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UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 31, 2011

Blake Gideon

Q. Your favorite team is coming to town. I know you and your secondary guys always circle this game on the calendar, don't you?
BLAKE GIDEON: Yeah, obviously they throw it around the yard a little bit. It's going to be a challenging game. It's going to be us against their receivers every play, and they're going to challenge us. So we're going to be up to it, and we're looking forward to starting practice tomorrow.

Q. How much has this team changed since '08 when you got here? They seem like they've really established their running game a little bit more since then.
BLAKE GIDEON: Yeah, absolutely. I think you guys saw it with 440 something yards, whatever, of rushing this past week. Any time our offense can run for that many yards and control the clock like they did, then it really makes our job easier.

Q. I apologize, I meant Tech.
BLAKE GIDEON: Oh, Tech?

Q. Yeah, since '08.
BLAKE GIDEON: Yeah, they've definitely become more balanced. You know, whereas my freshman year and a little bit of sophomore year we could trot out seven or eight DBs out there and really focus on the pass and kind of the guys up front could pin their ears back and worry about pass rush and not necessarily run gaps, I don't want to say it's easier to defend, but maybe easier to prepare for.
It's going to be a challenge for us this week to be balanced and be able to stop the run. That's first the foremost. If they run it down our throats then there's no reason for them to ever throw the ball. We want to stop the run first and then force them to pass it.

Q. What does this shutout do for you this week confidence wise and going forward?
BLAKE GIDEON: Well, confidence wise it helps us out, I guess. I don't know what the right answer there would be. I think we never lost any of our confidence. I know we had two tough games, but at the same time, we've watched the film from those and we've seen mistakes that can be improved upon. I think we did improve on those.
There was really minimal mistakes this past weekend, so to be able to see it on the scoreboard, then that's definitely encouraging.

Q. How do you guys look at Tech, they go to Norman and win and get killed at home by Iowa State?
BLAKE GIDEON: Well, we're definitely not going to see the team that just played this past week. That's really always been the case here at Texas, that however bad a team has been playing this season, whenever they come to Austin, it's going to be a different team that we see. There's just a lot of tradition that comes with the name of Texas and playing against Texas, so I think a lot of teams, they come to Austin ready to play. It's definitely going to be closer to the team that everybody saw on TV a few weeks ago in Norman and how they're going to come out here and they're going to expect to win.
You know, that's the thing about Tech; they go into every game expecting to win and expecting to be successful.

Q. It's not your ultimate goal, of course, but what would that sixth win mean and obviously beyond that?
BLAKE GIDEON: Obviously we don't want to stop at six wins. That really wouldn't be too successful of a season to just stop after this next victory, but at the same time it is huge to become Bowl eligible. It's something that we failed to do last year, so that is one of our goals, to go to a Bowl game obviously. To be able to get this win and really move past that, to be able to bend aside how good the Bowl is and really not be worrying about getting a number of wins. We're going to be able to focus on just one game at a time from here on out.

Q. Mack talked about the need to hustle but not be satisfied. Talk about how as a player you approach that.
BLAKE GIDEON: Yeah, you don't ever want to be satisfied as an athlete. You want to be able to improve every day, and you never stay the same. You take a step forward or take a step back. I think once you're done improving then you're really done as an athlete. As a person in life, you want to keep getting better at everything you do. So it's important for us to put this past game where it belongs. It really can't help us going into this next week. We can't roll over any of those points we scored. We can't start them in negative points. This game doesn't help us at all. We're going to start out with 60 minutes on the clock, and it's going to be 0-0, and whoever is the best team on Saturday is going to win.

Q. Tech likes to brag about Seth Doege being a mobile quarterback or more mobile than past Tech quarterbacks. Can you see that on film?
BLAKE GIDEON: Yeah, sure. Obviously he's got legs to worry about. He's not a guy that we're worrying about just pushing the pocket. A lot of guys you can kind of get outside the pocket and then their game completely changes, but he can still run and throw it, and that's something that we're going to have to account for is his legs.

Q. Can you compare him to another Tech quarterback or just another quarterback you've faced?
BLAKE GIDEON: Yeah, I think all the Tech quarterbacks, it seems to be just a lot of those guys keep coming out every year. They all get the ball out on time. That's the main thing with Tech and their offense. You're not going to get a great chance to get pressure on them, they're going to get the ball out quick. There's a lot of timing routes that you can tell they've spent hours upon hours during the summertime in seven-on-seven drills working with each other. It's a tough offense to defend, but at the same time it's fun to compete against.

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