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UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA MEDIA CONFERENCEOctober 26, 2010Jeff HortonCOACH HORTON: I guess to start it out, highlight was probably the pregame the other day. I thought it was funny there to watch Coach Paterno try to figure out who I was. You could see one of his assistants pointing at us over there. Originally they were pointing at Cos. He looks about as old as I do, not quite as in good of shape. One fingered me. Coach and I met. I saw that going on. I ran over there, introduced myself to him, talked to him. That was really an honor. He really is an icon in the coaching profession. He was great afterwards. Just said it was a tough situation, but I thought your kids played hard. You guys are hanging in there. Stay the course through the rest of the time. That was probably the best part of the day. We were really disappointed with that loss. We felt that it was a game that we really had an opportunity to win. We thought there were opportunities during that game that we didn't take advantage of in order to win that game. Kind of as I mentioned last week, when we get those opportunities, we really need to take advantage of all of them in order to be successful. So that was disappointing that we didn't take advantage of that. We did a lot of good things in that game. I know you sat there and looked at the same thing I did as the game unfolded. Looking at the postgame statistics and results, the bottom line was we didn't do enough to win that football game. And until we do that, we won't win a football game. So that's a new challenge for us this week. The things we've been talking about is we got to be able to strain more and sustain more. If we can do those things, we'll give ourselves an opportunity to win. I thought the two biggest probably areas we need to improve on, on defense we got to tackle better. I think our defense did good things. 2-for-10 on third down. 53 plays. 44 is usually a pretty good day for you defensively. The big plays they had, we just didn't do a good job of tackling. On offense, we just didn't finish off enough drives. I mean, we won the possession time. I think we had 84 plays. Again, that's not good enough. We have to do those things that's going to help us win, and that's create more big plays. If you can run 84 plays, only score 21 points, we need more big plays. I think that's a real key for us. Moving into this week, obviously we're excited about moving into the easy part of our schedule. You got Ohio State coming in. Couple weeks ago ranked No. 1 in the country. Pre-season picked to win, team picked to win the national championship. They have great players. That's the reason they've been in a lot of national championship games lately. Coach Tressel and his staff have done a great job down there obviously. You know what, it's a great opportunity for the University of Minnesota. I know I've gotten beat up a little bit or maybe even compared some, but as a competitor, I'll give you a little analogy: To me it's how do you think you can win. It's no different if you're a surgeon, you'd want the surgeon coming in to operate on you, you'd want him coming in that day thinking that he's going to do a great job, got a chance to make you better. You wouldn't want him coming in there thinking, This is a little tough, I don't know if I have a good chance to save this guy. Or a lawyer going against F. Lee Bailey: Can I beat him in court? Should I even show up? As a coach, we're going to do everything we can in preparation and working with the kids to try to win that football game on Saturday. When we hit that stadium at 7:00 to start it, I know our mindset is we got a plan in place, let's go do it. We really think we can win that game. Obviously the odds are stacked against us. We're not immune to that. But I think the competitiveness in you is what brings that out. As long as there's a chance, as long as we're playing that game, that game doesn't get canceled, we have a chance to win it. That's our job to get our kids to believe in that and do that. The big thing is, when you play an Ohio State team, you have to be in attack mode. You got to go right at 'em right from the start. I think if you sit back and wait for something to happen, sit back, hope they make a mistake, you got no chance. Whether it's kicking game, offense, defense, we got to come out and try to attack them right from the very start. It's going to be a title fight. We'll tell the kids today in the team meeting, Eventually you're going to be in that ring on Saturday. You got to start throwing punches or the results won't be good. It's going to be a big, physical game. We're going to try to back off this time of year anyway going into our ninth game, not be as physical in practice, still have great tempo, but not bang each other as much maybe this week so come Saturday night we're fresher, bodies are healed up a little better, we can be physical, play against them. I think with Ohio State on offense you start with Terrelle Pryor, him and the kid Newton at Auburn, probably two of the best passing/running quarterback combos in the nation. They seem to want him to throw the ball more this year. He's not running as much as he used to. He's still dangerous when he gets out of the pocket. He's a big-time player. I think you really got to contain him, stop him to have a chance for success. On defense they're very physical. They're solid up front. They really come after you, try to disrupt you. Looking at the latest statistics, they're third in the nation in total defense. Thank goodness we're not playing the first two, at least this week anyway. Michigan State might be that next week. It's going to be a tremendous challenge for us. But, you know what, we're going to be ready to play and we're going to try to make it happen, do some good things. On the depth chart, couple things. Austin Hahn, he'll be out for several weeks, defensive linemen, with