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PURDUE UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 13, 2009

Danny Hope

COACH HOPE: First down any goal line situation to look at. I think we had one snap at goal line, they got there one time and they fumbled it. They are a dominant defense, their front is exceptional very sound when they line up, very confident in how they line up. They don't have to do a lot. When they line up, they can get after you and shut you down and they do that week-in and week-out and they are certainly one of the great defenses in the country.

Q. Are they a defense that likes to blitz, or are they able to put the pressure with just their front four?
COACH HOPE: They can do either one. They are effective with either one. They hit the quarterback a lot.

Q. If you look obviously offensively, you have Prior, and how do you duplicate that in your practice, a kid like that?
COACH HOPE: You can't. You can't duplicate it. There are some things you can emphasize in practice and then try to exploit those areas to make sure people are executing that part of it.
Obviously containing is huge with this guy. You can drop back in the pocket and step up inside and let it be gone, or he can drop back in the pocket and slide to the right or left and stick his foot in the ground and be gone. He's a tremendous athlete and he's great runner with the football and he's hard to pull down. He's a lot to defend. To contain is something that's very, very important with this guy, he can manufacture a rush, you have to contain him some. He's really a good football player, great with a football in his hand.

Q. I know you talked about him a lot, but Keith Smith and the type of season he's having.
COACH HOPE: Keith is having a great season, and certainly is on track to be in position to earn a lot of post-season accolades. He can probably catch over a hundred balls when it's all said and done this year if he keeps going like he's going. He's very competitive. He's a low-rent guy and he can take Heath and lots of other guys in his position and teach them the same route and he can step up and run that route and he gets it right just about the first time. He's very, very good appropriate football player; that's one of the reasons why he's as successful as he is, he gets good at it quick. We don't ask him to do a lot but he does. He's a low-rent guy, he's a natural in a lot of ways. He has great hands and great route-running instincts and good size, and he's an outstanding teammate. We are really excited about the year he's having and he's really going to be something special.

Q. Having reached the halfway point, I hate to be the one to ask about your offense, you have somebody to be somewhat pleased about the production you've gotten from them, and that unit as a whole has been a pleasant surprise, because obviously you had a lot of question marks about that going into the season.
COACH HOPE: They have done very well and I guess the silver lining in the situation is I come in on Sundays and I look at the offense with some of the coaches, and every play I put a plus or a minus next to it, a check or a minus; a check against a good play, or put down a basic play, somebody got so many yards per carry, whatever, and a minus where the breakdown is at. And there's a lot of areas that we accrued through the course of the game that we can still get better at offensively, and a lot of it has to do with being together for a while and getting new guys on the field.
But there's a lot of room for improvement aside from the obvious things that you guys see. It's extremely optimistic to me and the team, when we look at it, we say, we'll just do these things here a little bit better, if we can be excellent in a couple of the areas and you don't turn the football over, gee, look how good we can be and how many points we can score.
So we are not a finished product on offense but we have done very, very well. We moved the football up-and-down the field. I think we are an aggressive offense, and I think that's important. And we have the ability to run the ball and I think Joey has done a good job of making plays and we've had a lot of new guys that have come in. We've gone through a little bit of growing pain but some of these, guys the light is just now coming on for them. So we are very, very optimistic about what we have and the direction that we are going, so give credit to the players and the staff.

Q. This morning you gave up a lot of points, you've really gotten out of the gate real fast, the first quarter you've outscored opponents 59-16, but then dropped off in the second and third; has that been somewhat perplexing to you to have that dropoff, but then you back in the fourth quarter and outscore opponents?
COACH HOPE: It is. It must be something I must be saying wrong. I say we want to start fast and finish strong. I should say stick something in the middle to help us out. We have been a team that ever since we got back together in camp; we wanted to practice to a certain premium in camp but we don't practice as long as some people do. We practice long enough but fast and hard, and we wanted a certain break in the practice. And we always want to start off practice hard and or start off practice fast and we want finishes, we want to emphasize finishing strong in practice, and we've done that in the games.
We've had a series of events that have really killed our football team, and it's cost us the win, and it's happened in the second or third quarter. I don't think it has anything to do with time. I think it's timing, maybe, I don't think it has anything to do with time, I don't think it's the sand falling in the hourglass and we make mistakes or it's predetermined. I think we include some things at times that impacted the football game.

