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UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 8, 2016Tracy ClaeysMinneapolis, Minnesota . . Q. Hey, I see you got a new tailor. COACH CLAEYS: A new tear? I don't know. Q. Don't you have a tailor that makes your clothes? COACH CLAEYS: I have one suit. That's it. Q. He was looking for you. COACH CLAEYS: Oh, was he? I've got one suit. That's what I got. So, probably didn't. I got one suit. That's all I got. Q. A $50 suit? COACH CLAEYS: It's a little bit more than that, so -- Q. Tracy, last month, we heard a little bit about the possibility of the lineman facility. Where does that stand? Does that still look like a possibility to become part of the athlete's village here in the near future? COACH CLAEYS: What I've been told, it's going to be discussed again at the next board meeting. So, yeah, I do think it's a possibility. But that's all I know at this time. Q. What effect do you think that big loss will have on Nebraska playing you? COACH CLAEYS: I just -- they're still in it. They still have a chance. I don't see it having a big effect. I've been a part of that where we lost big the week before, because you get an injury, and the flood gates open up, and it truly just comes down to who prepares the best and plays the best on Saturday, so, I am sure they'll be ready to play and playing at home, and they still have a chance to win the west also, so, I expect we'll get their best. Q. Tracy, why has your defense been so good at creating turnovers? COACH CLAEYS: It seems to be another one of those things, kind of like penalties. Some years you get them; some years you don't. I do think that the pressure we've created -- I think the sacks and creating more pressure probably is the biggest reason, if I had to guess, you know? But we've worked on them and done drills all year long. Some years it goes good. Q. Would you say your turnover margin is the biggest reason why you're 7-2? COACH CLAEYS: I think the turnover margin definitely, if you look over the past years, it does have an effect on the better teams, you know? And that's a two-way street. You know? Sometimes we have created some turnovers in the past, and we've turned it over more, and this year we've really done a good job of taking care of the ball. I think turnover margin is a legitimate deal each year that a lot of better teams are up there towards the top. Q. Tracy, what have you seen out of Thomas Barber, how he's progressed his freshman year? COACH CLAEYS: Mainly special teams. We haven't played a lot of defense. Has great instincts, loves the game of football. Again, you know, family wise, football has been important to his family and been awfully good to the University of Minnesota. He continues to improve and has been a big part of our special teams. Q. Tracy, not to have you go off about one targeting penalty. How do you sum up how you would like to see that rule addressed in the offseason, both -- you talked about unavoidable category and maybe also that the conference can review it in between games? COACH CLAEYS: Yeah. I don't know. I mean, there's -- I think there's an avoidable -- you know, the other idea that maybe they would be open to is like the flagrant one and flagrant two in the NBA. Even though it's in that kind of unavoidable thing that you get to 15 yards, but you're not throwing people out of the game unless they get two in the same game, so all I know, when there's a gray area involved and you're throwing kids out of the game, you got to do everything you can to make that gray area disappear and be as small as it can be. Hopefully, there will be some things like that that they'll look at. Q. Did you get an explanation? Did you get an explanation for that? COACH CLAEYS: You know, as they always -- they told us what their justification was, you know what I'm saying? So, you know, they're not going to go backwards, you know, on something right now. It's something that will have to wait until the end of the season. Q. Did it come from the booth? COACH CLAEYS: I'm told no, you know. Q. Did you look at it from the video board? Is that where you saw it? Is that why it came so late? COACH CLAEYS: They said they were in discussions. You know, they all have the -- an earpiece, and they can all talk to each other, you know, and they were in discussion about it, and that's what took a little bit longer because they were all talking about it before deciding to throw it. So, I don't know if he seen the replay or not. Q. You can't talk about it. COACH CLAEYS: No. Q. Right? I've been watching this team for 100 years, and I never seen such worse officiating in my life. COACH CLAEYS: That's good you said that. It's on the record, but I can't talk about it. Q. I tell you what, unbelievable. They think they got a quota how many calls they got to make. COACH CLAEYS: Appreciate that. Q. Tracy, when you turned over the kicker job to Emmit this season, was there any concern about how he might do? Did you need to see him in game action before you felt good about that? COACH CLAEYS: I felt good about it in practice, but always, it comes down to they don't count, in practice, as much as they do in games. I didn't think we'd end up going backwards on that, from what I've seen in practice. Again, that was all done, because Ryan wanted to punt, and so Emmit's worked very hard at it, but, you know, over 50-yarder, too, surprised me, you know. That was stretching his limit, but, no, not how well he's done, hasn't really -- hasn't surprised me. Q. Tracy, you talked about playing meaningful football in November. It's November and you got all of your goals right in front of you. How do you harness that with the kids, that they don't get too excited? COACH CLAEYS: It still comes down to the one game. Hopefully, you know, I think the championship teams, if you look at the Patriots, and the most consistent teams, is every week they do, they respect their opponent enough that that's what they prepare for to play on game day, and it's hard, though, not to look ahead. You know, all of the social media and phones, you know, I'm sure kids read about the projections each week. You're going win by this many or lose by this many. It's hard to get kids not to make up their mind before the game's actually played, and so just keep hammering on, you know, is the respect for your opponent. That's one thing, since we started in