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PENN STATE UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCEOctober 26, 2010Joe PaternoTHE MODERATOR: Welcome to our weekly teleconference with Coach Paterno. Questions? Q. Joe, does Rob Bolden have to pass any more tests before he's cleared to play? If not, do you expect him to play Saturday? COACH PATERNO: They tested him Sunday, and he still had some memory problems. They're going to test him again tomorrow, see where he is. If you ask me, if we had to make a guess, I'd guess he's not going to make it. But that does not mean that I know what I'm talking about. As I said to most of you, I don't have an MD at the end of my name and I'm not a psychiatrist. And they're watching him very closely, and obviously we'd love to have him play. But we're not going to take any chances. Young man like that, regardless of whether he's a football player or not a football player, you'd want to be careful about it. So I don't -- I just don't know. But if they allow him to play, it will be because they're sure he's okay. Q. Could you assess Matt McGloin's performance Saturday. And will he be the starter if Rob couldn't go? COACH PATERNO: Let me answer the latter part of the question. We'll let the kids compete this week with the idea we won't have Bolden and see what happens. I thought McGloin -- poor kid, I always kill his name -- when Mack went in the game, I thought he had to go in there with very little preparation. I thought he did a very good job. Obviously, the first play was a great one. And I think he got carried away on the second one when he threw the interception. But I thought he did very well under the circumstances and will get better if he has to play more. Q. Could you assess the Silas Redd performance on Saturday, and are you planning on using him more, getting him more into the offense? COACH PATERNO: I think we have -- obviously Royster is our first stringer. He's played a lot of football, has had a lot of success, knows what's going on, is very dependable. Then both Green and Redd we like very much and we'd like to get both of them a little bit more work. So for me to tag Redd in front of Green would probably not be fair. I think both have good potential. I think Redd played maybe 18, 20 plays, and I think Green played 18, 21 -- I don't know. But they're both playing about the same amount of time. Green plays maybe a little bit more on special teams. I'm not sure about that. But I think that it's a nice situation. Both those kids could be good football players eventually. But right now they're sharing some opportunities. Q. Is Newsome practicing full strength, and how much work do you expect him to get with the first team quarterback this week? Is Kevin Newsome back to practicing at full strength after you said he was sick last week and had a knee injury? COACH PATERNO: Well, Newsome practiced yesterday. And I'm assuming he's going to practice the rest of the week, and we'll see where we go from there. I don't think the knee injury was a serious one. I think it probably scared him a little bit. But our medical people don't think there's anything wrong with Kevin. And that Kevin can compete. And I think that's what he's going to do this week. As I say earlier, we're not going to make a decision until we've got a chance to see these guys operate with some pressure on them in a week of practice and we'll go from there. Q. I wanted to ask you about Chaz Powell, where you think he might fit into your defensive plans this week; and is there even a shot he could take away some playing time away from Stephon Morris? COACH PATERNO: Chaz Powell must be have an advertising agency. He gets more interest. Chaz -- I think he'll play probably a little more this week. I don't know. Obviously Morris had some tough plays he had to make. He made a couple of real good ones and got hurt on a couple. But I think Chaz has got -- Chaz Powell has a lot of ability. If I would be critical of him is every once in a while he loses his concentration. And when you're playing where he's going to be playing, at the corner, you run the pressure every down. I think he needs to have a good week. If he has a good week, he'll play more. Q. The running game had a good second half last week, got off to kind of a slow start. How important is it to get off to a quicker start this week and try to control the ball against Michigan's offense? COACH PATERNO: I think we've got to play 60 minutes of really good football, both sides of the football. I think it's amazing, when you look at the tape of Michigan's game against Michigan State, against Iowa, people like that, how well they played. Outside of turnovers and a couple of major mistakes, they're every bit as good as those two football teams on those particular days. So I don't think it's a question of how we start or what, it's whether we're ready to play 60 tough minutes. Don't make a lot of mistakes. And as I've been saying for the last couple of weeks, make some good plays, make some things happen for ourselves, which has been one of the problems we've had as a football team. We just don't make some big plays. We've