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PURDUE UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 1, 2016Gerad ParkerWest Lafayette, Indiana COACH PARKER: Thank you, sir. Good afternoon, everybody. Hey, just want to first open up with thanks again for all the support from the community and administration, players and our staff, especially the first half, man, I thought it was a really different energy about our stadium. Our crowds got involved in third down, what a great energy it felt when we transitioned from first to second quarter in those things. So really want to say thank you to them. Obviously we gotta help in the second half for that to continue, but I really thought it was a step in the right direction both as an administration staff part throughout the weekend during the game, but for our players and fans as well. We appreciate them. Also, I have to say humbly great job to Penn State in the second half. Coach Franklin and those guys did a great job of having their football team come out, be ready to go and really just take advantage of our mistakes and put us away and change the game in the direction we didn't want it to. But they did a heck of a job. As you look at it, obviously we're going to always be attacking on how we're going to respond when things go bad, and a lot of questions come up on that as it goes from the second half of both games that have been under my watch, and the first thing you do is you try to allow bad things not to happen. I think everybody says deal with it. We need to not have as many bad things happen you won't have to deal with as many. The other thing is is we have to create a heightened sense of focus during those bad moments. So I think those are the two things we'll continue to harp at our guys about and push forward on; also, with the understanding, too, and I told them yesterday and I'll tell you all. Listen, it's not like we're at war here. We're still playing a game of football, and you can say all those things; there's many opinions and many things to write, I think, or talk about, but the biggest thing that happened is we put our defense on the field four times on the plus side of the 50 yard line, and when you do that and you turn it over, you're not going to win, you're not going to win. We played two ranked opponents back to back. You're not going to win football games and stay in football games doing that against anybody, and that happened in the second half, so to do that, we can't do that to them, and we also can't have happen for our defense what happened in the last 15 plays where we gave up 28 points, and really that was the biggest disappointment on that side. And then offensively you look at it and say, hey, we gotta keep our momentum from the first half, answer the bell. We had untimely turnovers and certainly some untimely penalties that some I would agree and some I would not agree with. But we gotta be able to handle those so we can sustain drives and not ruin them. Other things I had we do have to build off of our first half instead of focusing so much on the negative of it. As I said from the start of the job, we gotta focus on those things. Six of our eight quarters we've played have been pretty sound quarters, but what we did in the third quarter and at the end of the fourth certainly are not something we want to be proud of. I think the biggest key now for us is to move forward against Minnesota. Coach Claeys has got those guys playing well; they're 6 and 2. Another good football team, I think is giving up around 22 points a game on defense. They do a great job with their schemes there, and on offense they're averaging around 31 and a half, 32 points a game and doing some things well with their run game and playing very physical, playing the same culture of football they've played for years. So another huge test for us. Society is not going to take it easy on us to move forward, nor will they on me, and we're going to focus on moving forward and building off what we've done these first two weeks in a positive way, fix the things that we have problems with, continue to approach those and see what happens. So with that being said, again, we'll open it up to you guys and move from there. Q. Coach, given the Minnesota's strong running game, how challenging is it to make them one dimensional as a passing team? COACH PARKER: Yeah, I think probably everybody that plays them would say that that's what you have to do. They're good at what they do. They're up for that challenge each and every week. It's going to be a physical matchup. You would argue that it could be one of your most physical games you've played to date and what they're going to do to you in the run game. Both backs are good backs that can get you several different ways, and we're going to have to find a way to sustain and stop the run to keep ourselves in the football game. Q. Struggled against the run all year. At some point do you change schemes or what can you do to limit the damage of the run? COACH PARKER: Yeah. I mean there's no line about it. We have struggled against it. And we have changed schemes. You've seen that change the last two weeks in those things. You always peer on how to change them enough, what is too much change, when is pressure too much pressure, when is it not. You're playing those games. At the end of the day we gotta get our guys playing confident, playing fast and competing every snap. I think that addresses more of the problems you have than anything. Some of the stuff we can't address. But the