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UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 1, 2006

Charlie Weis

MODERATOR: Coach will make some opening comments and then we'll take some questions.
CHARLIE WEIS: Well, let's get into our review of the Purdue game. Let's start with special teams. I'll go to the pros and the cons.
I thought our punt team continued to perform at a very high level. We ended up netting 44 and a half yards a punt and all three of our punts, even though one of them was a little fortunate, it got a little roll, but all three of our punts were down inside the 20. We finally nailed a plus 50 punt down there by -- it was a good kick by Geoff. And Lambert was down there and a couple other guys. And J.J. ended up downing it.
But that was, that's much improved. I think the punt team has continued to perform at a fairly high level and I think that obviously J.J. and Geoff have a lot to do with that.
We pulled off a game changing play on the fake field goal. We were in a situation where it was a safe call because we had a time out left that we could have used if we didn't get the look.
I think John Carlson made a very good block on that play and Jeff showed good patience to let the whole thing unfold. A lot of times when you design something like that and they want to do it too quick and not let everything unfold before they go ahead and do it. And we had no penalties in the kicking game, which I thought that was a big positive.
And the negative vein, I thought our kickoff coverage, our kickoff, our kicking and our kickoff coverage was very poor. That's both the kicks and the tackling. The average drive started for the day on the 27.6. They had 131 yards of kickoff return yardage. Now obviously when you kick off multiple times there's going to be yards there, but that was our worst average start for the year on kickoff coverage.
We missed a 48 yard field goal and although we had given up a few yards on the play, previous to that, with the sack, I mean we had a substantial wind at our back at the time and you would like to think that we could have, we could have nailed that one.
I thought for the day, with the exception of Geoff, I thought that we were probably inconsistent at the kicker position.
Also, we have to do some, make, besides tackling better on the kickoff coverage, I think we have to make some better decisions in our special teams than we did yesterday. And we need to do a better job with finishing plays. I think the biggest emphasis that we're going to have in every week, every week you take one thing on special teams and we're going to have to work on finishing plays and continue to work with our kickers and our kickoff coverage.
On defense, as I mentioned yesterday, I thought that the three -- well the two major things that were positives in the game were our third down third down/fourth down getting off the field on third down statistically. And by game plan, going into the game, to take away nine and 28, I think for the most part nine and 28 were greatly neutralized.
Unfortunately, that led to a big day by 1. Lambert did make a big play. Causing that fumble and recovering that fumble in plus territory. I think they were really the three biggest positives of the day on defense.
Now, negatively, let's, there's a number of things. Before I get to big plays, which obviously every one could see, the fact that they threw it 46 times and we had no sacks and no interceptions, that's definitely a negative. We gave up six big plays in the past game for 238 yards. 39 yards, 23 yards, 26 yards, 88 yards, 40 yards, and 22 yards. That's 238.
I mean, that's not good.
We had four penalties on defense. Three PI's, and an offsides. But the offsides, you know, you could say a couple of them were questionable, the one that probably bugged me the most was actually the offsides on Victor, because I thought the center flinched the ball. Also on that one, and I try not to whine too much about PI's, because I'm always whining for them on the other side. So I try not to whine against them too often, although I thought some of them were really borderline.
I was disappointed with how we played the option down on the goal line, for a walk in touchdown. And besides only having two, three and outs for the day, probably the thing that disturbed me the most is there three touchdowns were all 85 yards or more. Now obviously the one was along play, but the other ones, you know, 85 yards or more and when you're pinning them back and you're leaving them in bad field position, you would like to think that the odds of them going the length of the field is minimal. And they did it three times, two times on drives and one of them, obviously, on the long pass.
Offensively, the first time in a number of weeks we were able to stay on schedule basically that means that our first and second down get production. On third down, get conversions, and stay on the field.
Now, I talked about yesterday, you know, our third down conversions and our fourth down conversions, one significant thing was we scored on the first drive of both halves. And I thought that was significant. It wasn't just a first drive of the game, it was also the first drive of the second half. When they had just got some gas in their tank after that long touchdown, right before half time, to cut it to a two score game.
Not including the fake field goal, we really scored four out of the first six times we touched the ball. We had no turnovers, we established a running game and really averaged 4.8 a carry. You can't really look at those statistics the way they do, that was the big difference between college and the NFL, in the NFL those sacks count against your passing average. In college those sacks count against your rushing yardage. So that rushing average really wasn't what we ran the ball for. Darius ran for 4.7 and obviously we had that little reverse in there too. We averaged 4.8 a carry.
We were very efficient in the passing game, completed well over sixty percent for the day. Which is much improved. And we only had one unforced penalty on offense. And we had two called on the same play. They called a holding on a play and they also called -- and it was an illegal motion on the play as well. And they declined the illegal motion and took the holding call, which is the longer of the two. But, so really we had one play in the game where we had an offensive penalty.
Negatively, we didn't finish the game in the fourth quarter. I thought the offense played pretty well until it came to closing it out at the end.
We didn't score every time we got in the red zone. And we had opportunities to do that.
We gave up four sacks, a couple of them were actually very good decisions by Brady. Sometimes you get coverage sacks, sometimes you, he could have thrown the ball up, but I think there was -- you think he made, you know, just a couple times I thought that he made a wise thing taking a sack, even though he's not trying to take them and we're not trying to give them.
But more the most part I think there were a lot of good things on offense. Except for finishing out the game and the obvious cast of characters that stood out in the game. I know Brady played very well. So did Darius and Rhema. Carlson showed up again. And I think on the offensive line, if I had to pick somebody out that kind of stood out for me it would probably be John Sullivan. Because I thought he was probably the most consistent of the offensive linemen.
MODERATOR: Start with questions for people here in person.

