|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
PURDUE UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 12, 2013Darrell HazellCOACH HAZELL: After watching the film on Sunday, we take a look at last Saturday's game against Iowa, I thought, just like we thought going in, we matched up well on the perimeter. But interior, they did a good job, Iowa did, did a good job of running zone play and cutting us off up front and even cutting our linebackers off which made it pretty easy for them to run the football on us. I thought our secondary did a good job of coming up and supporting the front seven. We need to play a lot better up front with those front seven guys in the run game. But I thought our safeties came downhill and our corners did a good job of tackling. But anytime you do that, you expose those guys to the deep pass and throws down the field. Offensively, probably our best protection day of the year. Some of the things we did inside helping with the back and chipping with the tight end and cutting our splits down, really gave Danny some nice looks from the pocket. We need to continue to do those things. But the thing that we're not getting in our offense right now is the big play in the run game. We need to be able to hit some of those big plays because where we are right now, we're not able to drive the ball 10, 12‑play drives down the field. So we need to hit some big run plays going forward. As you take a look at Penn State, they've kind of changed their style here in the last couple weeks offensively. They've gotten into more two tight end sets and a little bit more of two back sets, and are trying to run zone very much like Iowa's doing or did last week. Defensively, they're playing a lot of zone coverage back there. Not a whole lot of man coverage, but, again, it's another team, I feel going into this one, just studying them that we match up very well. Probably a little bit better on the interior as opposed to last week, and very well on the exterior. Q. Obviously, Penn State has one of the top receivers in the Big Ten, if not the nation on the roster. Can you talk about the kind of problems he's going to give you? COACH HAZELL: Yeah, he's a good player. They try to get the ball to him. They've got a young quarterback, so they've got to be careful in how they get the ball to him. But he's a good player. You watch him drop his hips and come out of breaks, and you can tell he's done it for a while. He catches the ball well in traffic, so we're going to have to do a good job of disrupting routes and getting guys in the quarterback's face so he doesn't have such easy lanes to throw it to. Q. When you mentioned the quarterback, he's obviously played in a lot of ways not like a freshman. What are his attributes? What has made him successful in his college debut? COACH HAZELL: Well, I think he stands in there pretty well for a young guy. I think they're doing a lot of half‑field reads with him, so he doesn't have to scan across the field. But I think they've kind of protected him a little bit that way as a coaching staff, which they have to do with a young guy like that. But you're going to continue to see him get better and better each week. Q. When you look at your defensive line, the front seven, these last several games what needs to happen? What do you need to see? Some of that have to do with maybe just getting in the weight room more? COACH HAZELL: We've got to get to that next gap. Somehow we've got to get to the next gap over, that's what's happening right now. They're cutting us off on the zone schemes. We've got to move a little bit quicker, and we've got to be able to create penetration. We're getting our hips turned sideways, and we've got to make sure that our hips are up the field and not going toward the boundary. That is one of the things we've got to do with our up front people. Q. I know you've talked a little about the offensive line, but in particular is anybody really picked up the play in the last week or so? COACH HAZELL: I thought both Kitchens and Pamphile on the outside played well this past week. So right now we're not strong enough on the inside to get those big dents on those three techniques and nose guards, so that's where you're going to create some of those big run plays. Kugler had a tough draw last week against 71 and 90, that was probably one of his harder games I thought all year. That guy was creating some penetration in the back field against those two good players inside, both of those guys. So he had a tough draw, but I thought our two tackles held up pretty well last week. Q. To pick up on the offensive line, you have some young guys there in the middle that you've talked about how they've been sort of up and down. Do you like their potential going forward when they get in the off‑season and get bigger and stronger? COACH HAZELL: You look at college football programs and that's the one position where you'd like to get two or three years into the program before you actually throw those guys up, because it takes those guys a little bit of time to develop. Yes, to answer your question, I do like their prospect years to come. We're also going to take a look at another guy. We kind of stumbled on to one last week on Thursday, putting Cermin inside, a little bit of guard, a little bit at center. That is a much bigger body inside. He looks like a big guy inside. So we'll take a look at that here in the next couple days and hopefully he can give us some depth inside. Q. You have some younger guys who aren't playing. Are you still seeing where they might be best suited? COACH HAZELL: Which guys? Q. I'm talking about guys who aren't playing, Warburg, Cermin, like you said, J.J. Prince, some of the other guys, just sort of seeing where they might fit into the picture when their time comes? COACH HAZELL: Yeah, we're going to actually take a look at Prince in