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PENN STATE UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCESeptember 16, 2008Joe PaternoTHE MODERATOR: Welcome to our weekly teleconference with Coach Paterno. Questions. Q. Can you compare this Temple team to the last two Temple teams that your team has seen? COACH PATERNO: This is the best Temple team I think I've -- we played them early when I first came here when Rogers was coaching down there, and when Wayne Harden was there. They should have beaten us one time down in Philly when Wayne punted the ball every down almost. But this is will be the best team we've played so far this year. They're experienced and extremely well-coached. Al Golden, and there's a couple other Penn Staters on that staff. They're disciplined and they do a lot of really good things. Nothing fancy. They have a heck of a quarterback. That kid is a kid we had -- he had committed to us, and then he wanted to play baseball. He went someplace down south. I'm not sure where he went, but he's a really good quarterback. This will be a really good football team on Saturday. When I say really good, I mean solid and in the right position, not going to beat themselves, that kind of thing. Q. Could you evaluate Jared Odrick's play at the tackle spot through three games? And I was also wondering if you're concerned at all about freshman Brandon Ware's weight? COACH PATERNO: Well, the second part is easy. Yeah, I'm concerned. Concerned for his own health and everything else. He's almost 370 pounds and he ought to be about 325, 30 pounds. He has a tough time losing weight. He went down to 361 and he was very proud of himself. We kept urging him to go further. He goes up and down, so I am concern about that. I think he could be a really good football player, but irrespective of that, he's going to have a problem the rest of his life if he doesn't start to get control of his weight. Jared has played very well. He's a very, very good athlete for a man his size. He doesn't have quite the stamina that you would like him to have at this stage, but that's because he's lost so much practice time because of injuries. But he's doing very, very well. Q. I was just wondering if you're getting a handle on your team yet and how good you think you can be? COACH PATERNO: Well, I don't really know yet. I hate to be evasive, but everything has gone our way so far, so you like to think you're pretty good. But until we get into a good football game where we can't get some easy ones, and that's what I think we're going to find Saturday against Temple. They'll make us earn everything, because they line up properly and hustle, they do all the fundamentals well and tackle well, and they catch the ball. They're experienced. I think at least 22 kids played against us last year. I think you got to go step by step from now on in. I think we're going to have to earn everything we get. Not that we haven't earned it. I don't want take anything away from the kids that made the big plays for us, because that's not fair. But still, it was a little easier than it's going to be. I hate to say Hey, this is good, that's good. Let's see what happens in the next weeks. Q. You referred to Adam DiMichele, the quarterback from Temple, earlier. How does he stack up against the quarterbacks you've played so far this year? Looks like he has to pretty much do it all for Temple's offense. COACH PATERNO: Well, yeah, he's the leader. He's the guy that runs the show. He makes the plays. He creates the tempo of the ballgame. You know, I think he would be -- the kid in Oregon State didn't have much of a chance to do much, but he would be the best I think we've played so far. In fact, I know he's the best we've played so far. But there again, what you give to one you take away from the other. The other kids that we played that had -- that I think were pretty good really didn't have much of a chance to do anything. They were down so far so quickly. But this kid is a good football player. I don't know, I liked him in high school. I don't know whether -- I don't know how many football scholarships he had. I watched him play football, I watched him play some basketball, and I said, Let's go get him. Good student. But I would probably have to say he's the best we played so far. Q. Is it a concern that any of your starters haven't had to play a full four quarters yet, or do you prefer they're not getting banged up already? COACH PATERNO: Well, you know, like when you talked -- earlier in the year when we were talking, I said I'm concerned about depth in certain spots. I wasn't quite as concerned on depth on defense. Maybe in the secondary, but up front I wasn't. All of a sudden we lost couple -- we lost Hayes and we lost Still. We had to do some things with a couple of kids that were a little bit out of line. So our depth, that's the one place that bothers me the most, because of all the places, the way the game is played today, your down guys have got to constantly keep pressure both on the run and the pass. They've got to put their ears back and go in every play. They got to chase people and do a lot of things over and over again. So if you watch, and Larry Johnson does a great job, you watch the substitution pattern that we have, and you don't see a lot substitutions except on that defensive line. Now, wideouts maybe when we go from two wideouts to three wideouts, and at times we play with four wideouts. But we're moving people in and out of there, the down guys. I don't think we'll ever get to the point where we want to play one set of down guys. We are pretty much comfortable we could do that with the rest of the team. Q. I'm sure you've seen it before, but what are some the characteristics of a team that's looking ahead, and what do you do this week that if you see those things you can put a stop to them pretty quick? COACH PATERNO: Well, talk, rant, and rave, that's what you do, and threaten. You can't -- I've