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PURDUE UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 27, 2016

Darrell Hazell

West Lafayette, Indiana

HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Well, that was a really good win for us, to be able to overcome. I thought our kids had a lot of fight and I thought they never panicked. Really kudos goes out to the fans and the crowds. I thought they were outstanding throughout the course of the game, especially when we were down. They were loud on third down situations. So I really appreciate our fans that game.

Looking forward to go on the road for our first Big Ten opponent. Maryland, you watch their football team, they're 3-0 and they're doing a lot of nice things on all three phases of the game. It will be a good challenge for us as we hit the road on Saturday.

Q. When you look at a win like that, coming back against adversity, does that tend to be a break type moment?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I think, Pete, when you take a look at being in that situation and being able to overcome it, let's our guys know that they can do it from now on. And I think that's the confidence boost that you need as a football program, because we haven't done that.

You're down that many points and potentially down another score right before the half, when we turned it over again, could have been 21-3. But the defense did a phenomenal job of holding them out, and the offense went down and scored. Now all of a sudden the complexion of the game went from potentially 21-3 to 14-10. It changed the whole dynamic of the game on the sideline.

Q. Do you get a sense that you have extra confidence now that you have that win against that kind of adversity?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I think our guys see a lot of play makers on the field on both sides of the ball. And that gives them the confidence, to be able to push the ball down the field and make some big plays in the passing game. To be able to run the ball efficiently and consistently gives you a chance at all times.

And then when you start to play good defense the way we did in the second half, really the last three quarters, you play good defense, you know you can get off the field.

People look around and they're starting to feel pretty good about themselves in the locker room.

Q. When you look at Maryland and their running game how concerning is that?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Well, they have a host of backs that they roll through there. And the quarterback was a big part of that. He ran a lot of yards the first three weeks. Some of that zone read things that they're doing right now. I think we have to do like we always talked about, make it one dimensional, stopping the run, and then we'll play off the pass once we do that. They're a good running football team.

Q. It looks like Jones will be back at starter. How do you prepare for the quarterback, how do you prepare?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: You know, we'll see who they roll out there on Saturday, you've got to be prepared for both of those guys. They're both very different in their style of play. One's a guy that can do a little bit of both. One guy is a dynamic runner that we saw in the overtime victory against South Florida. You have to be prepared for both of those guys. But I think the main thing we have to do is stop the run first and put them in some pressure situations with the passing game.

Q. When you look at a guy that they have like Likely, do you have concern here that he can do so many different things?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Yeah, he's a dynamic player, he's all over the field. He's playing some slot receiver form. Handing the jet sweep to him. He's playing a little bit of nickel. He's running punts, running kicks. So he's a really dynamic player. We must know where he is at all times when he's out on the field.

Q. And then lastly, I know you've addressed turnovers for years, you've had turnover issues again. Do you do anything different in practice? Do you play like Barry Manilow songs if it doesn't stop? How do you handle it?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I didn't hear the last part of the question, but they're laughing, so it must have been pretty funny.

Obviously we'll have to keep emphasizing the turnovers, which we've done since game 1. The two fumbles that Markell had, one they had a nice shot on and put their hand on the football. And the second one he's got to be a little bit more aware of the people behind him and rolling high and tight. David's interception, he'd like to have that football back, it was not a very good thrown football, and he knows that. And then Brian Lankford was a little bit careless with the ball on the one he turned over. Those are things that we have to clean up. Our guys know that, doesn't they'll work extremely hard to make sure that we eliminate those bad parts of our game right now.

Q. My suggestions was to play Barry Manilow songs if they don't stop turning it over.
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Barry Manilow. Okay, you're dating yourself, Pete.

Q. Pete asked you about the turnover issue and maybe a couple of years ago if you're minus six at the turnover after three games it's problematic. But how much is there a correlation that your defense is just better than -- you've got to play good defense to overcome turnovers?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Oh, you definitely have to play great defense, especially when they give you the ball mid field, even hold them to zero points, hoping we could hold them to a field goal in that situation, but we did a great job, had a couple of negative plays early in the drive. It would have been a long third down situation. So you have to play great defense, regardless, but especially when you're turning the ball over the way we are.

