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TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 10, 2011

Tommy Tuberville

COACH TUBERVILLE: Happy holiday to everybody. Columbus Day. Everybody's laboring on Columbus Day, that's good. Let's talk a little bit about last week.
We're all disappointed in the outcome. And as I just told the team, there's a lot of factors we can go back and look at that that we can point fingers or whatever. But basically it was a total team effort of not getting the job done.
Played a good football team that played better in some areas than we did. And that's because the outcome, there's not anything that we saw on film that we can't correct. But it was definitely a three-phase situation Saturday night.
Up and down on offense, up and down on defense and didn't click on all cylinders on special teams. A&M had something to do with that. But, again, I thought we were in control of our own destiny. Had we done the things that we needed to do being a home game, being the first time that we'd played an opponent that we felt like we had to play at full speed.
But the preparation was fairly good last week. It wasn't near as good as I thought it needed to be in terms of our players and coaches and the time and the effort of doing the little things right. And we didn't do a lot of little things right.
In close games like this, just one small thing can cost you a game. And these next seven games we've got coming up are the same situation.
I don't look at a lot of stats, but one thing I do look at is possessions. If you look at Saturday night we had 13 possessions. We had four touchdowns. We had five field goal attempts. And we had four punts and no turnovers.
We've got to do better than that on offense. When you can only get four touchdowns out of 13 possessions, the way we play, you're not going to win a lot of games. We had 50 percent, 12 out of 24 third down conversions. That's good enough. But probably not good enough against a team that is as talented as who we played against.
Vice versa, defensively, for us, they had 12 possessions, six touchdowns. One of them being a blocked field goal. They only had one field goal attempt, but they had five punts. No turnovers. And you just look at the correlation there, they didn't have as many possessions but they had more touchdowns.
We had to kick more field goals. The difference in the game was them in the red zone of scoring touchdowns and us having to kick field goals. So hopefully that's what I go over with our team every game after the game. I don't worry about rushing yards, passing yards. You just look at the possessions and how you did when you get the bat.
And our defense needs to learn how our offense plays and our offense needs to learn how our defense plays. And you look at special teams. The one critical area of getting the field goal blocked, normally if you have another team score against you or you score against somebody on special teams, the high percentages -- percentages are very high that you're going to win your game if you score, or you're going to lose it if they score.
So a lot of people point that's the difference in the football game. There were a lot of differences in the game. But you can kind of put a finger on a lot of things that go on in terms of how the game went.
For instance, two minutes and 30 seconds to go in the game, we kick off to them. We let them run the ball back to almost the 40-yard line. We get them inside the 20. They have a much tougher time scoring right before the clock runs out. The game's a little closer. They score with less than 30 seconds in the half.
We're trying to teach this team how to play and why you have to play in certain situations and why you have to be good at everything you do, not just if you're out there as a linebacker, whoever is on the field goal team or the kickoff coverage team. But there was a lot of bright points.
But as I told them, there's nothing good about losing. And we're not looking at it that way. We lost the game. We didn't play well enough to win it. But if you win or lose, you go to the next week. You think about it for about 24 hours. You celebrate if you win for 24 hours, and you let it be gut-wrenching for 24 hours if you lose.
If you understand that and use the situation the right way and go back the next week, another week at bat, trying to get better, trying to win a game, then we'll have a good football team as the year goes on.
This will be a big turning point for our team in terms of how we face this this week. Our students won't be back in school until Wednesday. I've had all the accolades I want from: Hey, you played hard, you played good. That's no consolation for coaches. We don't come here to play good or play hard.
And the players probably hear the same thing. But the students don't get back to school until Wednesday, and they'll have to hear it for a couple more days. So we've got to do a good job in preparation for the game coming up.
This will be a better team that we play this week than we played last week. They're playing much better on both sides of the ball. They don't make mistakes.
They've played some tough teams and they've won. And they've gone to Miami and won on the road. Beat two conference teams and beat them with good hard-nosed football. It's going to be a team that we'll have to prepare for very hard. We're going to have to understand what they do, how they do it on both sides, and we've got to improve and we've got to play our game.
They don't have any star players. They don't want any star players. Coach Snyder has done probably the best job of coaching in college football since he's been in coaching since he's been at Kansas State, if you take both eras.
I've always said that. He goes there and takes over a program that can't win a game and the games that he won and how he won them and he's got to be one of the better coaches. It's been an era that I've been in in the last 25 years. And he's done it again, come back. He's taken a program that was in shambles and got it back within three years.
And they're playing hard. They play well. They have confidence, and so it's going to be a very tough game for us. We've just got to get ready and hopefully we bounce back and play better than we did last week.
Questions?

