UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 7, 2003

Tyrone Willingham

COACH WILLINGHAM: It's one of those situations where you try to figure out what adjectives, what positive adjectives you use to describe this guy. We've been, I guess you can say, fortunate or unfortunate to be able to see two really great receivers in the last two years. Without question, he is at the top of that twosome. He is very consistent and spectacular. That is a very difficult combination for us to defense or even attempt to defense. As of right now, no one has really done a good job of doing that.

COACH WILLINGHAM: I would almost hate to make a comparison, but I would think that Fitzgerald is quicker, faster, not quite as big, but both of them make plays, and they make spectacular plays. When you think you've got them down and out, they come through with the big catch.

COACH WILLINGHAM: We're always looking at trying to improve ourselves, trying to put our team in the best position to be competitive within the position and for the team. So the week gave us an opportunity to continue to look at our guys, hopefully develop their skill level, improve technique, and get them to be more comfortable and confident because no matter how you cut it, an offensive line group, like any group, needs to work together. And hopefully the more time they can spend together, the more productive they become.

COACH WILLINGHAM: I think for most of the week we were pretty consistent in terms of the guys we were working. I think it's been Ryan and one of the guards, Stevenson at the tackle, Molinaro at tackle, LeVoir at guard, and Morton at the center.

COACH WILLINGHAM: It always falls, I think, on the head coach first. So then, of course, that falls on the coaches, then to our players, our leaders, our seniors, et cetera. You can't accomplish anything, I don't believe, in a negative state of mind. So you've got to stay positive, you've got to be motivated to be positive. That's one of life's lessons, as I call it, that the game of football hopefully teaches you. Not only will we be able to use it for ourselves, but we can demonstrate it to other people so they can benefit from it.

COACH WILLINGHAM: Life is never easy.

COACH WILLINGHAM: You're welcome.

COACH WILLINGHAM: I think you hit it right on the head. Throwing the football is great. It's exciting. Fans love it. But if you go by the statistics of it, usually if you're throwing for 300, 350 plus yards, with no running game, then you usually don't fare well. So we've got to be committed to the run, we have to be patient with the run, and that's very difficult to be patient because the only thing that makes you really patient is success at it, and you want to stay with it. We have to make sure as coaches we're doing all the right things to have the right approach, the right attitude, and give that to our players so that they can be comfortable, patient, confident, and get some things done.

COACH WILLINGHAM: Your choice of "willing," no, we don't want to be willing to live with that (laughter). We've got to do better. That's what allows you to keep coming back to it. But on occasions, if you have to endure that to give it an opportunity to be successful, yes. Because no one moans or groans when you throw one incompletion. But if you have one run of less than three or four yards, then the whole - and coaches are the same way - the world is, gosh, in a downslide. So we've got to understand that. That's where hopefully the experience comes in, you can be patient with it and say, "Okay, let's keep grinding it, keep grinding it." But at the same time you can't rely on that and you're not being productive.

COACH WILLINGHAM: Statistics say that you don't win.

COACH WILLINGHAM: I think on a few times, I have, yes.

COACH WILLINGHAM: We've won some; we've lost some.

COACH WILLINGHAM: I don't know if there is a team on our schedule, from day one, that has been easy to gain your stripes against. Everyone knows this, this is not anything new. We play one of the most, if not the most, demanding schedule in the country. It's not an easy road, okay, to gain confidence or produce it. But the truth of the matter is, you always battle that which comes first, as they say, the chicken or the egg, success or confidence.

COACH WILLINGHAM: The truth of the matter is today that game doesn't exist. We're seeing an unprecedented level of competitiveness on every team that you play. So I don't think in today's football that that exists. You're probably better off having the schedule that we have, provided you can be successful.

COACH WILLINGHAM: Yes.

COACH WILLINGHAM: We will look at some things. I am not at liberty to tell you all the things we'll look at. But, yes, he's an excellent athlete. He has a very strong presence on our team - he should have a strong presence on our team. To incorporate him in the right way is the right thing to do for our team and the right thing to do for him.

COACH WILLINGHAM: If I'm not pleased with Brady's workouts this week... Being that I haven't seen those workouts yet, I'll refrain from comment on that.

