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PURDUE UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCESeptember 30, 2008Joe TillerTHE MODERATOR: Good afternoon and welcome to week five of Purdue football. The Boilermakers are 2-2 and return home to face Number 6, Penn State this weekend at Ross-Ade stadium. Coach Tiller is here and ready to answer your questions. Q. Hi, Joe. After you've watched the Notre Dame game on film, how concerned are you about what you saw from your defense, especially in the third quarter? COACH JOE TILLER: Well I think you're concerned any time that, you know, you get on the field and you can't get off the field. But it's like I said after watching everything on Sunday, part of that responsibility lies with our offense too. Because our offense needs -- you know in the first half I believe we were four of six on third down, and in the third quarter we were zero for three. My point being is that I don't care what's happening defensively, if your offense is three and out, three and out, three and out, it's going to put a real strain on any defense. So I think we can get back to complimenting each other offensively and defensively we'll be okay. Q. Let me ask you too, Joe, how do you get better against a run when you're forced really to play nickel most of the time? COACH JOE TILLER: Well you can do some things, you know, stunt wise and line movement wise that can help you. And, you know, you run a little bit of a risk when you do that. Yet the other side of the coin is it gives you an opportunity to come up with a, you know, minus yardage play. Q. And, obviously, you know Penn State and Ohio State will try to pound the ball at you. Is it realistic to expect to win either one of those two games if your defense doesn't improve stopping the run? COACH JOE TILLER: Well, like I said, I think certainly our defense needs to improve some, but our offense needs to improve also, and that will help our defense. Q. I know talking to assistant coaches, particularly Brock after the game, you know he said at half-time he sort of noticed the defense being flat, you know, and maybe not as fired up or full of excitement as he expected. Did that surprise you, and is that something that's coachable or can you rectify that? COACH JOE TILLER: Well it certainly was accurate, and, you know, I made the same observation. And, you know, sometimes you go in there and you're so involved in the game you're thinking about calls and situations and stuff in the game that, you know, you may not be looking at it through the players' eyes. And after watching the tape on Sunday, I can understand why they were of that mood. And that's because they were -- even though we were in the football game and actually were in position to be ahead in the football game, they were getting knocked around pretty good. They were getting -- you know, they were getting man handle pretty good the first half. So I can see why maybe at half-time they weren't quite sure about how much, you know, more they had in them if they had to go on field and stay on the field. And, of course, that's exactly what happened to us. But it's like I told the team at half-time, I said, fellas, you couldn't be in a more enviable position. You are sitting here 14-all and could be up but you're not. Let's go out there and get up on them like we're capable of doing. And I thought I'd get a great big, Yeah, but I got a, more like, Okay. So after watching the tape on Sunday, I understand a little bit better today than I did, you know, at that very moment. Q. The last thing I had is on Curtis. When you look at him, I mean, maybe his struggles, is it because he's having trouble throwing to the second or third options, or maybe seeing those guys open or what's your assessment? COACH JOE TILLER: Well I think -- you know, we think most about the last game, do we not? At least I think everybody reflects back on the most current outing. And I think in that ball game he did get on one receiver and stay on him, you know, visually with his eyes. I didn't see him moving the safety with his eyes like he normally does. And he probably got locked on a couple of guys more than he should have. You know, that's a point of emphasis for us this week, to get him back from a mechanical point of view to doing things, you know, and make sure that you are seeing the field and you're not going out there and playing with tunnel vision. Q. Coach, wanted to pursue a Penn State question here. Their offense, can you just describe how different it is from what you've seen on film over the one you played last year? COACH JOE TILLER: It's significantly different. I think last year with Morelli they were, you know, more of a drop-back type pass team. You know, Anthony Morelli was going to throw the football from the pocket. He throws some on the move, but not nearly like we're getting this year out of Clark. I think that Daryll Clark brings another element to the field with his run threat. I'm not at Penn State so I don't really know chronologically when this came about, but I did see their bowl game last year, the Alamo Bowl, and I saw how when he went in there, how the demeanor of their offense changed. And I made a comment to our coaches in the off-season that we're going to see a different looking Penn State this year with Clark at quarterback, and certainly that's been the case. So it's a much different offense. It still has big play potential. I get more impressed each tape I look at with Evan Royster. But, you know, seems like we've been playing against these receivers for six or seven years. And I know that isn't true but, you know, Williams and Butler and Norwood have been around a long time, been starting against us. So you see the same type skill outside, but certainly the biggest change from an offensive direction point of view is at the quarterback position. Q. Sean Sester, how is he progressing, and could we see him as a starter maybe in the next few weeks or so, what's going on with him? COACH