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FEDEX ORANGE BOWLDecember 31, 2007Ed WarrinerMIAMI, FLORIDA JASON ALPERT: Thank you very much for joining us here. We'll have Coach Ed Warinner. Coach, start by opening up with some comments about your time here in this Miami and your preparations for the game. COACH WARINNER: We've had a great time, and obviously, had great weather, and the players are enjoying their trip here. The people have been great. We love south Florida. Preparation's been good. Players went to work first day after we arrived. They've been practicing hard. Well focused and had a really crisp practice yesterday. So we're headed in the right direction, we think. So all is well right now. Q. You look at Tech's defense, can you compare it to anyone you've played against this year? Or can you assess that? COACH WARINNER: It's a very good defense, I wouldn't compare it to anyone we've played. Though it's probably as good or better than any defense we've played. Very good in all phases. Exceptional against the run. Giving up 2.8 yards per rush. Very physical attacking defense in the front seven. Then they're strong in the back end, too. Their corners are very athletic and their safeties are physical and run support hard. So they're a very good defense overall, and I would say probably the best defense we've played this year. Q. Does it seem similar to yours what you see in practice? COACH WARINNER: No, it's not similar. It's similar in how they play hard, and sound and they're very good on defense, and I think our defense is the same. But structurally, they're different. They lineup and play a little bit different coverages and have a little philosophy of how they pressure and things. Q. You guys have been penalized relatively few times. What is the difficulty associated with that and the spread offense? COACH WARINNER: Well, I'm not sure. The spread offense doesn't have much to do with whether we're penalized or not. I think it's just simply the fact that our players are disciplined. And the way we practice, the tempo we practice at. And their focus going into games has been very good. Our quarterback, I think your quarterback and the rhythm he has controlling the game and so forth really helps keep everybody in sync. You know, we're in the shotgun a lot, so we're on silent snap count quite a bit. When you're on silent count, there isn't a lot of opportunity to jump. Just basically you're jumping if you're nervous up there or prior to the snap of the ball, because they don't move until the ball's snapped. They're not going on a vocal cadence. But I think it's our players' discipline, and concentration and the way we practice to avoid that. We understand our margin of error is small. That's one of our big focuses on offenses. Margin of error. And our margin of error is based on things that we do to ourselves to sacks, penalties, drop passes, turnovers. Those are what we consider the margin of error. We try to keep those as low as possible, so those are the things we emphasize the most. Q. Can you discuss the evolution of Marcus Henry and why you believe he's become the big play receiver he has been this year? COACH WARINNER: Well, just a lot of talent there. Tall, rangy, very athletic guy. Great speed. Much faster than people think or at least people thought going into this season. But you get him out in the open field, and there are not many people that can catch him. Developed his hands. Understands routes, how to run routes against coverage, and then confidence. I think our quarterback has a great deal of confidence in throwing the ball to him. And he has a lot of confidence right now in himself. So just the fact that he is a complete package in terms of his development in all phases at wide receiver. Then our quarterback getting the ball to him. And as coaches, we have confidence, so we try to dial him up as much as we can. Q. What makes this offense so good? COACH WARINNER: Balance. Probably the fact that one week Marcus Henry might catch ten passes, and the next week Derek Fine might, the next week Dexton Fields might, and the next week Brandon McAnderson might rush for 200. So when you have a spread offense, and we consider it spread by formation, but we also consider it spread by we don't have to rely on one guy week after week after week to carry the load. So if they want to take away a certain aspect of our offense, we can attack in other places and we're good enough to do that. So balance in the run game and passing game. Balance in drop back play action. Balance in who the ball is distributed to has made us successful. And you got a quarterback with a pretty hot hand, when you've got that, you've got a chance. Q. Kind of a question in two parts, when you guys score as easily as it seems, I know it's not easy, but when you make it seem easy, how do you have to continue challenging your kids to work hard week in and week out? And the second part of that, was there, you guys, if my math is right, you have more touchdowns than punts or something crazy like this this year. Was there a point this season when you were baffled by some of the numbers that this team put up? COACH WARINNER: Yeah, it's never as easy as it looks. But it's like anything, you try to find a rhythm and you try to get your quarterback in rhythm. When he gets in rhythm, in any offense when your quarterback's in rhythm, you've got a chance. We just, our offense is based on attacking weaknesses and getting the ball to the spots and defenses where they're most vulnerable. We have a system of how to do that. And our quarterback can execute it. Like I said before, the balance we have, we have multiple receivers that can have big games. We have a lot of guys who have a lot of