	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

PURDUE UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 8, 2015

Darrell Hazell

West Lafayette, Indiana

COACH HAZELL: Just to touch on Saturday's game from last week, obviously not the desired result but there's a lot of good things if you study the films. Our offense played 98 plays in the first game of the season and didn't have one penalty, which is huge. Very little mental mistakes by the offense. Defensively, we were able to get three turnovers. I thought our team probably played the best collectively as we played since we've been here as a staff. All three units played as hard and as well prepared as you would like them to play other than being able to finish the game.

There's a couple points I'm going to make to the team. The points I'm going to make to the team today is that everything matters, and sometimes you don't see it throughout the course of the game. But here's a situation where you've got a chance to close the door, we've got the ball on the five yard line and we're up one score already, we have a chance to close the door. That play matters. That first play that was first and 20, they had a penalty, they had a holding on Evan Panfil. That first play of the drive, it matters. So that's the next step that we have to take as a program, that every play throughout the course of the game matters. It's the thing that helps or hurts the end result and that's the point we'll make to the team.

Q. Maybe you just kind of alluded to this, but the ability to finish. Ultimately, what does that come down to, and is that kind of what you said that every play matters?
COACH HAZELL: Yeah, sometimes we think finishing might be that a little seven-minute drive, but that seven-minute drive may never happen if you're able to finish three series ago or if we hit a field goal earlier in the game. Those things sometimes come back to haunt you and that's all part of that finishing equation that we'll address with the team today.

Q. You put so much emphasis on a game and you play so well in so many areas, but you don't get the big picture result, the win that you wanted. How tough is it to move on? How hard will you guys have it to be able to move on from now?
COACH HAZELL: We've got a hungry football team in our locker room and that's what you love about these guys. Obviously they're disappointed with last Saturday's loss, but they know how good they can be. And that's the things we have to do as a team, as a coaching staff is make sure we keep taking steps in the right direction because this football team is good enough to get hot and that's why you love these guys.

Q. With Indiana State, two years ago you played them, it was a very close game. This year I notice that everybody's different. What concerns you about this Indiana State team?
COACH HAZELL: Indiana State is going to come with every blitz known to man. They play an odd front, which you don't see a whole lot. But they'll change the coverage probably down by down, so that's a little bit of a concern for the offensive side. For the defensive side, they play a lot of different formations. Their running back's a good player, he's fast, and their quarterback's able to pull the ball down and he made some good plays against Butler last week.

Q. Darrell, throughout the spring and the fall camp you talked frequently about making the makeable plays, taking care of the football. Like you said, you did an awful lot of things well Saturday but there were some makeable plays you didn't make and unfortunately two pick-sixes, it's hard to overcome that. Moving forward, is that also a message to the team?
COACH HAZELL: Absolutely, and that's as glaring as anything from Saturday's game. You have to be able to take care of the football above all else. We didn't do a great job of that on Saturday, so that's something we'll continue to observe and go from there. The other thing is we did have about four, five makeable plays that we didn't make, so we have to be able to do those as well.

Q. With Austin's performance, he threw some good balls but he threw some picks, too. I would assume right now he's still your quarterback?
COACH HAZELL: He is. Yes, he is.

Q. With also defensively, a couple of cleaning up those penalties, you had two significant roughing the -- roughing and the late hit, Ezechukwu and Bentley, I think. You did do a good job offensively, as you said, but you can't have those penalties either, right?
COACH HAZELL: Bentley's penalty wasn't as bad as what you think. If you watch the film, it was pretty close, bang-bang. Danny's penalty was bad. You can't push the guy out of bounds late like that. But Bentley's was not -- after watching the film, the quarterback had just released and he put a lick on him.

Q. You have to be pleased with the running backs. It would look right now offensively your receivers are good, too, but your running backs and that offensive line moving forward could be a strength of this football team, correct?
COACH HAZELL: It really is. Those two guys played well; really their first time out there. They were -- D.J. graded out at 94 percent, Markell graded out at 86 percent. Those guys played extremely well, but the offensive line is what makes it go. Those guys, they played -- Cam Cermin played 94 snaps, which is probably a little bit too many. The rest of the guys were playing in the upper 80s, but they did a good job.