been pleased with the attitude of this football team. I think they have been all business. I'll be surprised if after they look at tapes of Temple that they would be careless with them. I think if they look at tapes of the way Temple plays and the way they hustle and the things that I mentioned, that they do well. I think they'll be ready to play. Q. Do you have any more of a feel yet for how serious Mike Lucian's injury might be? And also, as to whether Evans and Koroma could practice, if not play this week? COACH PATERNO: I don't want to talk about the second part of your question because it's not going to be helpful any way I answer it. But I think Lucian has got a chance. He didn't practice yesterday, but he's going to try to do a couple things today. Q. What do you think of the way he did play on Saturday? COACH PATERNO: I thought he did very well for a guy that had only been there a little bit. But he had played defense in other years. He likes defense and he's a smart kid, smart football player. He picked up things very well, so I thought he did well. Q. You've had a number of players or assistants that have gone on to be head coaches. Al Golden being one of them. Having coached against some of them, do you see any similarities in the way they coach to maybe the way you coached them or coached alongside them? COACH PATERNO: Well, I don't think that would be fair to Al. To be fair, Al has always been a guy -- he's a bright guy, and he was always independent. I think he's going coach the way Al Golden should coach, not the way Al Golden thinks Coach Paterno would coach his team. I think Al is fine. I don't see any similarity in the way he coaches and the way I coach. I think it's a good thing for Temple. Q. Do you take any extra pride when a guy like Josh Hull becomes a starter and an important contributor on defense, too? COACH PATERNO: Any added pressure? Q. No, any pride. COACH PATERNO: I think, yeah, if I were he and I came into a situation where he starts almost at the bottom of the pack and works his way up to where he's one of the leaders of a pretty good football team, I think I would take a lot of pride in that. Plus the fact he's an engineer, an excellent student, and handles it all together. I think he should be able to walk away from college football and college feeling very good about himself, because he's earned it. Q. Along the lines of coaching against former assistants, how do you prepare for that mentally knowing that you once coached this guy and you have to now line up against him on the opposite sideline? COACH PATERNO: You don't really -- I don't really think we look at that and say, We're coaching against that coach or coaching against this coach. I think you get into that and you get yourself all fouled up. You got to look at the players you're coaching against and you gotta look at match ups. You got to look at whatever style of play that they have that they've showed on the field. Not necessarily what you think might be behind this or try to read a motive in or something else. I think you look at what you can be sure about, and you can be sure about the players that are going to play the game. With all the tapes we have now -- and it's not a question of you look at them one week, you're looking at them all summer and in the spring. You look at what the schemes are, what they want to do offensively, what they want to so on defense, what's their third down tendencies, those kinds of things. You don't say, Well, what's he doing? Where is the coach? What's he doing? I mean, maybe some other people do, but that's never been the way we've done it. Q. On Saturday you were able to get Devlin in the game pretty early, and he immediately had success and took the team right down the field. What do you think that may have meant for his psyche in terms of the kind of kid he is? COACH PATERNO: You don't know Pat, do you? Q. That's what I'm asking you. COACH PATERNO: Pat doesn't need any -- Pat's been a very positive and very confident quarterback, athlete. He's a good quarterback. You got to remember how much success he had in high school. He's been doing really well in practice. I said to them, before the ballgame I was gonna get a minute, that it was not going to be a reflection of whether Daryll was playing well or not playing well. I just think that Devlin is a guy that can play. As I've said again, I'm repeating myself, I said we have three good quarterbacks. We could win with any one of the three. And I thought Paul did a good job when he was in there. So I wanted to play Pat, and I made up my mind after Wednesday, after watching practice, that I was going to play him. When I was going to play him, back of my head I was hoping I could play in the second quarter, and it worked out fine. Q. Deon Butler said earlier today one of the advantages of the lopsided wins is that the starters are very fresh because they aren't playing deep into the second half. Do you see it that way? COACH PATERNO: I think they should be. You know, it's a luxury if you can give people a break and have them ready. Yeah, I think that. My only concern with the amount of time you're playing, is ordinarily you would play your team into shape. They could get into the game and play 65, 70 players maybe. Our offensive line played a lot of players last week. You got to be careful that when they don't do that that you don't go out and start practicing and you make up for -- then you say, Well, we get to condition them. They didn't get enough plays or they didn't do this. Then you end up with a tired football team going into the next week. So there again, it's a little tricky. But, you know, obviously you should be ready to go in the fourth quarter if you only play two quarters and you sit around in the third quarter and something happens in the fourth quarter. Q. Some of the players have said that the preparations every week are the same regardless of whether you're going to play Carolina