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PENN STATE UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 11, 2008

Joe Paterno

Q. Your offense has scored three touchdowns in the last two games. Is that more a reflection of the problems you might have on offense or the strength of the two defenses you've played?
COACH PATERNO: Well, I think it's a combination of both. I don't think we've done a particularly good job when we've had opportunities to score. I think we got a 15-yard penalty when we're 3rd and 3 and a couple little things we're messing up on. So I think it's a combination of both.
I think we haven't -- at one time we was probably the best team around in the red zone. Last couple games we've had some troubles.
But I don't think you can take away from the fact that Ohio State is a solid defensive football team and that Iowa played a really good game, well-coached game, but it's a combination.

Q. How are Josh Gaines and Drew Astorino? And not having them, what kind of impact does that have on your defense?
COACH PATERNO: Well, I think obviously Gaines might have helped us as far as at the end of the game, get a little bit of pass rush. But I think he's going to be okay. He was in practice yesterday, was on the practice field.
And Astorino will be okay. Astorino gives us another player that we can play so that when you go to a nickel scheme, you've got another guy that can make some plays. So that's bothered us a little bit. But he got into the game. He hadn't practiced a lot, so that's the reason why we didn't play him more.

Q. Daryll Clark has been beating himself up pretty good and saying he's not been playing well. I wonder if you could talk about his last two games.
COACH PATERNO: Well, I think he's being too tough on himself. In fact, I told him that yesterday on the practice field. I think he's doing fine. He dropped passes, but we haven't been dropping any passes.
That's the other thing when you talk about not being a little more productive offensively. We haven't made a lot of great catches, and we've dropped some catches that would have had an impact on whether we go for a field goal or do we get a touchdown.
So I think he's being too tough on himself.

Q. A lot has been made about how players bounce back from disappointing losses. How do you bounce back from these kind of things?
COACH PATERNO: Well, I don't know. I always had rubber legs; we'll see. I'm looking forward to getting this thing going again.
You know, I've reflected on some of the tough games we've lost through the years, and in '82 when we won the National Championship, in the middle of the year we got creamed by Alabama. We blocked our own punt. We had a personal protector back up into the punter, and we lost about 41 to 20; I forget exactly what the score was. And we went on and won the National Championship.
In '05 we lost a ballgame on the last play of the game. We still came back and had a good year and bounced back.
I think you feed on your players, and hopefully they feed on me and our staff. So I think I was pleased with the way they came out yesterday. We didn't have any pads on, but we got some things tied down. Maybe I felt after the football game that I hadn't done a particularly good job for them. I think we'll all bounce back.

Q. You just mentioned the 2005 season. You have a decent number of guys who were on the team then that are still around. We saw how that team rallied after the loss in Michigan. How do you think that experience will help this team going forward?
COACH PATERNO: Well, they have to understand that they've had -- some of the seniors and some of the kids who we red-shirted as freshmen back in '05, those kids have been in three Bowls, won three Bowls in a row, and if they can pull this off this year, they could win two Big Ten Championships in the four years they were here, which is pretty good doing.
So I think we're trying to keep things in perspective. It's tough to -- obviously it's tough to go all the way. There's a lot of football still to be played by a lot of people around the country, and I think we just peck away.
We've got to think about Indiana. We've got to make sure we're ready to play Indiana and not dreaming about other things or moaning about things that might have been. And the saddest words of all are, "what might have been," so I think that we'll be okay, I really do.

Q. What have you told your players about 1999, and do you address that, specifically that season, with them?
COACH PATERNO: Well, that was a different kind of cast of characters. We had more superstars. We had the first and second guy drafted in the whole -- in the draft, and we just got a little bit -- you know, again, that's 1999. To me that's years ago because there's been so many kids who we have had to work with and play football with. So it's hard for me to remember exactly why we weren't able to get that club to regroup and go on and win some games.
But part of it is personality; the people that played were used to doing a lot of big-time things and big-time players, and I'm not so sure what happened, whether they got distracted by agents calling and all those kinds of things and all that happened. I don't know, and it would be unfair for me to say it was that or what, when I really don't remember.
I do know we obviously took a real flop, and we're going to try to prevent that obviously again.