Q. Physically, you know, in 48 hours whatever, everybody pretty much okay?
COACH HAZELL: Health wise? Anthrop's a little bit sore, so we'll have to be careful with him the next couple days. But everyone else is in good shape.

Q. I guess to follow up on Anthrop, do you do anything different with him going forward to make sure he's as fresh as possible for Saturday?
COACH HAZELL: We rested him quite a bit going into that one. We put him on the shelf a couple days and said let's get him through he game and see how well he does. What he's getting right now is a lot of that first-year post-op surgery soreness, which is quite common, and some guys handle it one way, some guys handle it another way. We just have to take him day by day and see where he is.

Q. This might be a premature question, but I'll ask it anyway. If he can't be better than he was on Sunday going forward, any thought that you would shut him down?
COACH HAZELL: For the game?

Q. For the season.
COACH HAZELL: You know, everything's crossed our minds and we'll take it, like I said, day by day. We don't want to do that, but obviously we want him as close to 100 percent as we can get him.

Q. You used him some on kickoff returns. Still the plan to do that going forward?
COACH HAZELL: No, we're going to take him off of kickoff returns this week. Probably put D.J. Knox back in. Maybe another guys we'll look at is Myles Norwood back there and even Timmy Cason as the other guy back there. So we'll take him, try to give him a little bit more rest in those duties.

Q. What do you like about Eddy Wilson that put him in a position to get some action for you?
COACH HAZELL: Yeah, you're going to see him get more and more as the season goes on. He's a big, strong, young guy. He's 284 pounds right now, he's got great leverage and he's got a good motor. He reminds you a lot of a Jake Replogle when he was a freshman but 40 pounds heavier.

Q. Did he come on late because he's not a guy that you mentioned a whole lot the first three weeks or so of practice, and then started to talk about him a little bit in that week leading into the game. Did he start to show up a little bit more as he got more knowledgeable about what was going on?
COACH HAZELL: I think his skill set in what we're asking him to do continues to grow the more and more he knows our defense. He's just scratching the surface right now.

Q. DeAngelo Yancey had a good off-season and gave you a good first game it seemed like. Did he sort of get back what he had been as a freshman?
COACH HAZELL: Very pleased at his performance. He graded out in the 90s, a winning performance. Did everything we asked him to do on Saturday. He played tough, he played physical in the running game, things that some people don't notice all the time but we need him to keep playing at that level and better.

Q. Does it help him that he had good results after trying to refocus on things in the off-season?
COACH HAZELL: Anytime you can get positive reinforcement, I think it helps your mindset, so yes.

Q. I think you played like 10 defensive linemen in the game. Is that something you want to be able to do going forward, or was it a matter of the conditions of the game, or what's your thoughts on that?
COACH HAZELL: I think we're able to play five guys inside, but those four main guys and rotating Eddy in. Then we play on the outside Evan and Shane and Antoine. And then a week from now we'll get another guy back to be able to play another guy, so that depth is going to be good for us in the future, near future.

Q. Griggs was your kickoff man. Will he continue to do that? He probably didn't put the ball as deep as you wanted him and had the one out-of-bounds also.
COACH HAZELL: Yeah, he's got to kick it off better. He hit a couple with the wind into the end zone, but the other way -- hit one way out-of-bounds and obviously missed the field goal and that's part of that finishing games. Those are things that we've -- we get a turnover on the plus side of the 50, we have to be able to get points out of that drive.

Q. You list, though, him and Meadows. Can Meadows do it?
COACH HAZELL: Yes, Meadows can do it.

Q. You mentioned that first and 20. What went wrong on that play?
COACH HAZELL: Well, we collisioned the tight end but we didn't carry the tight end. We need to collision and carry the tight end with the linebacker so there is no seam for him to throw that ball into. Just a technical thing.

Q. How do you grade Austin Appleby, because there was some good and then obviously the bad after having a chance to review the film?
COACH HAZELL: Well, he's got to play better for us to be successful, because I thought all of the other parts were playing well enough to be able to have some success as a team. But he has to be able to take care of the football better, period.

