	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

PURDUE UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 1, 2009

Danny Hope

Q. Going into the game Saturday do you feel like your team is in pretty good shape health-wise?
COACH HOPE: We're in great shape health-wise. We're in relatively good shape right now and only anticipate a couple guys not being ready for the game.

Q. Do you feel like -- obviously it's pretty important, all your first-year receivers kind of getting acclimated to things. Are you happy with where they are after preseason?
COACH HOPE: I think we've made great progress, and coming out of spring we had some concerns. We only had a couple receivers back that were scholarship players that had been in the games, so we were way behind from a throwing and catching standpoint.
Fortunately we did well in the recruiting process bringing a couple of junior college transfers on board and a handful of high school receivers. Those that were here on campus for summer school and that were here during the workouts during the course of the summer, they had a leg up on the other receivers coming in, and they've done very well in camp. I'm talking about Gary Bush and Antavian Edison, Keith Carlos and Cortez Smith.
We wouldn't be where we're at right now if they hadn't been here this summer. So I'm very comfortable where we're at. We think we have seven or eight guys to work in the rotation that we can win with that bring some speed some athleticism to the field, and we're excited about that.

Q. There was one other guy I want to ask you about, Joe Holland. Obviously his situation last year was kind of a desperate one. Now I'd imagine he's a much different player from your perspective.
COACH HOPE: I thought he did a great job last year for a guy who had not played at the linebacker position. He had to step up in the box as we call it towards the line of scrimmage here in the Big Ten. I thought Joe did a great job. He's a smart player, a fast player. He's become a more physical player. He's excellent in space when he has to get out in space and cover a receiver.
He's a long ways ahead of where he was this time last year. This time last year he had been a linebacker for about a week. Now he's been a linebacker for a year. We're ahead with Joe Holland and the rest of the linebacker positions.

Q. First can you talk about I guess a little bit about Toledo, the problems they present? I think they've got like 28 starters back.
COACH HOPE: Well, they're a veteran football team, and in the past they've been somewhat of a giant killer, if you will. We're 2 and 2 against them in our last four outings. In the last eight years they've beaten Michigan one time, they've beaten Penn State, beaten Purdue two times, Minnesota one time, so obviously we have a very formidable opponent coming into Ross-Ade Stadium. They have a bunch of players back, a new head coach that has instilled some confidence in his football team.
Defensively, the head coach is a defensive guy, and they're going to bring in pressure, blitzes, try to disrupt your front, so it'll be a challenge for our offensive front. They have some excellent players. They have one of the top defensive players in the country.
On offense they've got a four-year starter at quarterback, so they've got some automatic continuity throwing and catching-wise, one of the premier receivers in the country, a guy up for the Biletnikoff Award. Two running backs back, one that rushed for over 1,000 yards last year and another one that rushed for 700 yards, and they have a physical offensive line. So they create some problems and I think we match up well against them, but they have some experience that we don't have.

Q. (Inaudible).
COACH HOPE: Well, I like our situation at running back. I think it might be the best we've been at Purdue in a while, certainly better than where we were at, I think, when I was here the first go-around, just from a numbers standpoint of quality backs, and a lot of it had to do with two of our seniors stepping up. Jaycen Taylor is back, and we think he's close to the form that he was at in 2007. He's a heck of a football player. He'll play a lot Saturday. Frank Halliburton has taken his game to a new level.
With Ralph Bolden getting his feet wet last year, he's our No. 1 running back right now on the depth chart. He's a very good player. He's a physical back, very compact, runs well inside and has excellent speed to get outside and take the ball the distance.
Dan Dierking is a veteran player, a very complete player. I think he's catching the ball well out of the backfield, a very physical blocker. We have Jared Crank, who hasn't played a whole lot, but he's a big back that we can use as a blocking back or a short yardage goal line back. So I think we have some redeeming qualities at the running back position. Some of the best players on our football team are lined up at the running back spot and they're all tough guys that finish their runs and block well, so I'm excited about our running backs.