Q. You mentioned just a little bit ago some of the problems on offense that you've had in the red zone and some dropped passes. Did you have any thoughts on maybe why some of those things popped up now in week ten or week nine as opposed to earlier, maybe with practice or anything else?
COACH PATERNO: No, we thought we practiced well last week. I think, you know, you go through a season, and one of the things if you -- to win them all is tough if you're playing anybody pretty good, and I think you've got to be lucky sometimes when you're not playing particularly well. You get a break here, break there, a good call from the official here, something happens that helps you get through the tough times.
Even in '94 we were that close to getting licked, even though we had a really great football team.
I think you've just got to say, hey, forget that one, let's go on and play the next one. We had kids drop passes Saturday that I haven't seen them drop that many passes in practice and in games combined, and yet in the pregame warmup, I talked to the coaches obviously about does anybody have any reasons why certain things happened, and they were confused because they caught everything in the warmup before the game.
So it's hard to tell, you know. They're human beings and they make mistakes, maybe get a little careless, maybe want to make a big play when you're having troubles. You know, your team is in trouble, and all of a sudden, you're the guy that's going to deliver for them. Those little things, you make it harder on yourself.
Even Daryll, Daryll is making it harder on himself because he's saying I should have made this play, should have made that play and all that stuff. That's not fair. You go and play your game, everybody else plays their game, and hopefully it comes out.

Q. Joe, when Clark was struggling on Saturday, was there any consideration to giving Pat Devlin a series or two?
COACH PATERNO: Yeah, obviously you always think a little bit about that because Pat is a good football player. But you know, I didn't -- I don't know whether Daryll was struggling or who was struggling. I just don't think that Daryll was that bad. I thought he was playing a pretty good, solid football game. He hadn't thrown an interception until that last one, and that was a tough call. I mean, he had the guy open but it was thrown into the wind.
The coaches have to take a little blame for that. But we were trying to get that ball close enough so we could get a field goal into the wind. As I said, I second-guessed myself in the second half. We should have gone the opposite way and played the fourth quarter at the end of the game and gave the ball to Iowa with the wind, and then we would have had the wind the fourth quarter.
But I thought we had pretty good control of the ballgame. First half we were the dominant football team. I think we had the ball 23 minutes of the first half, 24 minutes of the first half.
So when we had to make a decision at halftime, I said, we'll be all right, we'll just keep playing our game. Now, if I don't make that decision, who knows what's going to happen. So there are a lot of little things going on.

Q. It looked like Iowa in the second half blitzed a lot more than it had pretty much all season, and that's a week or two weeks after Ohio State did pretty much the same thing, blitzed a lot. How do you think the offense has handled --
COACH PATERNO: I didn't quite understand that.

Q. Iowa seemed like they blitzed a lot more in the second half than they had pretty much all season long. Did you think you guys handled the pressure well, and do you expect to see it to continue?
COACH PATERNO: I thought the worst we were was in the beginning of the game because they put a twist in there and our kids didn't quite -- we didn't pick it up up front. The blitz didn't hurt us so much. They beat us a couple times up front. I don't think it was the scheme. I think they knew what they were doing; they played some formations, and they reacted well to the ball.
No, I don't think it was the blitz scheme. I thought at halftime, we came out and we knew what we wanted to do, and we did a pretty good job that way, but we didn't make any plays. We didn't make a big play when we had to, and when we had the wind in the third quarter, that's the time we should have been able to put it away, but we didn't.

Q. You've had an undefeated team in every decade you've been the head coach there except this one. Is it tougher to go undefeated now as opposed to the '90s, the '80s, the '70s?
COACH PATERNO: I think it is because I think there's more good kids around, there's more parity, and there's more exposure. Kids get to see people play, and they're watching television all the time now. So I think they get more familiar with the kids who are going to play, so I think it is a little tougher.
(Telephonic interruption.)
I think it may have had a little bit of an impact. It may have taken a ball off on one or two of them. But I don't think that he's -- the wind may have had it. And the fact that we've been outside so little.
You know, this has been such a mild fall for us. We haven't thrown the ball against the wind. We haven't had a lot of the problems that the weather created for us Saturday.
We've handled the noise, but we know we're going to get the noise. We practice three days a week when we're on the road with very loud speakers all over the place. We kind of laugh, but I never thought the other thing was important, but I might be wrong.