Q. And then defensively, your team has really played well the last two weeks and team is really getting better here in the middle part of the season. Is that sort of what you envisioned about this defense going in that they just get better week-in and week-out?
COACH HOPE: I thought we just start off faster. We didn't start off quite as fast for a lot of different reasons, and I think our defense and chemistry is starting to come together. That's huge on defense. That's a position where part of your football team, you're playing with emotion and enthusiasm, it's a real premium and it's a difference maker. You can't play great defense unless you do.
I think we have generated some energy over there and the team chemistry is really coming together on the defensive side of the ball and the guys on that side of the ball, the light is coming off now, guys that were still novices to their positions as starters. So I like the way we have been playing defense, we have been playing physical defense, but we have still got to tackle better. We still made some mistakes but people move the up-and-down the field every Saturday. We are not excellent yet in some areas. That's what we are striving for, but I like what we see off our defense. We are gaining momentum and we are playing with confidence and we are really starting to gel and we are getting better.

Q. Your special teams play just has to be frustrating, because it seems like one week it's one thing and the next week it's another. Touch on special teams play thus far?
COACH HOPE: There's a lot of phases in special teams that's probably not really attractive for the fans. We are doing very well in many phases of special teams. I know it's being taught and I know the scheme that we are using, the schemes that we are using and the techniques that we are using; and I know they are sound and I know they are implemented very well in the backbone of our special teams: The hold-up part on punt returns, most of the time the trail part on the punt returns, and the kickoff coverage has gotten a lot better and kickoffs has been really good. And there's a lot of areas in special teams I think we are doing very well at.
We are not doing real good with decision-making by our playmakers, by our return guys. When I say decision-making, whether or not they field the football at times, the right spots. We have had some muffs and we have had some fumbles and a couple of times we haven't ended up in the hole.
So I'm going to try to focus in on those areas so the areas that have been a liability to our football team are things we can focus in on, and if we can go to those areas being liabilities to areas that we can become excellent in, we can change pretty quick as a football team and that's what our goals are this week and what we are focused on this week and what we are communicating to our team.

Q. I know you mentioned the offense is evolving, pretty well recently, can you particularly talk about the passing game?
COACH HOPE: Numbers-wise it's attractive and potentially it's even more attractive. We are not hitting on all cylinders in the passing game. We have a guy that's a great competitor at the quarterback position that when things don't necessarily go right up front, he fights it to the end and makes some huge plays for us. He accrues a lot of yards and he's a great quarterback, the spirit that he embodies is really important for our football team right now.
But we are not excellent right now in the throwing and catching part; at some of the things that are important for us to really cash in on all of our opportunities. We don't always go to the first progression. We need to get more detailed in that area, and we need to be more detailed in route running.
We become excellent, or make excellent progress in those two areas, we can become even more efficient in the passing game and accrue a lot more yardage. We are not far away from being able to really pass the football, and that's pretty good because six weeks ago, we had a tough time completing routes versus air with our receivers and our quarterback; we were that neophyte at that position, and we made outstanding progress, but there's still some real potential there. We are looking at that on film and the light is it starting to come on in some areas that I think is going to really impact our play.

