TRANSPERFECT MUSIC CITY BOWL: PURDUE VS TENNESSEE

December 29, 2021

Josh Heupel

Jeff Brohm

Nissan Stadium

Press Conference

JOSH HEUPEL: Thank you, everybody here at the TransPerfect Music City Bowl. The hospitality has been absolutely fantastic. Our players and our staff have had a great week here in the lead-up to kickoff.

So appreciative of the hospitality. The bowl truly is first class in every single way.

Excited that we get an opportunity to finish our season here inside of our home state. Looking forward to a great football game. Purdue is a tremendous football team, a great competitive arena tomorrow. Looking forward to a sold-out stadium and having a lot of fun here as we finish off the season.

But just want to, again, say thank you to everybody that's associated with the bowl. You guys have been fantastic.

JEFF BROHM: We're definitely excited to be here at the TransPerfect Music City Bowl. Our team has worked hard to get to this point, and we're excited to be here to experience a great bowl atmosphere. We were fortunate to be here a few years ago, and our fans, our players, our staff had a tremendous time, other than the three hours on the field, which we didn't perform very well. It was a great week for us.

But it was a great learning experience, it's a great wake-up call to realize what we need to do to get better.

Scott Ramsey and his staff have done a tremendous job. We've had a great time. It's always a great venue. We're excited to play a really quality opponent. Coach Heupel has done a great job with his team this year, a lot of talent, had some big wins.

We know it's going to be an environment where there's going to be a lot of orange in the stadium, but I know a lot of Purdue fans will come down, as well, and we're excited for this match-up, and we're looking forward to tomorrow afternoon and getting out there and having a good game.

Q. For both coaches, some people think that maybe winning a bowl game does not matter as much to players as it did when you guys played. Do you think that's true, and how do you gauge the will to win this game with your players?

JOSH HEUPEL: Yeah, I think if you're a great competitor, and those are traits that we try to build and recruit, too, and have inside of our building every single day in what you do, it does matter. It matters how you perform. It matters to you individually and collectively as a team.

So certainly this is a game that our players have pushed towards, and it matters a great deal inside of our program.

A bowl game is unique in that I think it's important that they enjoy the experience with you're at home in your preparation, when you get to the bowl site early in the week, but the carrot of the whole week and the thing that you'll remember most about the experience is the game itself.

JEFF BROHM: You know, you always want to finish what you started, and I know our guys have worked real hard to get to this point. They've done a really good job of fighting through the season and figuring out a way to finish the regular season 8-4 and have this opportunity to play a tremendous opponent basically in their home state in a tremendous atmosphere.

We're excited about the challenges of the team to step forward and see what they're made of, and whoever takes the field, you want to go out there and do your very best and try to finish the season as strong as you can.

I know our guys are going to go out there and compete, and it should be a great day of football.

Q. Coach Brohm, assess your receiving corps without David Bell and without Wright, and also would you talk about what you think went wrong a couple years ago.

JEFF BROHM: Well, fortunately for us we do have a lot of receivers on your team. We're down quite a few, but that's the nature of football. Whether it's the last bowl game or the first game of next year, new guys are going to have to emerge, and this will be a great environment to see how some of these guys respond.

We're looking forward to a few new faces being on the field. We still want to try to do what we do best and get the ball to our playmakers and figure out a way to score points on offense and see if we can get a few stops on defense. That's always the goal is to just compete and game plan against a quality opponent and see if you can win.

I know as far as a couple years ago, it was not a good day for us on the field. It was one of those games where you'd just like to wash away. But you know what? We learned a great deal. We played a tremendous Auburn team that had a lot of talent, a lot of size, a lot of guys who have gone to the National Football League, and we got exposed in many areas.

A lot of things we needed to work on and improve and understand. When you go against really, really quality high caliber opponents you need to figure out ways to get stops and get points and get an edge on special teams and win.

So there are a lot of things you can learn, and we hope to try to put on a better performance this year.