things we can are to continue to look at our schemes. We challenge our defensive staff and everybody's challenging themselves in the room to make sure we're doing what's sound, what's easy and what we can execute and what we can execute fast are the biggest keys for us, and that's what we'll always as a staff, you gotta look at, hey, what can we do best on offense and do it and execute it and do it well and do it better, and on defense we have to execute sound football, fit the things that they do best and stop what they do best. Q. Then I think in an ideal world how many times would you like David to throw the ball? I think he's averaging about 50 passes a game. What would be the ideal? COACH PARKER: That's a tough question because we have to answer in what our present day is. Does that make sense? If you were asking me as a hopefully in my future, whether it be at Louisa Middle School or somewhere else, if I ever call plays and you have what you want, you want to be close to the balance. There's a great understanding of running the football, but you also have to play to our strength. As much as you say you would love to have a better running game and all that, no question we want to push towards that, but at the same time we're pretty good throwing it. So we've gotta make sure we find ways -- we need to find ways to win games right now, so for us right now ideally that's hard to say we need to be 50-50 balanced. I don't think that plays to our strengths right now in what we need to do in order to win football games right now. Q. And any other thoughts on the problems that Minnesota presents? COACH PARKER: No. I think you can tell that their footprint and fingerprints are on their program. Their special teams are obviously very, very sound. They do a great job on kickoff return, being very physical, and they can hurt you in the return game on both punt and kickoff return. Their punt scheme is very sound. And so you got all these problems you gotta exist with. They're sound in the special teams in the kicking game. Everybody in this room, everybody in the country knows what they present on offense with what they're going to do running the football, and on defense they're an attacking, move-it, come-at-you Big 10 defense that's going to lock up the box, give you outnumbered boxes and be very aggressive and have a good third down package, which is why they're so good on defense. So they present several problems just like the other two have had, and we'll do our best to manage it and attack it. Q. You alluded to it in your opening statement a little bit, but I wanted to ask you it's kind of the yin and the yang. In the five losses you're giving up 45 points a game and 7.8 yards a carry, but a lot of that may be the result of you're minus ten in the turnover situation. In the last four games, I mean I know you're aware of these numbers, how do you go about cleaning that up or fixing that, because that's a lot of yards and a lot of points. COACH PARKER: Sure. Absolutely. And it's hard to take that question in three weeks on the job. But you know what, everyone knows the turnover margin is the key, putting ourselves in position not only turning it over, but turning it over on the plus side of the field, which kills you. And obviously helping our defense focus on the handling the change of possession better than we have for the most part, which I thought they did a better job against Nebraska than we did this week, no doubt. But turnover margin is huge. That turnover margin is not just our offense. It's our defense as well. We're not getting takeaways either. We're putting ourselves in position of having long fields on offense, short fields on defense, and that's never going to go well. And you add a little bit of what you alluded to and you add some depth to that issue and all those things and putting them out there too much and taking on eight possessions or more in the second half, that's hard to do for anybody, but especially when you have some depth issues and you're looking at why the issue is the issue. Q. You told us the day you got the job and then after last week that you like the mindset of the guys in the room, that they seemingly are buying in to your personality, yet Coach Keady when he was here used to say "it's not who you play; it's when you play them," and you guys have lost three in a row and you've gotta hope your guys stick it together, but yet you're 0 and 13 in the month of November. Is there a way you handle that mentally moving forward? COACH PARKER: Yeah. I mean obviously you spin those stats and those things, and I mean as I was telling somebody, positive thoughts beget those positive thoughts. Winning does the same thing and losing unfortunately does the same thing. So a lot of it is is being able to flip it and break through somehow. I don't honestly -- I mean obviously we came out of the locker room and I told you all sitting here last week and said, how we play this week I'm going to hold myself personally. We came out of the locker room ready to play. We didn't play perfect and all those things, but our presence and those guys' energy and how we ran around and fixed things and nearly maybe an inch away from being up 24-7 from Markell's run, I mean we were ready to go, and we were ready to go coming out of the half, but it became an epidemic on our second turnover on the fumbled punt. That's when I thought it was a little bit of the revert back to where we'd been and say uh-oh, the collective breath, not only from our players, but possibly from the