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UNIVERSITY OF IOWA MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 2, 2010

Jeff Horton

COACH HORTON: All right. Obviously a crazy week and it's only Tuesday with everything that's going on here in the Twin Cities.
I think looking back on the Ohio State game, obviously we got beat by a better football team. I think they dominated us in all areas. They are very talented, and the farther we got behind, I think the more it showed. We just couldn't keep up.
The thing I was disappointed in, I thought we got sloppy. I think there in the second half when we have a punt block for a touchdown, we have a sack, fumble recovery run in for a touchdown, those are things that probably disappoint me more than anything. Because I think we've done a good job protecting the football, protecting the quarterback this year. We got sloppy there. And then in the special teams, there's no excuse for me for that to happen. So playing Ohio State, giving them any points, is not conducive to even having a chance to win.
I thought we started well in that game. Obviously we scored in four plays. The first time we had the ball. We only had five plays in the first quarter, and then when we got in the second quarter there, down 14-7, we drove it down well again and then we missed the field goal. You can just kind of feel the momentum get sucked out of you a little bit there. I was mentioning last week, we need to take advantage of every opportunity we get when we get a chance to score, we didn't do it. For a struggling football team it makes it that much harder because of the momentum shift.
I remember in the second quarter, about five minutes left, maybe a little more, not much more, it was 17-7. And I actually felt pretty good where we were at that position, then we couldn't get out of the half quick enough. It ended up being 31-7. You get behind Ohio State 31-7, that's not a good thing. They're talented. They are going to be able to tee off on you and get after you. And like I said, when it got a situation there in the second half that we got sloppy and just didn't finish it the way we wanted to.
I think Michigan State this week, they are a big, physical football team. They are obviously 8-1 and ranked. They are coming off a loss last week to Iowa, but they are still very talented football team. Probably if you look at the teams atop the Big Ten with them being one, you look at schedules, they have got the best path to the Rose Bowl, so we anticipate them coming back home and being ready to go and being prepared. And we'll have to get ourselves ready to go in there and get after them.
I think they ran into a buzz saw there at Iowa. Iowa kind of had their backs to the wall after losing to Wisconsin a week before. They jumped out on them early. I think a couple of the interceptions they had big returns with, and then getting ahead 30-0 obviously when Iowa did, and when you get behind teams like that, it is hard to come back on them. But I know Coach Dantonio has done a great job there at Michigan State and he will have them refocused and recharged and ready to go this week.
I think on offense they are very, very balanced. I think they run the ball very well. And they also pass the ball very well. They have had great success doing that this year. I think they have a talented group of receivers with Bell and Cunningham, the two backs, Baker and Bell are both kind of a double-headed monster. Kirk Cousins, the quarterback, has done an outstanding job this year, very consistent. Delivers the ball, spreads it around very well. And they are big and strong up front.
Defensively they are very aggressive. I think they have the best linebacker in the country in Jones. He's all over the field making a lot of plays. And Worthy up front, the D-lineman is very good. And last week you saw Rucker come back and play, and I know he is listed to start this week. And they like to blitz. You know, I'd say they blitz over 50% of the time. So we have to be prepared for that because they are really going to get after us. And obviously as the game went on the other day, Ohio State had some success doing that, so we have to be prepared and ready to answer that.
I think the biggest thing, we need to respond. We need to really kind of circle up and get ourselves ready to go and regroup and refocus and rechannel our energies to get going. I think it's a tough stretch obviously we are in. Losing this many games in a row is not fun, it is not easy, and it tests you as a person. And you have to keep marching on and moving forward, starting with me as a head coach for that. I am counting on all of us to respond to it, players and coaches. Have a great week of practice and get ourselves ready to go Saturday at 12:00 there at Michigan and get ready to beat Michigan State there in their home stadium. It would be a tremendous challenge.
I think if you look at the depth chart, you see that we had some changes. I think the biggest thing right now, you know, we're thin in the offensive line. I think Matt Carufel is very doubtful that he will play. Dom Alford is very doubtful that he will play, so that basically leaves us with one lineman backing up all five position, being Ryan Wynn. If something happens to two of them, we probably will slide big Curt Hughes down and he will have to be a lineman. But hopefully we can get out of that game with that going on. On defense, I change a few things. Kendall Gregory-McGhee probably start for us at defensive end. And we move Anthony Jacobs inside and give him a chance there.
Some things we dealt with there that I will put out, suspended Brandon Kirksey for one game. I love his passion, I love his energy. I like what he brings to the practice and to the field every day. There is a right way and a wrong way to do things, and as leader, a captain, I thought he let us down as that person. So we had a good talk on Sunday and he will be suspended for this game, and I fully anticipate him to come back next week and play his best game of the year against Illinois.
You'll notice Ra'Shede Hageman and Michael Carter not on the depth chart. I think it is in their best interests that they focus entirely on academics. Trying to do what is best for this football team and for the next coach coming in. That he has as many guys back as he possibly can. And I think they need to channel all that focus and energy into making sure they are ready to go for the spring semester.
So with that obviously we had some shuffling, but it was something we felt needed to be done. And again, I think it's in those young man's best interests.
So with that, we'll open it up for questions.