Q. When you work a rotation like that do you go with a hot guy, okay, you're going to get the first series, you'll get the second series?
COACH HOPE: We'll sit down and game plan. We can take a list of all of our play makers as a staff, sit down and say who's your No. 1 play maker, who's your No. 2 play maker, then obviously you want to try to get those guys the ball. A lot of our play makers are at the running back position.
Obviously we can run some two back. We're a multiple formation football team so we can line those running backs up anywhere on the field. We've got to plan to utilize those guys. They're our top players and a couple of those guys will be in the game quite a bit. They might not both be in the backfield, but they're our top players.

Q. I know you've made a big emphasis on special teams. How are you assessing that heading into the season?
COACH HOPE: Special teams has gone well. We spent a lot of time in camp on the technical part of special teams. We have a new special teams coordinator, and that's his sole responsibility, Coach Gibboney, and he's also an outstanding specials instructor working with the punters and the kickers and the snappers.
And I think our placekicker Carson Wiggs, is striking the ball very well. I think Chris Summers is punting the best that he has. And we have John Finch back as a long snapper. Obviously the specials have improved and they're ready to play. I think the time that we spent on the technical part of the special teams can make a difference for us particularly early in the season, so I'm pleased with we're at from a special teams standpoint.
Still got to get it done on Saturday, but we've spent a lot of time on it and it looks good on film.

Q. Just a guy that we haven't talked about a whole lot seems to be Brandon King, probably because he's been around so much, but what can you tell me about how he's looked in the last few weeks?
COACH HOPE: He's part of a potentially exceptional secondary with four seniors back there. A lot of NFL scouts have come in to look at Torri Williams and David Pender and Dwight McLean some and obviously have come in to look at Brandon King. He's not the biggest guy height-wise; he's under 5'10", but he's really compact, very strong, bench presses about 360, 370 pounds, a tough player in the run, skilled in the passing game. I think he's had an excellent camp, and I think he's ready to play.
I think he along with the other three seniors back in the secondary, I think they give each other strength back there. They communicate very well. They already know where each one of those guys are supposed to be at from an assignment standpoint, and Brandon King has had an excellent camp along with the secondary.

Q. Is one of his strengths along with those other guys in the secondary that he's sort of a versatile guy, he can play a little bit of safety probably and Torri can play a little bit of corner?
COACH HOPE: Well, we don't really need to play Brandon King at the safety spot right now. If we're short numbers-wise it's at the corner position. So I don't see the luxury of taking Brandon King and putting him at safety. We would if we needed to, but I don't see that being in the cards. The redeeming qualities he has is he's physical, he tackles well, he's smart, he's aggressive, he will play the ball. He has the confidence along with the other senior defensive backs to go after the ball and make some plays. He could have an outstanding year this year.

Q. You mentioned you anticipated a couple guys not being ready. Who?
COACH HOPE: Well, obviously Colt McKey will not be ready to play the game and probably won't play this season, at least not in the first half of it. Eric Hedstrom the same way, he will not play, certainly the first half of the season. There is some question whether or not Antwon Higgs will be ready to play. He's been sick and they've held him out of practice and we'll have to wait and see what the medical experts have to say.