rest of our staff, the stadium. You could feel the air go out a little bit, and we reeled from there. So it is my job to do everything I can for the next four weeks to keep on flipping that thought. You still have to come out -- I told the guys last night, we have to believe we are going to win this game. You have to expect for good things to happen and then handle them when they don't. And if we get a little bit better than that even the next four weeks, I've done my job, and then making a step forward because same thing is going to happen for whoever is here moving this program forward for it to get there. You can't take magic dust and sprinkle it and decide to, well, all of a sudden -- no, it is a process. And that's another conversation in entirety, but for us right now it is going to be a mental approach of finding ways to go play, have fun while you're playing and compete your tails off and not treat it like you're at war. Treat it as you're doing something that you love to do, that you've loved to do since you were a child and play this great game and then realize, too, that you gotta play with great passion and give it all you've got during that game and during that moment, and if you fall short, you fall short, but at least you don't have to come answer questions about what happened to us the last 20 snaps of the game. You know? Q. Last thing, your tight ends and your receiving group has played pretty well. I mean, and David's getting them the ball. I know you said you'd like to run -- you wish you could run the ball more, but sometimes you are what you are. That's the strength right now. Do you continue to go to that strength -- I know the defense is going to dictate that sometimes. But that's a good group right now. COACH PARKER: Yeah, I mean it is, and also, we're proud of the way we protected our passer. We're proud of the way the things our running backs have done in the passing game and our run game at sometimes, Markell Jones and those guys and Lankford and Richie all those guys have done a good job. Tario. They've done a good job as well, but at the end of the day as the numbers go, it's something we've struggled at and we gotta continue to find ways to run the football. I'm not saying go out here and throw it 70 times, but we throw the football well. We'll have to use that some run game and all those things, we'll keep finding ways to find our run game and do what's right. You look at it real quick and you would say I think our first series we ran for 40 some yards, ran for 40 some thereafter. So it's there. We gotta find ways to keep that going so we can have it, and I think we saw some of the reasons that can help us in the first half with the position we were in. Q. I think your first press conference we asked you how it was going, and you used the word whirlwind. Have you kind of started to settle in now in your third week? COACH PARKER: Yeah, you get used to these days and the schedule of it all. The staff meetings are not as weird now, and all those things. So I've settled in. Obviously the stress level of this is there, and you get it. I haven't felt sorry for myself. My energy with you guys right now is no different than it was after Nebraska, nor will it be if we go win or lose at Minnesota. What this all carries does not bother me. I'm not scared of this position. I think to have this position now and in the future, wherever it may be, I embrace it because this is what I've been called to do. Does that make sense? I mean I am called to do this job, and it's a greater reason than myself. So I could care less about the paycheck or what this means later on. I've just taken a tremendous responsibility to push these men forward to make them better, you know. And so it's not as big a whirlwind as I thought it would be because I'm doing something that I want to do in my future. Does that make sense? Q. Kind of as a followup, after last game you said after the end of the season I'm going to ride off into the sunset. What motivates you to get this team better each week knowing that in all likelihood that is the case? COACH PARKER: Sure. Just the players. And just being competitive. You know what I mean? And you want to do everything right by the staff and the players, so what they think of me and what everybody will speak of me long after I'm gone will still reflect the same thing I would have said prior to me getting this position. Does that make sense? Everybody's trying to treat this into a platform and you should let cameras in and all those things. And I get it. I get what everybody makes choices -- I don't need -- I haven't promoted myself to this point, and it's gone okay for me. You know what I mean? So I'll be just fine. I sleep pretty good. There's some things that wake me up in the middle of the night that I think of just for the players not for my life or my career or my family. Only thing that's woken me up at night has been what else can we do, what else can I do to find a way. You know what I mean? So we'll see. See what happens. Q. You've already been asked a couple of questions about extending the run. I think according to Pro Football Focus, 195 of Barkley's 207 yards came off right tackle. Is that an area you're particularly vulnerable in or what do you have to do schematically in that particular instance to limit the runs to that side? COACH PARKER: Yeah, I think it was 18 carries for 200 and change. I don't think it's necessarily a side. I mean I get it, but with the back away and their stretch play that they handed off that everybody