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PURDUE UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 21, 2008

Joe Tiller

THE MODERATOR: Coach Tiller is here. We'll get started with questions.

Q. Can you talk about the quarterback situation, who you expect to start this weekend.
COACH TILLER: Curtis Painter will start for us. Joey Elliott is out and will remain out for probably the balance of the season. The diagnosis of his injury went all the way from a fifth-degree separation, coming off the field Sunday afternoon, to now a third-degree and non-surgical. So that's good for Joey. That's good for us. But it eliminates him.
We have moved Justin Siller back to quarterback from runningback, and we'll work him extensively this weekend if we need him on Saturday.

Q. Can you talk about Curtis Painter's struggle this season, what you see as some of the problems he's facing.
COACH TILLER: Well, I think probably accuracy's been our number one issue. I think our ability to close out in the red zone. Fortunately or unfortunately, your quarterback has a lot to do with that because, of course, multiple times you're throwing a ball down there. I think his struggles have been mainly along the accuracy vibe.

Q. After having so much success with quarterbacks during your tenure, do you feel like Big-10 defenses have been able to adjust more efficiently to your style of offense and that's contributing to some of the issues this season?
COACH TILLER: Yes, I would agree it's contributing. I think that's true because if you go through the league now, I haven't taken inventory, but I would guess that there's probably eight teams that are running the spread offense or forms thereof, and as a result everybody practices more against it. Everybody sees it on the practice field, and everyone's made multiple adjustments and they're better equipped to defend it today than certainly any time in the last decade.

Q. How difficult is it to be playing this way in the final year of your coaching tenure?
COACH TILLER: Well, it's not quite what I had in mind, as you would suspect. But I've been to the mountaintop. I've been to the valley, too. The mountaintop's a lot better. But it's not like, for me, that I haven't seen just -- I'm sure I haven't, but I've seen just about everything there is to see in the game.
I'm no different than our players in that I'm disappointed with our results to date. But, you know, we have five games left to go. We'll go out there and give it our best shot.

Q. Can you talk about Eric Decker, the Gopher's wide receiver, why he's been able to do some of the things he's done so far.
COACH TILLER: He's an experienced player. He's an exceptional talent. He has great hands. We've been fortunate over the course of time to have a couple of players similar to him. John Standeford was similar to Eric Decker. Taylor Stubblefield in terms of his hands. I think Decker is a lot more physical receiver than Stubblefield was for us. But I compare the ability to catch the ball favorable with those guys. Of course, they caught a ton of footballs here.
He can really catch the football. He's a physical guy. He's an experienced guy. He does a nice job of reading coverages, making adjustments and settling down, finding the window.
And a big part of his success should also go to his quarterback. A real good receiver can do all of things I just mentioned. But if somebody doesn't deliver the ball, then it makes it difficult.
I think Weber has had an outstanding year to date throwing the football. I think he's throwing the football better than certainly we've seen him throw in the past.
I think when you have a hot quarterback and a really accomplished receiver, you put up some really impressive numbers, and that's what he's done.

Q. When things don't go well, the quarterback gets a bulk of the scrutiny, criticism, and so does your coaching staff, you and the coordinators. Is that just something that comes with the territory, and is such scrutiny justified, in your opinion?
COACH TILLER: Well, I don't know to what degree you call it scrutiny. Sometimes I would question some of the comments and some of the things that are written. But I didn't go to school, I didn't study journalism, so I don't feel equipped to criticize someone that's being critical, I guess. I don't know how many journalists have played football or played college football, played Big-10 football, have coached Big-10 football. Apparently a lot of them. But I don't feel qualified to criticize the critics.

Q. As you sit here 2-5, how critical are you of yourself and your coaching staff?
COACH TILLER: Well, we're always in a self-examination role. That doesn't change whether you're 5-2 or 2-5. You're always examining what you do. We always do a self-scout. We always try to pick up tendencies, see if there's things we can change.
Like I said, whether you're successful or not successful as a coaching staff, I don't know any coaching staff in America that doesn't self-scout and doesn't constantly evaluate what it is they're doing, talk about opportunities or ways to improve.

