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OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 18, 2013Tom HermanTHE MODERATOR: Questions for Tom Herman. Q. After the game, Urban said he didn't know how much the win impacted Braxton's throwing. He seemed a little wild at times. What were your observations? COACH HERMAN: I didn't know either. After watching film, I think it certainly did. Probably coaching error on my part in terms of maybe underestimating the impact that it had. Although it felt gusty at times on the field, I think the higher the elevation got, the higher the ball got in the air, the more it was impacted by it. Didn't throw the ball particularly well, though, intermediately either. To blame the entire lack of production and the throw game on the wind I think would be a little bit overboard. But it certainly played a part. Q. Did you see fundamentally anything that was different than his previous games? COACH HERMAN: No, not terribly. I think he was a little bit off. That happens sometimes. Q. Urban talks about Jack Mewhort. What do you think he means by talking about him, expand on his value? COACH HERMAN: I think maybe the public perception is, I think they really get enamored with skill‑position players, they forget about or aren't educated on how you win football games. You win football games up front on both sides of the football. To have a guy anchoring our offensive line that is as experienced and professional about going about his business ‑ let's not forget he's a really good player, too. You can be all those things. You can be a great leader, you can be very professional, you can be an anchor, you can do all that, but if you can't play, okay, great, you're a good kid, maybe I'll hire you someday. Jack has all those qualities, plus he's a really, really, really good player. He's the kind of glue that keeps us together up front. Q. Tom, what do you see with defenses now in how they're defending read plays in the run game? COACH HERMAN: I think there's a variety of ways that teams are doing it, not just team‑by‑team dependent. But throughout the course of a game I think teams have really gotten better over the course of the year, and years, plural, of having a couple different answers. It's like going back and playing the old triple option teams in Navy or Georgia Tech or something. You can't sit and play the dive the same way every time or they'll figure it out and rush for 500 yards on you. The same is true for some of the stuff that we do. We just happen to do it in the shotgun and some spread formation. Teams are switching it up. I don't know if there's one more common than the other. To say that, I probably wouldn't have researched it enough. But we see a variety of looks on it every Saturday. Q. How is Braxton at making those reads? COACH HERMAN: Better. Better. No quarterback is going to be perfect at it. So we continue to try to improve it. Each snap is different. You break it down into the inches of a defensive end or a linebacker's steps, where are his eyes. We're talking about inches, shoulder turns, steps. He took one more step out here versus one more step out there. Every time the ball is snapped is its own entity. I think he's getting better ‑ long answer to a short question ‑ but got work to do. Q. How is your baby? COACH HERMAN: Awesome, awesome. Glad he's not blond haired and blue eyed because I haven't been home very much (smiling). Q. Breaking the records that the 1995 Ohio offense set. What is your reaction? You're shattering records. Thoughts on that? COACH HERMAN: Not to sound coach speak, but I hadn't thought about it. To give you a short answer, you know, I don't know. Probably something maybe we'll look back and enjoy after the season. But I didn't even know that all those things that you said were even a possibility or hadn't been already done. Q. Is it frustrating, as well as you are playing, that you are in the position you are in the BCS? You don't control your own destiny. I know that's a cliché. COACH HERMAN: No, I don't think there's any frustration because I think at the end of the day, it was like last year, everybody said, Is there frustration you can't go to a bowl game? No, we knew we couldn't go to a bowl game in January. We've known about the BCS for the last 15 years. We know this is the system we play in and these are the cards that are dealt. It really has no bearing on how we prepare, how we play. And to waste brain cells, as I call it, thinking about it, worrying about it, would be brain cells that I can use better to help the offense or help Braxton, be a better husband or better father, whatever the case may be. But it's out of our control. So we can just go win games, play as well as we can, keep getting better every week. Q. Coaches are never satisfied. I would imagine this has been a very fun offense to be in charge of. When you look at this offense, where it is after 10 games, what improvement do you want to see the rest of the year? Where do you think you are right now? COACH HERMAN: I still think we can get better throwing the football. Although we're markedly better than we were in the past, I still would like to see us make the easy ones easy and every now and again make the hard ones become a reality. I'd like to see some improvement there. You know, we're really good scoring in the first quarter. What I'd like to continue to develop is that killer instinct, the pedal to the metal, foot on their throat, whatever catch phrase you want to use. You're up 28‑0 in the first quarter, so what? We had more three‑and‑outs against Illinois than probably close to the entire nine games leading up to that combined. I think the good