ago. We weren't perfect last week, we've got plenty of film to show that. I think as the moments get less, the awareness, you hope, grows and everyone talks about being focused and so forth. To me, focused is having a moment-by moment awareness of what needs to be done. I don't feel like we did a great job of having that focus or awareness a couple weeks ago. Never one bit wanted to take anything away from Purdue because Purdue did what you have to do. They got five takeaways, they did this and they did that. But having that focus and that awareness of what needs to be done right now, on whatever this is, the 27th or whatever of October, if we have an understanding of what needs to be done today, we go do that as well as we can do it, then we can move on and do the same on the 28th and 31st and on beyond.

REPORTER: Was Terrelle more relaxed against Minnesota in your opinion? He talked a lot last week, he said he felt more relaxed than he ever had, did you think he was more relaxed on the field?

COACH TRESSEL: I think as you grow in your experiences and are able to assess your own experiences, you do become more relaxed and we talk and talk and talk about the effects of a turnover or a missed tackle or it's not just all about the quarterback, and that's discussion and that makes sense and we can show examples of that, but sometimes when it happens, it becomes even more real, more deeply understood. I think when you more deeply understand something, you become more relaxed, in the realities of it, so I think as much as you hate to say it, the adverse things that happen, sometimes in life are very, very valuable. I thought because things moved along fairly well in our game, that helps your relaxation.

Minnesota was a team that they're going to blitz all over the place and we did a pretty good job of not having problems with that and progressed with the ball. Had pretty good balance. So that helps you be relaxed as well.

REPORTER: How did he grade out? Did he grade a winning performance?

COACH TRESSEL: No, not quite. His decision-making grade was very close to a winning performance. Just got to do some of the little things, but we're getting there. We're working.

REPORTER: What were you more upset about on the interception before
half, his decision or the actual throw? It looked like he had plenty of time.

COACH TRESSEL: From where I was standing, I didn't have enough information to know which, I just knew that we threw an interception. It looked to me from where I was standing, it could have been a little further outside, it seemed a little behind. When you watched the film, if he would have thrown it outside, there was a defender coming from the other side, so I think if you asked him he would tell you that he was most disappointed with the decision because he felt like he threw it where it had to be to stay away from that defender, but at the end of the day, he felt that he shouldn't have thrown it. And now as I've watched on film, I would concur with that. But he knew why he threw it where he threw it, because he could see the corner who was sinking and I couldn't from where I was.

REPORTER: Coming off the day you had with Purdue, was he tentative in a way?

COACH TRESSEL: I don't like too many throws where they don't think about it too much. It's not what I root for. I'm probably pleased about A, why he put it where he did and B, he knew what he needed to do, but, no, I don't think he was tentative in the game. I thought he made some real good decisions, it's third and two and maybe there's a little bit more I can get out there, but let me go get the two and little things like that. I thought he progressed, but so did other guys. Again, we talk so much about one position but I thought some people across the board did some good things.

REPORTER: Going into this game with Jordan and Jermil possibly as your running backs, did you learn anything about Jermil or was it hard to evaluate?

COACH TRESSEL: That was the end of the game and emotionally our opponent wasn't like they were at the beginning of the game, but that doesn't lessen the fact that he did a good job. We of course feel better about Jermil being in the game now after having seen him carry it seven or eight times. Jordan we've always felt fine. Jordan's a good back. Jamaal Berry might even get some work this week, he's back on the active full practice roster.

So the thoughts of going into the game and it's Jordan and Jermil, I'm a little nervous about that, that's awfully thin because what that tells me is that Brandon and Boom aren't allowed to play. And so you might be thrust into a difficult situation with a guy like Jamaal because he's a game that's like what, game eight or nine? Nine? Do you spend a year at this point? The answer's no if Boom and Brandon and Jordan and Jermil are ready. It all of a sudden we're down to one of those four, the answer is yes even if it's game 12, so you have to find out what the situation is.

REPORTER: Do you know much about one of their quarterbacks, Trevor Walls?