JOE TILLER: He's progressing -- and that's good -- but slowly. He played more plays last week than he did the week before. We still -- because of his back and the fact that he tightens up sometimes in practice, with like a muscle spasm type situation, which you know there's good and bad. Good part is he gets relaxed and it goes away. The bad part of it is it takes him out of some playing time. So he's playing a little bit more as each week goes by. We hope this week he'll play more than he did the last week. Q. I was going to ask you about Desmond Tardy in terms of his development as a receiver. At the beginning of the season I think you had Smith starting there, and now here he is catching double figure catches. How has he progressed in the last four weeks? COACH JOE TILLER: Good. Not a game does a season make, however. But he had a good game. A very good game. But, you know, if you were to study Purdue offensive football over the years you would see that traditionally speaking that that inside receiver leads the team in receptions. It was true with Chris Daniels. It was true with John Standeford. It was true with Taylor Stubblefield. It was true with Dorien Bryant. And most likely it will be true with Desmond Tardy. Q. Can you talk a little bit about Derrick Williams, just the different things he does and why he is so hard to stop? COACH JOE TILLER: Well he is an extremely skilled player and he is extremely fast; has great foot speed. You know, each year he's gotten, you know, more physical. He's stronger. I don't know what he weighs. I'm going to read here and see what it says. They list him at 199. That's real close to 200 pounds. So, you know, he's, I'm sure, bigger, stronger and probably faster than he's ever been. Q. Can you talk about the development. You got Greg Orton. Can you talk about the development on the other outside receiver and how that's going and how you feel about that spot right now? COACH JOE TILLER: Yeah. We like Aaron Valentin. I've said that for a long time. He caught his first touchdown pass. I think that was the only ball that was thrown at him. You know, if you have Tardy catching ten balls and Orton catching nine, and then Smith thrown in there, you know there aren't a lot of passes left. So we'd like Aaron to catch more passes in a given game. And I think that will happen. Because I think if people decide to begin to roll their coverage towards Orton or what have you that it will free him up. And we like his development, and, you know, we like the way that's come along. Q. Any thought on coaching against Paterno one last time? COACH JOE TILLER: Not really. We're both too old -- I know I am; I don't know about him -- to think about things like that. Q. Just to start off I'll ask the obvious question about Kory. Everything still as it was on Sunday as far as you know? COACH JOE TILLER: Yep. I think he's going to be fine. Q. We've obviously talked a lot about your problems at linebacker what have you. Seems like you've invested an awful lot in Golding. What kind of stuff about him do you like in terms of his potential as a linebacker? COACH JOE TILLER: Well we think we has good range. We think he can run. And we think he's tough. And those are three pretty good quality qualities for a linebacker. Q. He is just learning as he goes right now? COACH JOE TILLER: Yep. Q. Just going out and there being an athlete more than a football player? COACH JOE TILLER: Yeah. He's ways away from being a linebacker yet, but he is an athlete on the field. Q. Is there a hard adjustment going from playing with your hand down to playing out in space? COACH JOE TILLER: I don't know. Seems like a lot of guys leave here and do that so it must not be. Q. You said on Sunday you might have Kyle Adams back on Saturday. Is that still a possibility? COACH JOE TILLER: I think it's a possibility, but I would list him as doubtful. But I like Kyle. I saw him in the weight room yesterday. I'm trying to get back in the weight room myself and do a little better job of taking care of myself. I saw him in there and talked to him for quite a length of time, and he's working hard to get back. And, knowing him, he may be back. But, you know, I would like to see him bouncing around a little bit better. They ran him, you know, Monday so, you know, he's making progress. But I don't know, I'm not the trainer. Q. Is that something that's held your offense back at all? COACH JOE TILLER: Has a little bit. But fortunately for us, you know, both Tardy and Smith have stepped up and that's helped us. So if those guys weren't being productive then obviously that would hurt us. Although Wasikowski had a really good game against Oregon blocking and the like. We really haven't thrown the ball to him. And I think -- I don't know, you might ask Curtis, I doubt that this is true, but it's possible. I suppose he has more confidence in Kyle Adams than he does Jerry or Colton. There you have it. Q. Obviously Cliff just asked you about Sean Sester but with him being in and out of the line-up how is Garrett doing? COACH JOE TILLER: Garrett is holding in there. Isn't it something, I was just talking to Danny Hope last night -- you know Cory Benton wrenched a knee in the game, strained a knee in the game. Talking to Danny last night, oh, he's much improved, you'll have him at practice. But I was talking with Coach Hope and I said you know when I watch our offensive line, you know, Cory who is the smallest of the group physically sometimes gets, you know, tossed around a little bit. But I said isn't that a shame when a guy that weighs 283 is the smallest guy in your line? That's what the game comes to. I bring that up because Miller actually weighs less, although he is substantially taller, and he is doing a good job of playing hard and the like. But it seems like each week he is picking up something, you know. He's either got a knuckle or an elbow or a shoulder or hip or something. And, you know, he keeps on ticking and makes it back the next week. But, you know, I