Q. Aaron Valentine is a game-breaking type of player, but statistically, he's put together a couple of pretty nice games back-to-back which is something that he had not done this season. Your thoughts on seeing that kind of -- I don't know if the word consistency, but nice to see him have that kind of effort from a receiving standpoint?
COACH HOPE: Aaron Valentine you know, he's one of the leading all-purpose guys in the Big Ten. He was No. 1 going into the game the other day and he called some balls, so he's at the top somewhere. He's a heck of a football player and he's a playmaker. When you look at the breakdown that we have that's been critical, you look at sometimes it's playmakers. But those guys are in that position; the guys are not necessarily playmakers and they make a mistake, it's hidden out there somewhere out on the field but you don't see it, and we have had some mistakes made by playmakers.
Aaron has made a few mistakes but he has a great will to come back in and compete. And you know, he was banged up some coming out last week's game and we limited what we asked him to do and we asked him to focus more primarily as a receiver this week in practice, and he did a good job and then played receiver well in the game and we limited what he did on the return part of it from an injury standpoint.
But he competes, and we'll put him out, he'll do the best he can. And I don't have a lot of reservations about putting him back out there whether it be to return the kick or at the receiver position, so we have confidence in him. He practices well and he plays hard and he makes plays. One of the leading playmakers in the league. We just have to cut down on his errors.

Q. (Inaudible).
COACH HOPE: Yes.

Q. The first thing I wanted to ask you about, the turnover problem that you've had, as you look at those, any common thread, ball security or bad reads or bad luck or what?
COACH HOPE: Yeah. (Laughing) Combination of all that. I wish it was just one thing but it's not. We have turnovers in different areas and some of the games, you know, block field goal, turnover for a touchdown.
The chronic part is that when you turn it over in special teams, it ends up being not only just I turnover and your offense is on the field, but it almost always or inevitably is great field position. Sometimes you turn it over different places in the field, the team may have a long way to hit the drive with it. When you turn it over to special teams, it gives them a short field and we have done that a couple of times in two or three games, and that's really impacted the game. We can't accrue turnovers in offense and turnovers to special teams. That's too many.
From a statistical standpoint, if you score two times in special teams, the odds of you winning game is about 90-some percent. It's that big of a deal when you start turning things over from a special teams standpoint. It's something that we have to get handle on. It's not any one particular thing. We have to do a better job of securing the football in practice and carrying it over to the game and trying to manufacture those situations in practice and better decision making on the returns, so you are running where they are not, take advantage of the way their returning has been designed. It's a lot of little things we have to work on. It's not any one particular thing.

Q. There's been a lot of focus I guess since you took over for Joe on how the offense has changed, the philosophy of it; can you just give a little overview of maybe how you've tweaked the tendencies or the run/pass balance?
COACH HOPE: It's changed some but it's the same offense from a play calling standpoint, the same system is in, the system that we had here in place when I was here with Coach Hill the first go-around we had Drew Brees and all those guys. So that's the system that I took to eastern Kentucky and it's the system that I know the best and I want to have an offensive system that I know inside and out as a head coach. And it's the same system, but inside of that system are tools you can build any offense with and that's what Coach Nord's (ph) staff has been able to do, they have done a great job with that.
We can get out there and get empty with five wide and being a shotgun and we do it pretty well now. We can be in two backs loaded up with two tight ends and one back, motion. We want to be a stronger run team maybe than we have been in the past, I think there's some real value to that, and you manufacture a tougher offense, I think we are a more physical offense, something that I've been a part of in the past. So we won't be able to manufacture some run games, and so we did a few things formation-wise to help us some but it's really the same offense in a lot of ways.
It's just the tools are being used differently from a play-calling standpoint and a lot had to do with where we were at personnel-wise. We didn't have a couple receivers -- we had three or four starters coming back but the season started on offense and you know, and hardly anybody back had caught any balls in the games at all. We had but a couple hookups, game reps last year. So the play calling is based on personnel.