the spring, is that we've preached each week, are we going to have enough respect for our opponent each week that regardless what's said, we're going to prepare so we can play our best on Saturday, so that's the same message we keep hammering home each week. Q. Have they done a good job with that? Do you think the team had responded to that? COACH CLAEYS: I think so, for the most part. Even the ones we come out and played -- we came down the gate faster, scored more points and all, even though -- you know, there's some expectations, I guess, where everybody thinks you're going to win every game by 21 or 20 points. It just ain't going to happen nowadays. I think our kids -- our practice is going to be very good, and up-tempo. I think they practiced well. So, yeah, I think they're buying into it and of course you get here at the end of the year, it gets even more exciting so we got to make sure to keep them focused. Q. How does Memorial Stadium rank for opposing places to play? COACH CLAEYS: You know, it's one of the best, you know? Again, you get into that, which one is the best, but it's one of those top ten deals in college football, without a doubt. Q. Are you guys going to pump in crowd noise to try to create an atmosphere in practice? COACH CLAEYS: The offense will work with crowd noise, yeah. Q. Tracy, Bud Grant, all the years he was coaching, was campaigning for full-time officials, officials that work a college game on a Saturday and a pro game on Sunday. And those guys wouldn't be dentists, or wouldn't be anything else, they would be officials, and that's the only solution to this thing. COACH CLAEYS: Yeah. Yeah, I know that the training part, I know they put more and more money into it each year, but I don't disagree. Right. Q. That's their job. COACH CLAEYS: It's got to generate -- yeah, they got to be willing to spend the money on the officials and that type of money to pay them well enough to be full-time officials is the commitment they got to decide whether to make or not. Q. Tracy between the Iowa and Penn State losses, does one of them eat at your body more than another? COACH CLAEYS: No. Q. If so, why? COACH CLAEYS: They really don't. I mean, both of them we lost by one possession. I learned we have to move on. If it was still bothering you, we wouldn't be playing as well and winning games. So, it is what it is. You move on each week. Q. Coach, you've been struggling more lately on third down conversions offensively. How much does that concern you and is there anything in particular you guys need to do to improve on that? COACH CLAEYS: Just keep practicing and try to stay out of the third and longs. Third and long is hard for anybody and try to get more in the third and shorts. We did the short yardage thing better on Saturday, the third and shorts. So those are the ones we need to get into and when we get into them, take advantage of them. But, yeah, third and long has been a little bit of trouble, but it's trouble for everybody, so you just try to stay out of them. Q. Tracy, as interim coach, you went on that run through ranked points, you did well. Is there things you can take from that to apply to this stretch? COACH CLAEYS: Yeah. I think so. We've played in some the toughest stadiums. Last year we were competitive in that stretch through that time, and we had a lot worse injuries. I mean, I tell our kids that all of the time, is that D-line, we were all beat up and didn't have a lot of people, so we're as healthy as a formal team would be. We have our bumps and bruises. We could be missing a few kids, but I think that will give our kids confidence what we went through a year ago, and being able to play those teams and without some of our better players, so, yeah. Q. Now, Winfield made some plays for you this year. COACH CLAEYS: Yeah. Yeah. No question. He has, and it's helped us in the secondary how much he's improved. I say, what I enjoy about the team, you watch your seniors, I said if we are going to have a good year of seniors, you have to play well, and they played well. They really have. Then you look out there. We got an awful lot of young kids making a lot of plays and playing well for us to win. I like that kid. He's been very productive. Q. Is he highly recruited yet? COACH CLAEYS: No. Not really, not really. Q. Do you prepare as if Armstrong is playing? COACH CLAEYS: Yes, we will. We'll do everything as if he's playing. Just because he really does make their offense go. You watch all of the game films, we went through them, he's the one who makes that -- things go and makes the plays, and so we've got some video of the back-ups in, and so we'll prepare a little bit for them, but the whole thing will be -- is to be able to keep Armstrong -- keep control of him and hopefully not give somebody else like Westerkamp or somebody a career day. But we've got to control him. Q. Does your game against McSorley, does that help quite a bit, Tracy? COACH CLAEYS: It's two different types of offenses, really. But, yeah, same type as far as scrambling the quarterback, and stuff like that. But, otherwise, the offenses are quite a bit different. Q. Tracy, how do you think Mitch has handled kind of the ups and downs this year and, you know, different personnel things around him like your tight end situation and your O-line was beat up for a while? COACH CLAEYS: Yeah. I think he's handled all of that awfully well, you know? There's only -- I mean, I think that, you know, seven of the games, he's played awfully well, and a couple other ones, he'll tell you he probably could have played better, but he still hasn't had no really big balls while we've been going, and kid loves playing, and, you know, I like the way that Coach Johnson does practice. He gets the rep with a lot of people in the team situations, and so I think he's done awfully well. But, again, for us to finish this out, the teams that do well and finish their seniors have to play well, and he's somebody that he's going to have to play well for us to get where we want to be. Q. I saw Cody was listed as out? COACH CLAEYS: He's out for the season. He's going to go ahead and have shoulder surgery. We're going to go ahead and get that fixed. It's not doing anybody any good, and so the sooner you do that, the better he'll be back and ready to go. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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