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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYS

July 25, 2008

Tommy Tuberville

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA

COACH TUBERVILLE: Good morning. Ready to get started. It's that time of year. We're excited. I was really excited till I got up this morning, you guys picked us to win the West. Y'all are never right. That puts me in a bind. I don't know what I'm going to tell my team.
Actually we'll use this. It's probably good for us. You know me. You've heard me several times. I'm not big on predictions. But we need something to get us going.
Last year we had a good football team. The one thing that we didn't do is we didn't come out of the blocks. We lost two of the first three games, and both of 'em were at home. We lost four games total, and three of those games were on the last play of the game. We need to have a sense of urgency, a lot more than we did last year. And so I think this will be a point that we can use with our team, our coaches, and we can use it as a rallying point that a lot of people are counting on us and picked us in certain situations.
So I'm looking for consistency. That's gonna be the theme of what we need this year. And I think that our players will understand it a lot better by being picked number one in the West.
We have a chance to have a good football team. We've been working for this team for a while. Unusual that we don't have a starting quarterback, so to speak, in terms of knowing who it's gonna be. If it was today, it would be Cody burns. We have Chris Todd that went through spring practice about 80%. He really wasn't a hundred percent in terms of injuries. He's ready to go now. I think we're going to have a lot of competition going into two-a-days.
After about 10, 12 days, we will pick a starter. We will have somebody as our starting quarterback. I'm a true believer that your quarterback is the leader of your football team in terms of your locker room, your sideline, not just for your offense, but for your defense and your kicking game. We will have a true starter.
That doesn't mean we won't play several more quarterbacks because in this offense that we've gone to, which is totally different, you have to have more than one quarterback. But I want one quarterback as our starter, the guy that knows he's gonna get the reps with the number one team and the guy that all of us can look up to as the guy that, hey, if we need a touchdown in the end, he's the guy we're gonna count on getting it done.
Two new coordinators, not different for me. I've gone through several over the years. Defensively, Paul Rhodes, a guy I tried to hire back seven or eight years ago from Pittsburgh, a great teacher. A lot of enthusiasm. Knows his defense. We won't make a lot of changes. I'm gonna let him use his imagination in terms of what he thinks will help this football team with the talent that we have.
But we still live on speed, putting as many people out there that can run as possible. I look at the defense from inside out, starting with the defensive line. You have to be good on the defensive line in this conference to have an opportunity to get to Atlanta. If you're weak or short in that area, you have no chance.
We lost some good ones. We lost Quentin Groves, we lost Josh Thompson, who was our leading tackler at nose guard position, and we lost Pat Sims who went in the draft early. I like who's coming back, Sen'Derrick Marks, Antonio Coleman. We have some good young players to go along with them.
After watching spring practice, it could be one of our better defensive lines, if we stay healthy as everybody will sit up here and tell you.
But I like that. I like our linebackers. Tray Blackmon, I think, is finally settling down into a position. He was picked by a lot of people across the country as the top linebacker coming out of high school football. He's had some problems, but I like his mentality and where he's working from.
But defense is gonna be solid.
Offensively, new, different, totally different for me, for Auburn, even for the SEC. Everybody says, Well, some teams run this. Not like we run it. It's no-huddle, fast- paced, fast tempo, involve your quarterback in running the football, spread the field, use a lot of wide receivers. You know, really it's a change for us.
Last year we averaged 56 plays a game in the regular season. In the Bowl game we ran 93. If we can continue that, I think we can have some success. We will still run the football. You got to be able to run it to win. You got to be able to control it. We do have two good runningbacks in Ben Tate and Brad Lester. But your quarterback now is also considered a runningback. That's the reason, as we said earlier, we'll probably use several, but only have one starter.
It will be fun to watch. Is it a gamble? Really not. You know, there's only so many running plays you can run. But it is a change.
The one thing I do like is our players in college football, all of us, we know they come to practice every day. It's hard. It's physical. They get tired. And sometimes they get bored because of the things that you do.
This offense puts a smile on their face. They have fun running it. It's always something different, and I think it gives you the opportunity to use more than one player. You can spread it around, use the talent you have on your team. Plus, it's helped us recruiting.
I've never had 20 commitments in my life, even when I was at the University of Miami. This year we have 20 commitments, and a lot of it's due to the offense we've gone to and the ability to recruit a lot more skilled players.
But we're looking to the season. I think it's gonna be a challenge for us. The schedule's tough, as all of them are in this conference. We have one AD game in West Virginia. I call that an AD game, so we're gonna play West Virginia. They have a good football team.
It's going to be good for our conference, good for us. I've been to Morgantown, tough place to play, very good football team. And Alabama, product at quarterback in Pat White, so it will be a great challenge for us and we're looking forward to the trip.
Questions.