some packages this week with Justin being knicked up, Justin Sinz being knicked up. So we'll use him in some packages this week, J.J. Prince. Limitedly, but we are going to use him. But Warburg, we're going to hold off on him and try to get Cermin inside and get him some reps and see if he can hold up inside. I thought he looked really good on Thursday, and I wasn't expecting to see that as an inside guy. But I thought he looked pretty good. Q. You said with Sinz nicked up? COACH HAZELL: Yeah, Sinz is out for today. He's got a bruised rib, so we're going to hold him out today and try to do some different things package‑wise. Q. Do you feel like you need bigger plays in your kick‑return game? If you could get some shorter fields you've got a couple of experienced pretty good guys back there, but it doesn't seem they've been consistently getting you out past the 25 or 30. Could you use some bigger plays there? How do you generate that? COACH HAZELL: Absolutely. You can always get better field position, use better field position. I think you look back to last week, we knew going in that that guy had 22 of 48 touchbacks, so you only take in one or two schemes. They kicked it to us deep where we had a chance to return it once, and the rest of them were squib kicks on the ground. So that was the situation last week. Q. You mentioned trying to get bigger run plays. How do you generate bigger run plays? Is it something you can try to do a better job of scheming for or do you just need guys to make some plays? COACH HAZELL: It's a little bit of both. I think for us, where we are, I think some of those plays have got to come on the edges as opposed to between the tackles. We've got to be able to seal the edge, get on the edge, and get Akeem the ball on the edge where he's our big play guy, obviously, in the run game, or potential big play guy in the run game. We've got to find ways to get him on the edges of the defense. Q. Looking back at how Kugler played, do you like the way he played? COACH HAZELL: Very much, he graded out extremely well. He might have graded out the best. But came downhill, played a little bit of nickel, you could just feel his energy in the back end. Q. Why have you guys been so good covering punts? COACH HAZELL: An emphasis. Obviously, we emphasize everything, but there is an emphasis there. Cody has done an excellent job in my opinion of ball placement. He hooked a couple last week that could have gotten us in trouble, but it didn't. We're asking him to put it outside the hash. Give our three guys a chance to get underneath of it, so 4.0 plus hang time, and then just crazy energy on the outside. Those guys have done an excellent job. Q. You're talking about Cermin last Wednesday at practice, it seemed he took snaps at center, but you also have Kugler out for snaps. Was that an experiment? COACH HAZELL: Kugler was a gap fill out there. He's not going to play out there. But Cermin is something that we'll definitely look at. Q. You talked about having trouble with zone blocking from other teams. Has that been an every week occurrence from week one? Have you seen that? COACH HAZELL: Probably it was probably most exposed in two games the Wisconsin game and last week's game. When you have really two experienced offensive linemen that play so much in unison where they do such a good job of getting hip to hip, and getting 600 pounds on a 30 0‑pound guy. That's where we got most exposed against those two teams. Q. Are you having more success when they just go man up on you? When you can go straight and they come straight at you? COACH HAZELL: Power schemes more so, and I‑schemes, yes. But Penn State is a zone team. Now is Penn State as good up front as Iowa and Wisconsin? They're good. I don't think they're as good as those two teams. Q. You have two freshmen quarterbacks on the field, true freshmen quarterbacks on the field Saturday. Can you talk about Hackenberg, and just kind of what, as we look ahead in the conference, are these two guys do they have the potential to carry the torch for the lead from the quarterback standpoint? COACH HAZELL: I can speak about our guy. I can't speak about their guy. I think so. Last week when he had protection, you saw some of the things that he was capable of doing. He threw a comeback to E.J. on the far sideline. E.J. didn't get out of the route. But it was just what you want to see from a young guy. I think he can make all the throws. I think we've got‑‑ we're in such a situation right now where you've got to do some things to protect him, because of protection, but you'd like to be able to push the ball deep with him a little bit more. Q. You said Sinz probably won't practice today, but Anthrop had the same type of injury. Will he be held out today? COACH HAZELL: No, Danny's going to practice today. Sinz is a little more sore than Danny is. Got a couple other guys that might sit out today as well. Q. (No microphone) led you in tackles and had a sack last week. Why is he doing well? He's obviously been getting more snaps out there? COACH HAZELL: He's got a big motor. He plays so hard. Plays from his heart. That's what makes him so productive for us. Hopefully he can continue to do that. He was out of position a lot of times, but he plays so hard. Q. Is Ryan Russell your guy after four games or whatever it has been? COACH HAZELL: He got a little bit more productive last week, but we still need him to be a better player for us at the line of scrimmage. He was more productive than he had been for the first couple of weeks. Q. Do you think it's a matter of him just needing time to understand the position? I mean, obviously, you changed schemes because you thought he could fit in that spot, right? I mean, projecting forward, do you think he can play this position well for you? COACH HAZELL: I do. I do. He probably needs a lot more reps, and a lot better feel, natural