Q. Getting Hunte and Larkin back, I mean Hunte was good, he had -- seemed like he had a really nice ballgame. That all goes into it, too, just having the right personnel?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Absolutely. When you get your two starters back, those are impact players, especially on the edge, putting those guys on one-on-one matchups all the time. The thing that I was most proud of Da'Wan was the way he supported the run. He had some big hits for us. But you're right, Austin Larkin adds another dynamic to your pass rush and also being able to stop them in the running game.

Q. You've alluded to it a little bit, but I don't know how to ask this, but are you going -- do you think you'll have Martesse back at some point this season?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Oh, absolutely, yes. That's the plan.

Q. And last but not least, I know this is a huge time of year, but do you encourage your guys to -- the student athletes to watch the debates, get involved in that, did you get a chance to watch last night. Do you talk about that at all?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I haven't talked to the team about it. But I certainly like to watch it. I came in 45 minutes last night. I got home at 9:45 last night. So they were already in progress. But I sat up and watched them. I think it's interesting, to see those two go back and forth. It will be an exciting next couple of months.

Q. Pete asked you a little bit about defending the run. You did a nice job against an opponent that really ran the ball well in Nevada. Do you feel like you turned the corner in that way or will this be a bigger test?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I think every week is a big test in the running game. But I thought where we made the big step is we kept the edge of the defense. And we keep the edge on the defense, they only got out of us we think two times. If you keep the edge, you have a lot of good players on the inside. If you don't, all of a sudden you're outside one-on-one with the corner, one-on-one with the safety, which is not good. If we can continue to keep the edge on defense, eliminate gaps and penetrate, those three things, we'll play good defense, because we have good players over there.

Q. The read option, I think Maryland is plugged in a little bit more than teams you've played so far. What kind of challenge is that for them?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Again, that's option football. Somebody's got to take the quarterback on the pull and then sometimes they'll leak somebody out into the flat or just bring somebody around to be able to block the alley with the defender. So we have to be assignment is sound when you get the read option. They like to run the outside zone. The last game that they played against Central Florida, I'm going to go back and study it again, but at least ten to 12 of their 15 last plays were outside zone, with a read off of the quarterback. And when he scored, for the backup quarterback, when they scored the first time in overtime, he kept it all three times.

Q. We talked a little bit about turnovers. Maryland has yet to turn the ball over. Does that put a greater emphasis on you guys protecting the football?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I think the emphasis is always -- you never want to turn it over. But the emphasis has to be is we need to create some turnovers from a defense perspective. We're not getting a lot of turnovers ourselves. We have to get one or two or three, that's the thing that we need to start doing as a defense.

Q. When you look at you guys turned the ball over nine times the last two games, do you look at that and say if we didn't turn it over imagine how good our offensive would be, because you're top ten in a number of different categories. Can you look at it that way?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I think you have to. If you keep shooting yourselves in the foot you're not going to be as good as you can be, so we have to stop that and the offensive has a chance to be really, really good because there's multiple weapons that can hurt you.

Q. What are the tangible benefits of creating a turnover. And how does this hurt you emotionally or mentally when you have a turnover?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I think that's the big thing. Emotionally when you turn it over it drains you. But when you get one it charges you. Maybe that might be the biggest thing as you look at turnovers, other than the fact that field position plays such a big factor. If you get a turnover on the plus side of the 50, you're more than likely going to get points. So you've got to be really careful on obviously turning it over, but making sure you cross the 50 yard line.

Q. If you guys can summon that same kind of aggressiveness up front, how does that potentially lead to turnovers? It didn't on Saturday, but I assume that plays into it?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: For sure. When we penetrate and get hits on the quarterback, you're going to see a lot of meshes, get some of those mesh charges so we have to continue to penetrate with those two inside guys, typically, and some of those zone reads.

Q. They're getting a running back, who might be the best, they've run for 260 yards a game. What do you know about him and what he brings to the situation?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Not much. Not much yet. I heard about that last night. So I'll go back and pull some tape from previous games from him and see exactly what kind of back he is, if he's a scat back, if he's a power guy, if he's a finisher, just get a good study on him this afternoon.

Q. You guys have actually played fairly well on the road in the last three years. You've gone to some tough places and battled them pretty closely. Any constant there or any common themes as to why you've done so well on the road?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Oh, absolutely. I think there's a lot less distractions on the road. You're at home you've got people always pulling on you, and wanting tickets and wanting to see you. When you're on the road you're sequestered to your hotel, and you're with your guys, and you're studying your game plan, and there's a lot less distractions on the road.