Q. As a play caller, who has seen just about every offense imaginable, when you see an offense like Purdue's or anyone else's, is there the temptation that, to constantly be adding to your offense and do you have to draw the line somewhere to you know what is too much for your offense?
CHARLIE WEIS: I think that they do a nice job and I think that they have done a nice job over the years with their offense of tweaking -- I think they have the foundational system in place. And I think that that allows them to tweak it by game plan. I don't think that in their eyes they're adding tons more each week. I think that they go against their opponent and say, well where are we going to go. They want to throw the ball to 9 and 28. When they saw that 9 and 28 was the way we were going, I think they did a nice job of getting it to No. 1. And I think that for that you have to give them credit. And I think that they have enough flexibility in their system to game plan and be a game plan oriented team and be able to do that on both sides of the ball and kind of adjust to the opponent they're going against.

Q. You yourself, when you see variations on offense?
CHARLIE WEIS: I'm very similar. I'm very similar to what they're doing. For me it's variations of defense. Because I'm looking at the different defenses. Like even Purdue's defense, you know, a couple weeks ago it was all cover two. Then they went against Minnesota and it was all post safety, because they wanted to stop the run. Well, against us are they going to go cover two and roll up on our wide receivers or are they going to play post safety? Well it turned into a post safety game, because they figured that we were going to go and try to establish the run. Which was the right mentality for them to think that we were going to try to get the running game going. Now what happens with that is if you still are able to run it with some effectiveness, which we were, it opens up a lot of easier throws in the passing game.

Q. Obviously your background is in the pros, so there isn't much option there, but as far as the option game, I mean is that something that you have given much consideration to?
CHARLIE WEIS: Well, my feeling is the quarterback is the most important player on the team. My personal feeling is. And he's already getting hit more than I would like him to get hit now, not running the option. So I would prefer the quarterback not to get hit, personally.