Q. Some decision making, too, at times? I guess those are decisions, but other cases, too, when he's not turning the ball over, just there's some better decisions that he could make?
COACH HAZELL: You know what, his decision making, other than throwing it up when he should have probably taken off or thrown it away, was pretty good for the first game.

Q. I asked you after the game and now that you had a chance to review the film, should you have run the ball more?
COACH HAZELL: No, no. I thought we did a good job in the third quarter. Our plan at halftime is we felt like we could pound them, lean on them a little bit, they were getting worn down inside, was to come out in the third quarter and run the football. In the fourth quarter, they started giving us nine-man fronts. Gonna have to throw it at some point in time and you've got to make a couple of those plays when you do throw it.

Q. In the third quarter you had a pair of third and 2s after you had successfully run the ball. Looking back -- and you threw on those third downs, but is that a situation where maybe you felt like you had an advantage running and kind of the thought process of those two plays?
COACH HAZELL: Again, it was a nine-man front and if you run it and you get one yard and punt it, it's the same result. So we did what we thought was the right thing to do at the time, we threw the ball versus one-on-one coverage on the outside and just didn't complete the ball.

Q. You had said in camp that you have to be able to run the ball when the other team knows you're going to run the ball?
COACH HAZELL: And we did. We did in the third quarter. They knew we were running the football and we ran it that first drive or the second drive, I believe, went right down the field running the ball on those guys. But that's different than at the end of the game and four-minute offense.

Q. Obviously you had a lot of success running the ball, but just what areas need to be cleaned up as you start moving forward in this season?
COACH HAZELL: In terms of running the football?

Q. Yes.
COACH HAZELL: I think you've got to stretch them a little bit more, got to run the ball outside, a little bit of the speed stuff. I thought there was a couple times when we could have run the jet sweep maybe once or twice more where they were giving it to us. I think if we can stretch defenses in the run game horizontally and create seams for those guys to cut up into, that will help our inside running game.

Q. With Indiana State, you talk about them blitzing a lot. Is it from all the different parts or are they concentrating on coming up the middle?
COACH HAZELL: They're all over the place, they really are. They're bringing weak-side samurais with the free safety. They're bringing a strong field blitz. They're bringing a double dog inside zone. We just have to be good at recognizing where it's coming from, and our guys are veteran enough to pick those things up but we have to be able to do that.

Q. Back to the running game real quick, was the plan just to use two backs? And moving forward, do you want to incorporate a few more backs into each game?
COACH HAZELL: I think those two backs that we're using right now are pretty big gap between the third guy. So as long as those two stay healthy, those are the two guys that we'll probably use.

Q. You mentioned last week with Austin that if he could make the right decisions 90 percent of the time that you guys would be in pretty good shape. What percentage of the time did he make those right decisions?
COACH HAZELL: Well, four plays he made bad decisions and those were the four plays that come back and haunt you. So the other percentage doesn't mean anything if you can take care of the football. If you take care of the football, the percentages don't matter.

Q. On that second pick-six, it looked it was twisted up front and the guy kind of got outside of Hedelin. What was supposed to happen from an upfront perspective on that play, although David looked like he got beat off the jump and maybe King had to help initially, because then it put a little pressure on Austin, too. But how are they supposed to handle that up front?
COACH HAZELL: A lot of times bump them off, physically bump them off and you communicate to bump them off. He got a little bit of pressure, but it was an errant throw. The throw was behind the receiver. The receiver was getting man-to-man coverage, he broke on an in cut and the ball was thrown behind and right to the safety.

Q. On that play, too, afterward, I don't know what the rule is but Appleby, it was like a face mask to face mask kind of hit after that. Is that a penalty?
COACH HAZELL: It is a penalty. I didn't see that, but it is a penalty. Head-to-head collision is a penalty.

Q. How many option plays did you run?
COACH HAZELL: Option plays, or zone --

Q. The triple option kind of with Austin having that --
COACH HAZELL: I would have to go back and check. I didn't tally those up. Quite a few, though.

Q. Did it feel like more than you had done last year?
COACH HAZELL: We ran 98 plays. I would say we probably ran 40 of them.

Q. On the third-down play to Jurasevich before that short field goal, the one I'm talking about where Appleby was kind of in between?
COACH HAZELL: The one we did not convert.