Q. Brandon, is that something on the field or off the field?
COACH HORTON: It is just a combination of things. I think there is a right way to do things, and he didn't do it and we talked about it and it's handled. And I think he will be better for it.

Q. Is that the practice issues?
COACH HORTON: Practice issues? No practice issues, no, he is awesome. I love that kid and what he brings. He just knows there is a right and a wrong way to do things, and we talked it out. We are in good shape.

Q. How many weeks will Carter and Hageman be out?
COACH HORTON: They will be out the rest of the time. They will focus on academics the rest of the year.

Q. If mid-terms or something, how do you analyze or stay on top of it and come to this conclusion?
COACH HORTON: We stay on top of them daily with progress reports and different things. Obviously midterm, we've passed that now, so it is a crucial time for them.

Q. Did Matt have an MRI?
COACH HORTON: He did. I can't really, you know, I don't want to go into what it is.

Q. Do you expect to see him back?
COACH HORTON: Yes. Yep, yep. I think he'll have a chance. And I forgot to mention Jon Hoese. I don't think Jon will be back this week. We are hoping to get him back next week. He is getting better, but not all the way there.

Q. What is [Inaudible question]
COACH HORTON: He's tweaked a little bit, too, in his leg.

Q. How bad are the grades of these players? What is their reaction to it?
COACH HORTON: I will not discuss that. [Laughter]

Q. Coach, talk about football. Iowa was able to shut Michigan State down behind the defense. Anything they did special?
COACH HORTON: I think those turnovers really were big. They ran the one back for a touchdown, and they ran the other one back to about the 5-yard line and that gave them 14 points. I thought Iowa did a good job. Michigan State still played the run pretty well. Iowa made some big plays in the passing game. You know, I think that was a big key, and just, you know, they jumped up on them so fast, it was hard for Michigan State to recover.

Q. When you look at Michigan State, obviously they come from nowhere into last week. Where do you see and how they put this thing together?
COACH HORTON: You know what? I see a team that I think everybody remembers a year ago had a lot of adversity. They had a lot of off-the-field issues and discipline problems and different things. I think maybe they circled up as a group and hey, we're going to get that corrected and move in the right direction.
And even this year with Coach Cantonio getting sick with the heart issue, and Donny Treadwell stepping up and rallying, I think they beat Wisconsin one of the games when he was out. So they have been through some adversity, but they stayed together. And probably through the off-season they all made a nice commitment to each other that hey, we're going to put all this stuff behind us and move forward. And you can see it.
And they've played -- I think they are just a big, physical football team. All of my years in the Big Ten I always thought Michigan State had the best-looking players. They just always look good they look like an NFL team when they get off the bus. And you can really see that talent on the football field. Now they are doing an outstanding job this year.

Q. How big of a blow is it to lose Matt on the offensive line?
COACH HORTON: When you are that thin, we can't get any thinner. I mean there is nobody because I don't want to pull -- you know, there are linemen we are red-shirting, but that's tough at this time of year. And you know, he is a veteran and he has played a lot of football. But it is a chance for Ryan Orton to step up and get a chance to play. And he came in the other day at the end obviously, and he played some this year, so I feel comfortable with him in there. And others will be back this year, so that's good.

Q. How about it work with moving the tight end over?
COACH HORTON: When you send in a play, you probably have to send in a piece of paper with it. [Laugher]
I think that hopefully wherever he moved into, the other lineman would have to help him out there. There are obviously some carryover with tight ends and the O-line, they have got the same calls as far as identifying fronts and the different types of blocks. But still, it would be different, you know, instead of the end of the line, now you are in the middle of the line or wherever he maybe. It would be a challenge, especially in pass protections and picking up different blitzes. Fortunately for us, we are playing a team that will blitz 50% or 60%, so we would really be tested that way. But that's what we are dealt and have to figure out a way to get better. We will do some emergency work there, that's big.
And then we have to be smart with practice this week, because we only have six guys practicing. It is a lot of reps for six guys. You don't have anybody else to go in. And especially this late in the year, I think that's things we have to be aware of.

Q. How do you practice six positions?
COACH HORTON: Well, he played really almost every position since he has been here. As a freshman he started, he played tackle, he played guard, he played center. By playing center, it is the quarterback of the O-line, so he is the one that sets the mic, calls the schemes and stuff. So he is a smart guy. He is an engineering major and he will not be driving trains, he's going to be the real engineer in the building stuff. So he's -- Ryan is a smart kid and he will be able to pick it up. Yes, sir.