Q. The game that Joe had yesterday, when you consider shutting Travis down and letting him, with the bye week coming up after next week, get that rest, get totally healed and then comeback?
CHARLIE WEIS: I would say the answer to that question would be yes, I would consider it. I thought Joe was fairly solid. He certainly wasn't the reason that they had production. He was part of the reason, now, mind you, but he wasn't, it wasn't like they exploited Joe. But I'll see how it goes. Travis has really done a nice job for us. As soon as I can get him on the field, I would want to get him on the field. But I'm kind of in that situation with a few other guys too. We'll just have to wait and see. See how it goes. But our goal is going to be to win this game and then rest the next week so what you don't want to do is not put your best team out there for this week's game.

Q. You had success going to the left yesterday, George West went that direction, Samardzija scored that way and Rhema. Was that your strength or was that really something that you found out in them?
CHARLIE WEIS: Well, some of it was field position like where the ball is on the field, based on the calls you have. Obviously we got more experienced guys on the left than on the right, but it isn't like I go into the game and say we're not going to run to the right. Sometimes if the ball is on left hash mark and I'm lining up in a three by one then you're going to put the three receivers to the wide side of the field. It just makes sense to do it that way. So a lot of it has to do with on the previous play, where did the ball end up. If it ends up on the right hash, you know, I go, -- do you have a play that's designed to go into the boundary or do you have a play that's designed to go on the field. I already know what the play is, I just, you just flip it, based off of -- I mean I can put it in a right or left formation, based upon where the ball ends up being.

Q. You're getting close to the halfway point of the season, does it start to get to be a grind or do the guys need to start grinding a little bit more do you think?
CHARLIE WEIS: No, I think that it's not a grind because they see a light at the end of the tunnel. This he see a time, a time after this next game where they can kind of regroup. So I don't look at it that way like it's a grind. I actually think that it gives you an opportunity to say, hey, let's go out and give it our best game this week. And I don't see it, I don't see that they would view it that way, to tell you the truth.

Q. Geoff Price moved up to the top of the nation leaders in punting this week. I think you're fifth in net punting. Just talk about his continued consistency there.
CHARLIE WEIS: It really started last spring where he started becoming more consistent. And it continued through training camp and now it's to the fact that now that he's worked on a couple of those things that we had talked about, I don't know how long ago as a group we had talked about working on plus 50 punting and directional kicking and some of those things, he's actually gaining more confidence in those too. He's turned to consistently one of the guys that I talk to in front of the team almost every week about popping a positive vein as Geoff. He's been a very, very big plus and he's a very good weapon top of it. Because you have to look at it -- this guy changes field position. And that's, field position is critical.

Q. I want to follow-up a little bit on a question I asked you yesterday, you weren't sure about some of the substitutions on defense.
CHARLIE WEIS: I've watched now so go ahead.

Q. Did Walls get hurt?
CHARLIE WEIS: No, he didn't get hurt, I think that they were, I think that because they were picking on him so much, I thought that, I think Bill felt that if he got a chance to stand on the sidelines and watch what was happening, because when you go into the game plan where 1 really wasn't the guy that, going into the game plan that was going to be the man. Well we certainly made him the man yesterday. And I think sometimes when you stand back and get a chance to watch him or watch it, you know, you get a chance to regroup. And as a young guy what you don't want to do is demoralize them. Because they're not, they don't really know all the things that are happening because it wasn't exactly the way you drew it up when you started to plan originally.
Remember now, despite all that yardage in the second half they scored seven points. Now we can talk about all the yardage we want, but it was seven points. That's the way I see it. So I think that it was more of a chance to let him stand back and get a, be able to look at some of the stuff without just having that big guy coming at you on every single play.

Q. John Ryan also got into the game in some pretty meaningful time there. Can you talk about that?
CHARLIE WEIS: Well, Victor was spent. Those guys, those defensive ends, Chris and Victor played a lot because it was all nickel and dime predominantly. And there were a lot of tired puppies in there. So the inside guys changed a little bit more regularly. There times a time when you got to get them off the field. And sometimes when you see those young guys go on the field and you say well why would you put them in now it's because those guys that are playing are tired. That's why you put them in. It isn't because you just want to take people off the field. I would always like to have Victor out there. But we have confidence that John Ryan knows what to do and that he can make plays. So we have no problem putting him out there, or else he wouldn't run second team.