COACH WILLINGHAM: I think you have to make your young men -- you have to put them in that situation at some point. We've done that earlier in the year. Our guy have seemed to adjust well, so it's not a big deal this week.

COACH WILLINGHAM: Absolutely none. I think he'll do a great job.

COACH WILLINGHAM: Well, I think our fullback position is consistent with our offense. We've not reached a level of performance in any of those areas that we'd like to have. Have they done some good things? Yes. Josh has done some wonderful things. Rashon has done some great things. But we're not consistent in that area. It's very much like all the other areas of our offense: we still need to gain consistency of excellent performance.

COACH WILLINGHAM: Only with the addition of pass-receiving skills. We usually list our fullbacks in terms of priority, a fullback is a blocker first, receiver second and probably a runner third, in that order. So that's the only difference. There may be some programs that he is just strictly a blocker. The only thing they want from him is a block.

COACH WILLINGHAM: I don't play necessarily west coast offense. I would say any collegiate offense, the difference is the sophistication of the pass game. That young man has to learn protections, defenses, et cetera. And because of that, it's just a normal progression I think you get with going into college football. But it is more difficult.

COACH WILLINGHAM: I always look at the best interest of the team and the young man. So it could go right down to the very last week of the season.

COACH WILLINGHAM: If it's for the best interest of the young man and the best interest of the team, yes.

COACH WILLINGHAM: You could have got to that right off the bat.

COACH WILLINGHAM: I don't necessarily say this week. But I think if the situation is right for John and our team, yes, you can see John.

COACH WILLINGHAM: I think people - and that includes us - are still trying to figure out the right way to stop him, the quarterback. It's a little different scheme than what we normally see. I think Coach Harris has backgrounds of what has been labeled the west coast offense. But I think he went directly to the east bay for his lessons because he is a more vertical push with this passing game, deep routs, great deep routs, and their utilization of the tight end has a vertical stretch to it also. It's a little bit different, and it's very difficult to contain because of the max protection that they use, that they give themselves every opportunity to get that ball to that wide receiver. By trying to apply pressure, you often have to commit a lot of people to it because of their maximum protection, which again now fits into their hands that they now they have the ability to isolate him one-on-one. And one-on-one, he's extremely dangerous. To answer your question, I'm not sure if that is the only way. I think people are still experimenting and trying to find the right way to slow him down. It may be just using a variety of things.

COACH WILLINGHAM: You lost me with the last half of that.

COACH WILLINGHAM: I would say yes to that, especially on the situation that we're in right now. We've not generated a lot of points. So anything that we can do to keep their offense off the field would benefit us.

COACH WILLINGHAM: I'm sorry, can you restate that?

COACH WILLINGHAM: I'm not sure on what involvement they had with the administration of Notre Dame. Yes, I am a member of the BCA.

COACH WILLINGHAM: First of all, it's not -- I'm trying to make sure you can gain the picture I'm trying to present. It's not about race; it's about the right person. The right person can be of any makeup. What I would imagine that the BCA - and I haven't spoken to them on this issue - what I would imagine they're doing is providing this particular University with a list of candidates that may be the right fit, okay?

COACH WILLINGHAM: What you detect from watching the two of them work together is, at least I believe, and I could be off on this, but I think there are a lot of things that they do spontaneously, their reads on particular routs that the two of them almost make together, that may not be entirely included in that rout, that they make adjustments based on the coverage, where people are lined, how they're being played at that very moment. That kind of chemistry is very difficult to defense. It's that moving target that's always moving, not quite sitting still for you. You think you've got it placed and cornered, and at the same time it's adjusting as you're adjusting. It becomes very difficult because of the way they work together to defend. I don't know if I have a college group. I don't know if I have a college twosome that I'll compare to this group.

COACH WILLINGHAM: I would say that would be a fair assessment (laughter). I've always stated that I believe running the football is an important ingredient to being a successful football team, period. I think it shows up in practice. I think it shows up on your defense. I think it just shows up in your overall attitude of your team when you can do that. One, it adds an element of toughness. Then as you get into the ballgame, it adds field position usually, and the potential to control the clock. Those things, usually if you can keep the ball away from your opponent, it makes it very difficult for them to score.

