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OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEFebruary 6, 2019Jeff HafleyColumbus, Ohio Q. Are you a scheme guy or are you a guy that likes to take your talent and work with that? What are your philosophies? JEFF HAFLEY: Sure, good question. I think I'm both. There's places I've been you've really had to rely on scheme. There's places you've been you've really got to rely on your talent. We have talent here, so I think we've got to make the most of our talent, like Coach said, and I think we have to make it easy for our players to play fast, do what they do best, coach them up, fundamentals, technique. We need to do a good job with that. But there will be scheme involved, as well. It's a little bit of both. Q. It's been a strong philosophy here for the last few years of playing press man coverage with the quarterbacks. They sort of they oftentimes refuse to deviate from that. Wondering where that falls in with your philosophy, how diverse you get with your coverages. JEFF HAFLEY: Yeah, I think spending the last seven years in the NFL I watched a lot of these guys. I've studied them as I got ready for the draft and the combine and I've watched them play press and they've done a great job. They've been coached well and they've obviously been very talented. I'm a big believer in playing press, but I also believe you have to change it up. So we'll be some press, we'll be some off, we'll be a little bit of everything, but it's a good question because I know how much they've pressed here. But we'll continue to do some of that, and we'll do some other stuff, as well. Q. With you and Greg both being co-coordinators, how do you see that working out? Is it a situation where you coordinate the back end and he coordinates the front seven, or how do you mesh your ideas together? JEFF HAFLEY: Well, I think he did a great job of answering that as I sat in the back when he was up here. I've known him even when I was in the NFL, I've known of Greg Mattison, and he was one of the best D-line coaches, one of the best college football coaches in the country. I knew he was in the NFL, I knew he coordinated in the NFL, and I think his knowledge of the front seven, just sitting there talking with him, is as good as I've ever been around. And I think the combination, I think it's going to be something special, and I think just knowing Coach -- and him and I talked before we took this. We wanted to make sure it fit right, and so far it's been awesome. The meetings we have had have been really good, and I've enjoyed it. So I think it'll be a really good mesh of his knowledge, my knowledge, but he knows stuff about the back end, too, and I know stuff about the front end, too, so I think we'll just continue to work it together. Q. Jeff, defense is returning a lot of players who played last year but there's also a lot of talented players behind them. There's been some debate among fans, among people if the right players were getting their due diligence or their chance to get into the game. I'm wondering as a guy who walks in and has all this talent at his disposal, how do you analyze everybody from top to bottom in terms of who plays starting positions and all that? Do you just start from square one, analyze everybody and go from there? JEFF HAFLEY: That's a good question. I think all of us -- I mean, Greg might have seen a little bit more because he's played against Ohio State, and I've obviously studied the tape. I watched a little bit before I took the job. But for me, the best guys are going to play, and I mean that. I've started free agents over first-round draft picks. If I see a guy out working another guy, I mean, the whole room is going to see that. The whole defense is going to see it. So if that guy shows that he's better, we're going to get the best guys on the field, and I want guys to feel that way. It's our job to play the best players. I'll always say, I see better than I hear, just show me. Put it on tape. Do the right things. Work. And then if you're the best, you'll play. And if it's close, we'll find a role for you. But that's our jobs to do as coaches, get the best guys out there. Q. Is it a tough position to be in to analyze and break down an entire defensive roster from scratch? JEFF HAFLEY: I don't think so. I mean, I think you've just got to spend time and turn on the tape. I think that's why his morning workouts are important, and I think that's why spring football will be important. It will give us the opportunity to do that, and I know we're all very excited about that. Q. You guys have a particularly young coaching staff, a lot of the additions are guys that are still looking on the bright side of 40. Does it feel young around here? JEFF HAFLEY: I don't think so. I mean, I'm almost 40, so I'm like one of the older guys now. I finally feel that way. But I just left an NFL staff where the head coach was 39, some of my buddies in the NFL are 33, head coaches, 34. So no, I don't look at that at all. I mean, I think there's good coaches young, good coaches old. I think we have a really good