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FEDEX ORANGE BOWL: WAKE FOREST v LOUISVILLEDecember 30, 2006Steed LobotzkeMIAMI, FLORIDA THE MODERATOR: Coach Lobotzke, just a couple minutes of opening comments and then we'll take some questions. COACH STEED LOBOTZKE: Opening comments? We're just excited to be here. Thanks for having us. Q. Can you talk about Riley and the start of the year and where he has come? He was kind of thrown into a situation that not most freshman could handle. COACH STEED LOBOTZKE: Right. Eight days before the Syracuse game Riley was our No. 3 quarterback, and then we had a scrimmage and had our No. 2 guy get his shoulder knocked out, so Riley was bumped up to 2, started getting some more reps, and then in that third quarter we're sitting there and Riley has got his basketball hat on and he's signaling plays, and all of a sudden Ben goes down. And look over at him and said, "Hey, Riley, you're going to go in the game." He goes, "Oh, I need to go find my helmet." And he throws his hat down and runs off and he had no idea where the thing was at. No, we didn't expect to use him this year. From that point on, we scaled the game plan back big time and just gave him pieces as he grew into being our starting quarterback. So now he's up to the new modified play book. We really changed the offense this season from where we started because Ben Mauk had different talents, and we always try to mold our offense so our players, not to what we just want to do. So we really changed the play book as the season went on, trying to fit his skill set and make him good as good as possible and try to play to his strengths, which meant a reduction in option plays and an increase in five-step passes and really an increase in deep routes, also. People would say we don't call a lot of deep routes, but he throws a good deep ball, and we've called more this year than we have called in the past because he throws a good deep ball. His progress has been amazing and just the way he's taking care of the football and kept us out of bad situations and made the other team's offense go the length of the field to score; that's been our main goal, just taking care of the ball. Coach Grobe always says, "Don't be the Green Hornet on offense, just go out there, do a good job, take advantage of the opportunities we're given, and make the other team's offense earn it," so that's always been our goal all year, and he's done a really good job fulfilling that role. Q. Just as a follow-up, just talk about what -- being a freshman, you don't expect the nerves, and in this situation now, I mean, he looks like a veteran on the field. You don't expect that from a freshman. What is it about him? COACH STEED LOBOTZKE: He's just got it. Whatever it is, he's got it. He had it in high school; we didn't give it to him. He won two state championships at Jacksonville Bolles. He had it then. The bigger the game is, the better he plays. When it's flying all around him in the pocket, he just sits in there calm and gets it done. He's got it. He can just sit in there and get it done for us. The more pressure, the better he does. I don't know how you coach that. He's just one of those special guys you come across. We're really lucky to get him. Q. You partially answered this already, but how did you tweak the system from last year with Barclay to this year when you thought you were going to have Ben and then tweak it again when Ben was lost and Riley came in? COACH STEED LOBOTZKE: Right. Our main change from last year was being an "I" football team last year with Chris Barclay and really trying to be a run-oriented offense and ride Chris Barclay's shoulders to victory, and then this year even when we had Ben, we were going to have a shotgun football team and try to help our quarterbacks by getting deeper in the pocket pre-snap and let them see the field. Also create some opportunities for some option plays, whether it's a read option play or a shovel pass option, some option plays that Ben Mauk was really good at. We wanted to do that and we did that all spring out of the shotgun. Our main change was becoming a shotgun option football team and then helping Ben Mauk be in the gun to help his throw game because that's what he grew up doing up in Ohio. So that was our main change, coming out of the "I." Then when Ben went down, we shifted again from being a shotgun option team to being more of a predetermined shotgun run team with more drop-back passes, not that Ben Mauk couldn't throw drop-back, it's just we had to find more of those for Riley because that's really what he did. So we shifted to even more of a passing team. Now, if we can run it and you don't stop us from running it, then that's all we'll do. That's always been our trademark. But when we've had to, we will open up that throw game and try to use that, that segment of our offense. Q. Coach Grobe was saying that the offensive coaches are not selfish and not interested in being stat hounds. Is there a certain culture within offensive coordinators? I guess you know that the best way for an offensive coordinator to get noticed is to put up 500 yards a game and 40 points. Is that part of the expectation in a lot of places of having this role, and how do you resist that urge in the name of doing what's best? COACH STEED LOBOTZKE: I think you're right. I think a lot of guys that want to go on and be head coaches real soon are wanting to put up stats. They want to say I'm in charge of an offense that puts up big numbers, especially in the throw game. We score lots of points, we're flashy and we do lots of deep balls and risky things, but we're going to score points and I'm going to get my head coaching job because of that. We just try to push all that way down. For me I'm not trying to look for another job. I'm working for Coach Grobe and we're trying to win football games. So the best thing for us was to call plays from a team perspective. Coach Grobe and I have had conversations about