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RUTGERS UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 25, 2010

Greg Schiano

COACH SCHIANO: Okay, guys. Certainly had our opportunities to win that football game, but we were unable to do it; coaching, playing, all things. We just didn't do well enough. And North Carolina did just a little bit better than we did. So they go home with a win, and we don't.
But we'll get better. We'll learn from this and we'll get better. I'll open it up for questions, try to give you what you need.

Q. Are you concerned about the confidence level of Tom now?
COACH SCHIANO: No, I'm more concerned about his health. You know, the reason that he didn't start the second half is he had gotten hit in the ribs, and he was hurting. And it's hard, when you're a coach, you know, and you've had experience with a guy, I asked him, "Can you go?" Because I feel very comfortable with Chas. I said, "Tommy, can you go?"
And when he came out, he said, "I can go, Coach.
"Then when he got hit, he came out again, I said, "Can you go?"
And he said, "I can go."
Now that's where you have to make a decision, I think I made the right decision, he made some nice throws down the stretch but then he had an interception. Now is the injury the reason? You know what, I can second guess myself for a long time on that one. All I know is that together we felt that he could, and that's the decision we made.
I know he's hurting right now. But you know, that's what the great stories are made of; when you lead your team back, limping, everybody wants to write about those when they work.
When they don't work, hey, it didn't work. That's as far as I can go. There wasn't anything more than that.

Q. When was he hit?
COACH SCHIANO: Right before the -- I didn't even know about it until in the half-time they told me. He told them middle of half-time and so I guess he was just trying to see if he could gut through it, and the pain got worse. He'll probably be able to tell you better than I, but that's the report I got.
So as I said, I'm comfortable with Chas and we put him right in there. And unfortunately he didn't get great protection the couple of passes he threw. But that's the situation with Tommy.

Q. How concerned are you with the offense?
COACH SCHIANO: Well, obviously, I am concerned, because we are not doing the things we need to do. You know, you need to be able to run the football, he rushed for 87 yards, I think it was -- I think it was, yeah.
There's some good plays we are making, but we are just not -- we are making too many that aren't good. We just got to go back to the drawing board and figure it out. We have some pieces. There's some pieces that have to get better. We started Antwan in the game today, and I can't tell you how he played; I'd be lying if I said I thought he played well or not. I have got to watch the tape on that one.
I do know this: There are a couple runs that were there and we had a couple snaps that maybe got us off-timing a little bit, and we need to get better at that, shotgun snaps in the wildcat package, in the regular, confessional offense.

Q. Can shuffling back and forth from the wildcat package to the traditional offense cause problems for Tom's rhythm?
COACH SCHIANO: Can it? We have studied a lot of wildcat teams. I don't think it affected Arkansas when they were doing it really well. When you are doing it well, it doesn't affect you. When you are doing it poorly, it affects you. So when you're cooking it it's 10-0 and you're moving the ball and scoring, everybody loves it.
We need to figure out that mix I guess, because -- is it flow? I don't know. I tend to believe it's more making a block and reading the block correctly; whoever is running the football, when it comes to running the ball. I don't know if it's flow. I don't think so.
Now, Tom, is that the question when Tom comes out? We have talked about that. That's an opportunity for you to get to the sideline, catch your breath, fix up and get ready to go back in there. So I have addressed it. I don't think it's an issue.

Q. How concerned are you about Tom moving forward both physically and also just where his mental state is at?
COACH SCHIANO: More physically than his mental state. Tom made some big-time throws and our receivers, I thought we made some catches today that were big time catches so that's a step in the right direction, right? Now protection was not good. Now was we holding on to it too long? I've got to watch. I've got to watch and see that. But when you have five sacks, that's obviously not good on the protection side.

Q. What about Tom locking into Sanu? Are you concerned about that or is that the play call?
COACH SCHIANO: Well, some of it's a play call. But I think there's other guys who caught balls, too. There's opportunities, I think, for everybody. We maybe -- maybe we locked into Sanu more than we should have. I'll look at that. I'll look at it and review it. Pretty good player, too. I want to get him the ball. One of my fears that I always have to be careful of is: Is he getting tired, running the ball, calling it in the huddle, running the ball, going to wide out, running the route. I think we've really got to keep a close eye on if we wear him out.