Q. After the game on Saturday, you said that regarding the interference call there late, you said you were going to send -- after you looked at the tape you might send something to the Big Ten about it. Did you do that? And having seen the tape, what's your reaction to that call?
COACH PATERNO: I thought it was a bang-bang call, and I don't think you could take -- feel like it was a real bad call. It could have gone either way, obviously. But there were one or two others I thought -- that we've talked to Dave Perry about.
I think the intentional grounding was a tough call when we had the kid trapped and we didn't get the intentional grounding call. There were a couple other things. But you're going to get that, there again, every game.
I'm sure they could turn around and look at us, hey, why didn't they call this one, why didn't they call that one.
But the pass interference, I don't know. That would be a tough call.

Q. Can you talk specifically about Indiana, what they like to do on either side of the ball?
COACH PATERNO: Thank God (laughter). Indiana at times looks awfully -- they look very good at times. Other times they've killed themselves. They were moving the ball against Wisconsin in a heck of a football game, and a kid puts the ball on the ground and a Wisconsin kid picks it up and runs it 40, 45 yards and that gets them all out of whack.
They hustle. They're in the process of getting better, as a lot of good young teams are. One week they play very, very well, and the next week they play very well in parts of the game. I think they'll be very tough for us. I think everybody will be very tough for us right now.
When you get licked, people get encouraged, and I think that Indiana will come in here with a very determined group of kids.

Q. I know you often say that everything that's new is actually old and is just coming back around again. That wild hog formation that Arkansas began running a few years ago with Darren McFadden, it seems like more teams are using that. You had that package in more than ever with Derrick this past week. How did that come to be? Was that something that Galen said, let's try to get more touches for Derrick, and is that something we can look to see more of, or at least stay in the game plan for the rest of the season?
COACH PATERNO: Well, part of the reason we did that with Derrick was because we were concerned about Clark having -- still had that concussion. He'd be out of so much of the stuff that we have in and really not built for people, made for people who can run. I wouldn't put Devlin in a situation where if Clark went down, we'd put him in and we had to run him, so we had that package ready.
Devlin is an excellent quarterback, but he's a different style quarterback. He's more a real -- really good touch, good arm, he's smart, but he doesn't give you that other dimension that we were worried about earlier in the year because we weren't quite sure just how strong our offensive line would be against some of the people we had to play. So we drifted away a little bit from that.
So there were reasons why we wanted to go to that, but we've done that before. We did that with Morelli. We did that before Arkansas did. We had Morelli as a warrior.

Q. Is that something that -- everybody says that was an innovation of Houston, not of Arkansas a couple years ago. Is it something that they were running at Brown or something in like 1940?
COACH PATERNO: Well, yeah, a lot of that stuff, I've told you years ago, many times, 1944, I was a shotgun tailback, and we never huddled, never huddled. We were spread out and did a lot of the things that people are doing today.
But again, I go back to the one premise that I think you've got to always remember is you do what you think your kids can do the best, and you don't -- it isn't like this bunch of guys can do this as well as this bunch of guys. They might not have the one or two things that this group has that this group doesn't have. So you always try to -- and injuries have a big bearing on what you want to do. Get a couple kids bumped up and then you want to -- you've got them at practice the whole week and then play one game.
So you're always trying to say, okay, how do we make up for that? Well, you make it up with a freshman kid or someone that hasn't played a lot of football. You get a kid like Derrick Williams in a position where he can do something tighter and in together. That might not be necessarily true in what we did for this ballgame, but they're the kind of things that go through a staff when you start getting ready for a game.