Q. You were asked I think yesterday, is this defense good enough. I think he prefaced it by is the 93 good enough?
CHARLIE WEIS: Yeah, my boy Len, yeah, I got it.

Q. Okay. You answered that you like the third down conversion rate. But beyond that, what do you like about this defense? What is it about this defense that leads you to believe in them so much?
CHARLIE WEIS: Well, let's talk about this game. We had one drive for a touchdown. That's seven points. They gave up a home run before half time into a double coverage situation we bang into each other, the guy takes it to the house. Okay. They come out in the second half, they gave up one more touchdown. So this is a team that was averaging 40 points a game. So where every one wants to say well the guy threw for a zillion yards or they do this and do that, I look at production. And the bottom line is, how many points do you give up. That's really what the game is all about. How many points you give up. The teams been giving up 40 or I mean the team's been scoring 40, they gave up 21. And seven of them were on an 88 yard pass. So from my standpoint I don't look at it as a negative as other people would, because every one just looks at the yards. I look at production. And you can get off the field on third downs, there aren't that many long drives, am I annoyed at the three long drives? You bet I am. I'm more annoyed at the one play and two long drives, though. You know, and half time we addressed the long play.

Q. Let me twist this a little bit. Where do you see room for improvement in this defense? Where do you expect it to get better and think it will get better?
CHARLIE WEIS: Well, I think that the players, every time we go into a game with a certain mode in mind, this defense has shown that they could do that job. Let's -- don't let Trannon beat you, I mean don't let Stanton beat you. Okay. Don't let Trannon beat you. Don't let Calvin Johnson beat you in the game. I mean, you can go back to different things in the game, you know, get pressure on Penn State. I mean regardless of what it is, they have shown that the main gist of what we're doing, they can do. And they have done it almost every week. Let's say Michigan's the one throw away. They have done it almost every week. But what we need to do a better job of, and this is really what it comes down to is, okay, if we're going to take this away and you guys are in one-on-one situations, whether it be a beating them on a pass rush, or playing them coverage, you need to make one-on-one plays. Because that's really what it comes down to when you put a point of emphasis on taking certain things out of the game. And at that point that's what we're going to have to get better at.

Q. The first drive Darius touched the ball I believe on the first six plays that you guys had. Can you talk about the physical condition a running back needs to be in, in order to do that and not tap out of the game.
CHARLIE WEIS: Well, early in the game I don't think it's much of an issue as far as stamina goes. And he hasn't gotten a lot of usage in the run game and believe it or not, one of the jokes that you have the underlying jokes that you have is he has fresh legs. Been by fresh legs means he hasn't got a lot of work carrying the ball so therefore I'm not afraid -- normally I don't like giving, him touching the ball more than 25 times. Well he ran it 31 times and had another several especially catches on top of it. So that's a full day for him.
But I think that our team basically he has fairly good stamina and those type of situations would be a lot more practical in the fourth quarter than they are in the first quarter.

Q. Can you talk a little bit about the fact that you had him run the ball. I think it was 20 times in the first half. Did you realize that you were up that high as far as Darius' running?
CHARLIE WEIS: I don't ever count. I don't say, call upstairs and say, what's my run/pass ratio. I don't do it like that. I try to get us into third and short. That's what I what I try to do. And there's been several games this year that I haven't done that very well. So going into this game that was one of the things we were trying to do is be in more manageable third down situations than we have been in. And the easiest way to do that is to hand it off and get positive yards.

Q. The stat sheet said that Anastasio had the one catch for 15 yards, can you evaluate the third receiver more than that, just that one stat.
CHARLIE WEIS: Well, I mean we in a lot of three wide receiver sets. It's just a lot of the balls ended up going to Rhema yesterday. I mean it just, when we call plays, we don't throw to or away from anyone, we throw where the coverage or the progression dictates. So I think two balls went in Chase's direction yesterday, one on the hitch that was a little, that were a little short on the play and the next one was a 15 yarder for a first down. I think that it all depends on how the coverage goes to where the ball ends up going. But I don't think you noticed him in a negative vein either.