Q. Jeff, what would nine wins mean for this team and this program based on year five of your tenure?

JEFF BROHM: Well, anytime you can finish a season strong, get a bowl win, it's very important. But I think we understand where we're at. Even the Drew Brees Rose Bowl team won eight games. We've talked to our team about it. If we can go out there and compete and just figure out a way to finish strong and get nine, it would be huge. It's something that we could build upon.

You know, it's a bowl game, so it's going to be competitive. We know we have our hands full. We're going to have to play well in all aspects of the game, do a lot of the small things right. We're going to have to defend an offense that goes very fast, which really in our conference we don't see as much. And we've worked on it a whole lot, but getting out there and doing it in the game is a different story.

But I know our guys are looking forward to playing a quality opponent that has a lot of talent in their backyard, and we'll see what we're made of.

Q. Coach Heupel, the administration made the decision a while back to allow Tennessee to play in the bowl game. Looking back on that, how much do you appreciate that, considering that you're in Nashville right now?

JOSH HEUPEL: I appreciate that from our administration, that they're going to support and give our players every tool, every resource, but also just support them in their mission and make sure that we have a great player experience and that every facet of our program.

Certainly when I took the job, there's things that happened before I got there really felt like they were going to be a speed bump. That's been proven to really kind of play out, and the kids inside of our program have really bought into the culture, bought into competing every single day, and that's why we're here and have the opportunity to play in this bowl game.

Q. Jeff, the production on offense is more lopsided obviously than the past with you guys. How much is that by design and preference, and how much of it is just matching personnel?

JEFF BROHM: You're talking about passing?

Q. Yeah, you throw the ball --

JEFF BROHM: Well, a former quarterback, that's kind of what I like to do. But we'd like to always figure out a way to score points. We do want to play an exciting brand of football. We do want to get the ball to our playmakers. Throughout this year we didn't have a big staple of running backs and we had some injuries early on, and really we were thin at that position. We had to figure out a way to score points.

I think we got better as the year went on at getting the ball to playmakers in different ways. We found ways to get our quarterback in a better rhythm and to get completions and score some points. Every week is a new week when you face a quality opponent that has really good talent and plays really hard on defense, you've got to find other ways to score, as well.

I think it's just what can we do to not turn the ball over, score points, get stops on defense, try to gain an edge on special teams, all those things we work hard at, and whatever we have to do to score points we're going to try to do.

Q. Josh, why is this offensive system, why does this work for you? Why did you pick this kind of system to coach and to utilize?

JOSH HEUPEL: Yeah, at the end of the day it's an exciting brand of football. I think young people, young players, playmakers and big skill want to be a part of it. At the end of the day offensively you're trying to find ways to put your kids in position to be successful.

Our tempo is a portion of how we try to apply pressure to the defense and dictate the flow of the football game.

Q. Josh, two things: Any update on the availability of Cade Mays for the game?

JOSH HEUPEL: Yeah, Cade will not be playing in this football game. He will not be able to play.

Q. And then also, the SEC is off to a rough start in bowl games. Do you use any game examples to say, look, when you're not focused and dialed in what can happen out there?

JOSH HEUPEL: Yeah, it doesn't matter what league you're playing in. I think your preparation leads to how you play on game day. From the time we started bowl preparation, you've heard me say that when it's not football time, you've got to enjoy the two, three-week buildup to the bowl game and enjoy the opportunity to have camaraderie and create memorable moments.

But when it's times to be in the building, I don't care if it's lifting, I don't care if it's football, if it's meetings, it's your walk-throughs, you've got to be focused on that. This group has been good in their preparation when it's been time to be focused on the football side of it.

Now, the last 48 hours will be huge for us too here as we finish up today and get ready for tomorrow.

Q. Why do you think your team has been so successful in first quarters this year? You've gotten off to a great start just about every game.

JOSH HEUPEL: Yeah, doing the ordinary things at a really high level. That's a really simple explanation. But our kids understand what we're going to do, and they've played smart football early in the football game in all three phases of the game, been able to line up and execute.