Q. You count on Tiree looks like he is picking things up. And then the tight ends and the fullback.
COACH HORTON: Sure. I thought it was great to Tiree, he really had not played much this year. Eric Lair and Curt Hughes and Collin McGarry before he got hurt with his concussion kind of handled that. So it was good. I think it is always like that with junior college players, if you can red-shirt them for a year and then give them two years, usually it takes them almost a year to figure it out. And usually you recruit a junior college player because you need them to come in and fill an immediate need. But it is still a big step. To me, it is no different than a freshman coming out of high school. You would hope you get the extra year, but he couldn't. Slowly but surely he is more into the swing of it and understanding things. For him, it was a big catch. He actually got tackled by -- I thought it was a horse collar, but he actually pulled him down by his hair. You know, he has the longer hair and the guy yanked him down when he went behind. But it was good to see him step up. I still think with Collin's situation and now possibly with Curt Hughes playing more line, it will probably be a bigger role for him this week. Especially now with Jon Hoese out, you obviously got to use the three tight ends, so one of them has to play full back a bunch too, so that will open up more times.
We basically should be able to run the same thing we do, we call it 21 personnel. Two backs, one receiver, which would be a fullback, which is one back, two tight ends, and now we can move those guys around. It should be pretty interchangeable.

Q. Can you run successfully against their front seven?
COACH HORTON: Say a couple of Hail Marys or something, I don't know. No, we have to stay at them. They are active. One thing, it teams like to blitz, they blitz into some things, but they will also blitz out of some things. We have to be able to recognize it and be able to get better plays and go from there.

Q. I mean you guys haven't struggled that much with the pass blocking until the Ohio State game. Do you think they revealed some weaknesses?
COACH HORTON: Well yeah, that could be possible. I think the biggest weakness is we were behind so much. When you are behind like that, they hope you run the ball. So then, therefore, they weren't worried about the run. They were coming up field and blitzing corners. And really, it was like a feeding frenzy. They had nothing to worry about other than to try to get to the quarterback.

Q. Without much with the corner backs in recent weeks, and how thin you have been in general, how confident are you now when you are down guys?
COACH HORTON: You know what? The one thing we have done is the secondary, they played a lot of guys over there. I feel comfortable with the guys that are out there. That's who we have got. We have got Michigan State receivers, they all look like Da'Jon and Marqueis. They are big, tall receivers. We're not real big at the corners, but yet we have to be able to match up and cover and fight.

Q. Does this take away Henderson and Carter who were competing?
COACH HORTON: Kyle will be the starter, yeah.

Q. I mean with --
COACH HORTON: They will get opportunities, too, as they move up on the depth chart, yep.

Q. I completely understand why you are starting them, but what do you say to the fan, to say this season is a wash. Why don't you get the new guys, the younger guys some experience because this season is done?
COACH HORTON: Right, right. I think it's two-headed. I know a lot of people listen to this press conference because it is amazing how many emails I get right after the press conference.
I think it is a couple of different things. One, I mean you could go over our depth chart and we are really almost playing everything. I get a lot of emails saying why don't you play younger guys. We are playing, if I look at our depth chart, we're playing all the backs we got, all the tight ends, obviously all the linemen. All the of receivers, and that's counting MarQueis, a receiver, and defense they play everybody they got one way or another. So you can put a guy in, put the big thing with MarQueis, it's easy to say practice him more at quarterback during the week, but he practices so much at receiver.
And then the thing the other day maybe put him in late or not, to me they were blitzing like crazy and I didn't want to throw a guy in, his first time and have blitzes coming from all over when he hadn't had a chance to prepare for it during the week. People say well give him a chance to prepare more during the week. That's easier said than done when he is one of our featured receivers and he himself hasn't played receiver a lot.
So you know we're going to continue to look at that. If we feel an opportunity comes up down the road here, something we look at it more, just with where we are at number-wise. If we take him out, we really don't have -- I mean there is nobody to go in and fill the void. And as much as we have to fight for everything we get to take him out of there is not -- but we'll continue to look at it. If we think a situation, the right kind of situation presents itself, then, you know, we'll see what happens.

Q. So we can't but Weber at receiver?
COACH HORTON: No, he's beat up himself.

Q. [Inaudible]
COACH HORTON: No, he'll be out.

Q. With a couple of suspensions and the academic troubles with some of these guys, is that a carryover of the mid-season change and the firing?
COACH HORTON: I don't think so. You look all over the country, I mean there's not any program immune to it. Things happen. It's part of life. No program's squeaky clean, everybody has issues. I always say those issues are all encompassing. Nobody is immune to them. They are all equal-opportunity employers and they can affect any team at any time. So to me it is not any different or out of the ordinary. You just keep marching on. Guys learn and you move on.

Q. The lack of focus because of the --
COACH HORTON: I really don't. Our kids have worked hard and done things. And football is an emotional game, and when you're losing you get frustrated. Just like I said, there's not a coach here or a player that's not frustrated or feels good about losing. Obviously, you have got to control it the right way. I mean, nobody feels good about it. But there's a right way and there's a wrong way. And you have got to learn that.

End of FastScripts

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