Right: Coach Tressel with my three adopted children, from the left, Kosta, Woody, and Carmen.
AP Photo
It’s that time of the week when I recap what Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel had to say at his weekly press conference at the Hooter’s on Sancus Blvd., er I mean, the Jack Nicklaus Museum on Olentangy River Rd.
As beat reporters such as Tim May, Ken Gordon, and Doug Lesmerises all dine on the finest meats and cheeses in the land, Tressel talks about his football team and Ohio State’s upcoming opponent, the Ohio Bobcats. And unlike last week, he also recaps the prior game, Youngstown State.
Coach Tressel’s opening statements:
Our defense probably didn’t get as many snaps as you’d like in an opening game, but they did a good job with seven three and out and we talk a lot about getting takeaways and so forth and we didn’t quite get the number of takeaways that we would like to get but on the other hand, when they’re going out three and out, there’s just not as many opportunities to get those, so there were a lot of good things that we saw.”
Every week Coach Tressel names the various players of the week (offense, defense, special teams, offensive lineman, attack force player, etc.), and here are a few of the key ones:
The offensive player of the week was Rory Nicol and Rory really has had a solid preseason camp, an excellent leader, been an excellent performer. He made a nice catch for a first down there. Marcus Freeman, I think even though he only played 20 some snaps was the defensive player of the week, had four or five tackles and a couple TFLs and quarterback hits and so forth and really looks good and is moving fast and is also providing excellent leadership.
Coach Tressel then talks about the Bobcats:
Ohio U. comes in here, I was impressed with the battle they staged out of Wyoming. That’s a tough situation going clear across the country. They lost a tough ball game but really if you look at the game, I think they were in command a good bit of the time. A couple costly penalties against them on that last drive really made the difference and Ohio U is going to be like their coaches. Coach Solich is one of those guys.
Defensively, they’ll blitz all over the place. Bo Pelini one of our graduate’s brother Carl was on our staff for years and now joined Pelini at Nebraska, but you can see a lot of what LSU does in the way they fly around on the offense. And over on defense, they have their good receivers back. They did lose their all-star tailback.
The quarterback is one of the dual purpose guys that in this particular game against Wyoming, he threw it more than maybe he has in past games and ran it maybe a little less, but he’s got the ability to do both. So our guys are going to work on preparing for the Bobcats, but what’s most critical in our eyes is we’ve got to make the Buckeyes better this week and they’re working hard at it.”
Of course when Coach Tressel opens the floor for questions by the reporters, the first one is about junior running back Chris Wells, and if he knew anything about his injury that he didn’t know Saturday:
I would have said when we had our trainer’s report. Kind of labeled them as doubtful for Saturday, and then he should be in good shape and then I saw Beanie about 10:30ish in the training room and he said he felt great, so I guess I didn’t know either of those things since we last talked.”
My theory has always been no matter how well Beanie feels, he will sit out this Saturday against OU to rest up for USC, and its assumed that’s Coach Tressel’s position as well. But not so fast my friend…that doesn’t appear to be the case when Senator Sweater Vest was asked that question:
No, I have the third vote. The first vote is the young person because if they don’t want to play, and I haven’t found too many of those guys. Most of those guys are saying, I feel fine, but then the medical people have a major vote and how you practice has a little bit to do with it especially as you get into the back end of the week. That Wednesday-Thursday practice are critical, not that today’s practice isn’t, but when you have a veteran who’s had a lot of snaps and so forth, it’s not quite as critical, but I’ll have that third and deciding vote, I guess.”
Coach, you played an early Saturday afternoon game, so did you hop into the Tressel Vessel and head to a local bar or plop down on couch to watch any other games?
Yeah, I watched the end of the Utah and Michigan game and I thought Michigan showed a lot of stuff that they just — they went after them. I didn’t see — I just got home and the part I saw, they were fighting like mad. I saw the Michigan State-Cal game because that’s some of my guys on that staff and it seemed like every time we had it going the right way, something went the wrong way, but I thought they played like crazy. They’re clear out there in Berkeley and they didn’t get back until 8:00 in the morning the next day and I just thought they fought like crazy and I watched the rest of the Missouri-Illinois game. And throughout the whole course of the game, people were counting them out, oh, this one’s over and here comes Illinois storming back. So I happened to watch those three games.”
But no U…
Wait a minute, I watched a little bit of SC, yeah, I did, I watched a little bit of SC and Virginia in the second half.”
…and?
They dominated the game… It’s impressive when you can go all the way across the country, it’s a good football team, I didn’t see the beginning of the game, by the time I saw it was 24-7 or something like that, but to dominate a game in the way that they did, that’s impressive.”
On Saturday, Terrelle Pryor was the first one off the bench to replace Todd Boeckman at quarterback. Coach Tressel was asked why, and if that meant Pryor was the clear-cut, second-string QB and the backup to Boeckman:
I guess the only thing you can read is that was our opinion, that that’s what we should do at that moment. I think as you’ve watched 20 some practices, he’s done an evolution. For a freshman to come in, we haven’t said, okay, we’ve got these five plays and that’s all he has to learn, he’s learned the entire situation and he’s done a good job and we thought that that was the best thing. Clear cut? Well, if he goes in second Saturday, he will have been for that game, but, no, we like competition continuing. I don’t know what clear cut means. Does clear cut mean it’s clear and cut and it’s never going to be attached again?
Getting back to Beanie, Coach Tressel was asked about playing him this week against OU since the Buckeyes take on Southern Cal next week:
You’d love to have him for every game. We’d all be lying if we didn’t talk about being excited about playing Southern Cal and one of the challenges, just like we talked at the beginning of the year, one of the challenges is being able to put away any of those distracting thoughts of ‘oh, you’re going to be good’ or, ‘oh, you can’t win the big ones’ or any of those distracting thoughts and work on the task at hand. So our focus is hopefully on the task at hand. Would we make a flat-out decision as to play or not play simply on what lies ahead a week from now? No. Because you might, as Coach Bruce and I were talking, if all of a sudden the guy is dying to play and you don’t let him play, there’s a little seed of doubt in his mind, in others’ mind, oh, I wonder if — so if he’s ready, he goes.”
Asked if Beanie is out for Saturday, will Boom Herron start?
Oh, I don’t know. In a perfect world, all three of those guys will carry the mail. In a pool carry it the first time, I guess I don’t know, I guess we could settle it out there with empty and not start any of them, but I don’t know, we’ll see.”
Towards the end of the press conference, Tressel was asked if Ohio State fans can go back to their lives and not be too worried about how Beanie is doing:
Tell them to worry more about Gustav and Rita and those kinds of things. Beanie’s going to be fine.”
Tags: Football by Matt Barker, Publisher & Editor of BuckeyeBanter.com
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Right: My indoor basketball court at the Barker Estate. This is where I like to bring the honeys so I can “dominate in the paint,” if you know what I mean.