or Temple or Ohio State. Sounds like the right way to go, but these are kids and human beings. Is it possible to keep the motivation level the same on a week-to-week basis? COACH PATERNO: I think so. The fact that we have a procedure, Monday we do this, Tuesday this, Wednesday this, Thursday, I think it's good, because kids can anticipate it and you don't have to spend a lot time on the practice field. One thing I've said many, many times, is the worst thing you do is waste their time on the practice field. That's when they get bored. You know, Here we go and this and that. Each week is a little different. Not the procedure, but the organization of the practice will be the same. We'll say we're going to go 12 minutes to teach the running players, but the defenses that they're going to face will be different. Maybe not completely different, but there will be some defenses that are different, so they have to get themselves ready for that. That's a challenge. But you don't want to go out there and spend 22 minutes to teach a run when you only need 12. Because you've got a bunch of kids that have gone through it and know how to do it and have done it. You get in there and have a little fun with them and do it and get them out of there. So that's not are very clear explanation, but I don't think that's a problem. Q. How important have Williams and Butler and Norwood been to the success the last couple years? COACH PATERNO: They're big. I've said two things: I said I had a great coaching staff, and I have said that we had to get one or two guys. Butler was not one of the two guys, neither was Norwood. Butler was a walk-on. Norwood, I don't think he had another division 1A scholarship. I like Norwood because I knew the family and because I watched him on television be part of a basketball team, and I've seen some things on tape on a football field. I said, He's a player. I don't know what. Maybe a corner, something. So those two -- Williams and Justin King were the two guys that gave us the impetus. One guy, Derrick Williams, called attention to the fact that where were not going to -- you know, we still had some prospects as far as being a good football team. And King the say same way. They were two of the most sought-after kids in the country. But there's no question that the end result was Norwood, Butler and Williams and a couple other kids made a great big difference in the program, because we made some plays. Nobody gives Mike Robinson the credit he should have got. I think he had a heck of a year. He was an outstanding player in the Big 10 in the next year, 2005. And Jay Paterno kept saying, We gotta get a quarterback. We're okay. And I was not a big Robinson guy. So, I mean, it was a combination of things. But you knew you were a spark away from being pretty good. But those three kids obviously. They're awfully good. Q. I wanted to try to clarify the situation of Evans Koroma. COACH PATERNO: I'm not going to talk about it. Q. Are you still on a day-to-day... COACH PATERNO: I'm not going to talk about it. Q. You described the quarterback situation as a fluid situation at the start of the year. Would you still describe it that way? COACH PATERNO: There again, I hate to say something that I'm not sure -- I don't know what I'm going to do yet. I felt after Wednesday and looking at enough tapes that I wanted to get Devlin in the football game. And if I could, I wanted to get Paul in the game. We've had one practice this week. I got to get a better feel for it. And I haven't had enough time to look at Temple tapes to get a really very confident opinion of what we should do yet. I know you guys think I'm being evasive, but I don't know sometimes. I don't like to tie myself down it something when I don't have to. I'm not ready to say we're going to go with a quarterback. If three quarterbacks came in and asked me the same question, I would say, Hey, let's have a good week at practice and we'll talk about it later in the week. Q. What's the strategy behind sometimes you'll have Derrick Williams back returning punts, but deep in your own territory you'll have Scirrotto. What's the strategy behind that? COACH PATERNO: Williams was hurt a little bit Saturday, and Scirrotto has been, until that bad play Saturday, had been a very short-handed guy. It doesn't look like you're in a return situation, field position and things like that. Maybe to give Williams a little blow once in a while we'll leave Scirrotto in there. If we get into a situation where we're not quite sure where they're going to punt it, they're kicking the ball from their own 45, let's say, you're not sure what's going to happen. So I like a guy back there because they may throw the ball, fake the punt. You know, Michigan State really beat us on a fake punt last year. You're trying to get the best people in there for the situation, and Scirrotto obviously, being a defensive safety, would be better at reacting to passes and things like that. Plus he's got good hands. Q. Given that he fumbled a couple times, is there any thought about making a change there? Having Williams back, or someone else? COACH PATERNO: Well, we haven't talked about that yet, but that's -- I would doubt if we would make a change. Remember, underlined doubt. Q. Maybe I misread this, but it looked like when you guys called timeout the first time at the end of the half that maybe you didn't want that. COACH PATERNO: I wanted it. Q. Okay. Like I said, I maybe misread. What's your philosophy on when you have a big lead and that kind of thing? COACH PATERNO: Well, field position obviously has a lot to do with it. As I recall, Syracuse had the ball inside their own 30 yard line. You know, if they had made one or two first downs we wouldn't have called timeout because they would have obviously had an opportunity to make a drive. But once we had them, and, in fact, I think that third down play was a pass. Stopped the clock. We still had a couple timeouts left, and