Q. Can you also say whether it's been surprising to you that Jason has been able to do what he's done given his back issues in previous years or did you know he was capable --
COACH HOPE: Well, Worth, I saw him in the spring and I could tell he had a great nose for the football and had -- I don't know if it's uncanny, but had a real knack for deciphering a playing. Some guys can't do that. Some guys you teach them the keys to read, but they can't really tell you the rest of what happened. Kind of like Algebra in some ways.
He does a great job of really understanding what's going on and deciphering the play and coming up with the product in the end. He has an excellent nose for the football and he's a tough guy and a smart guy and heck of a leader for a football team. We are very fortunate to have him out there. We have a lot of respect for Jason and some of the other guys on the defensive side of the ball, and our whole team for that matter. Some of our guys have been through serious injuries and serious operations and are still out there practicing hard and playing hard. It's a very physical game and those guys showed great courage, he does, Williams, another great example, he's been through several surgeries, and he plays to win every Saturday. So we are really proud of those guys and Jason has done a great job.

Q. I read where before he signed with Purdue, Ralph Bolen had an ACL surgery his senior year of high school. I know he played some last year but I was wondering if that held back his progress as a freshman?
COACH HOPE: It certainly did. That type of injury, we have several guys on the team right now, I won't list but I've never been around anybody that had that type of injury that it didn't impact their following season, you know what I mean. Jason Taylor is a classic example. Football player with a major knee operation, and never comes back brand new. You can come back good enough to play and he's a great football player but never come back quite the same when you undergo that type of surgery.

Q. How much do you talk to your guys about this game being the opportunity in the sense that obviously they will be heavilily favored, did you talk about the opportunity part of things?
COACH HOPE: Obviously we do and they are all Purdue students, they are pretty sharp, they can see that this is a very unique opportunity to have a great team like Ohio State coming into come to Ross-Ade Stadium and it's an outstanding opportunity for our football team; it was six weeks ago and it is this team as well. We certainly need to do some things better as a football team in order to make it feel -- to have a chance to win. They are one of the premiere teams in the country and I think that's the message to our team is to focus in on those these areas that have become a liability and try to focus on those areas as quick as possible. That's what we have been talking to our team about.

Q. I wanted to ask you about Jeff -- inaudible -- and Eric, are you getting any of those guys back any time soon?
COACH HOPE: No. Not the next two or three weeks, I don't see that happening.

Q. Any of those guys going to play again this season?
COACH HOPE: Maybe towards the end. I don't know when that is. Depends how it goes. It's nothing -- it's better -- I've been practicing football for a long time, that's a situation that really hurts. We have guys back coming off surgery, we have guys with a shoulder surgery he has not had a whole lot of time in the weight room yet and then play the offensive line of the Big Ten, that's the situation you're looking at. You have some situations they won't be back ready to play year, or if they are, they had better get back pretty soon.

Q. What kind of physical standing is Marvin now in practice?
COACH HOPE: Good. Throwing; doing very well. He's not ready to have contact yet but he can put on the dress of the day, what the team wears, pads, helmets, shoulder pads, whatever we have on, and he's able to do some drills with the trainers and strength coach and throwing and stuff. He's doing very well. He is an excellent teammate and has a great desire to be a great football player.

Q. Now that it's starting to get cold out --
COACH HOPE: Good. You know, the weather doesn't have anything to do with it, and not playing as much doesn't really have that much to do with it. But the price that they paid to be here right now has been one of greater magnitude than most freshmen I've been around.
We brought in about nine freshmen and we were really concerned from a personnel standpoint coming out of spring ball, there was a huge void between our older skill guys and our younger skill guys. You lack it from a TD standpoint or from a receiver standpoint, there's a huge void in there. So we had to bring in a bunch of freshman in this summer out of high school. And summer school was a pinch, the class load is increased for a short period of time; and they have to lift and run and do all of the things that a varsity player has to do and then they go into camp two-a-days. So that's been the toughest thing for these freshmen to endure. They have been here for a long time and they have not been home, and some of them are playing but they came here and paid one hell of a price because we needed them to get ready just in case the junior college guys we brought in didn't pan out or we had an accident of attrition or our injured guys didn't comeback. We don't have a whole lot of margin for error from a personnel standpoint. I'm concerned more about that how long they have been gone from home than I am with the weather. I'm okay with the weather. That's a little thing.