Q. How would you describe your feelings towards I guess the performance of your coaching staff to date? Are you happy with your coordinators? What words would you use to describe that?
COACH TILLER: Yeah, I think they've done as good a job as they can. Based on our lack of productivity, we're undermanned defensively certainly at the linebackers. It's like beating a dead horse there. Offensively I don't think we have the play-makers that we had certainly last year.
I think we need to be patient, move the football down the field, move the sticks. We've done that. But when we've gotten in the red zone, we've stalled out. What we've tried to do is put our players in the best position to be successful. I think our players are trying hard. I think they're giving good effort, et cetera.
Now, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I don't think last Saturday was a typical game for us because I don't think we played particularly well defensively. Offensively, with the turnovers, I wasn't happy with those. Offensively we were a pretty productive team, but we stalled out in the red zone, and that's been our Achilles' heel this fall.

Q. When you look at the offense, is the offense too vanilla for your liking?
COACH TILLER: Yeah, it is. I'd like to see a little more challenging, if you will, of the defense than when we're doing. But it also helps if you have a little more explosive players than we have right now.
Our receivers I think are capable, competent receivers, but they're not big-play receivers. So therein comes the patience that I was talking about.

Q. Would you agree with this statement: From your offense, you don't see much out of the ordinary like maybe you used to?
COACH TILLER: Yes, I would agree with that.

Q. And why is that?
COACH TILLER: Well, because it hasn't been part of the plan up till now.

Q. Will it be part of the plan from here on out?
COACH TILLER: Well, let me put it this way. Ever since I've been a head coach, we've always gone into every game with what we call two deceptives. Sometimes they get called and sometimes they don't. However, this year we haven't had those in our game plan.
So my instructions to our staff on Sunday is, From this point forward I want to see, when the game plan is presented later in the week, two deceptives.
Now, I'm not guaranteeing you they're going to get called, but we're going to have 'em as a possibility anyway, which we haven't had.

Q. Are you miffed they haven't been part of the plan?
COACH TILLER: Yeah, they haven't been part of the plan. We've had a couple of special plays in all we put in. So, you know, we've had them from time to time, but we haven't had them on a weekly basis.

Q. Would you also agree with this statement: Fans could maybe better stomach losing if you went down using most everything in your arsenal?
COACH TILLER: Well, to date we have.

Q. In terms of your doing deceptives, maybe a fake punt every now and then, that kind of thing.
COACH TILLER: Yeah, except I don't think you want to be stupid about what you're doing. You want to give your team a chance to be successful.
I use the term with our team that you want to be risk takers, but you want to take the calculated risk, you don't want to take the uncalculated risk or gamble. When you do that, now all of a sudden you're playing not very smart. If you don't do that, then your chances of being successful are reduced even greater.

Q. It seemed like in his first start Ken Plue held up pretty well. What was your evaluation of him?
COACH TILLER: He played his best game to date. He was one of our highest graders. He played the most plays he played to date. So overall we'll pretty pleased with the way he played on Saturday.

Q. Is it fair to say he's remaining a starter?
COACH TILLER: Yes.

Q. Is he remaining a starter because of the way he started or because Pierce is banged up?
COACH TILLER: No. He's playing better than Justin is right now.

Q. After the game two weeks ago you kind of targeted the Minnesota game as your return date for Kyle Adams, you hoped. Is that still a possibility?
COACH TILLER: I only hesitate because I saw Kyle in the weight room yesterday, and he's doing more, and he's saying he's feeling better. He's out on the practice field in purple. But until we get the green light to put him in a live situation, I can't predict when he'll come back.
I thought he would be back after two weeks. I've said that before. It's a weekly enlightening as to whether or not he'll play that week or not. Actually it's a weekly darkening, not enlightening.

Q. Any chance you kind of pull the plug on him and redshirt him?
COACH TILLER: And redshirt him or not redshirt him?

Q. And redshirt him.
COACH TILLER: We'd like to not redshirt him, but he may be in that situation where it's not really wise.
I did meet with Kyle last week. I talked with him about playing. He'd like to play. I told him that basically we would approach each week as though he was going to play that week until we get to the last two games of the year. And if we're in the last two games of the year, then we might think, even if he were ready, at that point of the season we may go ahead and redshirt him anyway. But up until then, our thoughts are to play him.

Q. Do you sense your team is still pretty harmonious? You don't sense any splintering or anything like that?
COACH TILLER: I don't think so. You know, we may have an individual who might be a rather eccentric individual that might say some things. But I think if you look at our football team and talk to our players, I think you'll find they're all on the same page.

