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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 15, 2009

Pete Carroll

THE MODERATOR: We figured there's probably no better way you'd want to celebrate your birthday than with this fine group. Some of your finest friends in the world. Happy 29th.
COACH CARROLL: Right.
THE MODERATOR: We have a cake and wonderful pasta for you. Besides that.
COACH CARROLL: No surprises, huh?
THE MODERATOR: Do you want to talk football?
COACH CARROLL: Thanks for whatever acknowledgment there (laughing). Well, this has been kind of an eventful opening for us with the first game coming up and getting through that one and going to Ohio and getting our game out there in Columbus. Leading into the conference, which is really exciting. It's an exciting time for us and an opportunity and chance and all of that.
With the stuff that I know everybody's interested in about the relationships and the friendships and all of that. They definitely exist, and it's part of the make-up of this match-up. So this is just an exciting week for us, and we're looking forward to this.
Just to finish up, I know last week everybody's concerned about injuries and all of that, and we'll find out as the days unfold here. As far as Matt and Taylor, both those guys will get some work this week. Both are feeling much better than they did on the weekend. But we'll have to wait to see and go day-to-day on that one. I don't have anything more on that.
I think that the chance we have now is to face going on the road for the second time in two weeks, and coming back and playing again in a very difficult setting. We've always found the environment up there in Seattle to be very hard, whether it was coupled with a little bit of weather or just, you know, their fans and the way they get after it. It's been hard.
So we look forward to this to be a very challenging game. It's really exciting to watch Sark (Sarkisian), and Nick, and all the fellows up there get this program underway to get their first win, and get the monkey off on the back of the program. It's a major accomplishment. And we know they had a great time with it, and enjoyed the heck out of it. And they've earned it by their hard work. They're doing good stuff, so we're happy for them.
As far as the relationship going into this game, there's nothing I've liked more than playing against people that I really love, and friends and people that I've worked with. For whatever sordid reason that is, I don't know. I can't explain it, but it's fun to go against our guys. It will be fun to match up with a program that is similar to ours. As we watched it in recruiting, they were very active and very competitive. Hit it with a lot of energy and the kind of enthusiasm we'd expect. They've obviously taken hold of this program in the same manner.
Sark would not back off the whole approach of being pumped up and energized and hard, fast practice like we know. And you can see what's come out of that. They play very aggressive. The style is very similar to ours, and their defensive and offensive schemes. But their nature and their mentality is different than it's been in the last few years.
So it's already gotten them their first win. And this is going to make for a really interesting challenge.
I think to answer the thought, what is it like to go against somebody that you know? Just go back to the NFL days when you play against team that's you've been against for years in your division. You play them a couple times a year. You know the coaches and staffs and personnel and all that. You develop a deeper relationship with the planning of those games and those match-ups, and that's what this already feels like.
They know a lot about us. We know a lot about them. I don't think anybody has an advantage. You'll let me know. If there is some, I don't know. But it's really, it's fun from our vantage point because it has to be very detailed and intricate subtleties of the adjustments that we'll do and they'll do. It's fun to see it unfold for us and how they do and how we adapt to all of that.
There is a gamesmanship that just because of the background and the knowledge it's different than other match-ups. But that doesn't make the game different, it's just different in that aspect.
So look forward to this, and can't wait to get it started, and it's a big deal. I understand that to both programs. And we want to get this thing off on the right foot, and get to Seattle and come home with a win. So we're going to go about that in every way possible. All right. What have you got?

Q. How much are you getting into sort of the gamesmanship thing, and trying to think one step ahead of a guy that you know so well?
COACH CARROLL: It's not so much a step ahead. You're trying to make sure that really you cover your bases and everything. That's what's really important. When you know the information that we have and they know that, you have to cover yourself because they know all the stuff that you're trying to do. We know what they're trying to do.
So we have to make sure that we've covered everything. It's more that than the actual strategy and how we're going to make them or mislead them or misdirect them in some ways. I think it's more about making sure the package you present for your players and the game plan is really rock solid and doesn't leave any stones unturned. That's really where the depth comes from and the intricacies and stuff.

Q. How much time and energy are you going to spend talking with players about keeping spirits high after such a big win?
COACH CARROLL: I already started in the locker room just to make sure, we see teams every week with a big emotional victory, and then the next week they don't look like the same football team, and that happens in sports. We went right at that in the locker room to make sure we set the tempo. We had a lot of fun with it in the game, and then we went right into what's at hand because I don't want to miss this opportunity to play really well again, and come back and get a win, obviously.
So I mentioned it to them yesterday, and now a week's a normal week from this point forward. It really has to do with the respect that we bring to the preparation process that makes the difference. We've got to make sure that that's there. Wanted to make that clear to them that I'm not going to stay on it all week long because it's already kind of in the works.