Q. Appleby threw it over Jordan, Jordan got a free release on that. Is it supposed to chip that in, or how was the play supposed to develop? What was the correct decision, I guess, on that play?
COACH HAZELL: We had four options on the play, which that's why you love the play. We motioned the wideout into the backfield. His first option is to give the ball to the running back. Another option is to take off and run with it. The third option is to kick it out to the guy that we shipped it back into the backfield, and the fourth option is to hit the corner out. He had two of the options and we just didn't convert.

Q. Which two?
COACH HAZELL: He had the corner out open and he had the run open. He would have had to give him a wiggle and tuck it back inside, but I think he probably could have got in on the run.

Q. How many testimony tempos do you use? I know you said you were planning on using five.
COACH HAZELL: Used all five. Yep, used all five.

Q. Did you like the mix of that from that perspective?
COACH HAZELL: I did. I thought we kept them off guard a little bit when we went a couple of the fast tempo calls. Yeah, we used all five and did a pretty good job for the first time.

Q. Were some of the assistant coaches in different color shirts to be able to signal so the guys could see them? Is that what that was?
COACH HAZELL: Yes.

Q. How important is it, I guess, to assert yourself in the running game this weekend knowing that that's probably the strength of this offense?
COACH HAZELL: That's a staple for us right now, it really is. Everything will come off of the offense, of the run game, and you've got to know your personnel. I think that's the big thing about football in general. Know what you do well, which guys do what well, and that's what we're doing right now. We're being able to run the football, that offensive line with those two running backs. The receivers are doing a good job on the perimeter blocking. That's all part of it as well.

Q. What impresses you about D.J., not just maybe the kind of runner he is, but maybe the way he approaches the game?
COACH HAZELL: He's calm, he's very confident. I don't know if he has a little man's disease or not, but he's pretty confident and that's what you love about him.

Q. He's been that way since he got here?
COACH HAZELL: Oh, absolutely. He always thought he's the best guy in the room and that's what you want out of him.

Q. To see him in the off season knowing that number one running back opportunity was there, are you happy that he worked like he wanted it? Does that make sense? I mean, you have Keyante Green, for example, is the guy who's not really even in the mix right now and he had that opportunity as well. Seems like maybe this off season there was a little different approach there with those two guys.
COACH HAZELL: I think your makeup is your makeup. I think that's -- we are who we are and you're going to approach things the way you approach things. I think that's the way he is in about everything that he does.

Q. How many missed tackles did you guys have Sunday?
COACH HAZELL: 10, which is low for the first game. We had seven in the back end and three across board, which is pretty good. We had four total penalties, two personal foul penalties and two holding calls, which is pretty good for the first game.

Q. On the last drive, after the game you had said we didn't want guys on the one-on-one matchup. Did you mean all across the board, because I think generally the impression was like you say you have the two best corners in the country, why in the world didn't you have one-on-one?
COACH HAZELL: Here's the philosophy behind that. To put corners in a one-on-one situation all the time, that's a very stressful job. It's stressful mentally, but also stressful physically. Think about chasing a guy all across the field. You want to keep mixing it up to take them out of that situation. That's some of the things we talked about as a staff last night is just being able to mix because they are great cover guys, but at some point in time they're going to get a little bit tired, they're going to have to make an open field tackle in a third of the field. That's hard. I don't want to put anybody under that stress.

Q. And you had played zone coverage throughout the game. It wasn't like you just switched and --
COACH HAZELL: We were playing zone and man that last drive.

Q. So are you comfortable then with the type of defense you played on that final drive?
COACH HAZELL: Yeah. I think we could have made some adjustments, a couple adjustments. Nothing major. Like I said, just to help the corners. What I mean by that is just take some guys out from the front. And here's what we were worried about defensively is do we remove guys from the front, that leaves you vulnerable to that good back. So that's the cards you've got to try to play. You take guys, you put them over top the receivers and give them help over the top; now all of a sudden your front's thinned out so you're going back and forth on what you should do there.