had a long run for a touchdown outside of the kickoff return. We've dropped some tough passes in a couple of tough games. So we've got to make some things happen for ourselves. But I think the first reaction to your question would be: We can't worry about just half the game; we gotta play the whole football game. Q. Seems to be a lot of good quarterbacks in the Big Ten this year. You've seen a couple of veteran guys at Iowa and Minnesota and now you have a different guy, younger guy to prepare in Robinson from Michigan. Can you talk about the group as a whole in the Big Ten from top to bottom, the quarterbacks? COACH PATERNO: I think obviously you have observed the same things I have. I haven't seen everybody play every game. But I think that there are some talented athletes playing quarterback, more so than we've had. A lot of experience. Kid like Webber we played last weekend, Webber started 40 games. I don't know how many. Obviously the kid that has gotten the most attention would be the quarterback at Ohio State. This kid here came out of nowhere. What did he run, for a couple of hundred yards earlier in the year against a couple of football teams. He's awfully dangerous. He's got great instincts running with the football. Throws the ball well when they decide he's going to, they're going to give him the protection he needs. But he's tough to rush. He's tough to get after, because he does move so well. And I think that -- I don't know of anybody in the league that doesn't have a pretty good quarterback. When I say pretty good, probably better than that. Probably much better than that. Q. Although he only played for a quarter and a half last week, did you feel like -- could you assess Rob Bolden's performance? It kind of looked like maybe he had a break-through game. He was playing at a really high level until he went down. COACH PATERNO: Well, I think he's still coming along. I've tried to get across that when you haven't had a spring practice and you've got to be careful with what you put in that a kid can handle. We've had the kind of injuries at key spots. We've had to rearrange our thinking about what we're going to do with the tight end, the two tight end thing. We're playing with a true freshman at tight end right now. The other one is down. It's a make-shift football team each week. And I think he did a tremendous job and hopefully he's going to be okay this week and we'll have him. But I think he's all business. Not very spectacular. Doesn't talk that much. He's not a guy that's bouncing around out there. He does his job. Pays attention to details. Does his homework. And I think everything considered, darn good year. And I just hope he's going to be okay. Q. A few of your young defensive tackles, Jordan Hill and DaQuan Jones, has had to move outside because of all the injuries you've had up front. Has that been a tough transition for them, and how do you think they've handled that? COACH PATERNO: I think they've handled it well, but it is a tough job. There's an awful lot of pressure. We've talked to -- the league is tough. The league's tougher this year than I think any year that I can remember that we've been in it. You watch Purdue play against some of their clubs, they play really good, and yet they've got a Ohio State game a really good lickin' and it surprises me that it would be that -- that the difference would be that great. Everybody in the league, to me, looks good. Even the Indiana/Illinois game, you know, the score would fool you. Indiana turned the ball over five, six times. They gained over 400 yards against Illinois. So it's a tough, tough league. And I think when you ask kids to change positions in a spot where they're highly visible, where people can arrange to do things to take advantage of it, it's tough. But I think they've held their own. Q. You gave up 830 yards the last two weeks. Is that a bit of a concern that you've been giving up that many yards the last two weeks? COACH PATERNO: Sure, it's a concern. What else do you want know say? We're trying to get a little better. I said after the Illinois game I didn't think we had played very well defensively. I thought we played a little better against Minnesota, but you've got to give the other guys credit. The quarterbacks, the running backs, the size of the offensive lines that we're playing against. The organization, the coaching. Yeah, but it's still -- when you give up that kind of yardage, it concerns you. Q. Was Bolden's injury officially ruled a concussion? And how impressed have you been with the way medical science has come with concussion research and head injury research with all the computers and things? COACH PATERNO: You guys ask me questions, I don't know the answer to those things. I've said this a million times to you guys: I only worry about things I can do something about. When it comes to something where it's a decision I can't make and shouldn't make, I say, hey, tell me what went on. When they tell me what's going on, I try to get some things done. Right now Bolden's a question mark. I have relayed that into what's happened around the world, no. All right? I don't know. So I can't -- I can't answer that. Q. Was there some misunderstanding initially when he came out, because Mike looked like he tried to get him to go back in the game -- COACH PATERNO: Who is this? Q. When Rob came out initially, was there a little misunderstanding of what his injury was? Because Mike looked like he tried to get him to go back in for either -- what happened there? COACH PATERNO: Mike was concerned about the kid aggravating the injury. That's what happens sometimes. A kid gets hurt; he's got to be bravo. You've seen it happen many times. Kids come off, holding their legs and all that stuff, and all they do is aggravate an injury. In a situation like that, Bolden, we've never seen him hurt. And Mike was trying to say: Sit down, let them look at you. Let them look at you, which I think was very responsible on Mike's part. I thought that was something that everybody would say: Gee, that's a great job Mike did. He tried to get the kid to just sit down until they had a chance to look at him. Q. If Bolden can't play, how would you expect McGloin to play if he has to start his first start? COACH PATERNO: I said I don't even know if we're going to -- one more time. We have a couple of kids who are going to practice this week. Whichever one looks as if he's better prepared for this particular game, if Bolden can't play, that's the one who will play. How does he play? That's why we play. I hope he will play well. I don't care who we play, they'll play well. And what else can I tell you? Q. Can you talk about the challenge your defense faces, because it appears, at least watching Michigan, that they play an extraordinarily fast tempo, that might be a little bit more unique than maybe what you've seen so far this season, even if Robinson or Forcier are in the game? COACH PATERNO: We've played against people who are fast. I don't think we've played against anybody who is any better offensively than Michigan is right now. Michigan is, as I said earlier, I think Michigan's offense has been very, very good. If they had not had some turnovers against a couple of very good football teams, they might have won another game or two. I think there's no question that they have a fine offense and it's going to be a very difficult job for us. The quarterback, as we said earlier, there's a lot of good quarterbacks in the league. And certainly Michigan's got a third kid that didn't play that was one of the more sought-after kids in the country. They're a good football team. Got a heck of an offensive line. So we've got our hands full. Q. Any chance Curtis Drake and Andrew Szczerba, is there any chance that either of them plays again this season? COACH PATERNO: Szczerba, he's out for the year. Q. What about Curtis Drake, are you thinking of -- COACH PATERNO: Curtis Drake is out for the year. You kind of fooled me with the two names. I thought that was well known. Q. Would you be open to using multiple quarterbacks depending on Bolden's status this week, or would you rather settle on one guy, settle on one starter? COACH PATERNO: Play it by ear. I hope I've got options. The more options I've got, the better I like it. Q. It's going to be the last Penn State/Michigan game for at least two years; is that just one of the unfortunate side effects of expansion, not being able to play the other teams in the other division as much? COACH PATERNO: There again, I haven't thought about next year. We don't play Michigan next year? I know Michigan had an open day when we played them this year. I know Ohio State has an open date before we play them. All right. I think the Big Ten does a great job scheduling. But honest to goodness, we don't play Michigan next year here? Are you sure about that? Okay. Who are we playing instead? Geez, you mean you know the negative but you don't know the positives. There's got to be somebody. It's probably Nebraska. Probably sticking Nebraska right in there. They're probably going to -- they've got to get -- we're going to play Nebraska every year. That I know. Because Tom Osborne and I talked. So we're playing them. So they may have replaced. For a year or two, I don't know. I really don't. Q. How do you prepare for a quarterback like Robinson? Do you have guys on the foreign team who can do some of the things that he does; do you put a running back there? How do you handle that? COACH PATERNO: We have some of the guys who can do some of the things he does. But we don't have anybody that quick and who can do -- we try to emphasize the fact that you can't get careless with them. You've got to understand anytime he's got his hands on the football he's liable to just turn it on and make a big play on you. So everybody's got to be alert and know where he is, and knowing when he's got the football, that kind of thing. But we've only practiced one day. So it's hard for me to tell you where we are with it. But we're not going to stop him. He's going to make yardage on us, because he's too good. He's too good for that. I just hope that we can get, that we can make some plays on him. Q. Have you thought much about how this game, what it could do for your season, a big game at night? You've already