Q. Evans used to be progressing for you, playing a lot, just on your base defense --
COACH HOPE: Well, he's a starter to me whether he starts the games or not, he plays as much as any starter and he's -- I'm not surprised because of the intangibles he brings to the table and he has a lot of physical talent, as well. He was a good running back in high school, a physical running back in high school. And as a guy and as a winner he's an A plus-plus. He's a winner, he really he. He's a special guy, and great athlete and great school. He has all of the redeeming qualities you want four player to have and he's a heck of a football player, too. He came here as a running back and was moved over to safety, worked some at linebacker, at outside linebacker some, and is becoming a journeyman in his position in a lot of ways and is really coming on. I think he's one of our better players. He can definitely help.

Q. Obviously you want to cut down on your own turnovers, but facing a team like Ohio State last week they scored 21 points off interception returns and kickoff return, too, they seemed to be particularly good about taking advantage of opponents' mistakes?
COACH HOPE: They are really good at everything. We manufactured a lot of our own turnovers and they manufactured some for you. They are a physical football team and they are very fast and they do a great job of getting off the block when their linebackers are exceptional about getting off the block. They have some outstanding football players and guys they are able to utilize on special teams are very, very first picks, as well. So they create their own turnovers, they take advantage of your turnovers and they have a lot of great players.

Q. How is the offensive line playing?
COACH HOPE: Pretty good. Pretty good. We have been able to stay pretty much healthy from the standpoint of guys not having missed games, but if you do get banged up as the season goes on, it's a physical thing, running into each other all the time. A might be a little bit of pressure on the offensive line, and we are at a point in time in the season where we have to try to manage the players a little bit differently. I think we have done a good job of getting them ready to play, not just the old line but our whole football team but getting ready to play on Saturday, that's a big part of it. We came in knowing we were going to be able to compete with our team as a second strength and coming up with our ones. We can compete with anybody, we can turn it over some and gotten ourselves into a pickle a little bit but we have been able to be fresh on Saturdays and guys physical on Saturday and wanting to play. I think our offensive line is in the boat, but they are starting to get banged up a little bit now, so our management of them here the next couple of weeks is going to be important as far as a strong finish goes with those guys. The better the team that you play, the harder it is. And any competition is tough sometimes and there's a lot of things that the defense can do to challenge your offensive line to try to slow down the running game. And one of the mistakes, the slant angle the defensive front, certainly they can line up where they can try to get themselves an edge to the gaps that they want to get to, and we have to be able to get there first and get there right on a consistent basis and really establish a really strong running game. It's there. But just the defense is a bit more challenging.

Q. Is there any injury that's going to affect who you play?
COACH HOPE: Yeah, I think so, I think we are going to be okay, which is good. We have not hit on as much in practice. When we go, we go real hard, we are physical, but we don't go quite as long and don't have full pads quite as much.

Q. What is your -- inaudible -- in terms of --
COACH HOPE: We'll be in shells today and see how it goes. Putting them on and off as a reward, putting equipment on and off of them, that's part of the preparation of our football team, period. I'm not sitting here saying, you practice good today we'll go out in shorts. This isn't kindergarten. We practice good today, we are going to practice harder tomorrow. We are not going to change the dress as a result of reward for preparation reasons.

Q. Can you talk about Roberts -- that move a little bit?
COACH HOPE: Well, Josh is not on the team right now. He stopped coming to practices and so he's dismissed. So that's a great opportunity for him.

Q. What do you like about Robert?
COACH HOPE: Well, he has got some physical tools. He doesn't know a whole lot about playing his position right now and he's way behind. He's a guy that we are going to have to develop down the road, anyway, so there's your opportunity.

Q. Also your return game, just how much moving forward are you going to lean on Wendell, will he be a guy back there that you might use?
COACH HOPE: Well, we always consider who is back there, he may not be back there all the time. And to win, you really need to win in a big return here there to help us so we are going to take a look at the talent and give those guys some reps this week and get a gut feeling and one of those guys gives you something to smile about. Surprised to see him out there Saturday. We will surprise you, though, okay. Full of surprises.