catches and touchdowns. If you get worried about the pass too much, then we're going to be able to bang the run in there. So just consistency. But I think we've gotten into rhythms and games. Once we get into that rhythm, I mean, Todd will hit 13, 14 in a row. You know, there is some rhythm in play calling and attacking people. But it's fun. I mean, it's a lot of fun, we enjoy it. The players get excited. We don't set any bars on well, if we get 21 this game we're going to win, or if we get 24. We just try to go out and play and try to score every series. We don't always do that. But we're just trying to be aggressive, too. We try to attack and put pressure on you. I just think it's a culmination of a great job by our assistant coaches of coaching their players. They believe in the system, they're all going out and attacking and executing well. Q. Along those lines were there times when 21 and 24 would have disappointed you considering what this offense is capable of? COACH WARINNER: Those two 19-point games disappointed us. But we won them. We don't care, as long as we win. Our goal is to win by one, and anything after that, we'll take it. But only disappointing us in the fact that there were opportunities that were maybe left on the field for more points. But you're not going to get it every week where you hit every chance. I think that's the thing that Todd's done. When the opportunities have presented themselves, he's made the throws and we've made the catches and things like that. You always have plays you look back in games and say, man, we left a few points on the field there. We didn't leave a lot of points on the field in games we were able to convert. Q. I was wondering, what is it about Todd that makes him such a good fit for what you guys do? And trailing off of that, was there a moment when you got here and you were watching Todd where the light kind of clicked on in your head that hey, maybe we have something special in him? COACH WARINNER: Well, I think the one thing that was an advantage for Todd coming in is that he ran a spread shotgun offense in high school. Had a lot of success. So, you know, had a lot of confidence in his own ability to move a team and score points and be successful. I think he lost one game as a starter in high school as a starting quarterback, and that was a state championship game. So in Texas that's pretty good. So we came in and we put in the new offense in the spring and taught it to the guys. I just think that after he understood what we were trying to do on offense and he worked his tail off in the summertime and on his own, and he's very football smart, very intelligent aside from that. But he's football smart as well. And I just think he started piecing it together in his mind. When he gets confidence in something, boy, look out. His greatest strength is that, he's very confident, he's not afraid to pull the trigger, and he knows what's going on in front of him. He gained confidence, and he started getting into rhythm in the summertime, going through preseason practices. You could just see that he knew how to move the club, and that he knew how to make quick decisions. He has that thing quarterbacks need, short-term memory. He doesn't let a bad play bother him. He's on to the next play. It bothers the coaches, just give me the next call, let's go. Because he knows what he did wrong. He's the kind of guy now we're at the point where we coach him, but he knows what the mistakes are he's making, he knows what he needs to correct before you even say it, so it's pretty good. Q. How tall do you think actually is? COACH WARINNER: Tall enough to get us to a BCS Bowl (smiling). He's under 6-foot. He's 5'10-ish. Q. Having that disadvantage in height, what sort of things do you set up for him to offset that or to overcome it? COACH WARINNER: Well, the thing that he does is he has to have great anticipation, because he has to fit the ball in windows. Most people talk about windows in the secondary. We talk about windows in the D-line. So he's fitting the ball through windows in the D-line. You know what I'm saying? So he has to time up where his throws are, and regard to that, he knows how to slide around some times. You'll see him sliding around in the pocket, and he's just finding his throwing lanes. So he's learned to do that. That wasn't something that he had to do in high school as much as at this level. Big guys push the pocket, hands up, he moves around. So you'll see him moving around back there a little bit, which unsettles some people coaching quarterbacks, they don't like their quarterback's floating, but he's doing it to find his throw lane. We move the pocket, we have boot legs, we have nakeds, we do some of those things. Play-action to move where the launch point is in the pocket to give him different angles to see around. But he just knows how to play the game and where to fit the ball. Q. He you talk about Todd's short-term memory. How much did he need that after the Missouri game? That was kind of a tough night for him, he had gone 200-something throws without a pick on that big stage. He probably had a couple of throws he'd want back. How have you seen him come back and recover from that game? COACH WARINNER: I thought he recovered in the second half of that game. First series we went down we were inside the ten and he threw it behind Marcus on a route that if he hit him in stride, he was going to score. He got picked off because he got tipped by Marcus because it was behind him. Then we came back and never punted the rest of the game, so scored every time we had it after that. So he just knew it was one of those balls, you know, you throw 50 balls, 45 balls in a game, and you throw two that are three feet off, and