mean, he's got a lot more tape on him than now than he did a month ago. Q. You are not worried about Cory for Saturday are you? COACH JOE TILLER: Cory? Q. Cory Benton? COACH JOE TILLER: No. I think we'll probably be -- we might as well deal with it. The only guy that I'm really concerned about Saturday is Duong. I don't see us having Duong. And I don't know if we'll get Adams back. Otherwise, I think we'll be at full strength compared to where we have been. Q. Can you talk about the performance of Mike Neal this year. This is the first -- COACH JOE TILLER: I want to ask a question. Why do reporters want to know about injuries so much? I got to thinking about that. If I were a reporter, why would I want to know about an injury? Then I thought, well, I'd want to know about an injury so that my public could go. Then I got to thinking, why does my public want to know? They are intently interested so they can place their bet on the game. Otherwise, why would I report an injury? What value is there to that? Must be some, I don't know. I'm not in your shoes. I'm just talking out loud like the knucklehead I usually am. Q. We'll talk about a healthy guy; presumedly. COACH JOE TILLER: That's what I'm talking about. (Laughter.) Q. Mike Neal who hasn't been healthy in the past, how is he holding up for you? COACH JOE TILLER: You know, Mike, when he is healthy is (knocking on wood gesture) he is a guy that makes us a better front. And he's been healthy and he's played pretty well. Got our only sack Saturday. But you know Mike is an improving player. It's really interesting he is a Junior. But this is really the first extended playing time he's got. So we hope it continues because, you know, he gets better as he goes out there. You know the more often he sees the blocking schemes live during a game, et cetera, against different people, the better he becomes. So he's playing pretty well right now. Q. He seem to be your only guy that was in the back field since last week it seem like? COACH JOE TILLER: He's our only 450-pound bencher too, so that's probably got something to do with it. Q. We're continuing the defining moments thing and we're up to the Wisconsin game in 2000. Just what do you recall of Terrill's block and Woodard's return there in overtime and your thoughts on that play in that game? COACH JOE TILLER: I think the significant thing about that is they lost yardage in that series. And, as a result of that, and attempting the field goal, it's not uncommon kickers try to drive the ball more the further back they go. And, you know, they change, unfortunately, I think. That's one of the good things I liked about Carson Wiggs when he tried the 60-yarder. He didn't get it there, but he didn't change his kicking motion at all so the ball came up. But a lot of times in an attempt to get the ball further they'll drive the ball a little bit. They'll be a little bit higher on the ball. That makes for a lower trajectory. Then I think that's why Craig Terrill could block that kick. I think if they had been closer it would have been a more difficult kick to block. Of course Woodard picks it up on the run and high steps it into the end zone. So, upside of that, I don't remember much about that game; just the dramatic fashion in which we won it. Q. Penn State's defense, is it similar to what they've had year in year out? COACH JOE TILLER: Yeah. I was watching tape last night on them and, you know, whenever you look at an opponent you obviously are looking for how your specific offense might be most effective against their defense, alignment wise, schematically, et cetera, but you are always looking at their personnel too. Saying we want to go in this direction because of this guy. I think it's typical Penn State team. There aren't any weaknesses out there. They're not one where you can say, Hey let's go after this corner or go after this safety or whatever, or, Let's run the ball at this linebacker. So aren't any of those holes, so to speak, that show up. And, as a result, I would label it a typical Penn State defense. Q. I think this is the time of the year where you usually can talk about your team as a whole now that we're heading into conference play. How do you think the team has been playing to this point? COACH JOE TILLER: Well if you'd ask me that two weeks ago I would have said pretty good, you know. But based on one quarter -- isn't that something, one quarter of one game can change your outlook. You know, I think our team has the ability to continue to improve and get better. You know, I think our receivers and quarterback are getting closer to being on the same page. I mentioned that early in the season. And I think as this the games go by, you know, I think we're getting a little more productive in that area. I don't know what the yardage is like but we're getting more productive. Defensively, if we hadn't had the third quarter of the last game I would have said, you know, we made progress defensively too. So obviously we did some backsliding and we need to get back to where we were. You know our forte is going to be our ability to run and get the football. It's never -- I shouldn't say never, but this year it's not going to be, you know, let's play the game in a phone booth. So we're going have those issues to deal with. Q. Has there been an area so far you are really pleased with? COACH JOE TILLER: Well I like the way the offensive line's come together. I like the way, you know -- I was liking-- once again, I got to be cautious that I don't skew the entire four games based on one quarter. But I was liking the way our front was playing. And I still do defensively. And I think they're going to be fine. Because we're rolling enough guys through there that, you know, they tend to get better when that happens because they're not exhausted. So, you know, I think that that will help us as we progress through the schedule. And I do like the way the receivers, you know -- we need Tardy to come through and have a big year. We need Keith Smith to