Q. I think we probably know who that individual is.
COACH TILLER: Probably do.

Q. What was your reaction to what Kory said?
COACH TILLER: Well, as I said to our own coaches, that he has grown physiologically but not intellectually in the last four years. So if you know him, that's not a surprise. It's a disappointment.
But I did make a special point of noting as a result of the number of yards we rushed for, all the yards we rushed for, except two runs, we got exactly what was blocked, what was there. So if any person thinks that they're going to carry the team, then perhaps we should just hand him the ball and stand on the sideline and cheer. I don't know what kind of a game plan that would be, but perhaps we could try it.
One thing about it, I don't really just ever sugarcoat stuff. You know, I've been doing this too long (laughter).

Q. In terms of Minnesota's defense, obviously they've done things well offensively, but defensively it seems like they've really picked it up and it's been a key for their success.
COACH TILLER: Yeah, I would agree. I think they're an improved football team overall. They've won six games. I think they've improved as a football team, period. I think the biggest difference in their football team is that they've all improved. You take a football team from a year ago, you can go position by position and they are improved players.
Their defense is a rather veteran team. It's made up basically of juniors, guys that were getting banged around and knocked around as freshmen, getting run over and physically abused, and they've grown up. They're physically capable of playing in the Big-10 and playing physical-style football. I think you see that in their defense. I think offensively they're getting exceptional play out of their quarterback.

Q. The exceptional play out of the quarterback, they're leading the nation in turnover margin, how much of that is attributed to the quarterback, him making good decisions?
COACH TILLER: Yeah, a lot, like a hundred percent really. I mean, I think the guy's thrown three interceptions in all the games they've played. Based on how many passes they've thrown, he's having an exceptional year. He's being very smart in terms of what he's doing with the ball.
He's been fortunate a couple times. I've watched tape. There have been some balls thrown out there that have been tipped up in the air. The defenses, they've dove for the ball, but didn't catch it. Other times you see a ball tipped up in the air, hits a guy right in the chest. So there have been a few of those. Overall he's done an exceptional job of protecting the football.

Q. Continuing our defining moments, we're up to a loss, unfortunately. The 2002 game against Ohio State, what do you recall about the pass over the top on fourth down?
COACH TILLER: I thought Antwaun Rogers was in pretty good shape. I thought we had the thing defended. Were they ranked 1 at that time? I don't remember. But it would have been a great win. We were in position to win the game.
I thought we played really hard throughout the course of the game. I thought our guys really laid it out there and played a really good football team. It's hard to score against them because they were a great defense that year. We got them in a fourth-down situation.
Really, we couldn't have asked for any better of a finish, except to bat the ball away instead of having them catch it.

Q. We saw Frank Duong for one play. He didn't look that great. He was limping. Is he getting better?
COACH TILLER: Yes, he's better. He ran better on Sunday. Of course, you all know I didn't see him yesterday. I'm anxious to see him today. He did some pass skills on Sunday. He's a tough guy. Frank is a tough guy. You ask him how he's doing, he's always ready to play. He may be hobbling when he says that, but he always says that.
I think he's coming back. I was encouraged Sunday because I saw him in some of the drills. That's really a first step for a defensive back to come back. If they can't participate in pass drills and break on the ball and do the different things they need to do, they're not going to be very effective on Saturday. But he did that Sunday.
We think we've got a good chance that we'll get him on the field a little bit more this week.

Q. You've only had a couple losing streaks of this length since you've been here. A lot of times it's stay the course, stay the course. Are you veering off from that now, opening up the playbook?
COACH TILLER: Well, not really. I just want to see a couple deceptives. I say, they may not get called. It will be what it will be in terms of how people interpret it. I was going to say, I hope it's not in the headlines, we're opening the playbook, see all kind of deceptives on Saturday. I just want to have that option. I just want that option available. Whether they get called or not remains to be seen.

Q. Going back to Joey, you said he likely won't need surgery but he'll still not coming back for the rest of the year. Did I hear that right?
COACH TILLER: Correct. It's not that he most likely won't. As of yesterday he definitely will not have surgery, which is a huge change from Sunday and Saturday coming out of the locker room.

Q. When you put him in on Saturday, was that going to be a permanent move?
COACH TILLER: No, I just wanted to put him in there, see how he did. Obviously, if he did a good job, it could have been something other than temporary. But, you know, he got off to a flying stop. That wasn't good. Then I think we were three-and-out on his next series, then we started to move the football.
You know, we were going to evaluate -- at least in my mind, I was going to evaluate how he was doing, whether or not this was going to be a more permanent thing. But it's a moot point today, isn't it?