Q. Is that different from what you did last year? Leading into the Oregon State game?
COACH CARROLL: A little bit different in that I fronted them up a little differently using that game as an example. I think it was that obvious that we could do that. Didn't have that example going into that game last year.
No differently aware than I was a year ago coming off the Ohio State game, going into the first conference game. But I didn't do a good enough job last year. We didn't play as well as we could have. And hopefully we'll capture what it takes and do well by this time.

Q. The game against Ohio State, what was preventing you from getting into a good offensive flow there for most of the game? How did it just suddenly emerge there at the end?
COACH CARROLL: Well, they had a lot to do with it. They played really well. They had adjusted their scheme considerably from how they played the year before, and surprised us for that. We didn't get to see it in the Navy game. We really didn't use the Navy game. We couldn't figure out how to make sense of that in relationship to that offense and our offense.
It took us a good while. I don't think we ever really nailed it with how they played us. We were that, plus the way they played at the line of scrimmage with their crowd helping them get off the football about the same as on our offense got off the football, neutralized us some. That's part of the advantage they have playing at home when their crowd is like that. The cadence doesn't help us as it normally does in games.
That just kind of evened things out. Also, the field position as it was forced us to be very careful. We had to be very careful with every snap. We just kept waiting for an opportunity to bust out. Get out of the field position. Kick our way out of it, or run and throw our way out of it, and we didn't do that.
If you remember, even in the last drive of the first half of that game we were backed up and we didn't run the football. We bounced out of it. Stafon makes a 30-yard run, and now we're in a different mode. It took Joe's big play to get out of it. That won't be different in any game for the most part. In particularly a game where the score is really tight, and you know all the energy's there in their favor. We just had to be careful and that all added up to looking like that.

Q. We know Aaron's always on call. Is anyone on call regarding Taylor's situation?
COACH CARROLL: We have a couple different ways to do that. Drew McAllister's the guy that's in line to play. Though he's still hobbling a little bit. Noticed in the game we went to Josh and put him back in safety. So that's a couple of our thoughts. Meanwhile, T.J. McDonald has to get ready to go, too, as a back-up.
You know we'll tell you, Marshall Jones has to play some safety for us. We have to cover our bases with the small travel squad.

Q. Anymore concerned about your special teams than normal?
COACH CARROLL: Yeah, we got beaten in the special teams last week. Ohio State did a great job. They outkicked us. Both punter and kicker. The return game was pretty well dead, but we were really unhappy with that, that we got field position and they beat us by ten yards in the punting game, and ten yards in the kickoff game. In terms of drive starts and all that.
We were just disappointed. Our energy was good, we were flying around, but we were kind of crazy. Maybe tried too hard. So we're trying to zoom in on some stuff, and we have to perform better. In a game like that. The kicking game alone could have won the game for them. And that's how vulnerable we made it.
So in a tight game, all of the statistics, they should have won the football game when you're winning the kicking game. We should have not allowed that to happen. Fortunately we hung on and hung in there and didn't give it up. But that's a big area of concern. Making that change right now.

Q. Can you talk about Walker? Any similarities to what you saw from him?
COACH CARROLL: Only in the fact that their offense really relies on the guy. Ohio State's offense is totally built around Pryor. And without question, this offense is built around Jake. Jake's different, he's a different athlete. He's much quicker than Pryor is. He's a quicker start guy. Gets to full speed in shorter amount of times, and he runs more aggressively. He'll run over guys when he gets his chance. He'll run more like a running back than Terrelle did. He's faster.
Terrelle was fast. But Jake starts faster and gets out of problems more quickly, so he's harder to tackle. But you notice, Pryor ran a lot against us. It looked like the passing game, but they had a lot of designed runs for him in the game. I don't know that these guys will do quite as many, but they'll make it hard for us. We'll have to be attentive to it all the time. I don't think there is a better player than Jake Locker that we play. I've seen that since he was a freshman. He's a guy that really carries the program. There aren't many guys like that. He's that guy in their program. So he's a huge issue for us to stop him.

Q. Coach had a little bit of an audio problem in the beginning. Would you please comment on Matt and his play this weekend, and how you're going to evaluate him?
COACH CARROLL: You didn't miss a thing. I didn't talk about that that much.
Yeah, well, I thought Matt did extremely well in that game. The way he handled it, and dealt with it. It was much like we expected. But you have to do it the way he did it. More specifically was his mentality in the game. He was in it, talking, communicating. I've said that a number of times, but a lot of times kids don't communicate real well. He was fine. He's just like he was always was, and is. He got banged up, and his shoulder was sore. It might have happened in the third quarter, and he made it through it. He hung tough. But he finished the game really well. Take that into account, it was an extraordinary outing for him.
As we go through this week, I saw him this morning. He feels pretty good. We'll wait to see how he feels when it comes down to throwing the ball. He'll get work at practice, but we'll limit his throwing if we do any at all today. Aaron will take the bulk of the snaps and we'll go to tomorrow to see where we are.