Q. You mentioned that Toledo has a new staff. Obviously the first game of the year is always maybe a little more difficult to scout, but did you go back and look at Oklahoma State tape or did you just stay looking at Toledo? How do you do that when a new staff comes in?
COACH HOPE: We've looked at everybody's tapes, all the guys on our staff, the backgrounds that they have. Obviously you can go back and look at the Oklahoma State film, and their head coach was a defensive coordinator at Oklahoma State and just assume that he'll stick to what he's been successful with in the past, and they were very successful down in Stillwater. So we're assuming that he'll do a lot of the same things at Toledo that he did at Oklahoma State. He's calling the defense on Saturday for Toledo. From a defensive standpoint I'm assuming he's going to do what he's had success with in the past. A lot of the schemes that they use are schemes that our defense uses or that are similar to, so there was some carryover in the training part of it.
From an offensive standpoint, they have coaches that have background from Bowling Green and also from Appalachian State, and those two offenses are very similar and those offenses are similar to our out of offense in some ways where most of the time they're in the shotgun and have one back in the backfield and they're running some of the zone plays and reading the backside end and incorporating some option game off of it, and we're assuming that they'll do some of the same things again this year.
A lot of what they do on both sides of the ball is similar to what we do, so practicing against ourselves has been good training for us. If they come out and do something different, it's probably not anything we haven't seen at some point in time or reviewed at some point in time during camp.

Q. You mentioned their quarterback before, their starter. What impressed you about him when you watched him on tape?
COACH HOPE: He gets the ball out of his hand quick. He knows where he's going with it. He's schooled up, he's experienced, has great control of the offense. I think the players believe in him. But I think just the speed that they play at, he gets the snap, he gets the ball, he gets it out of his hand fast, he does a great job with his pre-snap reads. He's a veteran quarterback and he looks it on film.

Q. How do you find the balance defensively of showing too much this early in the year? Is that something you're worried about or are you going to go out there, and if you have to blitz every play you're going to blitz every play?
COACH HOPE: We're going to blitz. It may not be every play, but obviously we're going to blitz some. We have good players and I like what we do when we play base and some of the variations off our base, and I also like the idea of going out there and getting after someone's front. With a veteran secondary that gives you the confidence that they'll maybe pressure a little bit more. We're not going to hold back. We have a game plan that we believe in. It's already been scaled down to what we think the players can handle. We'll practice on both sides of the ball and we'll rep those plays and calls in practice and carry those into the game.
We won't carry any plays or schemes into the game that we're not comfortable with or comfortable calling, or any plays or schemes that we don't feel our players have had enough reps at. So you may not take everything in your entire playbook into the first couple of games but what we have it scaled down to is what we're going to go into the game and call, and we're comfortable with that.

Q. Do you go in with the first ten plays offensively mapped out?
COACH HOPE: I think everybody does that. When you call those openers, when you want to be strong in your openers. A lot of times you'll go back to your openers. Those are the plays that you normally ran with the most frequency in practice. But sometimes you go out there and they're lined up in something that's a surprise, and maybe you have a different play or a different package that can exploit what they've came out and chose to defend you with. So we will have our openers and we'll have a plan, but there's something else out there that's available to us, we'll get off the openers in a hurry if we have to.

Q. I guess much has been made of some of the struggles you guys had in the run defense last year, giving up some big plays. Why is that going to be better this year?
COACH HOPE: We're hoping that we've improved in it. I think we're stronger up front from a defensive line standpoint. We have a lot of good players back, some guys that can do a great job up front, and we have more players that I think are ready to play on the defensive line, and then again having some experience back at the linebacker spot. And even though we'll be playing with Dwayne Beckford quite a bit, it'll be new to him. He was with us in the spring and got a ton of reps through the fall camp with Carlino out, but Carlino has played, Beckford has had a ton of reps, we've got Werner back, Joe Holland has a year's experience. So I think with the defensive line that we have and some experience at the linebacker position and a veteran secondary, we should be able to go out there and be very strong defending the pass or the run.

Q. When you were talking about the running backs you didn't mention McBurse. Do you plan on playing him Saturday?
COACH HOPE: He's probably not ready to play this weekend. He's a great talent. He's had some struggles from a health standpoint. He's been injured two or three times, and there's tremendous competition at the running back spot. In order to play running back in this offense, and particularly for the running back coach that we have here at Purdue, you have to be a physical player, and it's hard to be a physical player when you're injured. So he really hasn't had an opportunity to get on track.
He does some things in practice that indicates what a great prospect he is, but he hasn't had many days of practice where he was full go from a contact standpoint. Certainly don't rule him out for the remainder of the season, but he's not a big factor in the game this Saturday. He'll be available and we have some plays if we need to get Al-Terek in the game that we're comfortable calling with Al-Terek in there, but he hasn't really practiced all that much yet.