Q. You mentioned a couple weeks ago the offensive line played maybe their worst game of the year. What did you think of their performance last week?
COACH TILLER: Well, I think they played pretty good. We gave up two sacks, but we gave up two sacks to a team that was tied for the lead in the Big-10 and ranked in the top 10 nationally for sacks for the season. So I thought they played pretty well in that regard.
What I said earlier, I didn't say it to be cynical. I thought there were some gaping holes that were knocked out there for the run game. I thought there were times when they knocked us, our front guys, into the backfield where there was nothing there. But there were other times where there were big holes.
So overall, you know, I didn't think they played that poorly. The offensive line was not the reason that we weren't successful.

Q. Do you anticipate starting that same group again this week?
COACH TILLER: We will if we can. Every day's an experience out there on the practice field, so we'll see.

Q. You have a couple guys banged up still up front?
COACH TILLER: Yeah.

Q. Have you talked to Curtis? I don't know what your approach with this is during the year. Do you feel he's a fifth-year senior, there's nothing I can say? Do you sit down and say, Listen, you need to pick it up for us?
COACH TILLER: If he doesn't know that by now, I don't think a talk would do much good or have any impact.
I try to be positive around him. That's all I do. I simply, you know, let him know he's our horse, and you got to carry us.

Q. You said you didn't sense any splintering. Overall, what do you think the morale of your guys are? Do you think they've packed it in? They know there's still time to get a winning record, maybe make a bowl?
COACH TILLER: The guys I'm talking to believe there is. So maybe I'm only talking to guys I want to talk to or some such thing.
I don't know. I saw a couple guys in the film room yesterday. I made a special point of stopping in and visiting with them for a while. I ask team leaders what's the mental state of our team. You know, everybody assures me that we're ready to go play another football game, and that there's a lot of football to be played yet.

Q. Do you think these last four losses have been more a product of you just playing against very good competition or more so things you aren't doing? Is it a combination?
COACH TILLER: The latter. I think it's a combination. But we played awfully good people, too. You know, I don't know how many of you look at, pay any attention to, care about the Sagarin power rating or whatever. If you look at that, based on our opponents to date now, we're rated as having the third, according to their computers, the third most difficult schedule in the country. Obviously we've been playing some pretty good people.
We haven't played to the level we would like to play at, but we've also played some pretty good people. Oftentimes, you know, that's not factored in when you evaluate. It's like, Well, the heck with that team, let's just talk about the ugly things regarding this team.
I think we've done some positive things. I thought we did some positive things Saturday. I'm not a big statistical guy. But, once again, we had over 300 yards thrown. We had 400 some yards total. We didn't get the ball in the end zone, but there's a lot of other positive things going on offensively.
We've been playing against good people, too.

Q. This year you have a 17-game-losing streak against top 25 teams. Does that become mental at any point or do the guys not pay any attention to the rankings?
COACH TILLER: I suppose you could say it would become mental. I don't know if any of our players know that. The only reason I know it is because it's brought up. But I don't pay any attention to that.
I don't think you can take the field thinking you're 0-17 against ranked teams. Oh, my God, what's going to happen today? So I think it's a non-issue personally. It certainly is in my case.

Q. Just trying to clear up a rumor here. Did Justin get hurt Sunday? The rumor is he got hurt and he's out for the year.
COACH TILLER: That's a rumor.

Q. Correct rumor or false rumor?
COACH TILLER: If I validate it, it would no longer be a rumor.

Q. I'm hoping you'll validate it.
COACH TILLER: I won't.

Q. One last thing on the Sheets thing. Obviously you weren't too happy with his comments. Any fallout from you or the coaches or among his teammates that you're aware of?
COACH TILLER: I think we all know Kory pretty well. Anything that Kory says doesn't surprise any of us, players nor coaches. Kory is liable to say anything at any time. I have an issue with what he says somewhat.
The other side of the coin is, you know, he's playing hard. I think his heart's in the right place. I think he's frustrated. I think it manifested itself in some comments.
I don't think, from a deep-seeded point of view, that he's malicious or thinks anything really bad about his teammates. But I think he's frustrated. The guy's a competitive guy; he wants to win.
Am I happy with some of the comments? No. But I know Kory. And I know Kory is competitive and Kory wants to win. So do I. I don't say the same things he does, however. But I'm three or four years older than he is.