a knee. Jon Hoese is doubtful. Kind of monitor that through the week. I would say he is doubtful. Dom Alford you probably noticed played a lot more last week at left tackle. Eddie Olson still having some trouble on his ankle. We'll monitor that during the week. Ed Cotton will be the starting fullback for us, as John is probably out at this point in time. Defensively nothing has really changed. We'll work like last week, Michael Carter and Kyle Henderson at that corner spot, let them compete, see who comes out the best there. I think, again, as we move into this, it's a situation that I feel confident with the kids that they're onboard with us. We haven't had issues that way. They're working hard, doing what we ask them. Put a great week of practice together. You know, we'll probably be indoors all this week, at least through later in the week when it's supposed to clear off and be nice. Saturday night is supposed to be nice. What an opportunity for most of the nation, national TV, chance to step up, show what we're all about. A lot of doubt obviously. Nobody giving you a chance to win other than inside this room. I'm not saying when you're in this room, but when our team comes in this room later on. One thing I'll promise you, we'll go out there and play hard. I thought the kids had great energy and really tried to play their tails off the other day. We had our chances, didn't finish things up as good as we wanted to, and we were disappointed because we were disappointed with that loss. I'll open it up for questions. Q. When you head into a game against an opponent like Ohio State, do you have to coach the players about not getting caught up in Ohio State's ranking and focusing on their own game? COACH HORTON: Yeah, I think that's the biggest thing. We're going to talk to them. Sometimes I think they're afraid to make a mistake. If you're afraid to make a mistake, you're probably a little hesitant. What I'm trying to emphasize to them is there's really no reason to worry about it. We're where we're at right now. Cut it loose. If you make a mistake, you know what, at least you're going as fast as you can. Try to take that pressure off of them. If you make a mistake, at least if you're going full speed, that mistake might turn into a big play. See it happen all the time. We're not going to wait on it, we're going to attack them, so let's go. Q. Going to go with more two tight end sets? COACH HORTON: We've done a lot of that this year with Curtis Hughes and Eric Lair playing at the same time. They're kind of interchangeable there. They've mixed in with that formation. We can do different things out of it. Tiree Eure has played more lately. That's kind of helped us with those threes guys. Q. (Question regarding Hughs.) COACH HORTON: I think just Curtis, he's just a good-sized body that through practice his preparation has been better. Q. What does it mean to have Jon Hoese? COACH HORTON: Jon is the kind of guy people on the outside might not notice him as much, but obviously on offense he's a big part of the package. Where he's missed also is in the special teams. One of the best special teams players we got, punt, kickoff return. Losing him in that spot, somebody else is going to have to step up. Q. You said numerous times that the focus of the remainder of the seasons was on the players. Now that Weber has passed the 10,000 passing yards, do you have any plans to use Gray on Saturday? COACH HORTON: I'm using Gray the whole game at wide receiver on Saturday. You know what, if you look at us offensively, what MarQueis has done and Adam has done, that's a big percentage of the offense. If you take one of those guys off the field, I don't know who the other guy is that can fill in and help with those kind of numbers. We're going to keep both those guys on the field 'cause we really feel they give us the best chance to win having both of them on the field. Q. Do you feel Jacobs has kind of found himself now? If so, how do you evaluate where he's at? COACH HORTON: Talking about the D-line? Q. Yes. COACH HORTON: Yeah, I think each week you see improvement. Obviously I didn't notice it as much when I was on the other side of the ball. I think he's done some nice things and really stepping up inside, in different packages after doing it on defense. He's doing some good job there. Q. Do you feel the consecutive losses now the team has had, going back to what you said a minute ago about the pressure, are they feeling the pressure of that do you think? COACH HORTON: I don't think so. I mean, it's obviously there, but I don't think it's a thing that they're really talking about. When they came out on Saturday, they really felt confident in what they were going to do, the plan. I don't think it's something that's lingering over them. We just got to get another opportunity this Saturday to end it. It is up to us to do it. Nobody else can help us. You'd hope on Halloween maybe somebody else would show up in Ohio State uniforms. But they're the ones that are showing up. So we got to be ready to go. Q. Do you expect a sense of normalcy, maybe this week players can get the change out of their minds a little bit, get back to concentrating on the practice till the game? COACH HORTON: I think that's a real good point. Hopefully second week into practice where we've tweaked some things, that's not unusual to them. They know the routine now with some things we changed up. As you mentioned, second week for Coach Hammock, I forgot to mention, he did a tremendous job for calling the plays for the first time last week. The other guys on offense did a great job. I thought the defensive changes worked out very well. Everybody is another week in, like you mentioned. Hopefully that brings more stability to an unstable situation, if that makes sense. Q. Adam Weber seems to like finding that go-to guy. Guys like Eric. Da'Jon McKnight seems to be that guy. What is he doing differently to stand out to you more? COACH HORTON: Right. I think