UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 20, 2004

Lloyd Carr

COACH CARR: After three games, I am very disappointed offensively in the number of turnovers, and I think it's a major goal and it's a major point of emphasis for us to take care of the football. I do think two of the turnovers on Saturday, the one where Jason Avant slipped, that's a play that you don't have anything that you can do there. I thought the first interception that they returned deep in our territory was another play. San Diego State made a good call there, brought a safety that we didn't have anybody to protect and those things will happen occasionally. But, we've got to do a better job of taking care of the football, and too many times, we've put our defense in poor field position and we've got a good defense. The only disappointment I have there, we had another big play on Saturday, 61 yards, that play was really an option play, and you have to defend it by assigning certain people to the quarterback, certain people to pitch back and we missed an assignment. So those are the things that are most disconcerting to me. I think from the positive standpoint, I'm very pleased with the way we ran the football. We ran really for 180-some yards, of course got sacked in there too many times and that detracted from that. But that is good, when you can rush for 180 yards, you're doing some things very well. So, you know, I want to mention a couple of people I think Grant Mason has done a tremendous job on our kickoff team. And Darnell Hood did a great job in coverage on punts. We did have an opportunity to play Clayton Richard, and of course Mike Hart and Jake Long got an opportunity to play in there. So we had some young guys that had an opportunity to play that stepped up and made some plays. We are looking forward to opening the Big Ten season, and an outstanding opponent coming in here to help us open it. Questions?

COACH CARR: Well, I think the main thing is that in the course of a game, when you get into the fourth quarter, if you've been able to run the football, it takes its toll on the defense it. Really takes its toll on the pass rush because if you've been able to knock people backwards and keep the ball, you know, it translates into so many things. Time of possession, of course, is one, and that is one statistic that I'm very happy with after three games. That's where rushing the football factors in, as well as it makes it so much better from a down-and-distance standpoint, and when you can do both, now it creates much greater problems for the defense.

COACH CARR: Well, I don't like to compare our players to people in the past. You know, I think that's very difficult to do. I think it's unfair to do it. And yet, you know, I think it's safe to say that David Baas has had a great career here. I think the fact that he's elected by a captain, he's been selected by a captain speaks to the respect with which he is held by his teammates. I think if you talk to people around this league who have played against him, they will all have things to say that are very positive from his performance standpoint. His mother was in today. She gets to spend one week here every year where we have games back-to-back at home. You know, she was in today just saying how pleased she is with the education that David has received here and how he's grown as an individual and I think we are all very proud of David Baas.

COACH CARR: Absolutely. I've only had two, that I know of. Now, they sing, you know, in other venues, I'm not in attendance at. So I don't know how good all of them are, but from what I've heard he's one of the two best.

COACH CARR: The one on Saturday? For what?

COACH CARR: Oh, my goodness. You know what, no, I don't -- I think what it is, it is. And it doesn't bother me and it's part of the deal here, so, that's fine.

COACH CARR: Well, during the -- you know, if you are in this position, where as a college coach where you have as many televised games, you're going to spend a considerable amount of time on Friday's talking with the people that do the interviews. So, you want to try to cooperate and help them, and add to the people who are watching the game. I mean, I think the other side of it is that so many things that you say can be analyzed in a lot of different ways. If you would have told me that I said anything there that would have been -- what did they say, bad? Brusque? You know I'm not a brusque individual. Never have been, never will be. But anyway, if I was, then I certainly feel bad. I did not think I was. But that's part of the deal.

COACH CARR: Well, David missed some practice last week, and I think based on what I see, what I know, I think he'll be fine. I have not talked to the trainer today on any other -- any of our injury situation, so I really don't have anything to say there.

COACH CARR: What does it say? I assume Schneider -- ask Schneider. If he's listed as No. 1, then I assume that. The thing about those depth charts is they are issued on Monday. They are as much as we know at that time. They can change based on practice, based on injuries, based on a lot of things.