Q. At Big Ten media day you said the 2009 season would be special. How will you define if this season is special?
COACH HOPE: I think there's a lot of ways you can look at that. We didn't have a winning season last year and we're predicted not to have a winning season this year. We don't have a whole lot of starters back, so to have success against the great schedule that we have, to have a winning season would be one step towards us having a special season. Around here if you have a winning season you go to a Bowl. We didn't go last year, so that would certainly be a feather in our cap.
With the schedule that we have, with the players that we have coming back and the commitment that we've seen from our football team all the way back starting in January, we feel good about the prognosis of the 2009 season, and there's a ton of great opportunities for us, starting with a winning season, and from there the sky's the limit.

Q. In light of what the situation at Michigan with the 20-hour rule, is there a paper trail that coaches have to submit to compliance or whatever?
COACH HOPE: Weekly. Weekly.

Q. Do you submit your practice plan?
COACH HOPE: Everything we do is on film, documented on film, documented on paper, and we turn all that stuff in on a weekly basis.
Their schedules are really demanding. Maybe 20 years ago or so if you wanted to practice longer and more than others, there was a time and a place for it, but their schedules are so demanding right now with the demands from an academic standpoint and a community service standpoint, mentors and study hall and weight training and all the things we ask them to do, 20 hours is about what you have time to put in. It's hard to get in any more than that.

Q. And just from your standpoint, Saturday has been like 20 or 21 months in the making since you were brought in to be the head coach. Just kind of your emotions going into Saturday. I know you've been a head coach before, but just this long buildup for you, and what will your emotions be like Saturday?
COACH HOPE: I'm always excited come game day. Fans will be there, we're going to have beautiful weather. It'll be perfect football weather. I guess my excitement and anticipation is about our players and our staff and all the people that have been involved in the last year getting ready for this upcoming season. I'm excited to see those guys play and have fun and get it on and play Boilermaker football.
That's what's exciting to me. Game day is always exciting to me. That's what we work for and live for. I know the players are ready to play, ready to show everybody what they've got.

Q. Considering the competition, what did Ralph Bolden do to hold onto that No. 1 spot at running back?
COACH HOPE: He made more big plays in the practices and the scrimmages. He doesn't have any limitations. He's an excellent receiver out of the backfield. He's a physical runner. He's an excellent worker, really works hard in the blitz pickup. He'll hunt them up, and if the line makes a mistake and latches onto the wrong guy, he does a great job in the backfield acting as a search light and hitting up on the unblocked defender.
I guess top end speed separates him in some ways. Right now on our football team speed is something that we would like to get on the field and have more of it, and Ralph is fast. There were several times, many, many times throughout the course of camp things were bottled up and shut down and he was able to stick his foot in the ground and bounce outside and run off the distance to the end zone. That's something he brings to the table that we need right now on our football team.
He's a complete back, there's no question about it. He's had great competition. We've had all kinds of guys marching there in that No. 1 running back spot, but right now it's Ralph Bolden.

Q. I see that Kawann Short is the only freshman listed as a starter. What has he done to get to that position?
COACH HOPE: He started off by losing a lot of weight, getting himself in great shape and playing hard. When he came to Purdue he was an excellent prospect, but he was 330 pounds and struggled to practice and play hard. He's down to about 297 pounds and does a really good job of getting in a good stance and coming forward, and you have to do that in our style of defense. He got a ton of reps in the spring with Mondek out and he's really taken his game to the next level.
I know we can win with the play of Kawann Short. He makes plays, too, he finds the football and makes plays. He's 300 pounds and can run and hit and tries hard.