feel. I'd like to see him just go at times. When he sees a gap, go run through the gap and try to make a play. But that's all a learning process. Q. You said you want to get in the face of their young quarterback. You haven't gotten as much pressure as you would have liked this year. Do you change then what you do this week? Do you maybe blitz a little more because you aren't getting pressure? COACH HAZELL: Perhaps. Q. How much have you blitzed this season generally? COACH HAZELL: Percentage‑wise? I would say probably 20% maybe. Yeah, uh‑huh. Five‑man pressure or six‑man pressure or seven‑man pressure, which one? Q. Do they all count as a blitz? I don't know. COACH HAZELL: Okay. Q. Do you have specifics on each of those? COACH HAZELL: Yeah, there is a five‑man pressure. Q. But I mean do you know specifically the percentages? COACH HAZELL: No, I don't. Q. I'm just counting them all as a blitz, is that okay? COACH HAZELL: Yeah. Q. Punt return is an area that this program has struggled for, gosh, I think a decade or so getting anything. Do you feel like you have some guys who are play maker kind of guys that need help up front? How do you get more production in that area? COACH HAZELL: I'm not sure how many times we put that unit out there last week. I know we went after them one time. Thought we had a chance to get a block and the turn or centered the opposite way. Another time I think they were fair catch opportunities. Then one I think he miss‑hit one to our sideline. So we haven't had great opportunities for returns. If you're going to get four or five a game, you like to go after them one or two, and then hold up the other one or two. Then play it safe. If the ball is between the 40s, we're going to keep our defense out there, and that's not a great time for a big return. Q. Just to clarify, you mentioned Prince taking over for Sinz, so he would be kind of an extra lineman but a blocking tight end? How would you refer to him in that situation? COACH HAZELL: Yeah. We'll use him in situations. If Sinz is not available, we'll use him in some situations where he can lineup at tight end and help in the run game as well as the pass game. Q. Do you feel like (No microphone)? COACH HAZELL: I really do. I thought he looked a lot more comfortable out there. I thought he was more accurate with his throws. I just felt like he had a better feeling as he went through the process of the game. Q. Can you talk about the offensive line? And kind of playing off Mike's question, do you think it's a matter of building that offensive line and now we're seeing some pretty good things out of Etling? COACH HAZELL: There's no doubt. I think any good football team is going to have a good offensive line, a good defensive line, and that's where tall starts. If you have those two components, then you have a chance to be successful. You won't have the pressure of having to sit back there and drop back all the time where you can establish the running game. But when you do have to, you know that you're protected and he can make those throws. Q. With (No microphone) being out of the picture like the Big Ten Championship. What could happen for you this season, and what do you want to accomplish from here on out? COACH HAZELL: Every opportunity to get better, we're going to get better. We have three Tuesdays left for our seniors. What I've told our staff this morning, I want to be great today on this Tuesday. Every opportunity we have to improve as a football team, we're going to do it. Q. When you look back over your career, your life, really, is this the most you've ever been challenged? COACH HAZELL: Again, I don't evaluate it like that. You take each situation for what it is, and I don't look like 10 years or 15 years and say we were struggling. I really don't. All I can do is live in the now and work on the process of making us a better football team, which we're going to be a good football team. We're going to get things fixed and move forward. We're all going to be feeling very good about ourselves. But it's a process, and we understand that. I like the foundation of where our staff is, where some of our guys are doing, I like our foundation and the direction we're going. Q. Talking about Hackenberg and you like what you see so far. Can you compare him to another Big Ten quarterback or is it apples and oranges, or are you seeing different things against same opponents? COACH HAZELL: Well, because our hands are on Danny every single day, it's a lot easier to make an evaluation. Now you watch him, like I study four or five of men of Penn State's defensive offense. I'll study all their kick plays and four or five of Penn State's offense. It's harder for me to make an assessment of him other than what I see from those 45, 50 plays a game he's playing or 60 plays a game he's playing. He's got a chance to be a good play. He's a young player right now. You can see some youth, but you can also see some things that he's doing very well. Q. With the receivers, I know you're high on (No microphone) into action and really getting out there. Have you seen the progress even if it's not reflected in the numbers and stats and all that stuff? Are you seeing what you want to this season so far? COACH HAZELL: You know, we talked about that this morning a little bit. There are four guys right now, and I said going forward these last few weeks, we've got to get ramped up. That is Yancey, Anthrop, Posey and E.J. those guys can make some plays for us. We've got to get those guys wrapped up these last three weeks because they can be pretty special. I think those other guys, there is a package for (Indiscernible). I'm not talking about that package. Monteroso is still coming, but he's still a ways away. But those guys have proven they can make some plays for us. They're not as consistent as you like them to be right now. They still play young at times. Q. Last