COACH CARR: I think we learned that he's durable. When you carry the ball particularly in your third game as a true freshman 25 times, I think it says a lot of things. No. 1, the confidence that the coaches have in you. I think Fred Jackson obviously has a lot of confidence that that's why he had him in there. I think the fact that he did not fumble the football, he had very, very few missed assignments. So, when you have that kind of a performance -- he made good cuts. He got to where there was room to run and then when he didn't make cuts, I thought he ran very aggressively. So from that standpoint, I think, you know, that he's got a lot to build on. But, it's one game.

COACH CARR: I think I've tried to say this from the beginning. Every pass play has a progression of reads. The quarterback will go one, two, three. And so, where those progressions take him, that's who gets the football. Sometimes a guy isn't open. Maybe he wanted to go to him; he's not open. Or didn't throw to him, made the right read, went to somebody else. There's a lot of things. Maybe the guy didn't run a good route. So there's a lot of things that can happen there. Obviously the more people that you can involve, the better, and that's something that we're working on every day.

COACH CARR: Well, we are going to find out what they are embracing. Because there isn't any question that our ability to run the football is critical, because it enables us defensively to play to our strength there for a while, until we get to where we need to be offensively and where we gain confidence and experience. And if you can't run the football now, you're going to have a hard -- you're going to be throwing the football, the clock's not moving and you're checking ball too many times. So that does not play to your defense.

COACH CARR: John who -- well, you might ask him.

COACH CARR: No. Well, I saw the game on tape. This morning we were watching it. Got in late yesterday. The one thing when you're starting the Big Ten season, everybody is starting over. Most of the teams in the Big Ten have a loss and with the exception I think of -- there's a couple of teams that don't have losses, or there's three. But regardless, if you don't have any wins, we're starting all over. It's a new race. So, what has happened in these first three weeks, every team learns some lessons. You learn some things about your team as a coach, and you get ready to go into it with increased enthusiasm because it's a different ballgame.

COACH CARR: What we are trying to do is get better today as a football team. Every day we would like to get better. If we can do that, then the games will take care of themselves.

COACH CARR: Well, I have a couple really -- one very good friend on that staff, and so I don't think we were playing them. But you could see that at some point there, they were in every ballgame. And any time you're in every ballgame and you have a chance to win it before the fourth quarter and you've just taken over a program the previous year or two -- and I can say the same thing about, there's a couple of other teams in this conference right now, you can just feel they are starting to turn the corner. So, I think they play, they are a disciplined football team. They are very physical on both sides of the ball up front. They are going to run the football. That's what they have done so well and then their passing game is geared a lot off of play-action, which stresses a defense and then of course they play great defense. I don't think in the course of the last couple of years anybody has played better defense than Iowa has.

COACH CARR: Well, I don't know what's fair to say.

COACH CARR: You should ask Pierre that. I can't tell you. I think obviously he's been impacted by it. That's something that every guy has to deal with. And some of those nagging injuries are more painful than others. It's very difficult, for example, a groin injury or shoulder problems or hand problems that you can go out and you're not going to -- it's not going to hurt you to play. The question is, how effectively can you play; and then it's up to a coach to decide if somebody else is better who may have less experience, but he's healthy. Those are all things that factor in, and then how much discomfort can you play with. And those are all things that Pierre is confronted with, a lot of guys across the country that are playing this game are confronted with.

COACH CARR: I think first of all, when a guy goes in in the middle of the 2nd quarter, the game is on the line, there's more pressure on him, you get an opportunity to see how he handles the communication part of it, how he handles himself in the huddle, in the pocket, does he make the right reads and how does he execute, how does he perform. And even though it may not seem like a lot, I don't know how many exact snaps he got in there, six or seven or whatever it was, but every one of them is an opportunity for him to get better. It's an opportunity for him to learn some things. I think, I don't know how, what to tell you as far as what we do as we go forward here, but any time you can get a guy experience, it's very beneficial, to you, your team, the whole thing.

COACH CARR: No, I really can't. I think he's a young guy and I think, you know, obviously you want a competitive battle for the starting quarterback's position. Other than to say that I think he's like a lot of young quarterbacks; he's got things that he will improve on. But, he's got to have all of the qualities that you're looking for or he would not be in that position.

