Q. You seemed to mix it up, against Northwestern, you played some soft coverage but Grant had his game‑changing interception, so how often do you guys feel like you mix up your coverage within a game?
COACH WITHERS: Well, I mean, you'd like to be able to say you can press guys the whole game. I mean, you'd like to. To be honest with you, if you were playing 65 snaps a game back like you did in 1995, you're playing almost 80 snaps average a game and those guys start doing this in man coverage a lot. So you'd like to be able to press them every snap. If I had my druthers, we'd walk up and press every snap. But you can't. That's not realistic. And some of the coverages don't allow you to do that anyway.
But yeah, that was a game changing play because we were in press and they weren't expecting us to be in press and threw the ball out there. So, yeah, you'd like to be able to do it a lot.
Q. With that in mind, do you think y'all are a good press coverage team when you look at it? Is that when y'all are at your best?
COACH WITHERS: Here is the thing about press coverage. Press coverage to me eliminates a lot of different routes that you have to cover. You know, you've got to cover the go, and probably a hitch or a slant. You know, they don't run comebacks. They don't run a lot of digs. They don't run a lot of stuff because they don't have that in their plan because you are walked‑up press (ph).
We would like to continue to improve on press and be a good press team. But again, if you're‑‑ pressing in three‑deep is different than pressing in cover one or blitzing. It's a total different deal.
Q. After looked like he dropped into deep third or something, what was going on there? C.J. rolled in and stuff and they popped a play, I guess my point is, what did y'all work on this past week to sort of tighten those kind of things up or what was sort of the emphasis?
COACH WITHERS: Well, a lot of it is, when we are playing thirds coverage and we are using what we call a clue technique, where the corner has to clue two to one, he has to stay on top and stay square. So if two goes to the flat, he's on top of one. If one and two go vertical, he's got to split hem and we have to help him with a little bit of reroute on number two. That particular play, we needed a corner on top, we needed for C.J. to intercept the ball because they throw into buzz coverage.