in the stadium knew we had an issue. Was that scheme? Sometimes we didn't execute our scheme properly, and sometimes he was better than us. You know what I mean? And then on the last big run his effort was better than our effort. You know what I mean? There was three different phases of it that turned into something it shouldn't have turned in with the effort being an issue. And we gotta execute or scheme better. It wasn't like we lined up the defense and said, hey, we're not going to have an edge to contain the football. Come on. You all know better than that. You know what I mean? Those guys are smart guys. We didn't get there at spots sometimes. Could we have made better calls at times? Absolutely. Those guys own that. We own it. It's all good. And we've gotta do that better to put them in better position, it's something you'll attack each week to try to fix, but there's no question he got the edge more than he should have, right, wrong or indifferent for all kinds of different reasons, and then he's a great player. I mean you all saw that. And we knew that. And we ran to the football and did some really good things early in that game in the first half to contain him from big, big runs, and then it got to us in the second half. Q. Jake Replogle obviously helps a little bit in running. COACH PARKER: Do you think? Q. Yeah. COACH PARKER: Yeah. Q. I know last week we asked you if there was a chance that he would be playing. Is there a chance he'll play this week? COACH PARKER: Yeah. There is. Q. Is he getting closer do you believe? COACH PARKER: Yes. Yes. Q. I thought that would be the answer. COACH PARKER: Good. Q. And you kind of addressed turnovers before, but is it especially important this week to protect the football knowing that Minnesota does such a good job themselves of creating turnovers and also protecting the football? COACH PARKER: No question. You think they play with short fields. A lot reason they've got their points per game up, they play with short fields and great turnovers and they run the football; two really good stats to play the brand of football they play up there. So I mean it is huge. It's huge every week, but we've gotta control the football, take care of it. We need to get some takeaways and be real smart in the kicking game and put ourselves in position to go up there and play well and win the football game. Q. What are your thoughts on Minnesota's defensive line? That seems to be where a lot of what they do defensively starts from. COACH PARKER: A lot of movement, a lot like what we discussed, but they move them, got a great blitz package. Coach Funk's been dialing it up, and trying to get prepared for that has been a doozy. But they've got a good blitz package, like I said. They create a lot of movements, use their guys properly, attack gaps, again, play on your line of scrimmage, create tackles for loss, all those things and then they've got some guys that are good in coverage. Q. The last two weeks Cermin has warmed up in some capacity. What is it that -- is it just something about his footing that's not there that he's not able to go on game day? COACH PARKER: Yeah. There's obviously reasons, I mean with him and his health that are putting him in position to just not quite get there and having to go somewhere else. It's a day-to-day, week-to-week deal and then you're very, very hopeful that he'll be out there. He'll be battling and get healthy to go and we'll see where we're at. Q. He did come into the game. COACH PARKER: Yeah. Q. Was there a change in his health status during the game or -- COACH PARKER: No. No. Just during the game and decided going to try to come out and help us, all those things to get us out of the game. Q. The fact that they have two running backs that are as strong as they do, how does that challenge the defense in a way that's different than maybe Penn State with Barkley? COACH PARKER: You know what, I don't think -- those two guys don't change the way you scheme. You don't scheme with one or the other. It's the same run game for the most part with both of them. They're both different styles, but same run game. You know what I mean? They're both elusive for two different reasons, and we've got our hands full. Q. You guys use that rush front that had primarily been more used on third downs and longer yardage situations. You used that from the beginning kind of as the base defense on Saturday. What was the thought process behind that and how do you feel like that worked, especially considering David Barkley into the pattern^ ? COACH PARKER: Sure. It worked a heck of a lot better in the first half than it did the second. There's no secret. I will not make any excuses for anything and all those things, but you guys have done this long enough. You know some issues we've got with our depth there, and that triggers a lot of your scheme, and that depth obviously running out and those things create some problems for you, you know, and it did. And it will continue to. Now, on the flip side of that we gotta do better no matter who and what it is. You know what I mean? You all see that. Q. How can Evan help you in that position as opposed to being on the end? COACH PARKER: Yeah. I think more than anything, Evan's a big, physical guy that's played a lot of football here that can play multiple positions, so instead of maybe putting a guy that hasn't played a bunch of football for you and putting him in a position he may not be used to nor be ready for, you err on the side of that, especially in the internal side of your