Q. You said you always level with us.
COACH TILLER: Mostly.

Q. When you mentioned earlier, somebody asked you a question about Curtis, you talked basically about inaccuracies have been the main thing. Is that still getting on the same page with the receivers or is it something he's doing? Can you put your finger on it?
COACH TILLER: I think he's hurrying his throws a little bit. But outside that, I think it's just a matter of his reads, seeing the right thing, the right receiver. You know, I mean, we ended up throwing the ball into the end zone last week to Greg Orton when we were on the 10 yard line with Kory Sheets standing there and nobody around him, right? Then the next play he threw the ball, you know, to Sheets. Of course, the second play, the defense made an adjustment. To me, that's predetermining things.
I think when you predetermine, usually you have negative results. So I think he's predetermining some of his throws too much.
Obviously he has a lot of confidence in Greg Orton, so he looks at him more often than he did any other receiver. I think predetermining is hurting him right now.

Q. You said you thought the offense was vanilla, but you said that was part of the game plan. Is that because coming into the season you looked at what you had on offense and you did have new receivers that you thought you needed to keep it that way?
COACH TILLER: We thought we had to based on the newness of the receivers and the fact that our offensive line was just starting to get going when the season started.
So, you know, you have to be careful about flipping your protection and getting into audible checks, doing things that impact everybody, not just the quarterback or not just the receiver.
The fact that three guys started for us in the front didn't practice all spring, we're a spring behind everybody else. We didn't think that we could throw that much at our team. That was the wise thing to do at the time. Felt like we needed to learn on the move, learn on the run.

Q. You mentioned the self-scouting. What goes into that? Is that all film watching? Do you chart plays and tendencies of yourself?
COACH TILLER: That's what you do. You go through and you see what you ran, when you ran it. In other words, what did you do on first down? What did you do coming off the goal line? What did you do in the free-wheeling zone? What did you do in the red zone going in? What do you do on first down? What do you do on second-and-long, second-and-medium, second-and-short? What do you do on third-and-long, third-and-medium, third-and-short?

Q. Does that factor in the defensive package, as well?
COACH TILLER: Yeah. You do that both sides of the ball. Sometimes what you find out is you know what you're doing, but you can't do anything about it because of some personnel restrictions. You know, the natural tendency is if you know that, why wouldn't you correct it? Duh! You have to have some personnel at times to correct those.

Q. You're saying you find a tendency but you can't do much about it?
COACH TILLER: We'll change so we break the tendency, but sometimes we can't put the next option in place that we'd like to have in place. We'll go to an option, but it might not be the best one.

Q. You mentioned the lack of big-play ability from the receivers. Do you think that's been a combination of the receivers and a lack of being able to throw that deep ball?
COACH TILLER: Absolutely. Absolutely. We've had some guys open deep. We've overthrown an awful lot of deep balls. My message to our quarterbacks, whether it's Curtis Painter or Joey Elliott or Clark Kent, you know, underthrow the deep ball. At least we can make a play on it. When you overthrow a deep ball, you're along the boundary, you throw the ball out of bounds, no one can make a play on it.

Q. Going back several years ago, your first impression of Tim Brewster?
COACH TILLER: Brew came to Purdue as a graduate assistant wanting to get into coaching. So he was just an eager beaver guy. He wanted to help out wherever he could, do what you do as a GA, which is gopher work. Now he's a Gopher. So how appropriate. The way he started is now what he's actually realized, he's become a Gopher.
But Tim was just a high-energy guy that was trying to get into coaching. Guys that are trying to get into coaching usually have a smile on their face, they get there early, they stay late, and they're underpaid. However, he's not underpaid today, but he is a Gopher.

Q. I had a question about their runningback, No. 23. It seems like during your entire time here the Gophers have a long list of runningbacks. This is a freshman for them playing.
COACH TILLER: He's a good runningback, a talented guy. He's a freshman. He probably doesn't hit the crease like they want him to all the time. He has the ability to be a big back. I think right now he at times looks to me like he's very cautious when he runs. He fumbled in a game. As I watched him, he started then running through the line with both hands on the ball, which meant he couldn't really make a move, which is an indication of youth. As he gets older, more experienced, he'll become more comfortable and become even a more effective back.
But I think he's a solid guy right now that could be a very good back for them. Right now he's doing what they want him to do, which is most important, of course. He's getting what's there.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, coach.

End of FastScripts

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