Q. Follow-up on something that you don't look at the stats, at half time do you ever look at stats?
CHARLIE WEIS: What I'll do is I'll get, some time during half time, they will come in with a copy of the half time stats. And it gives me a more overall not specific view of things I want to address with the team. What I normally do when I come in, if there's one major thing I need to talk about to either one side of the ball or the team, I'll do that as soon as I walk in. And then I take at least five minutes to meet with the coaches and talk about issues that were going on in the first half and try to get an idea of openers for the second half.
Then usually about that time that comes in here and I can say, okay, we're doing a better job on third down or, hey, fellows we completed one pass here or, you know, usually something will come out of there that I can give as a more general type of thing, rather than a specific.

Q. They talked yesterday about the frustration of defense giving up big plays. That's been a common theme throughout last year and this year. I don't know if you think you have already done it, about you what do you do to try to fix that?
CHARLIE WEIS: Well, kind of tying into Eric's question before, Tom, okay, when we're talking about what happens when you're going to take away specific things and then somebody else is making all the plays. Which is like what it was yesterday. I think in those situations we have two choices. We can go away from taking away those, the guys we want to take away, which is the game plan for or the main gist of the game plan for the week. And roll into those guys. But when you do that, then you're opening up, you're making yourself more vulnerable to the things that the team has shown to do the best. I think we just have to go out there and just be sound fundamentally and work on fundamentals and techniques and sit there and play better. That's what I think we need to do. And that's not giving the players up either. That's just really a very practical answer to that question.

Q. You mentioned several players you thought played well on offense. Any players on defense you thought played particularly well?
CHARLIE WEIS: I thought there were players that played hard. There weren't any of them that -- I talked to the defensive staff about the same thing. Was there one guy that stood out. I know that the guy who I have continued to get more confidence in every week is Lambert, I can tell you that. Because I don't know if it's just parent laying from last week, but even though he got called for the one PI and the guy had the one back shoulder catch on him, for the most of the day he seemed to be a fairly consistent player.
I think that they played hard. I don't know, as Rick would say, if you give up that many yards, if you're finding too many people that played what you consider well.

Q. You talked about kind of the one-on-one battle. Winning those more. Is that what shows up in sacks as much as anything. You have eight for the season?
CHARLIE WEIS: Yes, sometimes that's true. But when you're talking about sack, you also have to look at where the protection help is going to. Like is -- and I don't know the answer to this question, the question I'm going to raise, but is Victor being -- is all the help going to Victor? So does that mean that we one-on-one on the back side, are they sliding to the right, are they sliding to the help left are they chip helping, what are they doing. And look I said right off the top of my head I don't have the answer to that question, but, yes, winning one-on-one battles is a big deal when it comes to putting pressure on a quarterback. Sacks, no, that's only one half of it, because pressure's sometimes have as much to do with the success of a defense as sacks do.

Q. And I think you lead the nation in fourth down conversions and I realize part of that have is probably the deficits, but what do you make of that stat? Is that a good thing, is that partially a bad thing? What do you make of that?
CHARLIE WEIS: I think that usually they're in, usually those plays are occurring in low risk situations. Usually occasionally it's been probably a time when you prefer to punt the ball. I'm talking about over the season. But some of that is luck. But some of it is having, showing confidence in your offense and your defense. It's a whole bunch of factors that all are unique to that one situation that comes up.

Q. Is it more of a feel for the game, feel for the moment?
CHARLIE WEIS: Well, like yesterday the one fourth and one, when we lined up in what we call regular people, we thought that either we would it we would be able to hand the ball off or flip it out to Darius, if they gave us the look and they gave us the look and we flipped it out to Darius for what turned out to be a fairly easy conversion.