defense. Q. What have you seen from him this season as opposed to previous seasons? He's set a career mark for sacks and tackles for loss, and we still got several games left. COACH PARKER: Well, first would be confidence, and two would be with that confidence it's called -- because Evan, he'll tell you, he's a thinker. He'll overanalyze and go overboard with it, and I think a lot of that he's taken out. You can think this game too much, I'd say collectively both as staff and players, and I think he's done a great job of just playing a little bit relentless, turning it loose, so to speak, and he's starting to reap the benefits of that. Q. Yancey's had big touchdowns in each of the past two weeks, but I don't think he has any more than four receptions in a game since start of Big 10 play. Is he getting the ball enough? Is he getting targeted enough? COACH PARKER: You know what, his targets weren't bad this past week, but it's been addressed. He needs to get the football more, he's gotta catch the football more for us. He's playing at a high level, and he's a good player, and we gotta get him the ball. Q. Brian Lankford-Johnson had a big game against Illinois but hasn't really been involved in the offense since then, even when Markell has been banged up. Where does he stand? COACH PARKER: Yep. He's been banged up as well, but to go along with that he's a pup, and sometimes those pups take some strong nurturing as they're young, and it's stuff you all don't see, so he's getting that nurturing he needs in order to get to a position he needs to help us and be a consistent guy that will show up every day to come to work. We'll keep working on him to do it. He's a talented guy that deserves and will have a great career here, but he's also gotta learn how to do it all the time. Q. Have you reassessed how much you guys can use Markell because at the beginning of the season it was talking 30 touches, and just because of his injuries, not just the shoulder, but looked like he might have gotten an ankle or something last week. It seems like that's going to limit how much he can really do. COACH PARKER: Yeah, you gotta be careful with a guy and find ways to get him healthier and healthier through a nine-game stretch of Big 10 football. Right? So we've gotta be careful, make sure we have him for when we need him as opposed to none at all, so we'll have to continue to do that and get him healthy down the stretch. I finally thought he showed back up and played in a way he was capable of this past weekend. Q. How is Richie doing? COACH PARKER: Good. Q. Is this a serious deal? COACH PARKER: Not serious serious, but enough to where he will -- I think everybody could see he won't be available this week. But thank goodness for him. We're thinking about him and those things. Could have been real, real bad. Q. Who do you anticipate your starting cornerbacks being on Saturday? COACH PARKER: Good question. I think today and tomorrow will have a big piece of that, to be able to see where we get to. But I would hate to be able to even give full names of it, one, for us to protect ourselves going up there, but two, I know what you see. You know what I mean? There's things we gotta solve the things two days. So I'm not avoiding. I just really don't know. But I'm kind of avoiding. Q. Generally speaking, the guys you had to play on Saturday were young guys who really hadn't played a lot. I mean just -- it kind of is what it is, I guess, but it kind of puts you in a difficult spot when you're having to put guys out there who don't have a lot of playing experience. COACH PARKER: I mean of course. Again, we believe in those guys. I've been around all of the recruiting and everything else. But like we talked about, there's just certain places you're having to play guys that you probably don't want to have to in a Big Ten schedule and those things just yet. But they're embracing it. I don't think they're playing out of fear. You know what I mean? I think embracing it and learning how to compete all the time, and it's our job to get them as close as we can not for their futures next year, but also as we go down the stretch of the last four. But it's there. There's not question that youth is there, and it's something that, you know, is valid. Q. How does concussion protocol work? Do you know well enough to be able to kind of tell me that whole process? COACH PARKER: I mean I know it well enough -- as those things happen, there is a protocol that they enter. I don't want to misspeak. I know that it goes straight to the hands of our team doctors and our medical staff. They go into a protocol. That protocol is followed by a T, which should be, and all the things and the awareness that's happened; and then when they're cleared and put through that protocol, that's when we get them back. So I don't want to misspeak on the day, the time, all those things. But they enter that protocol and then we're hands off, rightfully so. There's a firewall up for that reason. Q. And it's, as far as you know, based on a baseline test that they had taken before? COACH PARKER: Yeah. As far as I know, again, don't let me misspeak, but I think everybody in the country, it's a protocol that you take a baseline test to compare that to, then if something were to happen, knock on wood, if anybody on our team or in the country, you compare those tests after any of those happen to compare it to where they were and where they are now. Q. If Jason King were to not play on Saturday, how does that change your offensive line? COACH PARKER: Well, it