Q. The status of Eric?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Not good. It's a knee. I don't know what all damage. There's lots of damage. But we won't know until today, they let the swelling go down and do the MRIs and all that. But it's not good.

Q. I've got something here. You may not be able to comment on it. But I want to read it. It's under the heading of Coaching Ethics from the NCAA rule book. "Feigning an injury for any reason is unethical. An injured player must be given full protection under the rules. But feigning an injury is dishonest, unsportsmanlike and contrary to the rules and such actions cannot be tolerated."
COACH TUBERVILLE: You've done a lot of work on this, haven't you?

Q. Yes.
COACH TUBERVILLE: First of all, the number one -- the number one thing I want to say is there's nothing more important than the health of a player. You never saw us complaining, you won't ever see us complaining.
Do I think there's been teams in the past that have probably tried to slow us down in what we do, sure, I think that's happened. Do I think it happened Saturday night? I don't know.
But I do know Mike Sherman, and I do know that he's one of the guys that I would trust that winning at all costs is not the way you do it.
I do have some guys that I've coached against over the years that would do anything to win games. We're not going to do that. I don't think they did that. I really don't. I think that -- if you look at it, it's really not an advantage. It's probably an advantage for us to have people thinking about it, their players.
As I told our players, it's an advantage for us to slow down ourselves because we get tired. There's a lot of times we don't substitute. So I don't get caught up in all that.
But, unfortunately, in our business you have people that will go to any lengths in recruiting or coaching, cut corners. I don't think -- I know Mike Sherman is not one of those guys. I've coached with him. I've been around him.
And I would never point fingers at anybody. But again really it's not an advantage for the other team to do that unless they're just -- unless they don't have any depth. If they don't, they're not going to win anyway. Because if we got our offense going, we're going to score a lot of points. So I don't get into all that stuff. I think it's just good talk.
But they played a good, clean game. The hit on Eric, the guy was playing hard, stumbled. That can happen. Like Eric said, he called me yesterday, which I thought was great. And the guy felt -- he felt just as bad as anybody. And Eric said, hey, I should have caught the ball. I wouldn't have been in that situation.
So this is about players. And I think it's great for media and fans to talk about. But for us, you know, we don't get into those conversations with our players, the team. I talked about it to our players before the season: Hey, don't think this can't happen; we use it to our advantage.
We did the other night. I thought we were fresh. It might have slowed the game down a little bit, but it didn't affect us.

Q. Seems like Coach Snyder is getting more (inaudible) this year, aging very well at age 72 to be doing this. Can you talk a little bit --
COACH TUBERVILLE: He looks 52. He doesn't look 72. He moves around pretty good.

