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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN MEDIA CONFERENCESeptember 11, 2010Denard RobinsonRich RodriguezTHE MODERATOR: We have Michigan quarterback Denard Robinson. Q. (Question about the last drive) DENARD ROBINSON: I'm speechless right now. I really don't know what to say right now. That was amazing. Our team obviously came together and the defense played well, and we just put it together. Q. Did you feel fairly confident that you would be -- DENARD ROBINSON: Yeah. My team was confident. My offensive line was ready to play. The coaches were behind us and everybody was ready for that drive. Q. What's the first thing you said in the huddle for the final drive? DENARD ROBINSON: Time to put it in, time to put the game away. We let them stick around too long. It was time for us to put the game away. Q. What did you learn about yourself on that drive? DENARD ROBINSON: About myself? I don't know what I learned about myself. As a team, we played as a team. Q. 500 yards total offense. What do you think of that? DENARD ROBINSON: I didn't even know that. Man, offense came together. Offensive line blocked. Receivers were catching. And everything was clicking. That's basically what happened. Q. Could you describe what you saw on the pass? DENARD ROBINSON: Man, he gave me a wink before the play. He winked at me. He winked at me. I knew I could go to him, I could count on him. And it was time. Q. Was it going as planned? DENARD ROBINSON: He kind of gave them a move and then went inside. That's basically what happened. Q. Talk about the moves on the sideline for you guys. DENARD ROBINSON: I mean, everybody was like, man, that was crazy. That was a great pass. Great catch. We made some errors on defense. But we knew -- the defense had our back all game and we had to turn -- we had to have their backs, that's basically what happened. Q. How much can the team, the amount of energy, can you keep this up? DENARD ROBINSON: I've been training for it. I've been ready for it. I've been doing this training, so I guess I can. Q. (Off microphone) DENARD ROBINSON: I hit my head on the ground pretty hard. So I had to refocus. Q. Do you look at your numbers? DENARD ROBINSON: No, I do not. No, I do not. I'm a team player, and I don't worry about stats. Q. When did you realize that you were gone? DENARD ROBINSON: Once I get on the field, I don't like to be caught from behind. It was like I can't get caught, can't get caught. That was the number one rule. Q. What did you think about the block routes -- DENARD ROBINSON: That's what I'm talking about. He said: I set you free just now. Q. Do you think the big moments you played in last year helped you win? DENARD ROBINSON: I knew I had to calm down because the Iowa game last year, I played -- we got down. We scored and we came back, and I was rushing everything. So this time I calmed myself down a little bit more and I focused in a little bit more. Q. After you missed that play, did you feel fazed at all after you got hurt after that? DENARD ROBINSON: Just a little bit. Q. Are you sore right now? DENARD ROBINSON: Just a little bit. Just a little bit. Q. How much do you feel you've improved from years past? DENARD ROBINSON: I think I've improved a lot. As you can see, I mean, I've been practicing and working with the receivers, and they've been trying to get me better. Obviously the quarterback coach has been working with me, obviously. And the offense, basically what's going on. Q. Anything from Notre Dame's tapes from last week that helped you? DENARD ROBINSON: We watched film, but we didn't really know how they would play us. So that was a problem, because we didn't know how they were going to play us. Q. What did you think when Crist was injured in the first half, what went through your mind, the quarterback, David Crist? DENARD ROBINSON: I really wasn't paying attention to that. I didn't see that. Q. (Off microphone) DENARD ROBINSON: Yeah, we didn't really see that in film, but we seen it in previous plays before. That's what made us go back to it or whatever. Q. (Question about Notre Dame's offense) DENARD ROBINSON: I saw it the other day. They did a lot of blitzing in the second half. They came at us a lot, put a lot of pressure, stayed up to it and they played a great game. COACH RICH RODRIGUEZ COACH RODRIGUEZ: Obviously very excited. Happy. I'm proud of our young men. Both teams competed extremely hard, all the way to the last play. We had a lot of young guys out there and battled their tails off. Needless to say, our quarterback was pretty special again today. But this is a great win for us, in a tough environment, for a young team growing up, it's fun. We'll enjoy it for -- we'll maybe take 28 hours to enjoy this one and move on to the next one. We're proud of the guys and we'll move on to the next. Q. Obviously talk about Denard's poise on the last drive and his play throughout. COACH RODRIGUEZ: I've got my shoes untied in honor of Denard. I just slipped them on. He kept his poise the whole game, really. He'll be the first one to tell you there's about five or six plays and throws he'd want to have back, some potential touchdown throws and some things that he was seeing it, and he just kind of, he overthrew it or something. But he was really on as far as, again, as far as seeing the field; and for a guy that weighs 185, 190 pounds, he's tough and physical. Stuck some lines up in there and got some good blocking down the field. Q. Did you say anything to him after the Irish got that score to calm down, or was he already calm? COACH RODRIGUEZ: No, he was already calm. We had plenty of time with all three time-outs left. And we told the guys: We've just got to get some first downs, execute, get some first downs. Didn't have to take down field shots because of all the time we had and the time-outs we had. I thought he made a couple curl, flat route packages. And he was throwing them on a couple. Did a nice job of hitting Mike Shaw, and was really, was seeing the field pretty well. But we didn't have to panic; and, in fact, towards the end there we wanted to bleed some clock off. It was a big first down we got towards inside the 20, it was huge, so we can bleed some clock. And Roy Roundtree made a tremendous catch on the one-yard line, allowed us to do whatever we wanted with the formation with Denard running it. Q. Could you talk about how the mood of the game changed after Crist went out after that first drive and then for the rest of the first