Q. What do you remember about the Toledo game from '97?
COACH HOPE: Well, we just gotten here to Purdue and they had not had a lot of success a decade and a half prior to us coming here, and obviously they were a really good football team. Watching them warm up in pregame, they had a very physical offensive line and we were just starting to figure some things out, and it happened fast and they played well and they beat us. It was a terrible feeling after the game because the schedule didn't look any easier down the road.
Obviously I don't want to say it was a wake-up call, but it was a point in time in our program where we had to really pull together, and maybe a blessing in disguise in some ways because it forced the staff and the team to pull together with the schedule that we had in place in front of us.

Q. You've got a couple of freshman receivers that are listed as No. 2, Gary Bush and Antavian Edison. Can you talk about them a little bit?
COACH HOPE: Well, they're fast. They were here all summer long. They've really, really worked hard. They're reliable guys. They're extremely hard workers. Gary Bush was a 24-foot long jumper his junior year in high school, which is a heck of a long jump. They bring speed and athleticism to the field.
Antavian Edison was a great player in high school. He played all positions; tailback, wide receiver, defensive back, quarterback. He did it all, and his film was exceptional. They made a lot of great plays. He's a very hungry football player. He really wants to be successful. He looks at Purdue as a great opportunity, really proud of Antavian and Gary both. They did a great job through camp and they'll help us win on Saturday.

Q. You talked about at Purdue media day that you would definitely find time for both quarterbacks to play. Is there a way you're going to think about how they're going to go in? Is Caleb going to see time? You said you want to have the No. 2 see as much time as possible. Do you have a plan for that, or is it going to go per game?
COACH HOPE: Well, that's a great question, and we obviously would like to have a plan. We're just waiting to see and hope that it happens. If we wait until the tail end of the game and hope that you're ahead and have a chance to put him in in the end, sometimes that doesn't happen. Sometimes as the game goes on, it gets tight, the coaches get tight, and you're apprehensive to put in some backup players. So we want to get Caleb TerBush in the game early. We'll probably pick a series sometime in the first half or maybe the first quarter and say we're going to go with him to get his feet wet and get him in the game. So we'll have a plan.
Sometimes field position and momentum and the way things are going can change your plan, but we want to get him in the game early and get his feet wet.

Q. Obviously this Joey's first start. Do you feel his excitement, and how do you feel him focused and ready for a big game?
COACH HOPE: Well, he's always excited. That's what makes Joey Joey. He's a lot of fun to be around. He's an extremely high energy guy. Enthusiasm is contagious, it really is, particularly in football. I think that he spreads his enthusiasm to all of his teammates. He'll be excited for the game, he'll be talking a million miles an hour like he always does. But he's been around for a long time, and even though he hasn't started a lot of games at Purdue in a lot of ways, he exemplifies a journeyman quarterback.
The time that he spent at Purdue as a backup, he didn't waste any of those reps or practice opportunities. He's always worked hard and competed with the idea that he was going to be the guy, so I'm sure Joey is ready.

Q. Coach Beckman is ESPN.com's, one of their favorite Tweeters and he's really big on-line. What are your thoughts about keeping with the on-line community? How do you feel that you do?
COACH HOPE: Well, we want to stay up with technology obviously, and I think that's a big part of futuristic recruiting. I'm not quite as big on the Twittering thing as some of the other coaches. I'm not all that into keeping a diary of what's going on in my life and sharing it with everyone. I'm still curious as to why they'd be so interested. I think they'd want to know about the team and what's happening with Purdue football.
We mass email our top-of-the-line recruits on a regular basis and communicate with our guys more through a mass email program than we do from a Twittering standpoint. We just haven't broke loose with the Twitter thing like some of the others.
We do it some, and what I tried to do was rather than tell everybody where I was at for lunch or what was happening in my life, tried to use it to emphasize some of the strong points of Purdue. Every day we try to Twitter some type of strong message about Purdue. For example, did you realize in the last ten years that Purdue ranks in the top ten Division I football teams in the country as far as the number of guys that have gone on and made money playing in the National Football League. I think that's a lot stronger point to be echoing across the country than what I'm doing this afternoon.