Q. And last week we heard a lot of the points of emphasis, the guys talked about that after the game. What is the limit to that, how many points of emphasis can you have before a certain law of diminishing returns kicks in?
CHARLIE WEIS: Each week we can only have so many of them. And there's always the ones that you have to get after for a week. And usually they're very evident when you watch on tape both of yourself, and of the opponent. Usually they're very evident. So when you look at them, there's a lot of evidence of how you played something and how they played something and how it could be a problem if you don't make it a point of emphasis.

Q. Fewer than ten or what?
CHARLIE WEIS: Oh, no, it's never anywhere near ten. Well, I mean if you add up the whole team. But you can count, you can't emphasize more than -- you can't emphasis more than five things. Usually less than that because you just can't get them all done. When you try to do them all, it's like a jack of all trades, master of none.

Q. You were talking about the personnel. And you thought Ambrose might be out there. Could you give us an answer why he wasn't?
CHARLIE WEIS: Well, actually he went out and warmed up before the game and Bill felt that he was much closer to playing. We had that conversation in here today. I said now I'm going to ask this question, get asked this can question about Walls and for reason and Ambrose and what's the story here, so I have this one straight. Because I had watched the tape but I wanted to hear the rationale of the because I don't want to do it by conjecture. But I think that they felt that those other guys at full speed, the way the game was being played out, they felt that those other guys were full speed and would be better than playing him.

Q. About addressing that big play, how did you address that? What did you guys talk about?
CHARLIE WEIS: Well, I haven't met with the team yet. We'll be meeting with them shortly.

Q. No, I mean at half time.
CHARLIE WEIS: Oh, that one big play? Yeah, it was not pretty. That was not a pretty conversation. Like the week before, it's been well documented that I went in there and I was calm and mildly mannered and just questioned them, well this wasn't calm and mildly mannered and I was only speaking to half of the team at that, at this time.

Q. What was said?
CHARLIE WEIS: Well, I saw an opportunity to do one of two things. An opportunity for either an interception or a knockout. One or the other. And we were 0-2. Okay. There was no interception and there was no knockout. And all that we saw was an 88 yard touchdown going the other way.
So it wasn't lake those players weren't trying to make a play. They were. It just didn't work out that way.

Q. Speaking of knockout, do you expect Tom to make -- you expect him to make big plays. How do you get them going on special teams? How do you get Tommy going on defense?
CHARLIE WEIS: Well, I think that what happened with Tommy is on that one punt return, okay, he got nailed in the head. Which I felt was a helmet to helmet, which I come planed about at the time. And I think he just sucked it up and went through the rest of the game right there. Because I think for the rest of the game after that one he was just toughing it out. Because I think he was banged up pretty good after that one. Now it wasn't a concussion or else he wouldn't have been out there. But he wasn't feeling so hot. I mean I was a little disappointed in that one.

Q. You talked a little bit about Terrail Lambert after last week's interception at big play yesterday, are you noticing kind of a swagger or confidence in him where he kind of conducts himself like a guy who should be making plays?
CHARLIE WEIS: That's funny because in our staff meeting today I basically brought up almost the same, almost brought up the same thing myself. That it's good to see a guy who could be on a slow rise -- you don't want to take a meteoric rise and then all of a sudden set themselves up for a fall. But I think probably those couple of plays last week helped his confidence and I think it had definitely a residual affect for this week. Because he definitely, he, like I said, he gave up a -- they called the one PI on him and the one guy made the back shoulder catch, but no, there were a lot of times where he was in the right place.

Q. How many more times does he have to make plays like that before you can kind of count on him to be out there by himself and make one-on-one plays like you were talking about?
CHARLIE WEIS: Oh, we're counting on him a lot. He's playing most of the game now. With the way these teams are spreading us out with multiple wide receivers, he's basically a starter. He's not a backup, he's out there all the time. So I'm counting on him now.