thing for me, when you watch film each week, what is the one thing whether it's an individual position or whether the entire team? What is one thing that stands out each week when you see the film? COACH HAZELL: Here's the thing I address our team with Sunday. I took the timeline of the game. At the end of the first quarter 0 to 0. Iowa goes down, they score, 7‑0. Then we went down and answered, so it's 7‑7. Then they went down and made it 14‑7 on a good play by their football team. Now we've got to get that ball out of the air, but they made a heck of a throw and heck of a catch. So it's 14‑7. You come out in the third quarter and there is an exchange of serves. We get the ball first. We don't do anything. We get the ball, they don't do anything. Then we start the drive. With 8:56 to go in the third quarter, we end up fumbling the ball, okay? So it's 14‑7 at that point in time. We could have potentially tied it up. It's at the plus 35. Then here's the thing that I address with our football team. At that point in time a little wind went out of our sail. That can't happen. We talked about championship teams. When they become championship teams, you've got to be able to overcome those down by 7, down by 14, because it's a tight ballgame. The very next play was a plus 16‑yard gain to our sideline on a basic zone play. So we've got to be able to overcome those adverse situations as a football team to become a champion when we're going to become a champion. Q. Is Posey okay? He didn't play as many snaps last week. Is it an injury thing? COACH HAZELL: Yeah, he was a little sore going into last week's contest, and Anthrop had a great week of practice. I think he took two snaps maybe three snaps. Yep, but he's fine now. Q. A follow‑up on the four receivers you talked about. What is your definition of amped up? COACH HAZELL: We've got to get them playing at a high level, high speed, no mistakes and to make plays for us. Q. Is that just these are the four main receivers you go with moving forward? COACH HAZELL: I think for where we are right now, I think those are the guys that kind of identified themselves as the guys that can go out and make plays for us right now. Now those other guys are going to be a great supporting cast. But if we're going to get going and have success down the stretch, we need those four guys to play exceptionally well. Q. You're playing a lot of true freshmen right now. But of the guys red‑shirt freshmen in spring, have any of those guys really caught your eye? Think come spring they might be guys that you'll take a long look at? COACH HAZELL: I think the young line back, Keyante Green, they're running all scout things so it's hard to judge. He's one of the guys you like. I think Jason Tretter is going to be one of those interior guys that's not going to be a great player, but he's going to be a very serviceable guy inside as an offensive lineman. I think some of those other younger players are jumping out‑‑ not sure yet. Not sure. Q. There were a couple guys, Myles Norwood and Dezwan who showed up in the summer with some minor injuries that kind of held them back. When those guys are healthy, your assessment of them? COACH HAZELL: I think you're right on that. Myles is a guy that's flashed quite a few times. He's a guy that I think is going to be a good player for us. Dezwan's a little further away right now, but I think Myles is going to be a good player as a wideout. Q. You're playing so many true freshmen now, how much better should those guys be in the spring for having accrued all this experience? COACH HAZELL: There is nothing like experience. I mean, just think about the first time you put something together at home, how much easier it was the second time. There's nothing like experience. You can't trade anything for it. So they're going to be better in the springtime. They're going to be much more comfortable. They understand the language a little better. All those things that matter they'll be much better at. Q. Just going back to Penn State real quick. What are the challenges of defending what they do offensively from a schematic standpoint? COACH HAZELL: I think it's about the big back they use. They use the big back No. 28, and he's physical. He runs hard with the ball. He did not play No. 1 as much last week against Minnesota for whatever reason. But they ran zone with the big back, and he was breaking tackles, so we're going to have to do a good job of tackling that guy. Q. How are they on both sides of the ball from a physicality standpoint at the line of scrimmage? That's often something Penn State does? COACH HAZELL: They're good. Q. Historically, Purdue struggled at Penn State. What do teams have to do to be successful there? COACH HAZELL: They've got to play between the lines. Simple as that sounds, you can't let all those distractions bother them. All that matters is what happens in between the 53 and a third and 10 yards down the field. That's all that matters. Those are 105,000 fans that are screaming you've got to block it out and execute your job, and that's what some people go into that stadium and get distracted, but you can't get distracted. Q. Going back to that drive in the third quarter is he getting back to where he was preinjury? COACH HAZELL: That was a great play by him, great effort. He got hit three yards shy of the stakes and fought like crazy to get that extra three and a half yards for first down. He's got that in him. We need his energy and drive that he's shown us, and he's going to be a really good player for us. Q. Are you starting to see that burst out of him again? It seemed like we saw that in spurts on Saturday. COACH HAZELL: You saw that on his touchdown run. He caught the ball. He was a little shade to the defender and then accelerated. That's what we need those big play capabilities. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|