certainly would make it tricky, you know. It would make it tricky. And we'll see if we fully expect him to be there and all those things. But those are things that happen. And obviously you're going to look at it. We gotta make sure and protect ourselves if he were to want to, and we'll deal with that down the road. Q. You passed a lot of underneath throws on Saturday, and David had talked two weeks ago at Nebraska, we gotta be 80 percent, kind of that underneath game. You were on Saturday, but it was tough to maybe turn out big plays in that. How do you kind of balance getting the ball in your guys' hands pretty quickly with maybe getting chunk yardage kind of plays? COACH PARKER: Well, that's the key. I wouldn't know the exact numbers, but I know we hit two big ones late, one to Markell at the end of the second half and then Yancey's, but no question when you're trying to find ways to move chains, quote, unquote running game throws and find completions, but you also gotta err on the side of finding the ways to push it at times, too, and to be able to score points. That's the thing we keep on pushing. So I don't know if there's a percentage of it, but no question when you're doing that, it's all good and you find completions, all those things, but at the end of the day your drives need to end up in scoring points. Q. Was it indicative at all that you don't trust your young tackles to pass protect? COACH PARKER: No. I don't think so at all. You want to be smart. I mean for us to get in an empty protection game would not be real smart by us either. Then you all would be talking to us about sacks and everything else. So you gotta protect the passer and take care of those guys who have done one heck of a job, and at the same time we gotta play football, too, and get the ball vertically down the field somehow. Q. You talk about instilling belief. What do you mean? What are you trying to get them to believe? COACH PARKER: Well, I think to get them to believe not only in themselves, but believe in what this can be for them. You know what I mean? You get to a point in anything, I mean when you think of the times that you had your biggest ruts as a writer, biggest ruts in high school, making a lay-up. I mean I've been around -- you know, in high school, you get around somebody that does something all the time, and then you go out on the golf course around a good guy and then he suddenly catches the yips. And as soon as I do that, something that used to be so simple as shooting a free throw, all the correlations you can make become hard; and right, wrong or different, again, there's been change, so it has to be discussed, this whole program, fans, everybody sitting out there, all of us coaches that have been here, everything, there's been a walk to that locker room at home that has been the same walk too many times, and that walk and the way, the reaction of the fans, the empty stadium at the end of the game, all those things just come down on your shoulders, and if you can't find a way to get that weight lifted and walk around and say it isn't that bad, hey, let's go play a game, pick your chest up, be a man, play this game with passion, speak it with passion, coach it with passion, write about it with passion. If you talk about those things and get it engrained in them, they'll start believing in it. I believe that with all my heart, and the more you do that, the better off you're going to be, and wins certainly help that. That winning helps that. But before you get to that point you've gotta expect those things and continue to stress how important it is to push that message, and sooner or later it will take off. Q. I don't know if you can answer this. Was that a personality you recruit in players, that they have this kind of belief or is it something you have to work on constantly? COACH PARKER: Yeah, I think there have been too many great jobs or too many great organizations or great situations that have been great but also been ruined, too, now, by culture. So I would say that the message being pushed from me down is vital to it working, anywhere. And now, you're recruiting those great players and then having personalities that push that message that take your locker room over, and we've got a lot of that. Our seniors and our captains have been phenomenal, even through a tough game last week. They've been great. And if you have that and if you keep that, you'll keep your locker room and have a chance. You know what I mean? But there is no doubt the more guys you can recruit to get here to push that message and leadership skills, the quicker it'll happen for you. Q. David had mentioned you're talking about what's their why, what's their purpose. Are you looking for specific answers to that question? COACH PARKER: Not really. I think everybody is motivated in different ways. Some of our guys have come from terrible home situations and they're motivated because they're probably a little bit pissed of what situation they had. Some are from situations that were so good they're coming from and they're motivated by how good they did have it and the support they did have. Everybody is motivated by different things. You know what I mean? So that why and that thing we discussed especially in the wideout room at the beginning of the year can come several different ways. Some guys are motivated by the game they had in high school that was phenomenal. Others are motivated for the teacher who said you're not going to make it. You know what I mean? I think you gotta find that why or