Q. You guys script the first ten offensive plays each game. How much are those about kind of exploratory plays to find out what the defense is going to do and how they'll respond to different things you guys do?
COACH PATERNO: Well, we put a script together as you know. We literally program the first 10 or 12 plays. If we're comfortable with 12, we'll put 12 down and we'll work from that script. If we don't have 12 that we're comfortable with, we'll work with eight or ten to start the football game.
But part of that is to see -- we know pretty much what we're going to see this late in the year. So you look at the scheme, you look at the personnel that you're going to play against, and you say, okay, this should be okay with this most of the time, whatever.
And then you try to probe. You put one or two players in that would give you an indication how they're going to play one formation, two or three players are going to play another one, so that you're really building the background for what you may have to do in the clutch when you've really got to put it to them. But hopefully what you put in early works.
And we were fortunate early in the year that the coaches did a great job with the script, and we were good the first half on Saturday. We were not -- I know we did a pretty good job, going into the wind and the whole bit. We just blew the -- we came away with three when we should have had at least 17 points instead of nine. That's the way I looked at it.

Q. When can you tell if a team has moved beyond a tough loss, and is it something that's going to show up during the practice sessions or is it something you may not know until the next Saturday?
COACH PATERNO: Probably won't know for sure until next Saturday, but you can kind of get a feel for what they're thinking, the way they react to things, the way they take to coaching, how they -- I don't know. You know, when you date a girl and you go home that night, all right, you've got a pretty good idea about your status, you know (laughter)?

Q. You said earlier that he were concerned about Clark, that's why you ran Williams several times. Are you still concerned about that, and will we see more Devlin this week?
COACH PATERNO: I can't tell you right now. Right now the guys are working on how we're going to refine everything. I really don't know what to tell you in that. We've got a couple kids bumped and bruised that I'd better not talk about because they'll play, but how much they'll get to practice I'm not sure yet, and I think we'll have to play that a little bit by ear. But I know Devlin will get the job done if we decide that.
But we will have to get some other things established because even Saturday when we were in the shotgun, when Williams ran the ball, that was a pretty darned good run. That takes a good runner, not a guy that is an adequate runner. And Devlin may be better than we are giving him credit for running the football. He's really a good football player.

Q. Another one on Clark along those same things. A lot of people thought he would be running the ball a lot this year. He's got 230 yards rushing. I'm just wondering --
COACH PATERNO: Who are you talking about, Clark?

Q. Clark. I just wonder if concerns for him getting injured, is that a reason why he doesn't run more?
COACH PATERNO: Well, I think probably, and I'm not sure I know what I'm talking about here. But you're absolutely right we're not running him as much. But when he got banged up, and he runs a tough -- we were doing very well. You've got to remember, we were averaging 40-something points, and we felt we were all right. And even coming out of Ohio State, I thought we were fine. We played solid, didn't turn the ball over, and no interceptions, and I didn't see any reason for us to do a lot of different kinds of things and particularly expose him to a lot of hits. We didn't think it was necessary to do that.
I think now we're probably going to have to drift away a little bit from that, start the guy running the ball a little bit more. That was one of the reasons why Williams was inserted in there as kind of a backup guy.

Q. And to follow that up, if Clark isn't running a lot and you take that away, how much better is he than Devlin?
COACH PATERNO: He's not that much better than Devlin. But I don't want to start moving guys all over the place because we lost a game by one point in the last play of the game. I mean, we didn't -- we just made too many mistakes for me to get in there and say, hey, we've got to do this for Clark, we've got to do that for Clark. Heck, we let him go down the field for -- we didn't stop him coming down the field. I worry more about that than I do about anything else really, because the same thing happened to us with Michigan State a year ago.

Q. Have you found yourself dwelling on Iowa a little bit more than usual? Has it been tougher than usual to look ahead to Indiana next week?
COACH PATERNO: Well, I wasn't looking ahead as much until I came over here today -- I mean, looking behind as much until I came over here. You guys are talking about Iowa. I'd prefer to talk about Indiana and put it behind us, put Iowa behind us.
You don't have the luxury -- Saturday night was a tough night for me, no sense kidding you about that. Football games are tough on me these days because you go out there and you get in the cart and you go across the field and the whole bit, and it's all -- and then you're back in, and then you take the flight home and all that stuff, and then you get home and you play the game ten times in your head. So that's tough. You don't get any sleep Saturday night.
I've never had trouble sleeping the night before the game, but I've always had trouble sleeping after the game, whether we win or lose. So in that sense it was tough.
But Sunday afternoon, you've got to get your head on. I was looking at Indiana-Wisconsin TV tape, which we take off the thing, the TV tape on Sunday morning.