Q. You talked about your points emphasis last week, I know that they were getting off to a good start, running the ball. What are this week's?
CHARLIE WEIS: No, it was 60 minutes. Because getting off to a good start hasn't done so well the previous week. I think that this is going to be an obvious week for me. Because here's what's going to happen: Everyone will say, well, Stanford hasn't won a game yet. This is a lay up game for you. And all I have to do is show them the game from last year. You're going to go out there, you're going to whup them, you're going to the BCS, and we're fighting for our lives at the end of the game. We were fortunate to go down and score at the end of the game. I mean there's a vivid memory, all you have to do is go back to the end of November of last year and just go ahead and put it on there and you can see what happens if you just think you're just going to show up. And it could happen again if they think they're just going to show up.

Q. Those are the mental things, are there anything on the field that you think they need to do?
CHARLIE WEIS: Well, it's going to be a combination of problems that we have to fix and problems that we have to face. But I'll talk about Stanford on Tuesday. I just know what my approach to the week is going to be. I don't have to -- I didn't have to think what may approach was going to be though, I could have told you that before I got in the locker room.

Q. Lastly, last week you said that the offense was kind of struggling to find their identity. Are you getting closer to that do you think?
CHARLIE WEIS: I can't say you could say that with one week. We had one solid game on offense. You go back to maybe Penn State and say, okay, you had a solid game there, but now it's a question of, can you tie another one together. And now you have to start working towards consistency. Did they have a good game yesterday, for the most part yes. We'll see where it goes this week.

Q. You were so much better on third down yesterday, but also a lot better on first down. You averaged more than five yards a play, was there a combination of better execution, did you change the philosophy on those calls at all?
CHARLIE WEIS: Well, I just, like what I said, stayed on schedule right from the beginning. It was -- stay on schedule means make a commitment even if you're not getting -- even if you're getting a yard or two, okay, don't give up on it. And a lot of times the game dictates you doing that. And by me saying that it's almost like you're making an excuse for the other games giving up the run too early, okay, but as long as there's positive yards coming out of there, it let's you get to a third and short to third and medium, which gives you a lot better chance of converting.

Q. I was just going to say, how much more does that open up the play book than when you're at third and four as opposed to third and eight or nine?
CHARLIE WEIS: Well, there's a lot more plays in the play book that can get you third and five than there are third and ten. Because they can do just about anything they want on third and ten. They could bring the house and force you into a sight adjust and come up and make the tackle and you complete the pass, but you gain six and you're punting.

Q. Talk about Ryan and him getting out there, how did that decision come about where you thought he was the best one for the job?
CHARLIE WEIS: Well, Bob last week, Bob last week had kind of strained his leg a little bit where we figured that we would be okay by game time. And went out in pregame and just Brian didn't feel that he was really ready to go. So we had used, we had kicked off all our guys, Carl, okay, Ryan, Nate, we had kicked all of them during the week. And just had a plan going with the wind and going against the wind. And we felt that Carl would be the more consistent guy going against the wind and then we would use either Burkhart or Whitaker going against the wind, I mean with the wind. And that's basically how it ended up playing out.

Q. (Inaudible.)
CHARLIE WEIS: Well, first of all Renkes has deserved to be the kickoff guy with what he's done so far this year. So if he was healthy he would be kicking. So we're kind of figuring he'll be back this week and he'll be kicking. Because this was not something that was decided, there were a number of things that happened right during warmups yesterday. Which upset the apple cart just a little bit. But the philosophy has always been that I've come from an our staff believes in, that you just put in the next guy and let's go.

Q. Do you feel that Darius responded to getting up for this game?
CHARLIE WEIS: I would say that that was an infrequent occurrence. That was not, that was a bit of a misunderstanding. I think that after discussing this with both parties I think we have a much clearer idea of what the understanding will be as I've so carefully addressed it with both parties last week after the press so kindly let me know about it, which I didn't know. It was kind of nice when I had to walk upstairs and hear, so what happened, you know, it was nice of you, thanks.

End of FastScripts...

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