Q. Could you just kind of walk through your decision process on going to the spread and how difficult it was, what the tipping points might have been that you decided this was the right path.
COACH TUBERVILLE: Well, you know, the head coach is a guy that's got to make decisions on what you think's best for your team. Over the years we've had a good football team. You know, just playing defense, solid kicking game, saying we're gonna line up and run the football at you. It's hard in this league to consistently pound and pound the ball. People were ganging up on us. Eight, nine, 10 people in the box.
You know, if we wanted to consistently say, okay, we're gonna stay with winning eight, nine games, sometimes maybe win 10, I think we could have stayed with the two-back offense. I also looked at recruiting. I've looked at the change in football. I've looked at quarterbacks. You know, what is available. I think that this offense gives you an opportunity for a lot of variables to improve on. And recruiting being one, I think a plan. You know, Tony Franklin, I've watched over the years, even for college coaches, hiring coordinators, sometimes you hire a guy that, you know, has been in several schemes, he knows several things, you know, he's possibly better at one than the other. Tony Franklin is a one-direction guy. He understands this offense. He's worked with it. He's tweaked it. He knows how to practice it. He knows how to recruit for it. He knows how to game plan for it.
It's gonna be different going into the SEC 'cause we're gonna play teams that can really play defense. That's going to be a challenge for us. I think it's also going fob a challenge for the defenses to get ready for us in a short period of time.
I was looking for a way to help this football team score a few more points on the average, help the defense. You know, we're gonna be strong on defense. The one thing, of course, again, getting back to we are gonna run it. We're still going to be physical. But can we hold up doing this week in and week out? That's gonna be the thing that we've got to just set back and see if it's gonna work. It's not been tried in this league. Nobody else has ever run it like we're gonna run it. It's gonna be a different scenario each week for us to see, you know, if we can keep it to the same level and be successful running it.

Q. Tony Franklin had success running that offense against Georgia, Florida last year. That play a role 92 targeting him? How different this is offense from what Urban Meyer does at Florida?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Well, you know, Tony, at Troy, they played Georgia. They played some teams in our league. It's a little bit different when you're a conference team playing a conference team. The different mentality. When we play Georgia, we're gonna get a different mentality of them getting ready knowing it's a conference game.
But, again, you really can't worry about who you're playing, whether it's USC or Georgia or Texas or West Virginia. You have to worry about yourselves when it comes to offense or defense. You got to prepare your team and be able to use the players that you have. And that's one thing I like about this offense. You know, one week one guy's gonna be the star or get the ball more than other players. The next week we can use another guy. It's not going to be week in, week out of, hey, it's just got to be the tailback. I like the diversity of this offense. I've watched it over the years.
Dennis Erickson brought a little bit of this to us in 1989 at Miami in terms of spread offense. First time I'd seen it. One back in the backfield, a lot of shotgun, throwing the ball down the field. But you know, we won two National Championships running. A little bit different because the tempo was not the same, but we did run from a tailback position.
I think that's the difference in us and Florida. Florida's not really a tailback team. They're more of a quarterback/tailback team.
Tebow is a guy that one game, as a matter of fact, the game before we played them last year, he ran it 28 times against Ole Miss, if I'm not mistaken. Could have been a few less. That's a lot of times.
And, you know, we want the ball in the tailback's hands. But we're gonna spread the field. We're gonna run the ball from the tailback position. Our quarterback will be called on, you know, half a dozen times a game, maybe a few more.
But we want to put pressure on the outside. We want to make -- get 9, 10 out of the box and give our linemen and runningbacks maybe a few more running lanes and then be able to get the ball down the field a little bit better and have a few more big plays on offense.
Last year I can count on one hand how many big plays we had probably over 15, 20 yards. And, you know, it's tough when you're trying to win in this league consistently, you know, playing defense, just trying to play smash-mouth. We're still gonna do that, but hopefully this offense is going to help us be able to score from a long distance a little bit more often.