had a couple of losses. But how do you look at what this game could do for you? COACH PATERNO: I think, number one, it should be a fun night. I mean, that's why you're in it. Night game at home, thank God we're not on the road. Night games on the road are not -- no sleep Saturday night. Discipline. At least we're home, we can go home and go to bed. I think it's going to be -- it should be that kind of a game that you look forward to. How would that affect us for the rest of the season? I think I'm trying to take it one at a time. I can't worry about what's it going to mean later down the road. I just hope we play well. I hope we play better. Hope if we get licked we get licked because they beat us and we don't beat ourselves. That kind of typical coaching reaction to a big game. Q. Evan Royster is on the verge of becoming the all-time leading rusher. Could you talk about his career and what he's meant to the program? COACH PATERNO: I think he's done a good job. Q. You talked a lot about last week about emotion, playing with more emotion and enthusiasm, having the team play with that. Is that still a point of emphasis now? Is that something that you think you need to concentrate on for the rest of the year for this team? COACH PATERNO: Sometimes I don't get the first part of it. I know you want to know what I'm concentrating on. Q. Last week you talked about emphasizing playing with more emotion and enthusiasm. I'm wondering if that's something you feel you need to reemphasize every week? COACH PATERNO: I hope it carries over on that, obviously. I think I'm responding to the question about how this game, where does it stack up as far as the whole season goes. I've tried to get across to you, if Penn State plays Michigan and we're not excited about playing that game, then we're in the wrong business. And the kids went to the wrong school. I mean, I'm hoping we're going to play with a lot of emotion, a lot of enthusiasm. Hope the crowd is great. Hope it's just a great night for college football. And I hope we can, as I said earlier, hope we play well, as well as we can play. And that obviously entails emotion. You don't want to go out there and sit on your hands. We want to go out there and have a lot of emotion and have a lot of fun and see how good -- we're playing a good football team. We're not playing -- we're playing a good football team and Rich has done a good job. He put up for a couple of years where they struggled a little bit. But he's got the kind of football team now he's comfortable with. And they show it. So it's going to be -- it should be a game people enjoy watching. Q. Gary Klingensmith has been a long-time coach over at Gallaudet, used to play for you back in the '60s. What do you remember about Klingensmith? COACH PATERNO: What happened to Gary? Q. What do you remember of him? COACH PATERNO: How long have you got? Kling is one of the great characters. Great guy. He was deaf. He used to get in the huddle, and I tell a couple of cute stories, two things that still stick out in my mind after all these years because he played in the middle '50s. He never went offsides. He used to watch -- of course in those days they were all around our backs. We didn't take running backs and make whiteouts out of them. So he was always there. And he always watched the center. And he got so good at it, he could almost tell when the center was going to -- because they all have little idiosyncrasies, and he would get -- he would look at them, probably the first guy off the ball, legally. We go out to Ohio State, the year we beat them, one of the years we beat them out there. The first play of the ball game, he is offsides from here to the wall. And had never been offsides before. So after the game, the reporters asked him: How come you went offsides? You've never been offside. He said: This is the biggest crowd I ever played in front of and I wanted to make sure they knew who the deaf kid was. (Laughter) That's a true story. In those days, we mirrored the left half back and right half back. I think he was playing with Jimmy Kerr. Playing one half back and he was playing the other. We got somebody banged up. So Rip came to me and said: What will we do for a back-up guy if something happens here? I said: We can try to get Klingensmith to not only play the left but play the right as well right half back as well. He said: Why don't you go talk to him. So I wanted to make sure he knew that Rip okayed it. I grabbed him before practice. We had a kid by the name of Ronnie Coats who was from the same area, Western Pennsylvania, from Belle Vernon. Kling was from Brownsville and Coats was from Belle Vernon. I said to him: Hey, Klingy, Rip wants to know if you can play left half back and right half back. And he laughed. All at the same time. That was after -- he had trouble with me because I used to -- but he's a great kid. Great competitor. And he turned out to be heck of a coach. I think he was the first deaf coach ever hired at Gallaudet. He was the head coach at Gallaudet. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. End of FastScripts |
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