Q. Can you talk about what you see him doing different since he's come back compared to what he did before?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Coaching is a game of putting players in a situation where they can win and they know their limitations and you can get the most out of them.
His offense is, you know, is not flashy. But he never has been that way. He hasn't been a flashy guy. He tries to move the ball. He tries to control the ball.
He tries to do things within the limits of what his quarterback and his players can do. He's very similar to what I can remember years ago when I was a defensive coordinator at Miami, I got a call from Bob Stoops and John Leavitt, who was the South Florida head coach.
They were co-coordinators at Kansas State. They wanted to come down and learn our four-man front at the University of Miami. They spent about a week down. Of course, that's been a long time ago. They're still running the same thing. They don't change.
They're technique-oriented. The players play hard. He's convinced them that they're good, and they are. They are -- it's a team sport. This is not individual. He doesn't have a bunch of stars over there. Most of us don't. But he gets a lot out of his players, and what he does, he does it as a team, as a coaching staff. And, again, they played hard.
When you win close games like they've won, it means you're doing something right. And he's won some very close games. And there's some games that probably that it didn't look good for them into the fourth quarter. But the team went out and I've been a big fan of Coach Snyder's for a long time.

Q. Stopping the run, the way they run?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Of course I am. We ain't stopped it all year. And we brought it to a sprint last weekend, I guess. But this is a very similar offense that we've seen most of the year. They run a lot of options. They run power plays. They run a lot of two tight ends. The quarterback is going to take what you give them in the passing game. Very similar.
We've got to play better on defense. This will be a game where we've got to get our offense back on the field, and they do a good job of taking advantage of weaknesses.
And, again, they'll come in well coached with a lot of confidence. And they're on a roll. And, again, they've beat some good football teams.
And so it's, like I said, in my first statement, they're a better team right now, just for how they're playing, not that they've got better players, but they're playing better as a team than any team we've played all year. So we've got our hands full.

Q. Can you talk about the impact on the offense?
COACH TUBERVILLE: It's tough. It's tough to lose a guy, the type of person he is, number one. You hate for a kid like that that has worked that hard. His goal was to get a thousand yards.
Number one, he wanted to win games. But he wanted to show the team, hey, in this offense we can get a thousand yards in this league. I can help us win games.
He's a great blocker. Encouraging guy on the sideline. And just that's the bad thing about our sport, because you do have injuries.
And they happen quite often. And he was on his way to achieving his goal. But hopefully he can get everything straightened out and, again, I don't know how much damage there is. Quite a bit. And hopefully we can get him back, get going in spring ball and get him back for next year and ready to go.

Q. So he's definitely out for the year?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Well, I don't know that. I'm not going to speculate. But all I can tell you is it don't look good. I've seen a lot of them. And we'll let the doctors MRI it and a lot of swelling, all those things. So we can all speculate. But, as I said, when it doesn't look good, it doesn't look good.

Q. When you looked at the film defensively from the second half to the first half, was there a difference in the speed of the play? Was there more confidence in the second half?
COACH TUBERVILLE: I think our guys got more confidence as the game went on. We played better on third down. If we would have won, we were, what, four out of -- they were four out of seven, I think, in third down conversions or five out of seven in the first half.
Two of them were very long ones. You've got to win those. To be a good football team, you've got to win third down. Now you're going to lose a lot that are third and two, third and three. But when you got third and 11 and third and 15, if you can't win those, you better be good on offense.
And we have not been able to do that all year. We've had breakdowns, technique problems. Guys with not enough confidence. We've tried to be aggressive. We've tried to be conservative. We haven't been able to put a handle on it.
But the thing that you want to do is you want to recognize your problem. You teach it to your players. And that's the last thing I told them coming out of the dressing room. I always look at the stats and I tell both offense and defense the third down conversions.
I told both of them. We were decent on offense. We were very average on defense. And we were better in third down conversions the second half.
And I think the first time they got the ball we were able to get them on and off field. They punted five times. I didn't think we could make them punt five times. I thought we'd get a couple of turnovers and hold them in the red zone a little bit better, but we're still struggling.
Defensively we're flying around. We're trying to make plays. We've got different guys showing up better every week.
But it was good to see Scott Smith back last week. He didn't play very good, or very well. Sometimes you've got that learning curve. And he played hard. He just -- there's sometimes you gotta slow down.
You don't play up the field as much as he played. Just little things. So having him back was great. But not a lot of production. But he'll get better this week after watching the film.