Q. You had a 13-0 season. There's been five national titles won by coaches in the league. Talk about coaching in this league, what it's like, the competition level.
COACH TUBERVILLE: Well, players win games. But in this league, obviously you see coaches coming in that have great pedigrees. They've been pro coaches. They know how to coach.
The thing that I've noticed is coaches trying to get in this league from other conferences that want to coach in the SEC. I think that's a credit to this conference and the interest that the fans have. Week in and week out, you go to a game, the stands are packed. Everybody's into it. The competition is fierce. I think that's the reason the coaching is getting better and better.
Again, 14 years in this league, it continues to improve. There's been a lot of guys go in and out. But, again, you see a lot of coaches that want to come from other conferences or from the pro level to coach in this league because of the interest, of what you do, what our fans do. Everybody likes to be part of something that people enjoy doing.
And, of course, college football's huge. But it's even more than that down here in this part of the world.

Q. I was wondering if you could revisit your reasoning in hiring Bobby Petrino several years ago and your thoughts on him joining the league in your division.
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, I have a list of coaches that I look at and watch over the years. And Bobby was on my list very highly as a guy that I felt like could run an offense. It's not easy to hire coordinators. It's a lot easier for me to hire a defensive guy because I'm a defensive-oriented coach.
You take an offensive coach and it's harder for them to hire a defensive guy. They don't know as much about it.
So for me to hire an offensive guy, I've got to lean on my other assistants, but I have a list of guys that I watch. You know, I look at how they coach.
I normally do not hire a guy that one of my coaches has not worked with or been around in recruiting, which is number one, whether you're a coordinator or a position coach. The number one thing to work on our staff is you have to be a relentless recruiter because, again, you can X and O all you want. If you don't have the players, it doesn't make a lot of difference.
I looked at Bobby, and Bobby's been around. He's a coach's son, been around football all of his life, good football coach, knows what he's doing. He's going to have some growing pains obviously at a new position there, in a different league. It will be one of those situations where he'll have to grow slowly.

Q. How has Lee Ziemba progressed? What are some of the things you wanted him to really work on in the summer? What have you heard about his size and different things like that?
COACH TUBERVILLE: I've had a few natural offensive linemen in my career. I've got, I don't know, a dozen or so playing in the NFL right now that Hugh Nall has coached.
Marcus McNeill, the first-ever two-time Pro Bowler, freshman and sophomore season, NFL, great football player for the San Diego Chargers. This guy can play.
Lee Ziemba is as natural an athlete; big, strong, smart, fast, probably could play defense. Started every game for us as a true freshman. He'll start every game as long as he's at Auburn because of his tenacity. You know, he has the mentality of a defensive player playing offense.
We've moved him from right offensive tackle to left offensive tackle. He's enjoyed that move. He's a guy you can count on every day of giving all he's got in practice. He loves to practice. And that's very unusual for an offensive lineman because those guys never touch the ball. You know, they get rushed on, beat on by the defense.
But he's the perfect offensive lineman when you go out in terms of looking at a recruit and then knowing, you know, the potential that he has. He's gonna be a great one.
He's gotten better since he's gotten with us. He's overcome, you know, some things, again, our coaching him of moving him back and forth. But now he's in a position of, I think, having a chance to be as good as what we've ever had at Auburn.

Q. Staying with the offensive line. You got all your guys back there. In this offense, what are you asking them to do different? Pretty easy to see what the rest of them are doing different.
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, this offense calls for a lot more athletic offensive linemen because, you know, most of the time you're gonna go from a two-point stance. You're gonna pull. You're going to be playing outside. The pass protections are different. We've got more of a straight-back passing protection lane other than shuffling outside.
It's a little bit different. It's not as complicated mentally for an offensive lineman. I like that. I think sometimes you can have 10 or 15 protections going into a game, and depending on the front that they have. And everybody's got to be right. Everybody's got to make the right decision.
This is a little bit simpler in terms of giving our guys a chance to be more physical. We only have, as we have in the past, even though maybe we were a two-back team, we go into a ballgame with six or seven running plays. That's it.
I like that in this offense because you really don't add anything in the running game. You work on the same things every day. You might run it out of a different formation. That helps your offensive linemen be a lot more physical in terms of being able to come off the ball and creating running lanes.
The one thing about this offense is you have to have more athletic offensive linemen because of the techniques that you teach.

