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PENN STATE UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCEOctober 29, 2013Miles DieffenbachQ. Illinois defense, they've been allowing a lot of yards. Talk about what you see over there and what you guys can do. MILES DIEFFENBACH: They've played some good teams with some good offenses. Every defense, there's certain things you want to try to do to gain yards and score points on offense. We're still early in the week, so we still are early in the game plan and what we're really going to try to do with them. But hopefully, we can establish the run, have a good passing game and play to our strengths. Q. Coach talked to us yesterday about you guys giving a little bit more of a positive slant, saying if this is the worst thing that happened, it's so bad after all. Can you talk about some of your main takeaways from how Coach O'Brien handled the past two or three days. MILES DIEFFENBACH: Coach O'Brien really handled it well, really got good points across to us, but it's true. Obviously, we lost. We could have done better on both sides of the ball. It hurts. You never want to lose a game like that. We have a bright season ahead of us. We really could still have a great season. If losing a game like that is the worst thing that can happen in life, it's just never going to happen. Q. Another Coach O'Brien question. It seems every time you guys lose, he'll take full responsibility for everything. He'll never point blame at anyone else. What does it mean to have a head coach like that? Does it make you feel as a team you have to accept your responsibilities too and make you feel you do what you need to do? MILES DIEFFENBACH: It's awesome. He's a terrific coach. I wouldn't rather have anybody else up there. He holds everyone accountable, including myself. He's always going to take full responsibility that. As you were saying, as a player, you realize you've got to take full responsibility for what you did wrong. You've got to look at the film and judge what you can do better to help the team win. Q. Miles, since you've been here at Penn State, what have you learned about watching film and that aspect of it in terms of learning to play? MILES DIEFFENBACH: It's very, very important, something I never really did at all in high school. I didn't really understand how important it was. But it really gives you a good judge of who you're playing. Not even that, critiquing yourself is really one of the most important things I saw ‑‑ that getting your tendencies right, your steps, just everything you're doing. It helps a lot. Coach Mack and Coach O'Brien are really big on film. They've helped us a lot with that. Q. In terms of Jevin, Jevin stone, do you have a relationship with him? What's it like in terms of working with him and letting him know what you need? MILES DIEFFENBACH: Jevin is a great guy. I do have a relationship with him. He is pretty on point with everything. You really don't need to tell him what you need. He's usually ‑‑ an hour after practice, film is up, or the next morning the game is up, and we have all the tape we need. Or whoever we're going to play the next week's game is up as soon as that week's game is over. He's a great guy. He really gets the job done. Yeah, he's a funny guy. Yeah, he's a good guy. He's done some funny stuff. Q. Bill was saying a little earlier about Zach Zwinak, how maybe he's a little too hard on himself, specifically about the fumbles. Do you or anyone on the offensive line, do you guys say anything to him to try to pick him up, or how do you interact with that? He looked pretty down on himself on Saturday. MILES DIEFFENBACH: Yeah, I mean, it's hard. He's a tough player, and he wants to do great like all of us, so it's hard on him sometimes. We're always going to encourage him. I know he's a great player, and he can do great things for this team. I'm always going to encourage him, and so is everyone on the offensive line. We're not going to bring him down. We know he's a great player. Q. Miles, you guys have been called a resilient bunch quite a bit. Can you kind of contrast where you guys were at Saturday compared to where you were at Monday during that team meeting? MILES DIEFFENBACH: Yeah, we've been through a lot as a team. We've been through a lot of ups and down going from that Michigan game to that Ohio State game. You salt that Saturday night, but you wake up Sunday and realize you've got another game next Saturday. So you've got to get back at and get back to work and forget about the past. Q. [No microphone]. MILES DIEFFENBACH: You can't forget. It's always going to be in the back of your mind. But we know what type of guys we have on the team, and we know what type of coaches we have, and we're not going to let that affect our outcome on the rest of the season. Q. Miles, coach also talked a little bit about improving pass protection. You mentioned Christian getting hit a couple of times, even on three‑step drops. Was there anything you've noticed so far in looking back at the film or also just some things that stand out to you that you remember that you guys can improve on when it comes to pass protection? MILES DIEFFENBACH: Yeah, we can definitely get better up front. We've got to stay more inside out on our defenders and be more keyed in communication‑wise on what protections we're running or when we switch our protection up with our mike points. There's definitely room for improvement. We can't have Christian getting hit back there. He's a really important part of the team, and we have to do our job as an offensive line to protect him. THE MODERATOR: Anything else for Miles? Okay. Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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