Q. Is this the standard you're going to use now this week?
COACH CARROLL: Did I say that?

Q. With Aaron. Did you say that earlier when you installed Matt instead of Aaron?
COACH CARROLL: Did you think Aaron should be the starter?

Q. Back then?
COACH CARROLL: Yeah.

Q. No, I was over covering the Dodgers?
COACH CARROLL: Oh, good. It's just that chair for some reason in that corner (laughing).
It just depends. It depends on what's going on. What's at stake. What the issue is for the kids, you know. It's not necessarily 100%, in a particular play like Aaron who is a runner and a guy we want to see use his legs.
I felt like in his situation having a broken leg it might not allow him to play like he's capable and put him in a situation where he's not familiar. So that was a little bit different.
In that, every situation has its own set of circumstances in making the decision. In this case, you know, Matt's got to be able to throw the football and be all right doing that. We have to wait to see if he is. This is an injury that looks like it's going to come back quickly, the doctors have felt that from the start. He's much improved from yesterday to today. We just don't want to aggravate it in the process of getting him ready then try to manage the time it takes to get ready in the game plan.
We'll have to figure that out. I don't have a set formula for that. We'll just kind of feel our way through that.

Q. Joe McKnight has reminded people why he was the most touted prospect as a running back. Any specific reasons? Did he do anything different to get ready for the season and be so productive?
COACH CARROLL: I think it's just a matter of maturing. And learning from his experiences, and the first year we started him so fast. We went too fast. It was totally the coach's fault. I was totally to blame for that. Then he just has a lot of injury issues where he couldn't really blossom.
I think he's felt so much better through the off-season. He's more experienced. He's more physically fit. He's the strongest, the fastest he's been. Everything is in line for him. In that he looks back and reflects, you know, very critical manner in his first couple years and missing opportunities. And I think that's a real sign of growth and maturity.
He's willing to say that, and challenge himself with this year coming up. He's approached it just in a more mature manner. And so, he's running more physically, you know, and in all situations. He's tough. I think he feels like one of the older kids now. He doesn't feel like a young pup on the field out there, and it shows.
I thought it was exhilarating to see Joe just go after it in the fourth quarter in that game like he did. Whether he was running or catching the thing. You know, so saved the misprotection thing, it would have been an unbelievable finish for us.
But he really showed something. I think we can all see it. I don't think it's that big a deal now. Of we know Joe's grown up more than ever. Just like so many kids in the program do. It's a huge time of growth for our kids. We always see it in different varying degrees. But Joe is really blossoming right now.

Q. Is there any one moment you talked about how fun it is for you to play against former staff members. Is there any one moment that sticks out in your mind facing a former colleague in all your years of coaching?
COACH CARROLL: No (laughing). I've never really had a chance to go against one of our own guys as a head coach. This is the first time situation. But just over the years there's a banter. Not unlike when you're playing hoops. There is a banter that goes on that's kind of fun. I think that it's part of it between guys that are close. Maybe a couple text messages left here and there. Reminders of this and that and stuff that makes it fun.
But all in all, what makes it fun and what makes it different is how much you like the other people, how much you care for them, and you know how much they care about trying to do well. There's a little bit of an added element there that I want to make sure we put it in the right place, but it does exist. But I don't have any real single moments though.

Q. Joe apparently indicated after the game he expected to be yanked. Would you have yanked him a year or two ago, and why didn't you do it this time?
COACH CARROLL: A year or two ago maybe that would have happened. But I see Joe, you know, as being a big factor on this football team. Because he missed a block doesn't mean that he needed to be punished, you know. He knew, and he felt horrible about it. Horrible enough that he's telling you about it. Had we called the same play in the same situation where he doesn't have to pass protect, the meeting have been taken out. But we didn't come back with that same concept protection-wise, so it wasn't necessary. I'm happy that the coaches didn't have that urge about him like, let's get him out of there and all that. And we didn't go in that situation because it was an attack. He threw it wide open through that whole sequence, and we wanted him to be part of it.
If you noticed when we got to the other end, they went back to Stafon, too. Because that's where his role is emerging. I heard it on the sidelines, guys were fired up about Joe and the play he made, and stick-with-him kind of thing. But we do what we do. We've got to worry about it. And I made the call to go to Stafon just because that's what he does for us. He did it just like we wanted to. So he reinforced it.
It was kind of cool that Joe did stay in there and responded so well.