we had about, I don't know how much time, we had enough time to take it down the field. We did, and we got the field goal. I call the timeouts in that situation. The official is right there. If I'm not right next to the official I yell at Bradley, Get them the timeout, timeout, and Tom will call a timeout. Because you can make a mistake. You know, it's bang, bang, bang. But I think -- I can't tell you exactly what we would do every time. Once we get them in the position where he's got enough timeouts that if you get the ball back in decent field position, all right, even if you don't have any timeouts left. If we had used all three timeouts and they punted the ball, I think we would have 50 something seconds as I recall. And we were moving the ball pretty good. We spent on all of a lot of time in that situation as far as two-minute drills. I would have done the same thing: make them kick it. We might have blocked it. Might have run it back. If they didn't make a first down, I wasn't going to let them get up the field with no time left in the game. Q. Do you have any memories for Al Golden, Mark D'Onofrio and Matt Rhule when they were here? COACH PATERNO: Not to much Matt, because he was never a real strong player. Al was captain of our team in 1990, I think. And do I have recollection of D'Onofrio? You got two hours and get the ladies out of here so I can use some language? Fiery guy. Firey guy, Mark. Good kid. You know, you hope things go well for them. Not this Saturday, but most of their -- they've had tough losses. That Connecticut game, you know, they kicked the ball down to the one, two yard line and got a bad call. You look at that clip. Connecticut ain't a bad football team. People don't realize that. Connecticut beat Virginia, what, 42-15, Saturday? And Buffalo is a good football team. We played Buffalo last year, so we know their personnel. Pitt has their hands full with Buffalo. That hail Mary beat 'em. No, they're doing a good job. I'm pleased. Q. I was wondering what your thoughts were on President Stanier's decision to invite Michael Madera to speak to I guess a group of about 200 freshman athletes about kind of staying out of trouble off the field? COACH PATERNO: Well, he's president of the university. He's got to be concerned about everything. If he feels that maybe there is something that ought to be addressed I think he should do it. You know, I don't know what was said or done and why. I don't even know if there were any football players in there. They probably were invited, but I'm not sure they were there because we were practicing. He's got a responsibility to the community and a responsibility to the university. He's got a responsibility to the townspeople. If he felt that that would be a good move to get Madera to talk with them, I think that's his call. Q. Assess the progress of your linebackers. Especially Bowman and Bani Gbadyu? COACH PATERNO: I think again, I go back to the coaching staff. I think they've done -- Ron Vanderlinden is doing a really good job with them, because he has done it since he's been here. Bowman and Gbadyu are both really good athletes. They're not quite as comfortable, Bowman more than so than Gbadyu, comfortable about a whole a lot of things they may or may not see for the first time. But they're tough and they can run. They're not -- they've got to get a little bit more anticipation of what's going to come from a certain offensive set so they can play just a step faster. We got some other kids that are going to be good players. These local kids are going to be good football players. I think this is the best Sales has ever played, and the kid we talked earlier. I think it's a good group. The two kids you mentioned have potential all ahead of them. They're not anywhere as good as they're going to be. Q. I wanted to ask you about something that's rarely brought up: long snapping. How tough is it to find kids that can do that? Is it tough to find guys that can do that? Because most people really don't want to see to get their head caved in. COACH PATERNO: I think most people don't want to get their heads caved in, even coaches, verbally or physically. Well, I think that's really a good question, because sometimes you don't have one and you're going to make one. They'll go out there, and if you want to practice, the kickers and the quarterbacks and the centers go out 15 minutes ahead of everybody. There'll be five or six guys practicing a long snap. The quarterbacks and the centers will be working on the quarterback-center exchange, the shotgun snap, and the whole bit, while the other kids are sitting around the locker room. We don't want everybody out there. So you spend a lot of time with them. Every once in a while a kid sees an opportunity to make the football team. Like Federoff. Federoff is a kid that transferred here and wanted to be a fullback. He wasn't quite good enough, so he made up his mind to do that, and he's doing a really good job. For a while he was shaky, but he's worked hard. They go out there, and Bill will have four or five guys out there. There will be a guy snapping here, and two or three guys over there. Every time he snaps the ball you give him a shot. He puts his head down, snaps the ball, and boom. Try to make it as close to a situation you're going to get in a game. But sometimes you get a kid comes in and he's a natural and he's really good. So, you know, if you don't have a long snapper you got some problems, so you got to address that right away. Even in the recruiting sometimes. We have two walk ones that are going to be doing the long snapping. When they decided they wanted to come, we didn't think they were good enough athletes. So they go to work on -- they come in here as a long snapper so we got some insurance. But I think that's an all of important part of the game obviously. I got to get going. See you, everybody. End of FastScripts |
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