half? COACH RODRIGUEZ: I don't know that the mood changed for us; it may have for them. You'll have to ask them that. No question it probably stemmed their momentum a little bit. I thought he looked pretty good. I don't know what was wrong. But he looked pretty good when he came back in. But we had a lot of penalties that killed us, particularly in the second half. That was disappointing. I'll have to watch the film, seemed like every drive we had, we had a penalty that was stemming our momentum and not let our defense get off the field. But we executed at times. We didn't turn the ball over, which was key. But there's a lot of things we can learn from. I'd rather learn from a win than a loss, so that's a good thing. Q. Seems like we may be asking this a few weeks in a row now but is that how much you wanted Denard to doing, or was that even beyond what you thought he could be and should be doing? COACH RODRIGUEZ: I told you all last week, we can't be running him 29 times again. We ran him 28. Had he not scored on the last play, he may have had 29. But that was a lot more. We're just trying to win the game. But that's a little bit more than we wanted. I didn't realize he had 258 yards rushing and 244 passing. At the same time, the team's defending us a certain way. If Denard is getting tackled by third level players and the secondary is not as bad as the big guys in front, sometimes he got tackled by the big guys up front, but a lot of times today I think it was second and third level players. And he's fast enough that they don't get a whole lot of straight-on shots on him, I hope. Q. Going back to Dayne leaving, did you guys change anything defensively when they had back-up quarterbacks there? COACH RODRIGUEZ: No. They were going to run the same offense. We expected probably a little more zone read, what they did with Crist in there anyway. But when Montana was in there, we expected them to do a little more zone read out of the shotgun. It was a matter of us executing. Even in the second half, when he came in, made some nice throws. Some of it was our undoing, busted a coverage at the end and forward tackling and all that. They have good, skilled guys. Coach Kelly is a good football coach. They're going to win a lot of games. Q. Denard, he had over 500 of your guys' total, I don't know, 532 yards. Is that something that you want or would you rather have those spread out a little bit? COACH RODRIGUEZ: As long as we win. All 11 count. So if it's a quarterback, and everybody is surprised that a running quarterback -- all 11 count. Not playing with 10. If they came out with a rule and said you can only play with 10 guys, the quarterback can't run, we'd be in trouble if the quarterback can't do things. The rules allow everybody to play. That's a lot, I don't know if I've had a guy -- I've had some terrific quarterbacks. I don't know if I've had that many yards rushing and passing combined. But he'll get a few ice bags on him today and sleep on the way back, maybe on the bus, and rest up for the next one. Q. You said teams are defending you a certain way. Might that explain some of the difficulties you had on the ground with your running backs instead of Denard? COACH RODRIGUEZ: Well, I think, again, they did a nice job of moving some fronts and bringing some different packages. I thought our running backs ran hard. I'll have to watch the film to determine exactly what happened. But when the running back runs without a lead blocker, sometimes it's difficult on them. When Denard runs with a lead blocker, that's one extra guy. It's simple math. Again, it's not just that. The fact that he can run, and he's so instinctive, I think. He's going to keep getting better. As I said, when we watch the film, I'll bet you there's probably at least 12 to 15 plays that Denard will say: I missed it, which is pretty exciting going forward for us. Q. Can you talk about how important it was for Kovacs to get that interception in the third quarter when you hadn't really stopped Crist up to that point in the game? COACH RODRIGUEZ: It's huge. Jordan is a tough competitor. Many of you know this, the local guys know the story about him being the student body school start tryout walk-on guy a year ago to being our starting safety and playing at a high level every week. I thought he made some great tackles. Great physical guy. He's kind of the leader back there, has a whole bunch of freshmen, redshirt freshmen. Kind of keeps things together. Q. How many times in practice have you seen Denard break into the open like he did on the 87-yarder and what goes through your mind when does that? COACH RODRIGUEZ: In practice he's hands off. But we had seen it -- our defense had seen it all camp. It's hard to judge again because when you're going against each other, is it really our defense is bad or is Denard that good. In two games he showed it. There's going to be -- put a little caution here. Let's be patient. This is the second game as a starter. Still going to hit bumps in the road. But if he keeps making progress like this, it's going to be pretty exciting. One of the reasons I'll say this, again, that we feel we can run him more than typically is because we feel we have depth behind him. We have other quarterbacks we think can play. That gives us a lot more comfortable feeling than if we had nothing. We've got three quarterbacks we have a lot of confidence in and that way we can run Denard a little bit more. Q. You won despite not a great day from your kicker or punter. Did you think -- COACH RODRIGUEZ: Really? (Laughter) Wow Q. Did you think that you guys were a little further ahead in those positions at this point? COACH RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, I was disappointed. But, again, it's just one game. I can tell you this: I'm glad we didn't have to try a field goal at the end. Not that I didn't have confidence we couldn't make it. But after you miss two in a row, psychologically you may not be ready to go out there at the end. So we tried to call a play to get a first down and move forward. But those guys can kick. Brendan's a lot better than he showed today. And Seth Broekhuizen, I think he'll compete. And I don't know who will be the starter next week. And Will Hagerup is the first one back there in that room, probably disappointed in some of his punts, but he's a true freshman. And he's got a great future. I'm not worried about him at all. He's going to be fantastic. End of FastScripts |
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