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OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCEAugust 26, 2013Tom HermanTHE MODERATOR: We'll open up the Q&A with Coach Tom Herman. Q. With captains being voted on today, do some teams need more leadership than others and where does this team fall in that spectrum? COACH HERMAN: I think all teams need great leadership. All great teams need great leadership, I should say. This team is certainly, the unique thing about this team is that we have got a lot of guys on the fringe of being great leaders. They are good leaders. So we have got probably eight to 12 guys that are there on the fringe that are right there ready to make that next step into the elite leadership kind of category, but we are not there yet. So I do think for us to ultimately achieve what we want to achieve, we do have to have a few of those guys, if not all of them, make that next step. Q. Coach Meyer on an interview with ESPN yesterday said he holds his coaches accountable for behavior, and I'm assuming you're not ‑‑ COACH HERMAN: Yeah, how about that. Q. I'm assuming you're not running stairs or doing 6 AM workouts, but what does he mean by that? What does that mean to you? COACH HERMAN: Well, it means that we are in control and we are held responsible and accountable for the decisions, the actions, the performance of the guys in our meeting room. Ultimately, their performance on and off the field is a reflection of us as leaders and mentors, so it is a‑‑ and it's been that way probably everywhere in the country. I think maybe a little bit more here under Coach Meyer, and it's something in the last year and a half that I've really grown to like and embrace, because you are almost forced to form that bond with your players. Now, on the flipside of it, you're also held accountable for the actions of 18‑ to 22‑year‑olds which I know if any coach was held accountable for some of my actions when I was 18 to 22, I don't know if that guy would still have a job. But they also didn't have Twitter and camera phones and Facebook and all that stuff back then, too. So long story short, I think it's fairly common throughout the countdown try. I think maybe a little bit more emphasis is put on it here under Coach Meyer and I think it's something us as staff members have certainly embraced. Q. How different is the team going to look for the average fan out there? COACH HERMAN: Maybe to the average fan, not a whole lot different. I think we're not going to go from what we were last year to the triple‑option‑‑ to a wishbone team or an under‑center 22 personnel I team or anything like that. So our base tenets and foundations have been an up‑tempo spread, no‑huddle offense. I think we'll stay the same. I think when and how the ball is distributed may be a little bit different being that we have improved at some areas on the perimeter. We have improved a little bit at quarterback, too. So I think in play selection and ball distribution, there may be some differences from last year, but I don't think our core foundations are who we are and what we believe in will change. Q. What about tempo? COACH HERMAN: Yeah, I think‑‑ again, I've been asked that. We are not, nor will we ever be, one of those teams that they exist in a country and that's great for them, and they want to run 90 or 100 snaps. For us, it sounds cliché, but we are going to do whatever it takes to win. We are better at going fast now than we have ever been. If the situation dictates that we need to do more of it, we certainly will, and feel confident that we can. But at the same time, we don't have an‑‑ we don't want to play the game, the entire game, lightning fast, because we understand that there's a lot of different pieces to the puzzle in terms of winning a football game. Q. Can you discuss the progress of Cardale Jones; how is he coming along? COACH HERMAN: Improved slowly. I think he does a lot of things really well. I think he's like any of the other quarterbacks; I think his understanding of what we are doing offensively has improved. I think his decision making has improved. His biggest hurdle right now is just to maintain a level of consistency. It's like I've said about other guys before, you know, his good is really, really good but his bad right now is really, really bad. So we need that good there a lot more than the bad right now. And so he has spurts where you think he's regressed a little bit maybe and has not taken that step, but more spurts now than ever before of where you can see some steady progress. Q. J.T. Barrett, is the plan to redshirt him? COACH HERMAN: I think it would be too early to say. I would hope we have that luxury and that he would be able to have a year to season himself a little bit. But at this point, who knows. But yeah, I think, you know, your fourth quarterback, you hope you don't get to that point I guess. Q. Talking about Braxton's development, reading defenses, leadership, where area do you think he came the furthest in the last nine or ten months? COACH HERMAN: Confidence in himself and in what he's doing. We can say all we want to say about his improved mechanics, his improved fundamentals, but I think when the confidence in what he was doing and the plays that were called and where his eyes needed to be and the reads that he needed to make and the decisions that he needed to make were second nature to him and very comfortable for him, he gained a level of confidence that then allowed him to play with much better fundamentals and mechanics. Because we always knew it was there. We had seen the guy last year make some really, really sound, fundamental plays that he looked like a million bucks. The problem is I don't know that he was ever truly confident in himself and in the big picture of what he was supposed to do and how he was supposed to do it, so we didn't see those near as much as now. He is very‑‑ got tunnel vision, so to speak in, terms of I know what I'm supposed to do, I'm getting it done and now my mechanics and my fundamentals can flourish a little bit. Q. Coach Meyer was talking about Braxton's pocket presence and confidence, or how does a quarterback work on that, understanding when to take off, when to hang in? COACH HERMAN: I think it's all here. None of it‑‑ we do fundamental drills every day, and he's really, really good at them in the drills. It was the translation of the drills into an 11‑on‑11 game setting that because of his lack of confidence and maybe where to go with the football, and what to look at and what to see and how to do some of the things that we were asking him to do, led to a diminished pocket presence so to speak. I think once all of that came and again, not to sound like a broken record, but once that level of understanding and confidence in his competence and his mental aspect of the game started to come around, now everything around him from fundamentals to pocket presence to all the minutia details of how to be a really, really good quarterback started to come a lot easier to him. Q. It's a little murky at wide receiver and offensive line, can you take us through those two groups and say who is one, two is two, and where he can where he can this things kind of lie right now? COACH HERMAN: Yeah, we feel like we have got four