Q. Talk about the wildcat now?
COACH TUBERVILLE: We haven't even discussed that now. There will be somebody. We'll have to have somebody back there. It could be somebody. It could be a receiver. It could be -- as last year we had Detron. But we'll look at somebody.
The wildcat's good. Great for yardage. Change of pace, goal line, all those things. But you have to have somebody that's got confidence in running it. So we'll look at it and make the decision probably by tomorrow.
Today, we're going to practice today but this is more of going out and just kind of going through the motions, learning a little bit about what we're going to face before we get into hard practice tomorrow.

Q. Will Crawford be the go-to guy?
COACH TUBERVILLE: We'll spread it out. I thought Crawford did a good job. He's the best blocker we've got. It's important that your running back be a physical guy that can protect.
He was as good as Eric was. Knows how to do it. Been there, done that. And we used him a lot in those situations. And he can run the ball. The problem with Aaron is staying healthy, as it was for Eric. And so we just -- we just gotta keep -- but he can run.
He can be a 100-yard rusher a game. But he's got to be able to get that mentality and understand sometimes you're going to have to play through getting knocked around a little bit. Because carrying the ball three times a game as compared to 15 to 20 is a whole lot different in this league.

Q. (Question off microphone)?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Pardon? He's still suspended.

Q. Kansas State, the technique going in there, what's the key for Texas Tech to be successful?
COACH TUBERVILLE: We've just got to play our game. We've got to get better. There's things that we add each week that we take away on both sides. But it's all about blocking and tackling, blocking people and tackling.
And we had around 17, 18 missed tackles which you know is coming playing against those two running backs, and as good a receiving corps as A&M has ever had, we were going to have some missed tackles.
But the big thing I thought we just weren't successful at was in the red zone. You've got to force a couple more field goals other than touchdowns. And that kind of got away from us first half. The second half we played much better. I don't think there's been many people in there that thought we'd keep them under 400 yards.

Q. Talk about the crowd.
COACH TUBERVILLE: The crowd? It's great. You would hope it would be for every game. But we're like every other institution across the country: The economy, the traditional rivalries, that's what makes college great, better than pro football, is you have rivalries like what we had Saturday.
You're not going to have people that's going to be as interested in some games as they are others. Us, in our business, we'd like for it to be like that, but it's just not that way. Hopefully we'll have a great crowd this week.
As I said, this is as important as it was last week. It just doesn't have the significant titles to it as it did last week. But it's going to be a hard day's work for us.

Q. Talk about the mobility of their quarterback.
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, you know, he's deceiving. Big guy. Runs. He'll run it. He'll run quarterback draws. Sweeps. He runs the option play. They've got a couple of running backs or scat backs that are very deceiving.
They can find cracks and it's hard to find them. Big, huge offensive line. Big tight ends. And they'll lull you to sleep, then throw you a post route and the quarterback he'll be on the money.
So it's, like I said, it's a team that Coach Snyder's put together that's very disciplined. Very coordinated. They know what they want to do. They're not going to try to do anymore.
They want to run the ball, keep it away from you. Get you in a certain defense and then hit a big play on you, whether it's an option play or a pass play.
So they're a true, hard-nosed football team. That's the type of team he's always been. So we wouldn't expect anything different. The thing he's done this year is he's been able to put it all together earlier in the season than probably what people thought and get these guys on the same page. And I'll tell you, they are a very good football team.

Q. Do you ever have any interaction with Al Davis?
COACH TUBERVILLE: No, I met him one time at a Cowboys practice, I think, in San Antonio, when they used to go down there. They came in and worked out.
I met him one time standing outside his box in Miami. I went to a Miami-Dolphin game. We were open that week. And our guy that worked on our telephones, also hooked him at the Orange Bowl for all the pro teams.
So I went with him, watched him put the phones up on the sideline and stuff. And we were going to go there playing the Raiders. And go up in the press box.
He does the coaches. And goes down to another box. He said, what's this, this is Al Davis's phone, the owner. You know where that was hooked up. He was very hands-on. He was great for football back in the day of just, hey, win. I love that. Just win, baby, win. I'm sure they're going to miss him.