COACH WILLINGHAM: Again, I'm not as much into labels are others are. As long as our offense and team win, they can call us anything.

COACH WILLINGHAM: It creates a scenario that in most cases we've been chasing our opponent. We would much prefer to have them chase us. To come from behind, that's always a difficult position. So we'd love to get off to a fast start and put a little bit more pressure on our opponents to have to chase us.

COACH WILLINGHAM: Every day.

COACH WILLINGHAM: Well, I would hope the mark of all great quarterbacks is that they win. The thing that I'd like to see Brady do, whether it was Brady or Carlyle, Pat Dillingham or any of the quarterbacks that we've had in this short period of time, we want to see them produce wins. That is not just a quarterback thing as it is as much the quarterback and the team and the coaches.

COACH WILLINGHAM: I think it's become more important. I think over the time I've been coaching, you've gone from having no special teams coach to now having a special teams coach that are so talented that they actually coach the position of kickers themselves and know all of the fundamentals, coaches that travel, even though they're not noted as kicking specialists, but they make all the camps, all the clinics, they thoroughly understand the techniques of kicking and punting, the coverage responsibilities, how to protect. It's changed, like all of football has changed. It's become more sophisticated.

COACH WILLINGHAM: Are you free-lancing out of Boston?

COACH WILLINGHAM: First of all, I would say this: I think I've gone on record at some point of saying that I like our football team. I don't think it's an exaggeration for me to say that on the games we played, there's probably one game that we look back at and say the manner in which we played, we could not have won that football game, and that of course would be the Michigan game. I think if we did a few more rights, some caller this morning spoke of our rushing game, it might be a little different story. We could be very easily sitting here right now being 3-1 and not 1-3. I like our football team. I like a lot of the things that I'm seeing from our football team. I believe that if we begin to execute in all the areas, special teams, running game, offense, better and more efficient in our passing game, do some things a little bit better in our defense, I think in many occasions the defense has done an excellent job, and I think that needs to be noted, to handle a Purdue team and hold them to 223, 232 yards, something like that, I don't think there are many people that are going to do that this year. So there's some good things there. But what we have to continue to do is continue to improve, believe in self, the individual and team, and I think we can get some things done. But it is impossible to write that story that you're writing unless we do it game by game. I'm glad that you noted that. Our focus cannot be all that we have in front of us, but simply Pittsburgh this week.

COACH WILLINGHAM: I'll take that.

COACH WILLINGHAM: Very much so. But obviously we've got to do some things better. That is the key to what we're doing. Believing and not doing things better doesn't get us anywhere. We have to put it all together.

COACH WILLINGHAM: We talk about those things each week. We set goals for the season, which obviously have to be readjusted as you go through the season. We set goals for individual areas that we look at each and every week to see if we can hit those targets. We're constantly doing that, constantly trying to provide goals, areas for our team to really point, direct themselves to, direct themselves to help us be a better football team.

COACH WILLINGHAM: Well, for me, I would like to believe it's a natural process of who I am and what I do because I think I've figured out there's not much you can accomplish by being negative. Even though there are many around you that choose that, maybe even wish you to go that route, I don't think you can accomplish anything. Hopefully our football team is paying attention to its leadership. If it does, it will stay on the positive track.

COACH WILLINGHAM: The first thing you always point to is the individual pride of each individual, then the collective pride of our football team. That's always important to us. There have been many great teams, great players that have worn the Notre Dame uniform. We've always said that we want to live up to that tradition of how we play the game at Notre Dame. Second of all, there are many opportunities out there for us. If we play the game the way we can, we'll get one of those.

COACH WILLINGHAM: Well, we know from playing them last year, this is a very sound structure in terms of their defense. They may have had some losses that may not allow them to be exactly the same defense that they were a year ago and play at that level. But we know it's still a very sound defense, we know we have to first of all get our house in order before we can ever contemplate amassing yardage to the nature they've given up in the past couple weeks.

COACH WILLINGHAM: I would think if I'm rapidly adjusting at this time, it would be a mistake on my part. Hopefully I've been the kind of coach that's been involved on all of our decisions all along, talking, being in touch with our personnel all along.