Q. Was there any consideration to go to Aaron Corp, and what did you say to Matt?
COACH CARROLL: Sure. I told Aaron to get ready. I shook hands with Matt. I told him is that all you got? He squeezed my hand a little tighter, and I said that's enough. Let's go. That was the medical exam right there.
I got after Aaron. I looked over my shoulder, and he was watching. Then said to him again, come on, heat it up. It may be time to go. So that's what took place there.
As far as talking to Matt in particular, there was nothing more than just, you know, nothing significant. I had more fun talking to the linemen and challenging those guys at that time.

Q. The offensive line, we talked about the quarterback, but the offensive line at the end received it?
COACH CARROLL: Without question, they were more effective at the end. I think Joe had something to do with that. I told the team, you could see Joe's commitment on the carries that he had on that drive helped the line be effective.
We didn't have the kind of spacing that we like. I mean, the holes weren't maybe as large as they were in week one and some other times as we prepare. And Joe took off and ran through the spaces that were available and made yards, that where we might have made choices to cut back and to adjust. I think Joe made their blocks effective.
It would have helped us had we hit the line of scrimmage like that earlier in the game. I challenged our guys with that thought. I think Joe proved that to us.

Q. Were they inspired to make better blocks?
COACH CARROLL: No, I think he made better use of the blocks. And I think as we crossed the 50, I think there was a momentum shift. I think our guys could feel it. They knew what was happening and then we almost made every block we had to make from that point on on. So there was definitely -- you could see it kind of build, and I think the whole thing shifted in our favor.
I think Joe was a big part of that. Of course, the line play was just spectacular. The last drive, 95 yards in that time was an amazing drive.

Q. They were changing their fronts. Just take Joe out and adjust to how he had a change.
COACH CARROLL: Maybe, they do things differently. Any time a team does things differently, you have to adapt. I don't feel like we adapted as quickly as we needed to to make this thing come alive like we eventually did. The tempo of hitting the line of scrimmage put the factor back in our favor, and it showed.

Q. I wonder if Charles White was watching or remembers against Ohio State?
COACH CARROLL: There's no question. It was very similar though. But that was a 2-minute drive that Charlie led. But it was very similar. I remember how he attacked in that sequence there, and it was very similar. Very reminiscent.

Q. (Indiscernible)?
COACH CARROLL: Well, we sat down last night and talked about how Matt's handling the attention and the constant questioning and all that stuff. There's an innocence there that it's great to see. He's having fun. This does not change who he is. He clearly stated that and understands that. But we have to keep in contact with that. You know, stay around and hang with the people you always hang with. Stay close to us, you know. Don't get very far away from the way we do things at any time.
We're watching him as he's trying to figure it out, too. It's an amazing shift in focus and attention here in the last month or so. And these kinds of games are only going to add to that. He knows that our quarterbacks in the past have had to deal with this kind of attention, and he's preparing. He's learning as he's going. He handled himself beautifully. He does things so gracefully that you think he's going to be able to handle everything. We're going to watch him carefully through this, support him throughout and his family as well.

Q. Coach, do you think even though he's so young, he's going to become a role model now and inspire other players to work hard?
COACH CARROLL: I would think that there is -- that may be starting, you know. Because he just showed, again, like the epitome of a performer's opportunity and challenge and maximizes it. He went into that situation and played great football for his team. And everybody knows how dedicated he is that is around him. People will learn that on the outside in time.
He is a great model. He's a very unique model. Just like when enormous things that happen in sports. Somebody breaks the 4-minute mile, then in three months, three, or four people make it. Forcier doing it at Michigan. That may open up the spectrum of understanding from the coach's perspective and from fans and writers. There are a lot of people that didn't think this was the right thing to do, and challenged whether a freshman could do this. I understand that based on the history this is ground breaking stuff.
I think it's meaningful, and it's obvious and we're out there, and everybody knows the story. I think it could be really impacting other people's decisions and maybe the expectations of the players that changes how this happens, you know.
Because there are a lot of people, and I can't tell you I wasn't one of those, also, that thought this is too much. I remember talking to Mark Sanchez about Matt as we talked about it. I told him he's really looking good. But oh, there is so much. There are so many things that can happen. And Mark was even of the opinion that it would be hard for a freshman to come in here and do this. And here he is doing it in the league.
It's that new. And I think the thing that happened in the NFL with the kid at Atlanta, and at the Ravens, you know, helps everybody open up their minds to the opportunity that's there and the guy is going to excel. So I think it's a role model situation for the future, we'll see.

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