Right: Coach Tressel demonstrates how he will drive the equipment truck to Madison.
Matt Barker Photo
It’s that time of the week when Lord James Patrick Tressel, also known as Senator Sweater Vest, gathers with the media at Bernie’s Bagels and Deli on North High Street across from Mershon Auditorium on campus.
After munching down a “Buckeye Buster” on rye, Coach Tressel talked about various topics including last Saturday’s Minnesota game, next Saturday’s Wisconsin game, and “The Dynamic Duo” of Beanie Wells and Terrelle Pryor.
One thing Coach Tressel does every week is list the coaching staff’s players of the game from the previous Saturday.
Etienne Sabino, a 6-foot-3, 232-pound freshman linebacker, was the Special Units Player of the Week. He had two tackles, both on the punt coverage team.
The Defensive Player of the Week was 6-foot, 205-pound free safety Anderson Russell, who had seven total tackles, two forced fumbles, and a fumble recovery.
Brian Robiskie, a 6-foot-3, 199-pound senior wide receiver was the Offensive Player of the Week after hauling in eight passes for 90 yards and two touchdowns against Minnesota.
The Attack Force Player of the Week was 6-foot-3, 240-pound middle linebacker James Laurinaitis. He led the team with 12 total tackles.
There were four nominees for the Jack Tatum Hit Award: Etienne Sabino, Cameron Heyward, Boom Herron, and Terrelle Pryor. (See the video of the Pryor hit below. It’s a beautiful thing.)
In Coach Tressel’s opening statements, he addresses Ohio State next opponent, who gave up 27 unanswered point to Michigan, last Saturday:
Wisconsin, obviously, is coming off a tough ball game last week, they had the game well in hand, and just like it can happen when momentum shifts, it’s hard to get it stopped and that’s just going to make a very good team a much better team as we go into their house. And we’re looking forward to that challenge. They’ve got a mature team. They’ve got six seniors starting on each side of the ball, so I’m sure those seniors are going to take charge of that group and make sure that those guys understand that they can’t allow momentum to happen as it did.”
Then Coach Tressel talks about what it’s like playing in Madison:
Well, the thing I remembered the most, I just was asked this on the Big Ten call, what did I remember most about the last time we were there, which was ’03, the thing I remember is the rain was going sideways, and it was a neat atmosphere, it was loud and it was full, and I don’t remember the Jump Around so much because it was in middle of the game and I was working, but it’s a great atmosphere and people are having fun and players are having fun and everyone’s up a notch.”
Following the Minnesota game, Pryor was quoted as saying this:
“People like Mark May, he said ‘let’s see how he plays on the big stage.’ And we’re going to see next week.”
Pryor later said this:
“The media, ESPN people, sit there and talk stuff on our team and say we’re dead. We’ll find out this week coming up who’s dead. We’re out to show the world something, and we’re going to.”
Now we all know that Mark May is a tool, and I still wonder how he draws a paycheck from ESPN. Personally, I would want no other quarterback than Terrelle.
Coach Tressel was asked about his freshman quarterback and his demeanor:
I know this much about Terrelle and maybe some of our guys that don’t get a chance to be interviewed as much, they’re anxious to compete, and Terrelle’s the kind of guy that, someone asked me on the Big Ten call, do you like that maybe he’s a calm guy out there and that’s all I’ve seen. Whether it was the first scrimmage, he was calm. He lined up against the first defense, he was calm. First game, Ohio Stadium, he was calm. Now, maybe inside he was dying, who knows, but outwardly and performance-wise, he was calm. I thought at the Coliseum, he had command. Has he been perfect? No. Has he executed everything exactly right? Absolutely not. Every experience is going to be a valuable one for him and this is up another notch.”
Shortly thereafter, Coach Tressel was asked about the play of Beanie and how he fared following the game:
Well, I think he came out of it pretty good. I’m sure he was sore. Everyone who was in the game was probably sore. It didn’t seem like I heard any different. But I think that was a hurdle we needed to get through. He felt good about getting in there and being banged around, now we do need to lean on him, but not necessarily in the last phrase you used, not necessarily more carries, he needs to be great with the ball, however many that is, and he needs to be great without the ball, pass protection, route running, faking, you know, all those things. So, yeah, we do — now it’s no longer is he going to play or isn’t he going to play, as of this moment, things, you never know, now we’ve got to make sure we take the next step from a progress standpoint.”
Columbus Dispatch reporters Ken Gordon and Tim May coined the phrase, “The Dynamic Duo” on Terrelle and Beanie. (They also stole my Corny Greene/Archie Griffin analogy, but I will save that for another day.) Coach Tressel was asked if there’s anything in terms of play-calling he can do offensively with Terrelle and Beanie in the backfield that he might not be able to do otherwise:
As far as dynamic duo-type thing, we don’t run different plays when there are different tailbacks or quarterbacks in the game. You might feature something a little bit more than another thing, but Danny Herron’s going to play. I think getting Mo Wells back will give us a little bit more steam there.”
After playing several teams that run a spread offense, Coach Tressel was asked what it will be like to play a team with a more traditional attack:
Our guys love the competition, they love the challenges, and they know full well that Wisconsin’s going to come right at them and do a great job with their play action game and it’s not like they don’t play well, they’ll get Beckum back and the other tight end back, we’re going to have to be ready for the whole package, but our guys will work hard to be prepared.”
Coach Tressel was then asked what it’s like to coach against a team that’s coming off a disappointing loss, and if he anticipates a different team than he might have faced if Wisconsin won:
Yeah, I think when you’re playing a good team that didn’t play as well as they could the week before, you’re going to get a better team than maybe you would have if everything was just wonderful. I think that’s the way life is. It’s our instincts to want to do better when we didn’t do as well, even though you’d think, well, our instincts ought to be I want to do better when I just did well, I’m not sure that’s as human as the former.”
Following that response, Coach Tressel was asked about P.J. Hill:
He’s a great running back. He’s a load. Every time you hit him, he wants to leave a little bit of, as we would call it, a cumulative effect. So, I mean, he’s a tough one, but whoever’s playing tailback for him, whether it’s John Clay or Zach Brown or P. J., you better be ready to tackle.”
Later, Coach Tressel was asked about playing on the road and momentum:
The thing you better not be doing is looking up at the scoreboard to see if that clock’s ending because that tells you a little bit about what’s going on in your mind. To me, momentum is a mindset. As Coach Bruce would say, you’re going down because I say you’re going down, or we’re keeping momentum because we decide we’re keeping the momentum or changing the momentum or whatever it happens to be. You see sometimes teams try to hold on, and that’s not the way to stop momentum. If that snowball’s rolling down the hill, you don’t hold on to it, you run around in front of it and you stop it. To me it’s a mental thing.”
Tags: Football by Matt Barker, Publisher & Editor of BuckeyeBanter.com
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