Q. He's also moved up on the depth start to No. 2 behind Carlos as a receiver, would you like me to be more on offense, also?
COACH HOPE: Well, Wendell is on offense.

Q. More productive role for him?
COACH HOPE: He's become a lot more reliable, that's for sure. When Royce went down that opened up a spot so he moved up and he's reliable, knows what to do. I like what he's doing. He's a guy that we were not real sure about coming into the season with what his role would be and he stepped up, and really appreciate that. And Brown is another guy that's really come in toward the end of season and helped us and the football team and really proud of those guys.

Q. Obviously turnovers are No. 1 going into the second half of the season but what's No. 2 or three on your list of things that need to change and need to improve on so you can have a better second half?
COACH HOPE: The decision making is about playmakers. That's critical now. When we sit down and look at this stuff, I'm not big at the computer desk. I can do mine on the yellow pad. I can do a check or a minus sign and put down the result and figure it out. We need better decision making by our playmakers and that's quarterbacks and receivers, kick return guys, the guys that have the ball in their hands. People who have a drop, you don't get beat by incomplete passes. That's not what beats you. Backs can beat you and turnovers can beat you and you have some drops, improve some of that, our goal is 60 percent, we have to be more efficient with our playmakers and we can really step up as a football team, no question about it. Our offense, I look at what's there, pretty good on offense now. It's a learning process and they see the same thing, too, going, holy smokes, we get a couple of these things right here; so we are optimistic.

Q. Some Big Ten coaches release injury reports later in the week; is that something you are in favor of doing?
COACH HOPE: No.

Q. Would you like the Big Ten to mandate the coaches to do that?
COACH HOPE: I don't know why we would want to. What does it matter? You haven't lost a game, somebody is out, with a good is it going to do you? You're still going to get your report on it and do your article. Why do we have to give that information out? Tell me why, you know -- help more on you guys.

Q. Going back to Prior, getting him on the perimeters is going to be really big this week especially with his wingspan; does that change how your perimeter players are going to go after him?
COACH HOPE: We are going to try to get there, he's really a good player and hard to get to. He has long arms, aggressive returner very, very smooth runner, and he does it so effortlessly. And because he's so big, sometimes the great big ones, skill guys, don't look as fast, but he's really moving. He's quite a physical specimen, he really is. He's a challenge. He's a great player. Great athlete and great player.

Q. You talked earlier about how you didn't think after your starters you had much -- at the beginning of the season, how would you say you've gone as far as developing?
COACH HOPE: Pretty good many some areas. Josh Johnson has come a long ways. He plays a lot more. Evans was a backup and now he's like a starter to me. I don't think there's any dropoff. I think you pick up in some areas. Hays and Beckford, they got lost in traffic a couple of times in traffic and they tackle guys pretty good and they fly around and get after it like you want linebackers to do and those guys have really come on and so that's made a difference.
And Mondek plays a lot now and he's a much better player now than he was last year. Brown came on, was a backup guy and he played for quite a bit. We need another big, strong, physical defensive end to play in this league with and coming on has been a big deal. That's a lot of guys right there on one side of the ball that's improved a lot here in the last couple of weeks. Before we played 90 snaps with the same guys. We don't have to right now, that's a big difference in our team, a big difference in our team.
Offensively, some of the receivers have come on, Cortez Smith has come on and that's encouraging. Line-wise, Rich Meeks played a lot, Lindsay has come on and we had some good development in some backup roles. All of the running backs has competed and we faced progress. When I sat down with the team the other day I thought one of the keys to victory Saturday against Minnesota there were ten guys that played a significantly larger role in the game than what they had played at any point in time during the season, for those guys to show up and play, not just to show up but to show up and get game experience, we had to focus on that as a staff and earmark those guys in their preparation for the game. I think there was ten or 12 or whatever it was, there was a bunch. So that part is going good.

End of FastScripts

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