COACH CARR: Well, I think we have to see what happens in practice this week. I think the biggest thing we have to do defensively is in terms of getting to be the kind of consistent and well-performing defenses is to eliminate big plays. And that comes with being -- doing the things that you're supposed to do, lining up where you're supposed to line up, all of those things. And Leon Hall came in here a year ago as a true freshman, played through a nagging shoulder injury throughout the season, played at a high level. He missed most of spring practice with surgery, but he's performed extremely well throughout the fall and in the games. He's a competitive guy, he's a smart guy.

COACH CARR: Didn't I say Saturday? Look, I don't know what the prognosis is. I have no idea other than to go on a day-to-day basis. And last Wednesday, I think I talked about this on Saturday, maybe I didn't. He threw the ball, he did not throw the ball particularly well compared to where he was before he began to be bothered by the soreness. That's all I can tell you.

COACH CARR: I don't know that there's just one. I think he would tell you, a great example is his last, his next to last play there. We have a formation there, we call it Victory. Where we are just trying to take the snap, take a knee and get out of there. Of course, Chad took the snap, backed up, and let some 250-pound guy run over him. I mean, the things that he's learned just to begin with, he is, I promise you, much more comfortable in the huddle. He feels better about managing that, of getting a play call, of getting the singles or of getting a wristband call read to his teammates. Now, it may not sound like much, but when you are trying to do it, you know in the back of your mind the 25-second clock is running. You're worried about making sure as you go through that that you don't get ahead of yourself and leave a word out. I mean, there's been a lot of things that have happened to him from that standpoint that he's much more comfortable and much more confident. When he gets to the line of scrimmage, checking off, getting into a run, staying with a run as opposed to going into a pass; or we're going to run here and still over here, all of those things. And then when the ball is snapped, I think he would tell you that he's got more comfortable with his reads. We were talking yesterday and Scott told him last Sunday, he said, you know, this is not easy for a fifth-year guy. It's never going to be easy. Now, hopefully it's never going to be any harder than it is right now. But considering all of the things that it takes to play that position, and the pressure that comes from the expectations, I think he's really handled himself well. I think he's a guy that his teammates like because he's a down-to-earth guy. He just wants to win. He just wants to do the best he can do and be the best quarterback he can be. You always like a guy like that.

COACH CARR: Yeah. Now, in the past we've had guys that will -- like let's say if there's five -- I can remember one particular game, we had a guy that there was six -- we needed to buy an extra six seconds in the last two. We knew we could kill the clock. There was a six-second differential between if we just knelt right down, or if we could hold the ball or two or three extra seconds before he took a knee. If we did that twice, we could burn up six seconds and end the game. So, we had our quarterback backed up and stand and stayed up as long as he could. So there are times when you would do that. But that was not one of them. But that's something now that he'll know.

COACH CARR: Well, I think you'd have to ask him that. But I think I knows, he's been around this team, he's been around our meetings where our team sets goals. He's been in meetings where he talks about the opponents, the people we are going to be confronted with during the season. He's seen film from last season. He understands that this game, this season, this Big Ten season, really decides who goes to the Rose Bowl. I think he understands a lot of things, and yet I'm sure there's a lot of things that he has yet to learn.

COACH CARR: I think one of the reasons that they have been very successful is they don't change a lot. They are very, very well-coached, fundamentally sound they are not trying to hide what they are doing. They are not trying to beat you by changing and giving you something new every week. They are going to let their guys teach them what they want them to know and let them play and get better with repetition. And so, you always go back. If you play the team the previous year, you always go back because that refreshes your mind as a coach and there's always certain things in those games that you want to reinforce to your players or that you want to make sure that they understand the lesson that is to be learned from those things.

COACH CARR: What kind of a player is he?

COACH CARR: Well, he's a smart guy. He loves the game. He takes great pride in doing the things that he's asked to do. He's a team-oriented guy, which most linemen are. They are guys up there that they know they are not going to get -- there's going on a lot of plays in the game and in most of the plays except for their girlfriends and their family, no one is watching them; they are all watching the ball. But what they do is critical. They understand that. So if you don't have people that are tough-minded there, if you don't have guys that have great work ethic throughout the season, because up there, you cannot hide, if you don't have the strength and the stamina and the toughness to deal with all of the things that go with playing up there, and Matt has done all of that. He started here as a very young player and, you know, he's what you want.