calling plays from a team perspective, not an offensive perspective, and if the defense has just given up a long drive, the best thing we can do is go out and take up a lot of time and be on the field for a while. We don't need to score in one play. If the defense is out there doing great, I can be a little more aggressive with my play calling because they're fresh and they're rested and they don't need a break. Again, if you want to play to your team's strength and the defense is your team's strength, you want to make the other team's offense go the length of the field. So we've tried to minimize the number of short fields we've allowed teams to have on us. We don't want any turnovers on our end. If we do have a turnover we want it to be a deep pick like the couple we had against Boston College where it's almost like a punt. We've got a good punter. We're not afraid to use him, not afraid to use Sam Swank and let him lengthen the field for us. And our bend-but-don't-break defense has been just that; they've made teams get a lot of yards but not a lot of points, so it's been a good formula for us to win football games. Q. What did you tell your team when you lose your starting quarterback, your running back? It very well could have went the other way. What did you tell the offense and how did it kind of emotionally I guess more than anything, emotionally and mentally keep it together this year? COACH STEED LOBOTZKE: We've always had a motto. I this it became more prevalent than ever this year, when we just say TCB. The first thing we say is take care of business, just go out there and do what you're supposed to do; everyone just focus on their job, don't talk to the defense, don't talk to the officials, just do your job. And then take care of your brother; you're in this together. No one is going to come out here and play for you. You 11 guys out there need to get it done together, help each other up and don't sit and bitch at each other. The coaches will do that when you come off to the side. You guys just go out there and encourage each other. And then finally take care of the ball. And that really has been the most important thing for us this year. So that's all we talked to them about all year was TCB. For me it meant those three things. Q. How many pages did you have to pull out of your play book after Ben was hurt shifting things on the fly there? COACH STEED LOBOTZKE: We did, we took all the option pages out, I'll tell you that much. We took all those things out. It's not that Riley can't run, but he just is not comfortable. It doesn't play to his strength. We took out a lot of the drop-back concepts at first, but then we've put a page in each week. We keep adding a new route concept as he's grown and learned the other ones. We found some other things he does pretty well. He does some blocking things well, so we added some pages that we didn't have in there originally. He does some pretty good thing for us in this area, and we've also tried to do some more things with some deep balls because he throws them so well. Q. I'm curious, particularly with Kenneth Moore moving from wide receiver to running back, you guys use so many end arounds and reverses anyway. How interchangeable is your running back pool with your wide receiver pool, and are they really one and the same? COACH STEED LOBOTZKE: Physically some of the kids may look similar, and Kenny definitely was our best receiver and has become our best running back. But mentally they're not interchangeable. We have a very clear-cut different set of rules for each group. So we could not take a kid and just throw him from running back to receiver in a game. He wouldn't know the route concepts and vice versa. Our receivers cannot be plugged in and understand our protection schemes. That's probably been the hardest thing for Kenny. Whenever we called a pass in the past, he was out on the route. Now he's in there trying to figure out which linebacker he's supposed to block and what his check release is. Mentally it's not very interchangeable. But physically I think we had some kids that could play in either room. Q. I'm doing a story tomorrow morning on Ben Mauk. I know he was a work in progress like most football players are. But to groom him for three years, what did you see in that first three quarters against Syracuse that seemed to have pretty much everybody in the program excited with the way he was playing? COACH STEED LOBOTZKE: Yeah, we saw the stuff from Ben that we had kind of been missing his first couple years. He was just really calm, he wasn't running for his life like he had a tendency to do. He was throwing real accurate passes but he was throwing it to the right guy, which he had sometimes struggled to do for us. He was managing the game and not trying to be the superstar. We were really excited about what we had seen. It was only 10-10 at the half, but we had very high confidence in the way he was playing in that half. He threw one kind of silly interception and the ball kind of got away from him on a short route, but we thought, hey, we picked the right slogan this year for the poster with "the time is now." Ben is playing good and this is going to be our shot. We're going to get to a Bowl this year. Q. Kind of along those same things, about Ben Mauk healing up, with the No. 2 guy healing up and with Riley playing so well, I know you don't want to look too far ahead, but have you given any thought to what you're going to do in the spring with that position? COACH STEED LOBOTZKE: No, we've given it to no thought. We're going to try to get through this one and we'll worry about spring ball when we get there. I'm sure the job will be wide open and everyone gets to compete for it. I would imagine Riley will start out at No. 1, but I'm sure our head coach and our quarterbacks coach will get together and have a long powwow about that one and nail down a plan of attack. End of FastScripts |
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