Q. What makes it tougher to actually finish off on the road?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I think it's always the crowd that gets involved in the game. And we have to do a big job this week with the crowd noise on our game field. We anticipate there will be a loud crowd. And being able to communicate when all those crazy things outside of lines are happening, we have to do a great job of communication offensively and defensively, so we make sure -- if you don't communicate well, you won't play well. We have to make sure we do that out there.

Q. You're going to a place for a first time, nobody on this staff or among the players has gone to Maryland and played or coached the game. Is that any kind of wrinkle that throws into the game. I know some of you have coached?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I was there back in 2000 when I was at West Virginia. We did play there once.

It's about getting there, getting adjusted. But it all comes down to what happens between the lines, it really does. The ball is kicked off, how well are you going to execute. That's what decides the games, 99 percent of the time.

Q. When Da'Wan came into this program as a freshman, did you already see some of the leadership that you're seeing now?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: He's a great leader for us. He's a great leader for us, and he's not afraid to speak up. The thing that most impresses me about Da'Wan and the amount of growth he's had since two years ago or a year ago, and how much he's made himself much better as a football player, it's because he works so hard at it, it's so important to him.

Q. How much was the defense missing that kind of leadership or maturity in those first two games?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: We're pretty young in the back end other than the safety spot. And the safeties are pretty quiet, Leroy is quiet by nature. Roberts speaks up, he's a good leader, as well. But those corners, those are young players. When you're a young player, you're just trying to figure yourself out not trying to figure everybody else. We missed that the first couple of weeks. And now that he's back and the more and more comfortable he feels out there the better we'll communicate with those other guys, as well.

Q. Entering Big Ten play, where do you feel how your team is at?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I feel really confident. We have to be consistent, I think that's the big key coming to this game. We have to be consistent in our energy and our style of play, relaxing not tensing up, being able to play the way we're capable, because we'll matchup.

Q. Just generally how would you evaluate your team through the first three games?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Obviously the biggest is turnovers. But I think our energy has been good in all three games. I think our details can always be improved. I like the way we're trending right now.

Q. Do you think of Terry's play calling so far?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: He's been really good. I think he's ahead of the sticks, the defenses most of the time. I think he's putting guys in position to -- I know he's putting guys in position. He's giving the quarterback enough options but not too many. So he always has an out. He's been really, really good for the first two or three weeks.

Q. You told the story about when you first met with (inaudible) in the hotel room and you were showing him things. And you said he always had the answers. Do we see a little bit of that on Saturday, with some adjustment of the defense?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Yeah, I felt they did a great job Saturday. We went into the game thinking we were going to be a two high team and try to stop them, but as the guy evolved, I thought he did a nice job of just dropping in the box enough to keep them off balance. I thought he did a really nice job of calling the game.

Q. What's the answer to being a better third down defensive team?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: A lot of our third down deals are coming on short yardage. Not a lot of them, but you're third and three, third and four, and those are hard to stop when you're getting quick outs and quick hitches. But it comes back to our actual technique. Because we have not been in blown coverages, and guys wide open in those situations. We've been in pretty good coverage, we just haven't made some of those third down plays.

Q. What's the traveling option for the road?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: 70 in The Big Ten.

Q. When will you set that?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Probably not until Thursday. We'll have a 9:15 meeting on Thursday, which will be pretty close, but I have to see those 68, 69, 70, after Thursday's practice. We have some guys -- two guys pending at 69 or 70, 70 in the spot.

Q. Would you take more offensive linemen than normal if you know -- if McCann and Patterson don't go, or would you take ten offensive linemen, regardless?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: You know, there's some fluctuation there, that we talked about already yesterday, on Sunday action or two days ago on Sunday. Put them all in there for now, and then we'll start taking them off based on how they perform this week where guys are.

Q. You used the phrase "mesh charge" I haven't heard that, what's a mesh charge?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Mesh charge is when the back and the quarterback go right at the point of the read. He's reading the defensive man in the back and the quarterback are connected. If we can hit that mesh charge and you can create some turnovers.

Q. You mentioned the third downs have been a lot of third and shorts. Is there any problem with second downs, are you struggling a little bit on second down that's leading those to be pretty manageable --
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Yeah, yeah, I think that's all part of it. When you get in third and three, that means something happened on first and second downs. That all ties together. You'd like to get holding them to two yards or three yards on first down. But that's not always the case.