Q. Can you talk about TCU?
COACH TUBERVILLE: TCU? It's going to be a natural rival for us. We'll play them the last weekend. They'll take A&M's place next year. We'll go there and they'll be -- I'm sure the schedules will pretty much stay the same and we'll fit -- they'll fit into that slot for us and I think it's a good addition. It's going to make it more difficult, obviously, for us to go and recruit in the Dallas area, metro plex area, but that's football.
Gary Patterson is a good friend. He's done a great job, speaking of coaches that have done a great job at a school. Gone in there in the last 10, 12 years and turned that program into not just a winner but a national contender. So that will bring a lot to the Big 12.

Q. (Question off microphone)?
COACH TUBERVILLE: No, I don't think it will. I think it just makes for -- anytime you have a team that's close, that's built in, you've got a lot of things you do against coaching. Coaches who coach there, been there. My strength coach was there for three or four years. And there's a lot of carry-over. Players played against a lot of their players.
So it's kind of a natural fit with one team leaving, with a lot of natural things happening between players and coaches. I think the same thing with that with TCU.

Q. (Question Off microphone)?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, awesome. I'm really proud of him. And if you watched him Saturday night, there was times in the past when him or Potts or Sheffield, they'd all leave that pocket. I think Neal Brown's done a great job getting them to stay in the pocket and wait for the last receiver to come open.
I think that's been a big part of the success for them. He had them all over him. He got hit. He walked out of there Saturday night, he looked like the bionic man with all the ice on his shoulders and legs and back.
But that's what quarterbacks are like. You see them all in the NFL the same way. And he's got a lot of confidence. But the great thing is players have confidence in him. And he's a winner. He plays hard. He'll make a big play for you, and he'll make something out of nothing.
But as you said earlier, one interception, he won't try to do something that's really not there. Sometimes when players do, and sometimes when you've got pressure, because A&M brought the house. I mean, every down instead of bringing four, they brought five from somewhere.
He knew he had to get rid of it. He knew he would get hit. That's a sign of a heck of a football player.

Q. (Question off microphone)?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, well, we were planning on playing him on goal line situations. We weren't down there enough in terms of getting the ball to him. But I'd say right now he's probably 90, 95 percent. And he'll get better as the week goes on.
So we'll see. He'll practice, whether -- Torres did awful well. I'm not going to put somebody in there that's three-quarters speed when you've got a guy like Alex Torres that can catch the ball. I'm not going to do that.
The ball's in his court. If he can come out and show that he can go and beat somebody out that caught, what, 10 or 12 passes, we're going to be a better team. But we're not going to make a change just to say he's coming back and he can go out there and go three-quarters.
But he knows that. And he's not going to put the team -- I think Saturday was an indication of: I'll help you, Coach, if you need me. Need me means I'm not 100 percent. But you've got guys that are 100 percent, let's play with them. So we're in good shape there.

Q. Do you feel like it's been somewhat significant since he's been here, defensive line last year, Eric (inaudible)?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Well, it has nothing to do other than just the luck of the draw. I hate it not for this football team or anybody, I hate it for Eric Stephens. I mean, that's just one of those things that happens. And it will make him a better person.
I know right now he's going to have to work awfully hard to get back. But he's -- you've got to feel for him of how great a year he was having and getting ready to get in the meat of our schedule, and he was anxious to play against these teams and for that to happen is just -- that's the -- if there's anything wrong with our sport, that's it: Kids getting hurt when all the work they've done, in just one play it's over for a while.