COACH CARR: I think those are things, those are qualities that you have to see for yourself. Certainly, his high school coach and all of the conversations I have, you're always assessing the guy in terms of: Hey, does this guy really know what he's getting into? Does he really want this fight? Does he have a love for the fray? And is he competitive? Is this guy, does he have leadership qualities? Well, you can make all of the assessments, but the truth is, you really don't know until he gets here until he goes in that huddle, until you see how he reacts under pressure. And so -- did I know all of those things? No.

COACH CARR: That's an interesting recruitment because I'll never forget when Pat decided to come to Michigan, he had gone through a very difficult time in his life and lost his mother, and for that family, it was really hard. I'll never forget his father, Jim, he told me, because I went down on the day that I was allowed to go in. I went to the high school and his father came over to the school. Then I stayed and watched Pat practice. So the brother, Michael, had been, he was in the hallway or something. His dad, Jim, made it very clear to me that Michael was going to go to Notre Dame. You know, his oldest son went to Ohio State. Here Pat was declaring for Michigan. And he said, "I'm getting one of these guys to go to Notre Dame." (Laughter). So honestly, I just thought from the beginning, we would not have much of a chance to get Michael. But Mike Massey is going to be a good football player, I tell you that.

COACH CARR: I think, you know, I think one of the issues there may have been the rush. But, I think if you look across the country, and I think I've said this. I saw two games Saturday night that were impacted by missed extra points. We missed two, two weeks ago. I think a lot of that has to do with the pressure that is coming, particularly up the middle, and people are really trying to pressure the kickers. What happens is, it puts the snapper under pressure. It puts the holder under pressure. Sometimes the snap is wobbly, it's not easily handled. Sometimes the holder doesn't get the ball down at exactly the spot. If you notice, for a right-handed kicker, right-footed kicker, the left hand of the holder is always marking before the snap. He's marking a spot, his hand is on the ground, that's where he's going to try to get that ball down. Well, if the snap is off just a little bit, that can impact the hold. So I think we are going to see -- and you can never forget, these guys particularly the younger kickers, it's their first experience kicking off grass. In high school, they all have tees. So I think it's a challenge. It's a challenge.

COACH CARR: No, I think for the most part, we're using the same formation we've always used.

COACH CARR: Well, he had a good week of practice. It's like I always tell them, if you don't like your role, then practice hard and when you get into game competition, your performance, if it's good enough, is going to increase your role. And so the key always becomes that when you get an opportunity, if it's three plays, if it's one play, do something with it. And every play is evaluated, so Tim did a good job. It's the first opportunity he's had to play, and I hope that he will continue to play an increased role here because there's a lot of things that he can do and a lot of things that he can bring to our team.

COACH CARR: Well, I think, you know, he's 330 pounds. I think more than anything else, it was his physical presence and his ability to block the down lineman and knock people often line of scrimmage, really since he's been here. I think there are other things that he's going to have to work on, but fundamentally, if you want to run the football, he gives you the kind of size and strength and power that it takes to get some movement. I think one of the things we lacked in that first game, and it's not just at that position, so because I think Michael is going to be a very good football player. It was just a matter that in practice, he did some things that indicated he was ready to play and he's got some things that certainly he can improve on, but I think his performance was good.

COACH CARR: Well, Prescott came up with in practice, he had an injury there that kept him out of that game. It was not anything else. So Chris got an opportunity, I think he played five snaps at the linebacker, I think it was five at the linebacker position. He's done a great job on our special teams, particularly our kickoff team. He's one of those guys, he's kind of like -- except that he's a true freshman. But size-wise, he's kind of at the same stage, he's even a little bit bigger than Dahane (ph) and Ian Gold (ph). But he's the same kind of guy. He is a high-energy guy. He's a guy that really gets to the football. He seems to always find a way to end up around the ball. And I think that's really the mark, the first mark you want in a linebacker, a guy that instinctively can diagnose plays.