Q. We talked a lot about the defensive and third downs and turnovers, what do you feel like is the next step? Is it simple as consistency, because that hasn't always been there over the years for the defense either? What do you feel like is next for the group to prove they can do it again?
A. If you go back and evaluate this last game, watch the first series of defenses, where we gave up all the things. There was the third down, big play. So we've got to come out a little bit faster to get them off the field, because they took the ball down the field after the turnover in the red zone, went down the field and scored. We've got to come out a little bit faster and get adjusted a little bit quicker as a defense, that will eliminate some of those third downs.

Q. I don't know if Austin was quite a hundred percent, but what allowed him to play as well as he did for you, the first time out?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: He wasn't a hundred percent, but he did play well. He's got a will about him, and whether it's his mode or his want-to, all those things that he has in his DNA, that's what makes him really special. And I went back and watched the sack that he had this morning, that was well dialed up. We had Brandon Roberts creeping off the edge, showing blitz. We had -- I can't remember which backer it was, stepping up in the big gap, it was Danny, he stepped up in the big gap. Garcia stepped in the other. Danny, he drops out to cover the short route and then the back has his eyes on Larkin right at the edge, right at the end he takes his eyes to take Roberts off the edge, and Larkin dialed up really well. Everyone was covered and the blitz got home, just the way you draw it.

Q. Is that the kind of individual play execution that you feel like you're getting more of or at least got more of in this game?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I think it's not so much individual but I think it's the whole scheme of the way those guys are working together, knowing that I may not get home, but I'm going to help someone else get home.

Q. Why was Evan Panfil able to finish his plays this last week when before maybe he's been really close to finishing plays?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I don't know. That was a good sign, hoe. You're right, he's -- in the past he's run by quarterbacks or slid off the quarterbacks. And this one he had two huge sacks in the game. Had a chance for a third one and ran by it. But we need him to play like that for us to be successful. He's got all the gifts. He's so fast. He's explosive, he's got a great will, also. Now he's starting to finish a little bit better, so we need him to execute and keep going that direction.

Q. He works it, right?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Extremely hard. He's one of our best workers. If I were to say the top five workers on the football team, he'd be one of them, for sure.

Q. Is anything new you can tell us about Evan Cooper?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: He's still with the team. He's just taking care of some academic things for us now. We'll still see how his behavior continues through the rest of the semester, and at some point in time he may be back with us, and hopefully he works that way to get himself back in the field.

Q. He's enrolled?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: He's in school, he's enrolled, he's in classes. He seems to be doing the right thing in classes.

Q. You mentioned Martesse earlier that he would be back, your hope would be back sometime. Any time frame?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: It's a day-to-day thing that we're continuing to evaluate.

Q. Do you want to give us an endorsement for the presidential race?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: No, I definitely don't want to do that. However, I do have a candidate but I will not give you an endorsement right now.

Q. What does if mean to land a guy like Ju'Whaun ten minutes away from Maryland?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Ju'Whaun sells a lot of tickets for this game, I guess. He's such a special guy. He's so business-like. He's so mature. He's come through some hard situations that a lot of people don't know about. He's overcome it. He's become a leader of our football team. I can't wait to see him play on Saturday.

Q. I know you're far from completion, but from a morale standpoint, what does it mean to head into conference play with a record over 500 for the first time under our guidance?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Well, it's big. It's big. Getting that last win put us over 500. And obviously this is a huge game for us for a lot of different reasons, really looking go forward to it. It will be a great challenge to go on the road, our first Big Ten contest. We're going to play a good football team. This will be an exciting game for us.

Q. You emphasize when game started that you were second in the country on third down conversions. What has been the success for you so far this year?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I think it's a combination of a lot of things offensively. I think we're 59 percent in the country right now on third down conversions. If you can do that, you always talk about you get more play calls, you get more opportunities, you get more points. All those things correlated together. But I think we're getting some great calls by coach putting guys in matchups. Guys are making the plays, protection has been outstanding for us. All those things combined is what's leading to success on third downs for us.

Q. What can you say about Marshall's progression since the season started, especially when he had that big touchdown?
HEAD COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I'm really happy for Bilal, because he worked so hard at it for the last few years. And trying to find his niche. He's a great team guy. To make that big play, to boost our sidelines right before the half. That was big, big for him. And I was happy for him.

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