Q. What did you think of just the rotation you guys had generally? You played a few guys both on offense and defense. Was it because of the heat, or is that kind of what you would like to do going forward?
COACH HAZELL: We did it for both reasons, trying to create depth, but we did not have any cramping issues other than we had Danny E with a slight cramp and Yancey had a slight cramp, but we didn't have any issues in terms of the cramping.

Q. What did you think of the return game?
COACH HAZELL: We only had one opportunity on the punt return. Probably could have got another five or six yards if we got the ball outside. The kickoff return, we had one chance that had a big one and we missed the block inside by our center, which made D.J. come back and block that guy if he goes forward a little on the kicker.

Q. Is this week's game more about you than it is Indiana State?
COACH HAZELL: Absolutely. It's about our execution, how well we'll prepare here the next couple days, and coming out of the gate fast and getting a great start.

Q. You talked about how confident this team was. Obviously it was disappointing what happened last week, no doubt, but knowing the opponent you have coming up, is it just like, listen, we need to show who we are in this opportunity that we have right now?
COACH HAZELL: I don't think you need to verbalize that at all. I think our guys understand. They're very businesslike and they understand where they are. They haven't lost any of that confidence, if that's what you're asking. They haven't lost any of that confidence that they have. They know they're a good football team.

Q. D.J. Knox in his first start broke a hundred yards. Given it was a loss, he wasn't really excited about it after the game, but is that something he's going to be able to do consistently, and how crucial is him making big plays going to be moving forward?
COACH HAZELL: I think that's a big part of who we have to be, be able to make sure that he gets close to that century mark or better every week. As we get into the thick of our schedule, our line's going to get better, he's going to get better at things, the schemes are going to get a little bit more complex, but we need him to go.

Q. All the preseason talk about the O-line and you said you were very happy with them. What's the next step for that unit moving forward?
COACH HAZELL: I think still you've got to be able to adjust to the schemes week to week. This week is a different scheme for us. That odd front will create some issues identifying some things. But those guys, like Kugler is so mature about getting his guys where they need to be in terms of understanding things. I don't worry about those guys.

Q. You talked about adding depth to the line. Patterson and Barron just got in. Were you happy with those guys that didn't start?
COACH HAZELL: Yeah. You know, Barron's series that he was in there, we scored on. I don't know if you guys knew that or not. We scored on that series. What we have to do to get (inaudible), we were cross-training Roos at left guard, right guard and right tackle. We're only going to cross-train him now at the right guard and the right tackle spot to get Cerm out of the game. So Martesse will play right guard and left tackle, and Kirk Barron will play center and left guard. Keep Roos on the right side typically.

Q. Everyone after the game said put this behind, move on. Have you seen that? Is that mentally where the team is?
COACH HAZELL: I haven't met with the team, we had off yesterday. We met with them right after the game, but yesterday was the mandatory day off so our first meeting will be at 2:15 today. So we'll talk about closing the book on Marshall and opening the book for this one, and we realize how big this game is for us.

Q. On that ability to move on on a smaller scale, gave up the picture from the first drive and then responded on the very next drive. Does that speak to the mentality of the team?
COACH HAZELL: I think it speaks to a lot of poise. Nobody panicked. In the past we would have panicked on the sideline, but there was a calmness and there was a poise amongst the team. I think you have to be able to do that if you're going to be a good football team.

Q. What's Indiana State's offensive identity?
COACH HAZELL: They're trying to run some of the zone read stuff and they're in a lot of different formations, Brian, and the quarterback pulls it down. If you're playing man-to-man coverage and you leave open lanes, he's going to pull it down. He had some big runs last week against Butler. He's fast enough to hurt you, and he throws it well enough if you're not in good coverage, it hurts you.

Q. With the tough loss on Sunday, just how important is it to have -- I guess why is playing on Saturday such a big deal knowing you had that tough loss, quick week turnaround and focus on this game?
COACH HAZELL: Every game is important. You get 12 guaranteed opportunities and every single one's important. Our guys know that. You know, this is a very fast week for us. Had off yesterday, coming back they're going to be sore today from practice. We've got to be careful what we do with them. We'll come back a little bit longer tomorrow, and then Thursday is kind of our wrap-up day before we head to the hotel on Friday. It's a fast week. But our team is very mature right now. They're very businesslike and they'll come back to work today ready to go.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297