wide receivers right now that would definitely be considered starter/ 50‑, 60‑, 70‑play a game guys can and that would be Philly Brown, Evan Spencer, Devin Smith and Chris fields. Those four guys we feel very comfortable about. Philly is kind of a swing guy, if you will. He can play outside receiver and he can play some inside receiver. Chris Fields is mainly an inside receiver, and Devin and Evan are mainly outside receivers. And then beyond that, you've got a couple guys in the mix that are trying to fight for that fifth and sixth spot and Mike Thomas and Corey Smith and ‑‑ I drew a blank‑‑ the freshman, James Clark‑‑ I recruited him (laughter)‑‑ shows you how‑‑ and James Clark. And then obviously we'll sprinkle in some Dontre Wilson in there, as well. So those guys are kind of, like I said, they are the ones that are battling for those left over reps and those left over snaps during the game. Q. Define what you mean by "sprinkle in some Dontre Wilson." What does that mean? COACH HERMAN: He's going to touch the ball. We'd be foolish not to have him touch the ball. I think that you have to be careful with a true freshman that has to play some running back, has to play some wide receiver, has to flex out and run routes, yet be in the backfield and run run plays if you will. And so the package will be small to start the year off, and let him become an expert at the few things that we are asking him to do. Through the first few weeks, we have thrown a ton of tough at him and now that he's been exposed to so many different things and he's screwed a lot of them up, but the exposure is there, and now this last week will be kind of fine tuning, here is what you need to be really good at come Saturday against Buffalo, these eight, ten plays, formations, routes, runs. That's what we need you to be good at. So how many times and how often and how many snaps and how many plays and where is he‑‑ I don't know. And I'm not being coy. At this point on Monday of game week, I don't know that we know that. But I know he'll touch the ball and I no he he'll have a condensed package for him to get the ball to him. Q. When you look at your running back rotation, do you see four, five, just totally different guys, or how would you‑‑ you go from Jordan Hall to Bri'onte Dunne to Warren Ball to Ezekiel Elliott to possibly Dontre Wilson also in there. How do you use those parts? COACH HERMAN: You feed the guy that needs to get fed I guess. The guy that's playing the best will get the ball and so we'll determine early who that is the Jordan Hall, obviously he's had a great camp. He will be the guy that starts off at that spot and will continue are at that spot. And then as need be, again, a running back can't play 75 plays a game, so we'll figure out who goes in next and see how he's doing, if he's having success, and then maybe some of the other guys, their reps get limited or if he's not having success, okay, let's try Plan C and let's try Plan D. I think there's a little bit of a hierarchy. I don't know that I'm prepared to share that now. But beyond Jordan, you certainly want to get those guys some game reps and then just kind of see how they do. Q. In a general sense, for lack of another term, do you feel like your begun is fully loaded going into this season compared to a year ago, from an offensive standpoint, to your weapons are fully loaded? COACH HERMAN: I don't know if I would ever say it's fully loaded. I kind of like those teams they put out there in Honolulu in the Pro Bowl and then I would feel like we are fully loaded. But we are closer than we've ever been. That's exciting. Again, the hard part as coaches is that you have to temper your creativity a little bit because one of the things I was so proud of us as an offensive staff and players in this fall camp was we did the same things over and over and over and over and over again and we did them and we were successful week three when the defense knew exactly what we were doing, we could still execute. That was exciting to me, and so I think that you have to be careful to temper your enthusiasm and creativity, because at the end of the day, you can over‑think and over‑coach yourself at being really good at your identity. This is who we are and this is what we are going to do and we are going to do it better than anybody in the country. If that means that, hey, we want to get in a two tight end package with no running backs and put Dontre here and Jalin Marshall here and put Jordan here‑‑ at the end of the day, hang on, let's do what we are really, really good at and then figure out how to plug those pieces of the puzzle in what we are really good at. Q. Can you talk about Buffalo's defense, what they do and how you try to attack it? Just beyond winning the game, as an offensive coordinator, what your goals are? COACH HERMAN: Buffalo's defense is actually pretty unique. It's something that is a little bit difficult to prepare for because you've been playing against a certain style of defense all fall camp and then you go into your first game and they are a 3‑3 stack team that they will play three down linemen, three linebackers, three safeties and two corners. The unique thing, not only if the front unique, because it's from a three‑down rather than a four‑down front; their coverage schemes are very unique. They do a lot of unique things in terms of having their corners as their half‑field players to get to the safeties, those three safeties involved in the run fits. So it will be a challenge as we go through this week to kind of re‑train our brains offensively to what we have been facing for three weeks and then retrain them to, okay, now this is Buffalo, this is completely different than what you faced. They have a really, really good linebacker, No. 46. I can't remember his name. But he is an extremely, extremely talented player, probably will be a first‑few‑round draftable kind of guy after this season, so he poses some matchup issues that we'll have to game plan for. To answer the second part of your question, what are we looking to get out of it, obviously we want to win the game. We want to score. We want to execute. We want to minimize our negative plays, that was one thing. We felt like we took too many sacks last year. We had some‑‑ probably a few too many negative yardage runs. So we want to be‑‑ we want our execution level and our fundamentals and our techniques and we want everything to be sound and at the end of the day, you know, we don't ever set a point total; we want to score this many points; we want to rush for this many yards; we want to throw for this many yards. We want to be very, very sound and very fundamental, which is something we weren't last year in the opener, and I think we have got a chance to be this year. So if we can minimize or eliminate those negative plays and obviously turnovers, I think we'll have proved to ourselves that we are headed in the right direction. Q. Just to clarify real quick, I don't know if you mentioned Jalin Marshall and the receivers, is he in that mix? COACH HERMAN: He was setback a little bit, yeah. We'll still try to get him in the mix a little bit. But he's got some ground to make up. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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