Q. Trying to get the team to keep focused on Indiana, how much of that falls on you and how much of that falls on the players?
COACH PATERNO: Well, I think it falls on everybody, the staff and the players. That's what I said. You can't be -- I mean, I can talk, talk, talk, but the players are -- if you've got a good squad with good leadership, we'll be okay, and I think we do.
. Now, that doesn't mean we walk on the field and we beat Indiana, because Indiana will come here ready to win. We're going to have to play well. We're going to have to play better, we're going to have to do a better job coaching, we're going to have to do a lot of things better than we did last week to win.
But I think everybody has got to go to work and say, hey, let's put that one behind us and go.

Q. Are you sending enough people at the quarterbacks, or are they getting too comfortable back there in some of these games?
COACH PATERNO: We had them run around a little bit. I thought we did that all right. There's a couple change-ups we probably could have done. But the trouble is when you've got them in that kind of a situation, you start sending a lot of people, you're going to have to give up somebody in the secondary. And that kid, he did a good job. You get a couple 3rd down passes, you get a couple on the button, but if you start sending people and he gets it away, okay, then they get a run out of it, boom -- and all they needed was a field goal. That's all. You couldn't say, okay, well, they've got to score a touchdown; as long as we keep them out of the red zone we're okay.
But we couldn't afford that luxury, so then you start to be very careful about putting yourself in a position where you're vulnerable to a big catch or a catch and a run, because if you send them, you don't get them. There's somebody out there roaming free.

Q. Bani Gbadyu didn't play against Iowa. What's his status? And where is Devon Still at in his rehab?
COACH PATERNO: Still is still not doing anything. He still doesn't suit up for practice. Gbadyu, we took a linebacker out of that game a lot. We played with a lot of nickel. So when the linebacker comes out, you're really only play with two a lot of the times, and Gbadyu is not a first-stringer; he's got a couple ahead of him.
Now, if you're playing with three linebackers most of the ballgame, then it's a little different ballgame because you want to give them a blow like you do your down guys. So I don't think there was any need to use Gbadyu. He certainly is on the kicking teams and things like that, but he was hurt, he lost some time when he got hurt, fell behind a couple of the guys. So he's going to be a good player, but Saturday was not a big day for linebackers because we didn't play with three linebackers a lot of those times.

Q. Indiana has been using two quarterbacks. Are they much different with either one of those guys in the game?
COACH PATERNO: I don't think so. I don't think so. I've got to study what they do with one guy and what they do with the other guy for me to answer that question and know what I'm talking about. It looks like they're pretty well solid. I think they're in the process of building a football team, and they like their personnel and they like some of their skill people, and I think they're in the process of just -- let's let them both grow a little bit, and there's certain spots I want to use this one and certain spots I want to use the other one.
I honestly couldn't tell you that. I'm sure the defensive coaches have paid closer attention to it than I am right now. I mean, I've got a good feel for what they want to do. I've looked at their personnel. But if you said to me, what are they going to do when they get this guy in the game as opposed to this guy in the game, I'm not ready to answer that yet. Hopefully I could tomorrow.

Q. Deon Butler will break your receptions record with one catch Saturday. Can you just reflect on the career he's had coming on as a walk-on and ended up leaving as your school's career receiving leader?
COACH PATERNO: And one of the great people. You know, he had some offers, comes from a wonderful family. The dad and mom made a lot of sacrifices to send him here as a walk-on, picked up the bill and the whole bit.
He's just -- there again, we probably didn't do a good enough job getting him involved in the game. You've got to give Iowa credit because Iowa really was sound. They didn't -- we had a tough time making a big play. And it wasn't because we didn't have the right players. A lot of those players had really excellent calls against it, and the formations were really good against the things they had done. If we go one-on-one, just say, okay, we use this guy against this thing and put the tight end here, we thought we could do some good things with the tight end going into the football game, and we dropped a couple, a couple big plays. But what do they say, deal cards to losers? I'm ready to deal.

End of FastScripts

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