purpose or whatever it is that drives you, then feed off that ^ however you need. Q. You mentioned a couple of weeks ago that you need guys to give everything they have and give more if it doesn't work out. How have you seen the guys respond to that, because that's a tough proposition maybe for anybody, but especially for a young guy who's not getting the validation and a victory. COACH PARKER: Right. No doubt. And we live in a world that wants results. We want instant gratification. I think we talked about it before, the old tee ball effect. When I was in tee ball, you didn't get a trophy. You got a trophy if you won. We still kept score in tee ball. Now you don't even keep score, and everybody wants a cookie at the end of the game. So we want all that, and I get it. We talk about it all the time of, hey, I know the reward is winning, but also becoming the man you want to be and all those things. I think if we only work hard and trust the process when it works and goes the right way, you're never going to get there, especially when you're in a situation we're in from these four years. You're just not. The only thing I know for sure is this. If we continue to operate in a losing mentality, if we walk around like we've lost, if we talk to you all like we've lost, if we eat and we walk and we fly to games like we've lost, it's never going to get fixed. It'll never work. On the flip of that if we can continue to push and come out of that locker room like we did the last two games in the first half, if we keep pushing that message and it bleeds over to the third quarter and the fourth quarter, then I know that that's the only way it gets fixed. So on one side of this it can't work. On the other side is it can but it ain't a promise that it will. It's like faith and what everybody else believes in in their lives. You can't do that. You can't say, well, I think I love Kandi. I love her when she brings me a coffee, but when she don't, I don't respect her. Are you kidding? Welcome to relationships, marriage and life. So we'll keep pushing it and ^ pushing the locker room. I know that side of it has a chance. I do. It gives us a chance, gives the players a chance and the rest will take care of itself. Q. Cameron Posey has had a real high rate of turning second or third downs into first downs recently. Why is he playing so well? COACH PARKER: Well, it's good, and I give him heck all the time, just try not to act like he's from Boca. Sometimes he'll go with sandals, and Pose is a pretty chill guy. So we're having to heighten the elevation to him during practice. He's practicing better. I think he also has got confidence now, knows he's a pretty good football player. Our schemes, man, what the offensive staff has done on third down, we've been good on third down. We've been good on third down. I think our schemes have put us in good position. It allows those guys to work on some things they're good at in option routes and those things that we've done with them, and he's taken full advantage. So a lot of it is scheme, a lot of it is setting scheme because of what he's doing, and I would also think that a lot of it has been alleviated by two outside guys that have played pretty high level, too, which helps. You know what I mean? Q. David seems pretty confident in him and the routes he's running in those situations? COACH PARKER: Yeah. In my opinion, a long-time coach told me the keys to a great passing game are timing, depth and spacing. So we're talking to our wideouts, tight ends and backs. If we hit our spots when we're supposed to on time and you keep your proper spacing, you got a chance to find spots, and I think David is trusting those guys are going to get to the proper spots, and when you have that, you got a chance to complete balls. Q. Will you still use Bilal Marshall on punt return? COACH PARKER: Absolutely. Q. What do you like about him there? COACH PARKER: Well, I like what he did in the first return, not the other one. But I like that he's brave. I like that he hits the ball -- and you saw what he did, a poor decision that, again, if we pull him because he makes one bad decision, and really not a bad decision of a ball that goes below his eyes and he misses it, who am I? You know what I mean? There's not enough bad there to merit him not giving us what he'll give us back there. He's a good decisionmaker. Right? He can be trusted in all those things, and anytime you see something happen from a guy like that, you're like, no way. So he'll learn from it and grow from it, and I expect him to be great back there the rest of the year. Q. So which penalties did you not agree? COACH PARKER: Oh, you know what, I'm going to go with the old no comment. But it's a good try. Q. Did you consider challenging -- is this how this works? Could you have challenged Markell's run and did you consider doing that? COACH PARKER: Well, I considered it and asked them real quickly, but again, they came up from upstairs and said that ^ his body did. So on moving forward to use one, we didn't think with where it was at that it was worth burning the timeout to do it because we didn't think it would get overturned, but man, it was close. Q. You had a number of guys who did not finish the game on Saturday. Of those guys who are most likely to be able to return on Saturday? COACH PARKER: Good question. Hopefully all of them. We'll see. Q. Thought I'd give it a shot. COACH PARKER: Yeah, no. I get it. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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