both of them got picked off in that game. Otherwise, both of them would have been touchdowns. If he didn't underthrow the one to Fields, that's a touchdown. If he didn't throw the one behind Marcus, that's a touchdown. The rest of them he threw pretty decent, you know, and ended up having four touchdown passes, and 30-something yards. It's just those two he would have liked to have back only because they were about three feet off. But that didn't bother him, because he knows. It's just like a great golfer. You hit a 300-yard drive in the rough, well, the next time you're on the tee, you hit a 300-yard drive down the fairway. You know you can do it, you just pulled it a little. He doesn't worry about it. We don't dwell on it, we just move to the next play. That guy gets in a rut, gets down on himself, you're going to struggle. You've got to keep pulling the trigger and keep playing. Q. Have you ever seen him down? COACH WARINNER: Not really. That's why his nickname's Sparky, you know. He's a spark plug. He doesn't get down long, and that's what's great about him. The players feed off that. They know every time he walks out there with them, there's a chance to score, and they believe it, he believes it. And that's half the battle. Q. As a coach, how heartening was it for you to see the way Kerri Meier reacted to his new challenge and his new opportunity? I mean a lot of guys at quarterback might have retreated into a shell. But when he was offered a new challenge, he really stepped up. COACH WARINNER: That was probably one of the most amazing things about the season. That's probably why we're here. Just the fact that that selfless attitude permeated throughout our team. That the guy who was the heir apparent to be your starting quarterback, an in-state kid who had been recruited to come there and turn the program around had to take a backseat to somebody else. He accepted it, worked hard every day. Never pouted. Never did anything, but just come to work, put himself in a position to where if something happens to Todd, he can go in and be successful. Then found a way to get him on the field and help us win other ways, and he's accepted that and done a tremendous job with it. So, you know, when everybody on the team sees somebody like that put the team first, that's why we have a pretty unselfish group, I think. I think that's one of the biggest factors in helping us get here. Q. How good of an athlete is he? Seems like -- COACH WARINNER: He's as good an athlete as we have on the offensive side of the ball. In terms of athleticism, speed, strength, coordination, hands, you know. Understanding the game. But I mean, just he can -- there's not much he can't do. He's as good an athlete as we have on the offense. Q. You mentioned the system. Can you trace back to when you returned to the staff and the initial discussions you had with mark and how kind of the evolution of the system itself, how it's manifested itself as you've gone through the season? COACH WARINNER: Yeah, we had a lot of discussions prior to me taking the job. Because number one, you want to see if you have common ground with a head coach. He's an offensive guy. Coached offense, offensive coordinator, won a national championship. So he has some strong thoughts about offensive football, and so did I. We had a lot of common ground in our discussions. We pieced together our philosophy and put an offense on the field that works for the players we have. I just think that it was a work in progress. The first thing I wanted to do when we got here was put in a basis tem of spread no huddle, then work it from there based on the talents that we had, and what we have at the different positions. Because I had to find out the talents of our receivers, running backs, tight ends, O-line, that's why we're successful is we're playing to the strengths of our players. We're pretty much on the same page. What's nice is that coach can watch from a distance and say, hey, you know, here's some thoughts I have and he's usually right. In terms of adjusting this, tweaking this, adding this, not doing this, you know, and that's good. But it's a collective effort, but it's been good for us. Q. In your two stints at Kansas, has Coach Mangino, has his style or approach changed at all? Is he more of a nurturer? Or does he listen more? Is he more of a my word is the final word type thing or has there been any change at all? COACH WARINNER: Coach has stayed the course. He's not strayed far from what he believed in when he first came and building the foundation of the program. I mean, our program's based on discipline, toughness, hard work, nothing's going to be given to you. You've got to earn everything. Accountability, and all of those things. And we haven't strayed from that. We don't cut any slack on guys being late for meetings, missing weights, missing class. 100% effort in off-season drills. We demand when we have them for football, we demand just as much now as we did before. That hasn't changed. As the season went on, being 8-0, 9-0 did not change our attitude at practice. And our kids go out there and work their butts off. But I haven't really seen a change much, other than I think that you know, he's allowed himself to be more involved in all aspects of our football team, and a little bit less on offense, and more involved in special teams and defense. So he kind of mixes it up and is involved in all three now instead of being primarily involved in offense more so. No, I like our approach. It's what I believe in, and that's why I'm here. I believe in his philosophical approach of how you coach a football team, and we're pretty much on the same page on that. End of FastScripts |
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