step up. We need another receiver too, and I think we've got that guy in Valentin. Those are the areas of the team I like the best right now. I think we're probably punting and covering the punts as well as -- I better watch it, we're going against a great returner this week. But we're probably doing as good as job as we've done with that for awhile too. Q. After you watched the tape from last week David Pender and Torri Williams how would you rate what they did when they had to go kind of man to man? COACH JOE TILLER: I thought they were okay. David Pender-- I thought there were two catches made over the top of him and almost four catches made over -- but when you evaluate it, particularly the one that was reviewed and went -- you know, they played it back, I think both those guys were off the ground as high as the top of these chairs right together. So I think he's been in good position to play the ball. The one in the end zone on the one play, which the guy didn't catch it but should have been an offensive interference, you know, the receiver pushed off of Pender to go make the play. But I think David's played pretty well. I think he's a good man coverage guy. Torri is going be one of those, what we call a boundary corner type guy against a bigger receiver. And that's fine. But if you put him on the wide side of the field then he's going to get himself in the jackpot there. So I think overall he played okay. But I thought David played actually pretty well. It's hard for when you are grading a guy and watching him what you are really looking for is is he out of position or isn't he. If he is not out of position and a guy comes up with a great catch, he comes up with a great catch. Those guys are pretty talented too. So you just don't want your players out of position all the time. If they are, you know, people -- you have to put another digit up on the scoreboard. Q. You mentioned the wide receivers and going back to your pre-season comment about taking them awhile to get on the same page. After the four games are they where you thought they would be? COACH JOE TILLER: Yep. Yep. They're getting better too. The only guy that I wish would pick it up a little bit more and he has improved in practice last couple of weeks is Curry. We thought Curry could come in and really help us because of his size. But he's had a couple of good weeks of practice. And Coach Rock put him on the field Saturday. He hadn't put him on the field in the last two games. Put him on the field a little more. So I'm optimistic before we're done with this he is going to be a contributor too. Q. Kind of back to Golding. You mentioned Sunday about you can't play nickel all season or people are just going to run it. The goal was to hopefully get to the point where you can put three line backers on the field, I don't know what percentage of the time or depending on the offense. But you indicated Golding was the key to that. Is that something that you think might happen fairly soon? COACH JOE TILLER: Yeah. I think the other good news from a linebacker point of view is we look at the entire group core of linebackers. The other guy hasn't gotten much playing time, but when he has played he's -- he really looks impressive. In other words, he's not making mistakes. He looks like he really fits the position is Carlino. I think we're going to play him a little bit more. You know, we're going to fuss around with Heygood inside and outside, and Anthony is our best player right now, but if Chris could come on and continue to improve as much as he has from the day he arrived up until this point, he continues to improve, look for him to be on the field more. Q. And that would shift Anthony back to the outside right? COACH JOE TILLER: Yeah. Q. On the kickoff return last Saturday -- COACH JOE TILLER: What we really need is Jason Werner. Q. Yeah. I think last week you said two or three weeks. COACH JOE TILLER: Yeah, I think that's still probably accurate. I don't know. I didn't see Jason on Sunday. That's the first time I hadn't seen him. I mean, I saw him, but I didn't get a chance to -- I didn't run over and talk to him. So assume he is continuing to make progress. Q. On the kickoff returns, obviously Saturday they were kicking away from Desmond Tardy and not that having Kory Sheets return kickoffs is that bad, but if that would continue, is there anything you can do or do you figure hey they want to kick it to Cory that's fine too or do you make any kind of adjustments? COACH JOE TILLER: Well I think if that were continuing to be the case and Sheets were to play as many snaps as he did, you know, he played like I don't know 74 snaps, I don't know. He played the most he's ever played was Saturday. I think we take him off the kickoff return, and probably put Royce Adams back there and Tardy. Maybe switch them or maybe stack them and not split until the kicker got lined up. I mean, we have some options. And I think Royce is the next guy. But I think Kory, you know, he made a couple of really poor decisions late in the game returning kicks. And part of that is probably because he as was exhausted, I don't know. Q. And, finally, you talked about the four-game evaluation of your team. As the conference gets going, at this point is there anything that's happened that you say that's the way I expected it or wow I never thought that this would be the case in the big ten? COACH JOE TILLER: You know, Tom, I'm so concerned about us I haven't thought about the league. And I know we're starting with the most physical part of our schedule. The early part of the league. So we'll probably be talking about three weeks from now, and you'll say did you think it was going to be that busy? And I'll say, Golly, I think so. But y'all know what's coming up. So I think probably the back half, like I said, prove to be a little lighter than the front half. But who knows; might not be either. THE MODERATOR: That's it. Thanks, Coach. End of FastScripts |
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