Right: Oh no, it’s my wacky dentist thinking he’s Jim Tressel again. “Let’s go with a root canal on tooth nine, room three…”
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It’s that time of the week where reporters from all over the great state of Ohio convene to the Jack Nicklaus Museum on Olentangy River Rd. to hear to legendary head coach Jim Tressel speak and answer questions during his weekly press conference.
Every Tuesday, “Jungle” Jack Hanna brings various aninals from the Columbus Zoo, and Jared “The Subway Guy” caters the event with his tasty sandwiches. It’s fun for the whole family!
Without further ado, Coach Tressel’s opening statements:
Welcome, everyone, to the Big Ten season. We had a good ball game this past weekend. As we talked about last Tuesday, Troy is a tough football team. They’ve traveled everywhere and played in every venue you can possibly play in and against every ranked opponent from Number 1 to Number 10 and we knew it would be a battle and it was a four-quarter battle. Nice, hot day. A little bit of a tester to everyone, and it was good to come away with a significant win.”
Then Coach Tressel announces the players of the game vs. Troy, though the main two should come as no surprise:
Defensively, Kurt Coleman was the defensive player of the game and Kurt came up with the big interceptions and played just a good, tough game out there. The ball was spread all over the field. There was a lot of running, a lot of hitting, a lot of coverage involved and Kurt did an excellent job from that standpoint.
The offensive player of the week was Terrelle Pryor for the first time going in and carrying the load and having to make decisions, change plays, make plays, decide not to throw it somewhere, which we always say is as important as where you decide to throw it and he was 10 for 16 and had another 66 yards rushing and I thought showed good poise out there in a tough ball game where Troy’s defense was an aggressive one and came after him and he obviously made some plays.”
Shortly after that, Coach Tressel talks about Minnesota, and one of the first things he mentions is their turnover margin, which I document in my preview of the Golden Gophers:
Obviously, Minnesota has done a great job first and foremost with the turnover margin. It’s 13-2 in their favor. So if you’re at a 13-2 turnover margin, you’re going to have a lot of wins. They’ve also done a nice job with their special teams. Their punter is excellent. He’s created great field position for them, he’s a senior, a veteran, good hang time. Their cover units have been good. Their return men are good. Their kickoff return, in particular, has been very, very good. They put a lot of pressure with the punt rush unit. And so the things that really sway games, which are turnovers and special teams, they’re doing very, very well. Offensively and defensively you can see that they are growing in their system. Coach Brewster but together a great staff. He’s got Phil Roof as his defensive coordinator who is an outstanding Coach. He’s got Mike Dunbar who many of us know from years when he was at Northwestern and did a great job coordinating their offensive as well and I remember when he was the head coach at Northern Iowa he had great teams. So they’ve got excellent plans, excellent staff. Offensively their quarterback is tough. He’s efficient. He took every snap in their season last year, which — that’s amazing when a guy can — he was a redshirt freshman and took every snap in their season and he continues to somehow find Number 7. Decker is a great player. He knows how to get open. He knows what you’re doing. They’ve done a good job on their offensive line. They did get someone banged up at tailback earlier but they didn’t lose a step. As they moved forward from that.
Defensively, they’ve brought in a system within their second year as a staff when Coach Roof came in that applies a little bit more pressure, I think has done a great job in being sound. They’ve faced a lot of different kinds of offenses. Northern Illinois was one whole different style and then they go to Bowling Green and it was all four wides, five wides and they handled that. Then Montana State was back at home and they were kind of a combination of both Northern Illinois and Minnesota. They had a little bit of both. And then Florida Atlantic, which was a team that beat them a year ago, they thrashed pretty good 37-3 this past Saturday evening, and they really stymied Florida Atlantic’s offense, which a year ago scored a bunch of points on them.”
The first question from a reporter was that it was little out of character for Coach Tressel to shift away from a sixth-year senior for a true freshman, and he was asked what Terrelle gives him offensively that maybe he wasn’t getting before?
I thought that as Terrelle came in and grew to learn the system and in large part, thanks to Todd because Todd embraced him from the moment they came on campus, he helped him all summer long, you know it’s a little different era now where the freshmen come in in June and they go to all those workouts that the seniors hold on their own, they have seven on seven and they learn terminology and all of a sudden we’re in preseason and he’s rooming with him and talking him through things and in between every snap, all preseason, all August and September long, and the fact that he, from a knowledge standpoint, was so far along, probably further along than I’ve ever seen a freshman quarterback, and then you add the dimension of what he can do with his feet maybe makes up a little bit for when you’re a little shorthanded at running back compared to what you thought you were going to be, so you add all the different things together and whether it’s in character or out of character, what’s most important is we do what we think is the best thing that can help us at the moment, and, you know, so that’s what we felt we needed to go with.
Boeckman, who took two snaps all game vs. Troy and attempted just one pass, which he badly short-hopped to his intended receiver, was booed after that play by the Buckeye faithful in attendance. While I have not made any statement regarding that incident until now, I think it was wrong on so many levels. Coach Tressel was asked if he heard the boos and what he thought about it:
Yeah, that’s disappointing. I know we’re allowed to do what we want to do, but Todd Boeckman is a first-class guy. You guys were all in the post-game. I mean, he’s first-class. He cares about his team. Would he rather than out there? Absolutely. Does he want to try to find a way to get out there more? Absolutely. Did he not throw a good ball one time Saturday? Absolutely. But he’s thrown some pretty good balls and he’s been a part of the fans having a lot of things to cheer about over the last five years, but that’s part of the deal and it’s disappointing, but we’re certainly not going to sit and scold anybody because we’ve got enough problems of our own.”
Coach Tressel was then asked about the quarterback situation and whether or not Terrelle was his guy now or how will that will shake out?
Well, the thing we talked about yesterday is that many times in a conference race, a team that’s going to be the champion is probably going to end up with more than one quarterback making a difference and what that percentage will be, who knows. Terrelle took probably — I think we took 15 snaps yesterday, Terrelle took 10 of them with the group. Today we’ll probably have, I don’t know, 60, 70 snaps, and he’ll take 45 of them, that type of thing. But Todd’s going to work like crazy and keep getting better and if I knew for sure how it was going to unfold — but, you know, unless there’s just something unusual at practice this week or whatever, if the game were today, Terrelle would start it and we’d go with the flow.”
Later, Coach Tressel was asked about his offense and his assessment of it, which includes the status of Beanie Wells.
I think we’re trying to play with a little bit more velocity and quickness than I felt we were playing with earlier in the year. I think that we’re learning a little bit more about who we are. Now, it takes a little bit of a side-step. Yesterday Beanie ran every snap he was asked to run, looked to me better than I thought he might look, says he feels wonderful. So you don’t know exactly who the cast of characters will be, but I think we’ve got a pretty good indication of what we feel like each of our people can do and that’s helpful.”
So he’s still day-to-day?
No, I’m calling him probable. How about that?”
With that, the follow-up question to Coach Tressel was what does his return mean?
You know, I think it adds to our arsenal. He’s a good back. He can do some things so exactly how that will unfold, I don’t know that we’ve gotten into that predicting yet because it was Monday, and now he’s got to put the full pads on today and we’ve got to whack him a little bit and all those things, but I know this, I was encouraged at how he looked and how he said felt and so I guess that’s to be seen.”
Tags: Football by Matt Barker, Publisher & Editor of BuckeyeBanter.com
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