thing is that we've got some teaching to do. We scored 60 points, close to 600 yards of offense, and there's still a lot of teaching that can go on from that experience. Q. Indiana obviously has struggled on defense. What challenges do they pose to you guys? COACH HERMAN: I think the challenge is identifying what they're trying to do defensively. I think they have a little bit more of an identity maybe than Illinois. Illinois was kind of all over the place. That made some things challenging. We've got to identify what they're trying to do. I think we've got to handle their guys inside. They've good two big D tackles that are really good players. Then they're going to try to pack the box and play what we see almost on a weekly basis, everybody trying to pack the box, but play zone coverage behind it. We saw a bunch of it last year, we just couldn't throw it over anybody's head or didn't have the confidence to do so. I think we've got to be able to recognize when things start getting packed in that we've got to be able to make the play on the perimeter, too. Q. At this point in the season when you look at week 10, have Braxton have an off day, is that concerning to you at all or is that something quarterbacks do regardless of the time of the season? COACH HERMAN: I think it's concerning to the point that I wish it hadn't happened. But concerning to the point where I think it's a trend or a slippery slope? I don't see that. He had a bad day. He had a bad day in some conditions that were less than perfect. Learn from your mistakes and move on. I think if this had been a pattern through a couple weeks or a practice even, I might be a little bit more concerned. But, yeah, the concern is certainly there because you never want a guy to play substandardly. At the same time I don't think it's anything to worry about in the future. Not yet at least. Q. Tom, you came from two schools where if y'all just won, it was a big day. COACH HERMAN: Hell yeah (smiling). Q. What is it like now to be coaching at a place where you've won 22 straight, you score 60, but have national media still thinking it can be better? COACH HERMAN: You're saying at Iowa State if we scored 60 and had 600 yards of offense, we'd feel a little bit differently on Monday than we do at Ohio State? Q. I think you were fired up about going to the Yankee Bowl. COACH HERMAN: Absolutely. We threw parties and stuff, man (smiling). I don't know. I think as you grow in the profession, you just adapt to the surroundings. But I think you adapt to where you're at. But I think the thing that can get lost at times. We had a really good season at Rice a few years back. It started to be at the end of the year, where winning felt like a relief, and it wasn't exaltation, jubilation. It was like a relief, Whew, okay, we won again. I promised myself after that season that I'd never take a win for granted, whether you win 3‑2 or 60‑35 or you win 76‑0. Wins are really, really hard, I mean, really hard. Winning on the road is really hard. They're going to get harder as the season progresses. We don't ever want to take that for granted on how difficult it is, no matter who you play, no matter who you are, that winning a football game on Saturday and playing 60 minutes, at the end of the day looking up and having more points on the scoreboard than your opponent, is an incredibly hard thing to do, and should be enjoyed for the short amount of time that you can enjoy it, then start to prepare for the next week. Q. People keep thinking they're going to see more of Dontre Wilson. Was it because of the way the plays went out? Several huge plays Saturday. COACH HERMAN: Yeah, I think the thing that gets lost, does Dontre deserve to play more? Absolutely. Was it an error on my part not to get him a few more touches? Sure, you can put that on me. When you're playing well offensively, and you have some seniors and some older guys, every time that Dontre touches the ball, Braxton Miller, Carlos Hyde, Philly Brown, those guys don't. I think you have to be smart about when and where that happens. Did we think we might need him more in the beginning of the year to just win games? Yes. So now we've got to figure out a way, because the kid deserves to play. The kid is a really good player. I've got to do a better job as a play‑caller and game planner of figuring out a way to get him touches, but in the rhythm of the offense and not detract from some players that are playing really, really good football right now. Q. The third play of the game you talked about the reads. Gives it to Carlos, guy tackles Carlos, was gone. What was the ID on that play? Is that a great read on his part? COACH HERMAN: No, he was reading the defensive end. The thing we hadn't anticipated in, we were in our jet tempo. We were going fast. Indiana actually had a check, I guess you will. Every time early in the game, every time we jetted, they were going to bring pressure and play cover zero, try to stuff us up front. Actually, the guy he made miss is one that we don't account for. Usually if you see coverage zero you're going to check out of the play that was called. Because we were in our jet tempo, they got lined up fast enough, that guy was standing there. He made a great read on the defensive end. There's a guy there that's not supposed to be there, or if he's there, we would have checked out of the play. I mean, does what I've coached him to do for two years. All those drills we do on how to make people miss. I demonstrate, do all that stuff for him. He's starting to take after his coach a little bit, which is good. Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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