Q. You've been asked about a lot of positions. I think the only one I haven't heard you talk about is your returners, special teams. How do you feel about A.J. Valentin?
COACH HOPE: Well, he's really good, he was back there doing both and he was preseason all-conference nomination as a return specialist.
We have some other guys, as well; Keith Carlos is really good back there, Royce Adams is really good, Ralph Bolden is really good, Antavian Edison, so we have several guys. Sometimes you use a different guy, different type of return man for a punt than you would for a kickoff return. A punt guy can sometimes be a little smaller and he's more of a dodge-and-dart guy, and a kick return guy has to be a guy that gets it and splits it and takes it and goes right now. Aaron Valentin does both very well. But we have some other guys that we feel like can be good kick returners, and we have some other guys we've earmarked as additional punt returners. Right now Aaron Valentin holds both duties.

Q. What would you want to see out of that position? Obviously you're never going to turn down a big play, a touchdown, but are you looking more for that or consistency?
COACH HOPE: Consistently making a difference as a return guy. We spend all this time on special teams, and it's commitment. It's extraordinary commitment, if you will, to special teams, so we're going to put the best return guy we have back there to try to cash in on our opportunities, and we expect to do very well.

Q. Which assistant coaches are going to be on the field game day, and which ones are going to be in the press box?
COACH HOPE: Well, I am assuming that on offense that we'll have Coach Nord on the sidelines and we'll have Coach Rock up in the box and Coach Clark on the sidelines. That way I've got the quarterback down there and the offensive line coach down on the sidelines, and the quarterback coach can manage both the quarterback as well as the skill guys from the sideline perspective, and Coach Rock who's extremely knowledgeable, he can do a great job identification wise from the box.
On the defensive side we'll have Coach Landholm up in the press box, and I'm not sure whether or not we'll have Coach Hagen or Coach Anarumo on the sidelines but we'll have a couple guys on the defensive side in the box and obviously a couple on the sidelines.

Q. Obviously Coach Tiller, we'll remember him coaching on game day, he had the stopwatch and he'd time the special teams. Do you have any game day responsibilities that you're going to have that you had at Eastern Kentucky? The obvious is that you decide on 4th down and so forth, but anything specific you'll be doing game day?
COACH HOPE: I've got a special teams coordinator that's got all types of stop watches and he'll be timing everything. That's his job. My job is being there with the team, making sure the team is ready to go and keeping an eye on what's happening out there with our guys and making sure that we're playing hard and ready to overcome adversity. I'm there on the sidelines with the team. That's my job on Saturday. I've got great play callers in the box, great assistant coaches at every one of the positions on our football team.
Game day to me is a reward and it's a lot of fun, and when things don't go right on game day, I'm usually able to maintain my composure pretty well because we prepared them for Saturday. If a guy misses an assignment or doesn't make a play, in my mind we didn't do a good enough job preparing him.
The only thing I ever get upset about is any second-guessing or lack of effort. Then you'll see another side of coach hope on game day. But most of the time on game day I'm there to have fun with the guys and make sure we're having fun playing Boilermaker football.

Q. What kind of camp did Ryan Kerrigan have?
COACH HOPE: He had an excellent camp. He's bigger and stronger, he's gotten a lot of reps. He's a very special player in my mind. I was an offensive line coach for many years. He's extremely talented. He's 6'4", 260 pounds, he bench presses like 460, 470 pounds. He's almost a straight A student. He's the total package. As a player he's the total package as a defensive lineman.