the big thing with those two more, obviously Adam is throwing the ball and gave Da'Jon a chance to catch it. Da'Jon, viewing the film, a lot of his catches are spectacular. He's very confident. He's going to get it. That makes the quarterback confident if he can get it anywhere close to him, he can come down with it. It's great to see that chemistry developing. It was great last week to see MarQueis come back and have a big game. Had Da'Jon with eight catches. You had MarQueis with seven. Complement each other. If Ohio State feels they got to try to take away the one, you feel good about your match-ups with MarQueis. What's been good between MarQueis and Da'Jon and Eric, statistically they're all pretty close in catches. To us that's a good situation because you don't have that Decker separation. You can see why they had it, because of the kind of player Eric was. Hopefully this balances you up a little more and lets you attack in different ways. Q. Going to mix philosophy to throw it down the field more and attack that way? COACH HORTON: Yeah, no question. I think from the game, not afraid to -- Thomas did a good job I thought of changing up some tendencies that maybe we've established through when I was calling them, did some nice things, some change-ups on those that allowed us the opportunity to get the ball up. With Da'Jon and MarQueis, both those guys, if you get some one-on-one matchups, Ohio State I know certainly will feel good about who they got lining up, they're mano-a-mano, we're going to beat you one-on-one, hopefully we can get some big plays out of them. Q. (Question regarding USC and Ohio State.) COACH HORTON: I think Ohio State is a little different style of defense. Against USC, we felt that we could do some things running the ball on them. We kind of patterned our game plan a little bit after the way Stanford played USC, a little more power, physical running game. Had great success against them. I think with Ohio State, they're a little different style, so to speak. They're more individual one-on-one battles, try to disrupt things with movement. So that's why I think the difference, we can go at them and try to get them. Q. 16 points in the first half the last three games. Is there something you're seeing as a reason for these slow starts? COACH HORTON: No. We're trying obviously. I thought second drive of the game, we answered, came back and scored, was a big drive. I thought the drive right after halftime coming out of halftime after the way kind of all the momentum had swung in their favor after we didn't score, got the interception, ran it down and got the touchdown, I thought that was a big answer coming out in the second half. But it's not by design not to score. We're obviously still trying to put as many points as we can on the board. That's why I'm just saying, Let's just go for it. Q. (Question regarding Coach Tressel and Adam Weber and Terrelle Pryor.) COACH HORTON: You know, sometimes you're appreciated more maybe away from home, whether it's as a player, as a whatever. I think, you know, Adam Weber, when you look, I think sometimes people think it was kind of ho-hum that he threw for 10,000 yards, because they said he still hasn't won enough games. Playing football long enough in the Big Ten to be one of the five guys that have done it, to me that's pretty special. I don't care what kind of teams you have out there, you still have to go out there and play. A lot of people on teams that have struggled and haven't done that. I think that's a compliment to him. With Terrelle Pryor, obviously he's given a lot of people nightmares. If you look at his maturation from when he was a freshman to where he is now, he's come light years. I remember the Rose Bowl last year against Oregon. I think he almost single-handedly won that game and did a great job with it. When he hasn't had maybe his best game this year, he bounced back like he did against Purdue and had a tremendous game. Ohio State is trying to get back in the national title picture. We got to expect their best shot this week and we better be ready for it. Q. (Question regarding Adam throwing the ball more.) COACH HORTON: I thought it was a really good balance. I think it was pretty close, you know, run/pass ratio. I thought we ran the ball. As the game went on, I thought we ran the ball better until we got to the end where we had to play catchup a little bit. Coming out the second half, running the ball down the field for the most part, we had them reeling a little bit. The key thing, like any quarterback, not just Adam, the quicker you can get them into rhythm, the more confidence comes. Watching Eli Manning last night, started out 0-4, two interceptions. From then on, it was like he was throwing on air against the Cowboys. Different people, once it clicks on, that's when you got to build on it. Q. Any update on Ra'Shede? COACH HORTON: Ra'Shede is back reinstated. He'll practice, be in the mix this week. Did everything he needed to do last week. Onward and upward. Q. Is Rallis a hundred percent? COACH HORTON: That was a pleasant surprise the other day. Going into the game, we didn't think he would play as much as he did. He played almost the entire game, came out of it well. I think we got to be smart with him in practice this week. He adds a presence for us on the defensive side. It will be a challenge this week because Ohio State will give you a variety of formations, can hurt you running and throwing. He's athletic enough to where you can try to contain Pryor. The one thing when you watch all the film with Pryor, anyone that tries to tackle him from the waist up, no shot. The only way to get him, get down at his legs, pull him down. He's too big and strong. When you see him on Saturday, one of the best-looking players in the country. If you try to hit him up high, he's going to swat you off. You got to get him low. Thank you. See you Saturday. End of FastScripts |
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