COACH TRESSEL: Don't know much about him, no. I know he's shared time. They've each thrown the ball a little bit less than a 100 times. I think Flemming might have started the first three or four games and then the rivalry game is the one where Trevor came in and started and won the big one there, and then Flemming came back and Walls came and I don't know who started last week because I haven't watched, our impression was it was not more our Ohio guy, it was Flemming.

REPORTER: They both played.

COACH TRESSEL: But I'm not sure who started. I think they both played.

REPORTER: You never saw him in a camp or anything that you recall?

COACH TRESSEL: That I recall, no.

REPORTER: Jim, you guys are 40-point favorites in this thing.

COACH TRESSEL: We haven't got 40 points very often, so --

REPORTER: When you look at them on film, does that surprise you when you hear it's that big?

COACH TRESSEL: You know, A, usually I don't know that information, so glad that you brought it to my attention. You know, I don't know. I don't give any thought to that. I'm sure that there have been times where we have lived up to whatever was supposed and times where we haven't and I'm sure what it was had nothing to do with us doing that, so I don't give that any thought.

REPORTER: Do you treat this, though, as more like the season opener, something where you definitely will go in and try to play Bauserman, try to play guys in critical moments?

COACH TRESSEL: No, this is game nine. We've got to progress. Now, that doesn't mean Joe won't play, I don't mean that. But I'm not sitting here today saying, you know what, I think we'll put this guy in or that guy in. No, we're going out all barrels blazing and do what the situation calls for.

REPORTER: Jim, I think we all saw that the offensive line seemed to play better last week. Have there been times this year where you've had to adjust what you've wanted to do as an offense with personnel groupings or play callings because maybe you needed to help the offensive line a little bit or do something that if protection's not there, you're maybe limited in what you can do?

COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, I think you go into most every game finding out how they're going to play up front. You know, are they going to be just stout against the run and be limited on their pass rush, just play their hats low and say, hey, you're not running so you might as well start passing or they're going to play whatever you end up doing. I thought if you look at the first -- I think it was the first two series, I'm not sure we moved them much. But then I thought we did a pretty good job of getting outside and misdirect passing a little bit. And I think that helped the offensive line, but if the defensive line knows that, hey, all you're going to do is line up and we'll see if we can knock you backwards, most defensive lines in America, you're not going to be able to do that if they think and know that's what you're going to do. So we always try to do things to help our guys up front with the run/pass balance. Not always protect the same way, you know, if they know where the quarterback is going to be standing, it's a lot easier to rush the passer. If you watch teams that play against us, very seldom do they launch from the same spot, because if they did, our defensive line isn't going to find that. So, yes, absolutely we do all we can to help our guys up front.

REPORTER: On Terrelle's second touchdown pass to Posey, play action out of the eye, what impressed you most just about the way he handled that play? He set up right, he seemed calm, what did you like most about it?

COACH TRESSEL: Was it the one heading to the north end or the south end?

REPORTER: The south end.

COACH TRESSEL: The one heading to the south end? The nice thing was is we had tremendous protection and he had a chance to just look it over and really where he threw that touchdown was not where that play was designed, but he saw the field and he sent the ball out there and DeVier adjusted to the open spot. They kind of jumped the route that we'd hit Dane a couple times and their corner thought, well, I'm going to steal this one and Posey had a big hole out there and Terrelle saw the hole and laid the ball up. So that was well done in large part because there was no duress.

REPORTER: But was it indicative too, though, the receiver and the quarterback are also feeling each other's game a little bit more?

COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, I think the longer they play, they're both young kids, the longer they play, the better they're going to get at improvising. Funny thing is, we look statistically at our plays and what consistency level and this and that, and there was one option right that went 18 yards to the left, if you remember, Terrelle cut way back. And we were laughing that, you know what, when you put that in the computer, it's going to look like, boy, that play worked perfectly.

Well, there was a little improvisation because they overplayed where we were headed and he had the field vision to say, hey, they violated some gaps and some zones back there and here I go. So, yeah, I think the more they play, the more they'll be able to do that.