Q. Is he the kind of a player, a kind of guy that you would love to be able to play both ways, and special teams, he's got that kind of a motor?
COACH HOPE: He's got that kind of ability, but we don't have the luxury to wear him out covering kicks and catching passes at the tight end position. He was a heck of a tight end in high school. I think he averaged about 25 yards a catch in high school. He's a difference maker for us on the defensive side of the ball.

Q. What do you expect out of your team on Saturday? Obviously you expect a win but what are some of the things that you're lacking for in particular?
COACH HOPE: I want us to be excited about playing and go out there and have fun, go out there loose, play hard with no regrets, play with a lot of emotion and enthusiasm. Our goal for our team this season was be a team that hits hard and a team that doesn't make many mistakes and a team that plays for 60 minutes, and we're going to start off this Saturday trying to hit on all three phases of our main goals for the year.
Our guys are excited about playing Saturday, whether it be Toledo or who it might be, we're excited about playing game day.

Q. Do you think you'll learn a lot about your team, and do you think those first impressions maybe will give a good clue as to what kind of team you'll have this season?
COACH HOPE: Well, I think we've already indicated what type of team we're going to have this season with the commitment they made this summer and how they practiced out there in the fall. We've practiced very, very well and things aren't always going to go our way. We'll stub our toe somewhere along the way, but I think we have a lot of guys that have the substance to regroup at any point in time that things aren't going right. We've talked about that, we recognize that, how important that is. We have a lot of confidence going into the '09 season just based on the commitment and the effort.
We do have some talent, believe it or not. We do have some good players and talented players that have worked hard and committed themselves to being ready to play, so we're ready to play.

Q. How about just any particular areas of concern that you have before you open up?
COACH HOPE: Well, the first game you want everything to go right. You realize they're going to make some mistakes. Other than that, it's business as usual, and we're not going out there tight, we're going out there loose. In my mind there's a big difference between being tense and intense. Intense is a good thing. We're going to be intense when we play football. We are playing football, a physical game for physical people. We don't need to be tense. There's nothing to be tense about. Sometimes players can get those things mixed up on Saturdays and so can the coaches.
That's why I want to make sure the players understand where I'm coming from on game day. We've already paid the price, now let's go have some fun on Saturday.

Q. What sort of has impressed you most about this team during camp?
COACH HOPE: Their commitment. They practiced well even when they didn't feel good. Out of the 20-something practices we had we only had a couple practices where I felt like I had to mention something about effort, and when you're not coaching effort that's a good sign for your football team. We didn't have to coach effort in camp. They are committed and they want to win. And we have good leadership, as well.

Q. There are three guys you guys didn't have last year, Kyle Adams, Jason Werner, Jaycen Taylor, that you have back now. Can you just kind of talk about that group collectively, how much it hurt you guys to not have them last year and how much of a boon it is to have them back?
COACH HOPE: Obviously it hurt us a lot last year, who we lost and when we lost them. They were guys that we didn't have a whole lot behind. We had Kory Sheets at the running back spot and he's a good player, but that really left you the one running back that had played a lot in the game. Also when Kyle Adams went down we had to play with some tight ends that hadn't played a whole lot in the games, and the same thing with Jason Werner. That hurts you in a couple ways. You lost a top player at that position; each one of those guys was a starter so you lost 3 of your top 22 players. And then the guys that were behind those guys had not played very much and were just getting ready to play, so there was some dropoff early in the season.
Those guys got better as the season went on and they did well, but it caught us off guard a little bit at the beginning of the season. We lost three really good players and they were backed up by guys who had some guys behind them who had not played a lot in most of those cases.
They're three really good players. Anytime -- one really good player makes a difference, and all three of those guys are as good a players as we have at that position. Jason Werner is certainly one of our top running backs; Kyle Adams is certainly one of our top tight ends, and Jaycen Taylor is certainly one of our top running backs. We're not just getting them back, we're getting back three top players. That's a difference maker for your team. Would have been last year and will be this year.

End of FastScripts

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297