mix, a really good mix. You get Coach Johnson and Coach Mattison, two of the best in the business who have some more years, but then Coach Washington, Coach Barnes, myself, even some of the quality control and the GAs and the interns around here, they've got a great group. I don't think about the age or the youth at all. Q. Seven years since you've been out recruiting, stepping back into that, that adjustment from really dealing with men in the NFL, some were in their 30s, right, so trying to deal with 18-year-old kids, how are you going to make that adjustment, and have you talked to Coach Day about his expectations, what he expects out of recruiting? JEFF HAFLEY: Well, the recruiting, I think he expects me to go out and get the best players. That's what I expect out of myself. When I was at Pitt, I did it for a long time. I recruited some really good players. Getting on the road, yeah, getting on airplanes and traveling, I had to get used to doing that again. I got a little tired going from city to city, but that's exciting because we don't have to draft them now, we get to go pick them, so I get more than one pick. Coach tells me you get two DB's in this draft. I get more than two DB's now. We get to go evaluate, we get to go pick them, and if we want them, we'd better work and get them, and that fires me up to give us a chance to do it. And I believe I have the experience with what I've learned over the last seven years to give a lot to offer these guys. And as far as the NFL player compared to the college player, see, I saw that when I entered the league. I coached Ronde Barber who was 37 years old, I was 31. He told me, all players want to be told what to do and how hard to do it, and he said, if you do that and have a relationship with them, you'll be fine. I think the misconception is that it's different. I don't believe it is. I mean, Richard Sherman will call me, we'll talk just as close as I've been with 18, 19 year olds. You want to develop relationships. You want to develop trust. You want the guy to run through a wall for you because he knows he has your back, because he knows you love him, and you want that relationship no matter how old they are, and I think the same will go with these guys as it did coaching in the NFL. So I'm excited, though. I'm excited to get back on the road and recruit. I am. Q. What did Ryan Day tell you he wants fixed defensively, or new look, whatever it is you want to call it, because obviously this team had great problems last year giving up gash plays, big time plays, et cetera. What is it he wants most from you new guys defensively? JEFF HAFLEY: Ryan didn't talk about fixing anything. When Ryan called me and we started to speak, we just talked. We talked about the possibility of me coming back to college football, what he saw me doing. But we never talked about fixing anything. I have a ton of respect for Coach Schiano. He's a mentor to me, and obviously you guys know I've been around him for a long time. We never got into it. And I'll never say anything bad about the defense, about the scheme because I've been on other sides of that. The new guys come in and think everything was wrong. It's not. There's a lot of right, and he did a good job on a lot of things, and I mean that. Our job is to get better. We certainly have to, and Coach Mattison and I will do the best we can along with the staff to make sure we do that, to get the players better fundamentally, their technique, and then we'll figure out the scheme from there. Q. Having been in the NFL, what is it that that experience has given you from a broad range maybe point of view that you'd like to bring back to the college game? JEFF HAFLEY: It's a good question, too. The biggest thing is if you look at it, for the last seven years I've coached 140 games, right, so I've gotten ready for 140 games in seven years. In the off-season there's no recruiting, so today instead of doing this, I'd be in my office just studying tape all day in the off-season. The players can't even be in until April, so every off-season for seven years I studied tape and I learned, and I feel like that education, that knowledge -- I've had some scars. I've gotten beat on things by trial and error, but I think that has really allowed me to become a better football coach. I think the best thing that ever happened to me was I had the opportunity to go to the National Football League and just study football for seven years because now I feel like I've seen a lot, you know, and I think that will help. Q. Was it like Greg Mattison that the opportunity to coordinate was the attraction? Why do you leave the league to come? JEFF HAFLEY: That's a good question. A lot of people have asked me that. I wanted to coordinate and I was ready to coordinate. But there's more to it than that because I've had opportunities the past few years to coordinate to come back to college. I had opportunities to go be some type of coordinator in the NFL this past year. I came back here because this is a special place, and I mean that, not just because I'm sitting here. You get a chance to coordinate at a