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PENN STATE UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEMarch 13, 2019Joe LoriqUniversity Park, Pennsylvania Q. You came from -- you went to Texas Tech for about a month and changed and decided this was the right opportunity for you. What made you feel that way and how difficult was that to transition that quickly? COACH JOE LORIG: It was fairly difficult from the sense that I had closed on a house about two hours before Coach Franklin called me, no, just jokingly. Not difficult at all because of my relationship with Coach Franklin. Obviously it's Penn State. It's an iconic program. So pretty easy decision once I had kind of the nuances of just being there. I was there for five weeks and had kind of got used to those players and had recruited a bunch of players and brought an assistant with me from Memphis. To be quite honest, without Coach Franklin, I probably wouldn't have left there. That's probably one of maybe two people in the country I would have left, Matt wells, who I had worked for previously, for that situation. So from a logistical standpoint it was tough but from a decision-making standpoint, it was really pretty easy. Q. Curious your initial thoughts on Jake Pinegar, your kicker, came on pretty strong in Big Ten play last year. He had more 40-plus yard field goals than anyone in the Big Ten. A little rough in the Citrus Bowl in terms of his confidence but speaking with him, how much of a weapon can he be for this team COACH JOE LORIG: I think he can be a tremendous weapon. I was really impressed. One of the things I try to do when I come in new somewhere is not have preconceived notions, and also understand that guys as freshmen, it's hard to come in and start as a freshmen, especially at this level. It's a pressure-packed situation. So I try not to have too many preconceived notions. I didn't look at the kicking starts that were done throughout the year. I didn't watch the film for obvious reasons, so I know what I'm walking into. I'm impressed with his approach. I really wanted to find out, you know, you tell me where you think you're at, you tell me where you think you struggle, you tell me where you think the issues were, and I was impressed with his response. I was impressed that he didn't make excuses. He took accountability for the things that he thought he didn't do very well at and he -- and he was proud of the things they did do well and he has a good plan in my opinion, obviously I'll assist with it, but he's got a good plan of how he can get better. Q. Can you describe your philosophy, would you emphasize those kind of things? COACH JOE LORIG: Absolutely. So my mantra is "change the game." You'll see CTG on things around here. It's a trademark that I have, so special teams is going to impact the game every game either positively or negatively, right, and clearly we want to have the positive side. But what we really, I was going to say try to do, but we don't try to do it, what we do and I've done it at multiple place s is we create a culture. That's the biggest difference. Everybody in the country, I just told the team this in my first meeting with them, everyone in America, every team I've been a part of, they all talk about special teams, everybody does. Almost nobody really does what they say they are going to do, right. No. 1, it comes from the head coach. You talk about making the decision. Coach Franklin supports special teams 100,000 percent. I wouldn't take a job where the head coach didn't but we do a lot of unique things. One of the things we do that's really unique is we have individualized meetings which might sound like a basic concept, but no one does that. I try to model everything like he would offense or defense. I was a defensive coordinator for many years. So when you have your defense, you don't meet every day as a whole defense because the corners need to hear different things than the D-Line that needs to hear different things from the linebackers. You meet once in a while, but you meet most of the time individually. As special teams, no one does that, they meet all together for 15 or 20 minutes or whatever it is every day. So again, I try to model like that, so we'll have individualized meetings. So if you're in punt, you'll be with your position group. Sounds like a little thing, but over the course of a season the amount of individual attention those guys get and the amount of them paying attention in the meetings because you're just talking about their position is exponential, and it gets all the other coaches and staff to buy in. Special teams can't be about me. It's not my deal. It's our deal. When you get a collective group together like that, really special things happen. Q. How many hours do you think you've watched on film from last year and was there a glaring issue or two that really stuck out to you that said, hey, this is what we've got to do? COACH JOE LORIG: How many hours? Well, I didn't have any spring break. I was up here way too much. Too many. I felt like to get a good grasp on the team I wanted to watch all offense, all defense and all special teams just to kind of -- obviously involved in my own season last year, so I didn't see Penn State very much. I'll kind of follow it because of my relationship with Coach Franklin, but as far as knowing the players, I wanted to watch everything. I don't know, maybe 40 or 50 hours. That's what I did every day last week. There was some things like balls being kicked out-of-bounds, like six balls kicked out of bounds on kickoff. The missed field goals, almost all of them were on the exact same spot on the field from the right hash. There were some things that stuck out, but to be honest with you, I saw a lot of good things also. Some issues of giving up a kickoff or for a return on touchdown, things like that. But I saw a lot of really talented guys that play really hard, and if you have that, you can build a culture that I'm talking about pretty easily I think. It's what I told the team the other day: The fastest way you can improve as a football team is in your special teams unit. That's the fastest, easiest thing to improve, especially in