Q. Last year you talked a little bit in detail about the experience of coaching against your former team within the same conference, even the same division. Now there's another guy in the league that's gonna be doing that, Houston Nutt. If he were to call and get a little advice from you, pitfalls when that week rolls around, how to handle it, what kinds of things would you tell him?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, you have to have a game plan mentally as a coach, you know, when you've got to follow up a team that you've just coached. There's no doubt about that. You've got to be able to have your thoughts in mind, not just for yourself, but for your coaching staff.
You've got to be able to focus. If you take any focus away from your football team of what's going into that game and think it's about you, then you've got problems.
I think the best way to handle it is openly. Don't limit things that you're going to do. Don't change anything. Don't let the players see any change in yourself. Just go be yourself.
Things happen. This is a business for us. There will be a lot of talk going on that week. I've been through it several times. You just take it and understand that, you know, that's the way it is, and you work through it and then you go about it the next week.
But it's always different. And, you know, it brings back a lot of memories. Again, you can't let all that stuff get in the way of what your business is, of preparing, you know, 70, 80 guys to put on a bus or a plane and go play in a very tough environment, which is gonna be even tougher because of the situation.

Q. Even years later, do you have any lingering feelings about the whole Petrino Louisville deal involving you and Auburn? At the time did you ever blame him? What are your thoughts on that?
COACH TUBERVILLE: No. This is a business. I understand that. We all get caught up in certain scenarios. That's just part of it.
Bobby and I have talked many times since then. Since he's been head coach there, we've talked several times at meetings. It will be a lot of good talk between fans and media. But when it comes to the football teams that really matter in terms of winning or losing, there won't be any effect. Just the scenario which I just talked about.
You don't shy away from it. You talk about it. You get it out of the way, but you let your players know it's not going to be any distraction whatsoever in terms of your concentration going into that six or seven days of preparation.

Q. You talked about how Burns and Todd are just about even after spring practice. If you could talk about each of those quarterbacks, their similarities, differences, how they might fit this new offense.
COACH TUBERVILLE: Well, Kodi is built more for a runner. He's not a natural thrower, never has been. He's a great athlete. Was a great basketball player.
One thing I like about Kodi, he's durable. This offense is built for a guy like him. You know, he can probably run the ball 12, 14, 15 times a game and take the beating and get back to the line of scrimmage and be able to handle that.
Chris, a little bit different. Chris is more of a thrower, can run the ball. Understands how to run this offense. You know, he was actually teaching Kodi a lot of the little things in spring practice, Kodi being with us for over a year, Chris being with us for a month. It's a different scenario. But they're good buddies. They're friends. They work well together. Both will have to be successful for us to have some success.
But it's good to have different guys. If you had two of the same thing that the strengths were the same, we'd probably be in a little bit of a bind. But having two guys with different mentalities, with different physical attributes, I think it's gonna be beneficial to this offense.

Q. Just talk about Tyronne Green, kind of his development up front as offensive lineman.
COACH TUBERVILLE: Most of the offensive linemen we've had over the years that have really turned out to be great football players, NFL, started on the defensive side of the ball.
Tyronne was a defensive lineman, as Tim Duckworth was. Several other guys, Ben Grubbs who is now in Baltimore. Tyronne started as a defensive player, stayed there for a redshirt year. After a redshirt year, through a spring, he saw the writing on the wall in terms of guys in front of him. Might be a step slow to play defense, but good enough athletic ability maybe to be a contributor on the offensive line and go farther from there.
Tyronne has got a chance to be an all-conference player. Hard-nosed, physical guy. Maybe the most athletic player on the offensive line. He's smart. He's fifth-year senior. Will play on the next level.
Again, he just goes back to, you know, the mentality. He's got a defensive mentality playing offense, which is what we like. I think that's the best type. If you can get that changeover in terms of being able to play the technique and fundamentals, but Tyronne plays left guard for us. He's played right guard. We tried to make a center out of him at times, probably couldn't play center. He will be the leader. He and Jason Bosley will be the two leaders on our offensive line because they're the only two seniors.