REPORTER: Two years ago, Thad had disagreements with the coaching staff, thought about leaving the team, can you tell what he might have learned about that experience?

COACH TRESSEL: Patience. That's a great thing for anyone to learn in whatever they're involved in. And I think these young kids, whether they're at Ohio State, New Mexico State, Minnesota, wherever they are, they've been recruited. They've been given the impression that their services are sorely needed and the world's going to be wonderful if they'll just come here. Well, the world isn't wonderful anywhere to everyone's liking and it's maybe a lot more difficult and you get surprised a little bit and disappointed and impatient.

And we tease Thad all the time about how he was sitting on the stairs saying, I'm out of here, and a couple older guys put their arm around him and said, yeah, I was on the same stairs and you'll be fine. But patience is a wonderful thing to learn.

REPORTER: Was it ever serious enough that you thought he might be leaving?

COACH TRESSEL: No. He didn't have a car, I don't think. A long walk to Euclid. Kids don't hitchhike anymore. You're giving your age right there.

REPORTER: What kind of grades do you give him in class?

COACH TRESSEL: Thaddeus? He has a little advantage in that every time we're training table or whatever, I pop him some questions from the day's lecture, so he's started avoiding me because we put him on the spot in front of the coaches and the other players and ask him what are the three most important things a quarterback must do for the team or what's the relevance of a strength and conditioning program to a football program and he has a midterm on Wednesday the 19th or 18th of November. I'll be able to report back a little better, but he's always in class, he's always in the first row, so if you're there, you've got a chance.

REPORTER: How many of your players in the past have taken your class?

COACH TRESSEL: Not many, we had a couple take it the first year or two and they got a couple C minuses and B minuses and the word got out that's not the prof you want to take. The best student I had was Will Smith he played like he did as a football player. He was real serious, sat in the front row, worked like crazy and I think, don't quote me, it might be FERPA laws or whatever, Will Smith might be the only one who got an A.

SHELLY POE: Cordle says he got an A.

COACH TRESSEL: A minus. A minus, Cordle. Maybe he did, I don't know. But play along with me.

REPORTER: Does that intimidate people in the class at all?

COACH TRESSEL: No, but it was funny, yesterday in the lecture, usually I'll take the first 10 or 12 minutes of the class and we'll have a position coach and then one of our two coach emeritus and yesterday it happened to be Coach Cooper, so when Coach Cooper was getting up, talking a little bit about special teams yesterday, he prefaced his lecture with the fact that he asked the class a question, who do you think was the player of the game in Saturday's game against Minnesota, and, you know, they bowed their heads like, you know, and he said, well, it was http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059401http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/Vi...743&SPID=10408&DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=1059401Thaddeus Gibson right here, we need to give him a round of applause and Thaddeus wanted to crawl under his desk. But they have fun.

REPORTER: Would you ever -- Rusty was asking about the oddity of this game in the middle of the Big Ten season. Pac-10 plays a round-robin. I know that's different, they have one less team. But the Big Ten playing every team, I know that would limit to only having two nonconference games with the way things are.

COACH TRESSEL: And the big problem with that is one team would only have -- how does it work out? If we went to 10, if we went to 10 games --

REPORTER: One team would have to play nine.

COACH TRESSEL: One team would only have nine, something like that. And they're going to rotate that team to be the team that had the poorest record in the last five years and all that stuff so unless you've played them all, which means automatically now you've got five away games and in a 12-game schedule, that would mean we would never have to have a series with USC or Texas or Miami, Florida or Cal, if whenever's going to be able to afford to have the athletic department we have.
So I think the consensus at the moment, leadership always changes and things always change within conferences and the NCAA and everything else, but right now I think the consensus is that for the good of the athletic departments at the institutions, so as not to become too parochial, if all of a sudden you don't play anyone from outside your world, you're just kind of stuck in your own little world, you don't have that national experience and exposure and so forth, right now I think the consensus is, we've got it the best way we can have it for an 11-team league.