a place like this where, as I said, it comes from the top down. I think I'm excited about the challenge. Q. You mentioned the first meeting. What was the team's reception when you go in there and telling them -- because a lot of these guys have had plenty of different faces the last few years. COACH JOE LORIG: Yeah, that's always a little bit of a challenge. Really, you can tell by people's body language because most people aren't going to be rude to your face or say something. I really judge it by people's body language. And what I try to do is back up, like you said -- I'm a special teams coordinator so of course I'm going to get up and talk about the importance of special teams and there's a lot of similarities and philosophies with a lot of us in those kinds of things. So what I try to do is I back it up with data. I showed them in 2017, the Big Ten champions and the teams that played for the Big 10 Championship, they also were top two in the conference in special teams units. I showed them 2018, the teams that played for the Big 10 Championship were also the top two units in special teams on the respective sides when you look at the special teams numbers. And it's the same thing in the NFL. I showed them the Super Bowl champions from 2018, 2017 and the Top 4 teams, all were the final four in the playoffs. So there's a direct correlation. And then I talked to them about -- they don't want to hear too much about other places, but I talked to them about some of the things that we did at my previous stop. One of the things when I first got to Memphis and I sat in a room just like this, and I was asked about it every single day, they had the longest kickoff return drought in the history of college football, it was a 20-year drought, they had not returned a kickoff for a touchdown. Longest record in history. We broke the record in the last game there that we are now tied for the most ever in history. I'm not saying that to brag, but I wanted to show these guys tangible evidence of the things that we can do if and when they buy into this philosophy. And before that, really, it was getting the coaches aligned and on board and not to allude to the fact they weren't but to come in here and to establish the culture. Because really, it's not me. It's our deal. It has to be all the position coaches. It has to be the head coach. It has to be the team doctor, equipment guys. Everybody has to understand and not undermine the importance of that and truly, truly believe in it and when you have that culture on your football team, it's incredible what will happen. Q. Can you share what your recruiting responsibilities will be in terms of positions and areas? And you've had a lot of success in southern California. Do you think that can translate for a school like Penn State that traditionally has not gotten a lot of kids out of southern California? COACH JOE LORIG: Yeah, I have deep ties there because I've recruited there since 1999, I believe. I have a lot of relationships there. Recruiting is about relationships. Any time you have those kind of relationships, you can lean on people to give you accurate information. So I do think that can be a help, as we kind of call that, out of our footprint, though. I don't know what that number looks like yet but I do know that it's already come up a couple times where there's kids from California that have come here already or are planning on coming here and I knew their high school coach, so I can help bring that gap. My recruiting area here, I have a piece of Pennsylvania I don't know good enough yet to tell you -- it's like Erie County, I believe. I'll have a part of Delaware, part of Maryland and space coast area of Florida, and I'll nationally recruit more specials, so we'll get the very best specials in the country. Q. I know you haven't been here that long but has there been anyone that you've seen that can really make an impact for you on defense and special teams? COACH JOE LORIG: Yeah, there's a bunch of them. I want to point out anybody specific because there's a bunch of them. I think there's a lot of really good players here. I think K.J. stands out because he's a dynamic returner. Last week I watching him, I texted Coach Franklin -- wow, that guy. Really in the system I'm talking about, obviously you have to have good players, that's clear. But really, it's collective, right. It's not just having one great returner. We did the kickoff return thing at Memphis but when you watch it, one of the things that I'm proud of it and I used to point this out to all of the guys all the time is we would pause the tape. Yes, we had a great returner, we had Williams before; he's pretty good, too. It was the collective of the whole group that made a difference, and I think this roster is built with a lot of really good playmakers and I think we can rely on some of the guys that are already playmakers on offense and defense. And I think we can develop and continue to develop a core group of guys that maybe they are not the best corner or safety or receiver or not the most experienced, or they don't know the play goods enough yet; and they can have an impact on special teams because special teams, you can't have lesser players but they don't have to think as much. It's simpler. I'm not having to learn a really complicated playbook and then adjust if they are in Cover 2 or Cover 3 or Cover 4. There's so much more thinking on offense or defense than there is in special teams, so you can take a guy that's less experienced and they can play them soon. Q. What are going to be your defensive responsibilities, and was there an opportunity in the last 20 years where James wanted to hire you and it didn't happen? COACH JOE LORIG: Defensive responsibilities, we are still working that out. In the past, I've been a part of 3-4 schemes, so we have an inside linebacker coach, outside linebacker coach and secondary coach and D-Line coach and I always coached the outside linebackers. This structure is different because it's a 4-3 difference so there's not those extra kind of two guys. Right now I'm assisting just as-needed. Today I'll be with Coach Pry. I've been in meetings with him. But I'm very experienced