Q. Have you seen -- in the last couple of weeks in practice to want to use him tonight?
COACH SCHIANO: I think he did a good job showing us that he had some stuff to him in preseason, and then he got injured. When he came back, he's worked hard. And I thought that was a tremendous catch in the dig route later in the game. He went up and got that thing, and that's what Division I receivers do.

Q. Sanu did a great job on the touchdown drive, but a lot of the rest of the time, Tom had to come off the bench at third-and-long. So when you look at that, how many times he came in on third-and-long, how successful was the wildcat, do you think?
COACH SCHIANO: Well, not successful enough with 87 yards rushing, that's for sure. We can -- I can tell you what could have been; but what is, is 87 yards rushing. So it wasn't productive enough.

Q. Could you talk about the defense a little bit?
COACH SCHIANO: I thought the defense, save a few plays, I thought they played at a high level. This guy was throwing for four-something a game. I don't know what did he throw for, 204?
We busted -- we didn't bust; we just didn't play one coverage correctly; that long third down pass was a shame. The DPI I couldn't see it, it was on the other side of the field; I don't know if it was or it wasn't. We made a few plays where we had guys in place that were frustrating and they didn't fire their gun. The one reverse, we had a guy this place and just didn't go do it.
We missed tackles in the first half which we haven't done, but, you've got to give credit to North Carolina. That No. 34 is a strong guy, and I'm not sure that we did it the way we were supposed to. So the combination of the two can make you look -- not look good.
But again, at the end we have a stat around here, when you hold someone to under a hundred yards rushing at Rutgers, I think we are like 29-2, something like that. So we it and we didn't win the game, so got to do better.

Q. Did Tom have anything done at half-time? He said he maybe didn't mention it toward the end, did he put on a jacket, anything at all?
COACH SCHIANO: Trainers took care of him. They let me know as I was coming out and I'm not sure what they did and I don't think we are allowed to talk about that, anyway. Whatever trainers do and doctors.

Q. I know you obviously don't measure by how a game is per seed on the outside but I do think this one was sort of barometer-measuring stick, a higher-quality opponent, is there a level of just -- or can you describe just a level of disappointment in terms of where it tells you your team is at to miss opportunities like that?
COACH SCHIANO: Well, we are a young football team that hopefully we can learn from these type of experiences.
You know, we left too much on the table today. Now, it's not that -- you know, I don't like listening to coaches say, we left too much on the table. I sounds like a lot of guys. They had something to do with it, right? They picked off the pass, going in the red zone, that linebacker did a great job, he flipped his hips with one way before Tommy could see it, and he flipped his hips back and intercepted the pass. It was a great play by a very good player. They made that happen; as much as we did, they did.
So somebody made a play, but we are driving, 10-0; we are driving to go in and at least hopefully kick a field goal, and then we don't.
So it's disappointing, but this is a young team that's going to stick together, and we are going to get better and we are going to learn from these examples. I can't wait to see the tape and watch what was happening in the run game that we were not opening up more space. But again, our talented defensive football team, those three linebackers are as good as there are in the country. And I saw a couple of opportunities where there was holes, and then all of a sudden there wasn't holes, and I tried to stand in a position where I could see that today; knowing that they were playing and knowing what we were doing on offense, and they sucked him up and closed him up fast.

Q. How much was Joe Struggling? What was Joe he's physical status? Did he come close to not playing?
COACH SCHIANO: Joe gutted it out. Joe has done a little bit more each day in practice. He's not 100% but he played, and I thought he did a decent job; without watching the tape, I thought he looked pretty good.
I thought Jordan did some good things, as well. But again, at the end of the day, some good things, we didn't do enough good things, and it's not just them. I mean, I didn't do enough good things as a coach to put them in a position to make those plays; and thus, we are looking at a 17-13 game that we had opportunity to win. I'm not going to say we should have, because they did, we didn't. We had opportunity to, and we didn't cash in.

Q. Are you concerned that Tommy might not start next week?
COACH SCHIANO: Look, when a guy is hurting as bad as he is, my history is that he's really going to be sore for a while. I don't know. I don't want to speculate. That wouldn't be right. We'll find out, and as I know, I'll let you guys know. It will probably be one of those things, we won't know for a little bit.
Okay, guys, thank you.

End of FastScripts

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