place where you can win a lot of games. That's important. But there's more to it than that. You get to coordinate where you can win a lot of games with the right type of people, and that's the culture here. That's where it's different. I didn't want to go to a place where the culture wasn't right, where you weren't around good people, and that's what I talked to Ryan about, and I know Coach Meyer has done that, and I know Ryan will continue to do that. It's the right type of player here. It's the right type of head coach here, and it's the right staff here. So there's more to it than winning and losing. You want to do it the right way with the right people. Those are all the things that drew me here, and I studied that, and I talked to a lot of people about that. Q. Why are they right? JEFF HAFLEY: Why are they right? They've recruited the right type of people. They've recruited the right type of guy. They're smart, they're tough, they're reliable. They come to work. If any of you saw the mat drills today, for 30 minutes I was in shock. I hadn't seen anything like that for a long time. I said to Ryan when I walked out, I had the chills. But they've recruited the right type of guy, the guy that's going to do the right thing, the guy that's going to go to class, the guy that's going to treat people the right way, the guy that's going to come to work and give it all he has because you guys know it, other places they don't do that. There's a lot of teams that are different, but this place is special for a lot of reasons. Q. Just some scheme stuff, how much do you expect to be in nickel? A lot of teams almost use nickel as a base. What's your philosophy on that? JEFF HAFLEY: I think we'll have to be in both based on who we're playing, based on how we match up for certain teams. Are they going to run the ball or are they going to throw the ball, what the down and distance is, what personnel are they in, what tendency is it, how good is their slot receiver, how good is our Sam, how good is our nickel. I'd love to talk scheme with you for the next 30 minutes, but there's going to be so much that goes into that because we've got to do a good job. Coach Mattison and myself and the staff have to do a good job week to week trying to figure that out. Q. They've rotated corners a lot the last couple years. JEFF HAFLEY: Yeah, I know that. I've seen that. Q. Do you like that idea, or do you like, hey, if I've got two guys that are the best corners I want them out there? JEFF HAFLEY: That's funny because I remember the first time I had Latimore up on a 30 visit, and I was so confused, I was like, why are you rotating. If you're going to be the top-five pick in the draft, what's wrong with you? Why are you rotating? He's like, well, coaches rotate me. Then the next year, it's Denzel Ward out. I'm like, why are you rotating? What is going on here? He's like, well, the next guy is probably a first-round pick, too, Coach. And that just goes back to I didn't get it at the time. I was like, what are they doing? But the next guy is a first-round pick, right? So it goes back to the question I think you asked me before: If a guy is good enough to play, we have to get him on the field. And if he's doing everything right, we have to find a role for him. So if we've got three first-round picks at corner, and I'm not saying we do, we'd better find a way to use him, right? So I think we'll figure that out. We'll figure it out. Q. Do you want your corners turning and looking for the ball? JEFF HAFLEY: All right, so here's the deal on that one, and if I ever see any of you guys tweet -- do you think that we as DB coaches sit there and say, don't look back for the ball? Like my wife used to come up to me after games and be like, hey, why don't our guys turn back and look for the ball? I'm like, do you want to see my individual tape? All we do is practice turning and looking for the ball. DB coaches teach to turn and look for the football. We promise you we will practice to teach -- this is awesome that you asked this because now no one can tweet this out or say this. We are going to work on turning and looking and trying to intercept the football when we're in man. Now, there's certain parts of the field where it's not good to do that. So if we don't do it in a game, it might be a certain part of the field. But I promise you, come and watch individual, we'll turn and look for the ball. I don't know if you're allowed to or not. Don't trick me. I don't know all the rules. Q. We're not allowed. JEFF HAFLEY: All right, sorry. Q. Do you plan on coaching from the box or the field? JEFF HAFLEY: That is a good question. I think me, myself, Coach Mattison and Ryan will have to talk about that. We haven't even brought it up yet. I know where I'd like to be, but I'm not going to tell you that. Not because -- just because I don't want to be lying to you. I don't know where I'll be. You know what, I might want to go up in the box just so people don't recognize me around here. Thanks, guys. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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