Q. What kind of message do you send to the team to help them move on from an injury like that where they see he goes down and how hard he's worked and how important he is to the team?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Just what I told you. They all know. They understand what the sport's about. The sport's about contact and playing full speed and it's about guys trying to beat each other out, competition. Nobody wants to win a job by an injury.
But somebody's going to have to step up. And Eric will be the first one to tell them that in that running back meeting today: Somebody's going to have to take over. And he'll be there with us. And he'll be in meetings and learning.
But it will be tough for a while, but Eric will be a good football coach for us. That's what he'll be for a while, he'll be a coach.

Q. (Question off microphone)?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Well, I think yards after contact. He was doing a much better job of making contact, spinning, learning how to run the ball inside. He's a good outside runner and holding onto the football. He was doing a much better job last year, he had problems getting the ball out away from his body. And he was playing smarter. He's not a 17-, 18-year-old like most of these kids are.
And these guys were learning from him. Kenny Williams and DeAndre Washington, that's a good mentor for them. Now he's going to be their coach for a while. I think that will be a good fit for Eric to stay part of the program and listening and watching and helping and pushing and doing all the things that will help these young guys be the type of player that he was and will be again.

Q. The fact he's out for the rest of the year?
COACH TUBERVILLE: I think I can sit there and say this, I think you all saw that. When I went out there, it wasn't good. It's just not good. And you hate it for him. But I'm not going to say anything until the doctor comes and tells me and says this has happened to him. They've got to let the swelling go down.

Q. You mentioned the blocker, what do Williams and (inaudible) do well?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Well, they've got speed. They're illusive like Eric. They just don't have a clue what they're doing half the time. We scored last night. DeAndre ran a little deep on his route. When Doege's trying to get the ball to him, he won't turn around. Hard to throw a ball to a guy -- I think he was trying to get more depth, closer to the goal line. You've got to do what's called for because they brought more than we could block.
And Seth's on his back foot, just trying to get the ball off to him and waiting for him, he didn't want to throw it until he knew he was going to turn around. But the confidence in the quarterback and the back has to be there. I mean, there has to be a great relationship between both of them. And that between Eric and Seth was getting stronger and stronger.
Well, now we've gotta do it again. The hand-offs, the mesh points, all those little things that you go through with Eric that we went through last year, now we've got to go through it with a couple of young guys whose eyes will be real big when we go to some of these places and play at home against some of these teams.
And Aaron Crawford who can get the job done but has not proven to anybody that he can stay healthy. But Eric has not proven that either. So he started to do that. Now as Aaron knows, the ball's in his court. And there will be three of them back there and we'll see what they can do.

Q. Will we continue to see more (inaudible) on the offense?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Out of who?

Q. More Seth with the tight ends?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah. I thought Adam James played a great game the other night. It was a situation where he was playing so good we didn't play Jace Amaro. But each week we'll have different sets in terms of how we get the ball to the tight ends and how we use them blocking. That's going to be a big part of our offense.
We're just not that far along yet. And there's situations where we have held a few things back to where we thought -- we think it will work against some of the teams that we'll face better than some of the teams we've already faced.
So that's how our offense works each week. We've already pre-scouted everybody we're playing through the offseason and their defenses offensively, and what we want to run and don't want to run and kind of hold back for certain situations. So tight end is going to be a big part of our offense. And it's getting better and better.

Q. Can you talk about Adams (inaudible)?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, it's tough. It was tough on him mentally. Because I told him when I was first here it wasn't his fault. And the players rallied around him. I didn't know how it would work. I didn't know the type of players we had here. I didn't know Adam. But his work ethic, his leadership, he'll be the first one to stand up and take blame or he'll be the first one standing up in the dressing room, start motivating the young guys and defense and offense.
He's a good leader for us. And he's grown up. You want all of them to grow up like these seniors do and be more vocal, because this is their team. They want their team to be successful. And when they leave here this is what they'll be remembered for.
Adam's in a certain situation where he has had to go through a lot of things that he probably shouldn't have. But he'll be a better person for it. And he has not ever looked back, not ever been critical of anybody, talked about anybody. He has just done what he's asked to do and he's been a very good team player.

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