with linebackers, safeties and corners, so I think I can kind of jump around to wherever is needed. I think have they have talked about maybe some of the nickel stuff, what they call star, maybe getting a little bit of work at that outside linebacker sam position. So I think a little bit of it is kind of feeling each other out at this point. Answering your question about Coach Franklin, yeah, we were roommates at Idaho State in 1999. I knew he was special from the -- you can just tell the minute he walks in the room. He's extremely bright, very, very ambitious, always has been very ambitious. Dominates the room when he walks in. We all knew back then that he was going to do something special. I didn't obviously know where it would end up being. Pretty cool for him from where he's from to have this opportunity. He has not offered me a job in the past but I felt like it was coming. There's a coaches' convention every year. Every year him and I would bump into each other, grab a cup of coffee and stuff, and I knew he was following what I was doing because he would always say, hey, I saw your game against Houston or I saw your game against Stanford or whatever it was. So I knew he was following my career and had said good things to Mike Norvell who was my head coach there in the past. I felt my opportunity would probably come at some point but I just didn't know when. Q. You mentioned K.J. a couple questions ago. We saw him get work at punt and kick returner last year. What's your philosophy of using the same guy as K.J. at that level, if that's going to be your approach, and we saw Dotson involved, Thompkins was involved. Who do you think -- I know you didn't want to mention a bunk of specific names, but who do you think you're really going to put back there in spring to get a feel? COACH JOE LORIG: We'll do a thing called daily skill every single day when we are not scrimmaging, and what it is, it's the kick returner is catching the ball on one side, the punt returner is catching the ball on the other side and the guys you mentioned will be there and they will flip every day -- not everybody, but the guys that do both will flip. So if I was catching punt returns one day, I'll catch kick returns the next day and vice versa. I can't really answer to it. They are all going to be back there and I'll evaluate them and I also have to make sure we have guys that make great decisions. That's going to be important that we make great decisions. We have two goals on special teams. No. 1 is to own the ball. So on coverage units as we're going to be attacking the ball, and on return units we're going to make great decisions to make sure we're that never giving up a possession for our offense, right. And No. 2 is no penalties. A big part of what we do is making sure that not only dynamic players, I think we'll have plenty of those, but also great decision-makers in those situations. Q. Is your philosophy to use the game two guys in both roles if he earns that job? - COACH JOE LORIG: If he's the best guy, he's going to play. What our philosophy, that Coach Franklin and the staff and I have discussed is making sure that guys don't start on more than two special teams units unless it's approved by the offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator and head coach. What I do -- because you want to make sure you're not overusing guys and not being selfish which is easy to do if you get a special player. What I do is weekly I will get a play count for the week and year, talking about in the season now, that will be distributed to Coach Franklin, the offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator and myself to say, hey, make sure, K.J. played 11 special teams plays last week and he's played 34 on the year and kind of manage that number. Sometimes you find out a guy is not being used -- like at Memphis we had three really good running backs. So the head coach, rotate them all the time, start them on four if they are good enough, so this will vary with those situations. But I do keep a very active play count to make sure we are not over- or under-utilizing a guy. Q. Question about freshmen. You mentioned being able to play people early because of the more simplistic side of special teams. It seems like freshmen across the country are coming in, ready to play earlier and earlier. Is that the same thing, and I want to ask specifically about the specialist positions, because it seems like there's more training physically and kind of infiltrating the high school side for offense and defense. Do you find specialists, punters and kickers, things like that, coming in as well prepared or more well prepared in the past. COACH JOE LORIG: No. I think that they -- I think that they are well prepared physically. The hard part for specifically specialists is the mental side of it. There's lots of guys, tons and tons of guys that have good enough legs for a punter or are good enough snappers. It's the mental side of the game -- it's very much like golf in that way. That's where I think the challenge is, is when a guy comes in and he has to be in this environment, and he was in high school four months ago. It's not undoable. I've had people do it. But in my experience what I try to do, you have to be somewhere for a while obviously but what I try to do is I try to be a year ahead in recruiting. So if I have a junior kicker, I had Jake Elliot, kicker for the Eagles. So when he was a junior I recruited and signed the guy I knew was going to replace him so he had a year to train under Jake and I was able to bring, now the starting kicker, Patterson. So he had a year to develop, figure things out, get stronger, focus on academics. There's so many things that come into play for these student athletes, especially when they first get there. They are getting used to time management, living away from home, pressures of Division I football. There are so many things they are dealing with; that if you can give them a year to get acclimated, that's the ideal situation. Doesn't always work that way but you try to do it that way. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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