Now, there's all those discussions, do you want to go 12, do you want to do this, do you want to do that? I'm sure 10 years from now, it won't be the way it is today. Don't know how it will be. Really don't care. Most interested in the Aggies, but we can have that discussion in May back when those discussions usually occur in the May meetings and that type of thing.

REPORTER: Jim, when you look back on the first half offensively, to go into halftime with seven points, what were your greatest concerns about that first half? Obviously you had the long drive in there that yielded no points, but --

COACH TRESSEL: It was disappointing when you have 270 some yards and seven points, and so you feel as if you did one of the cardinal things that you never want to do as an offense and that's not be opportunistic, we had the opportunity to score points. How do you know how long that's going to take? What's going to happen the second half. Is there going to be a windstorm, rainstorm, whatever and you just missed the chance to put some points on the board.

Now, was I concerned that we weren't going to be able to go out and do well? No, I thought we could keep moving. Then we got a head start. We got the ball on the 30, 25, I don't know where it was. And then bang, and it started rolling, and we got great field position from then on out, but Big Ten games are tough games. Sometimes they break late, but sometimes they don't break at all. Lori, one more because my A minus student is in the back.

REPORTER: Usually you say that when a team's record or the statistics don't reflect well on an opponent the solution is to turn on the game film. I'm wondering if you've ever been in the situation as a coach where the game film wasn't good enough to tell your team that this was a challenge and what you did in that situation.

COACH TRESSEL: I think the challenge of scheme-wise making sure that you can adapt is enough to start with and then the more you watch a guy -- it's funny, I was talking to a recruit on the phone last night and he mentioned to me that his high school teammate was the starting corner for New Mexico State and he said, man, he's good. I said, I was watching him a few hours last night, I said, was he fast in high school? He said, yeah, he ran ten seven. He looks like he can run ten seven. So I think the more you watch people, the more you can see what the challenges are shall but on the other hand, we try very hard to really focus in on what it is we have to do. That is most critical.

That will be the case in all those games in November too. We'll be watching all those Big Ten teams like crazy, but it will still come down to what we do. And we have to focus on what we do. Scheme-wise, what is the intelligent thing to try to do so that we give our kids the best chance.
 
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On Thad Gibson not being happy a couple years back.

REPORTER: Two years ago, Thad had disagreements with the coaching staff, thought about leaving the team, can you tell what he might have learned about that experience?

COACH TRESSEL: Patience. That's a great thing for anyone to learn in whatever they're involved in. And I think these young kids, whether they're at Ohio State, New Mexico State, Minnesota, wherever they are, they've been recruited. They've been given the impression that their services are sorely needed and the world's going to be wonderful if they'll just come here. Well, the world isn't wonderful anywhere to everyone's liking and it's maybe a lot more difficult and you get surprised a little bit and disappointed and impatient.

And we tease Thad all the time about how he was sitting on the stairs saying, I'm out of here, and a couple older guys put their arm around him and said, yeah, I was on the same stairs and you'll be fine. But patience is a wonderful thing to learn.

REPORTER: Was it ever serious enough that you thought he might be leaving?

COACH TRESSEL: No. He didn't have a car, I don't think. A long walk to Euclid. Kids don't hitchhike anymore. You're giving your age right there.

:lol:

COACH TRESSEL: I think the challenge of scheme-wise making sure that you can adapt is enough to start with and then the more you watch a guy -- it's funny, I was talking to a recruit on the phone last night and he mentioned to me that his high school teammate was the starting corner for New Mexico State and he said, man, he's good. I said, I was watching him a few hours last night, I said, was he fast in high school? He said, yeah, he ran ten seven. He looks like he can run ten seven. So I think the more you watch people, the more you can see what the challenges are shall but on the other hand, we try very hard to really focus in on what it is we have to do. That is most critical.

They've got #4 Davon House, a corner from Palmdale, Calif, so it seems safe to assume that JT was talking to Josh Shaw last night.
 
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