Q. You talked a minute ago your assistant coaches have to be tenacious recruiters. When you're in-state rivals had 10 players arrested in 18 months, does that give you an advantage on the recruiting trail? Do your coaches emphasize that's not happening here? Do you put that to use?
COACH TUBERVILLE: You know, you don't have to use it obviously. You guys are going to write about it, whether it's us or somebody else. So there's not gonna be anything left unturned in terms of information.
We don't thrive on other people's misfortunes. You gotta sell your own program. As I tell our fans and our football team, you know, if you start worrying about other people, then you're not gonna do your job.
So I've got good recruiters. You've got to sell your program. You've gotta have a basis of which your philosophy can be sold to the parents and to the recruits.
You know, we don't just talk about athletic ability. We go out and recruit character and attitude and work ethic, and if you've got those three, then athletic ability is a bonus. That's kind of been our philosophy.
We might not get those five- or four-star athletes, but I'll take a three-star every time, if he's going to be with us four years, five years, get a degree and work hard. He's usually gonna end up being a heck of a football player.
In state, we're gonna recruit hard in state. We'll get our share. But I think the challenge for any of us, other than if you're Georgia or probably Florida or LSU, those schools have so many in-state players, that they don't take many out of state.
But for states that are smaller, less populated, we got great football in this state, but when it comes down to it, you know, the share that go around is gonna be kind of tight. And you got to go out of state. You got to be able to sell it to out-of-state players. Our coaches have done a good job in a lot of states, been able to get good players to come in and put together a pretty good team year in and year out.

Q. I want to ask you about the offense again. You've heard a lot of people talk about different offensive philosophies being gimmicks, something that's short-term. Do you see what you're doing putting you ahead of the curve, that this is sort of we know the spread's out there, or is this a relatively cyclical thing?
COACH TUBERVILLE: I think the jury's out. I think people are gonna watch us in terms of not just how we do this year, but how we do in recruiting. Can you recruit for this?
I think if you go back and look at it, it's hard to find a Matt Stafford at quarterback, a true drop-back guy, because high schools are getting away from that. They're putting good athletes at quarterback where they can run the ball, make pretty good passers. They might not be great passers, but they're going to be better runners.
I think that's what we all have to look at in terms of our football teams over the years, can we go out and find those guys?
Of course, we had Brandon Cox, who was a good football player. We got Neil Caudle, who is a drop-back guy, who will play in this scheme for us, but he's not a spread guy in terms of running the football.
Gino Torretta was like that, won the Heisman Trophy at Miami for us in the spread offense.
There's different quarterbacks you can use, but there's gonna be more opportunities for us to recruit a quarterback for this offense because we're able to see these guys running this same offense.
This is the offense of the future in high school football. Now, whether it makes it to this level, we'll have to wait and see. I think, again, the jury's out. Florida is running a little bit it of it. West Virginia is running it. Now Michigan is going to be running it. I think if you have some success from some of those schools, I think you're probably going to see more and more colleges that are gonna go to it, simply because of the ability to recruit, you know, some of those players that fit more in that scheme.

Q. I want to get your opinion on Raven Gray and the role he'll play this season.
COACH TUBERVILLE: Raven Gray was probably one of the best high school football players to come not just out of this state but out of the South in a long, long time. Defensive end. Enterprise. Did not make his grades, went to a junior college. Really playing well there, middle of the season last year. We knew he was coming back to Auburn, signing with us, coming back in January, and tears his knee up in a game.
So he's been on rehab. He's exactly what you're looking for in a defensive end. He's huge. He can run. He's got defensive mentality. But he's not been through a spring practice. Jury's out on what he can do for us in two-a-days. The doctors have cleared him. He's been running with our team all summer. He's ready to go. He hasn't hit anybody in eight months.
Hasn't been on this level in terms of speed, endurance, you know, getting hit, everybody can play. So I like the front end. I like what he's made of and his ability and his upside. But now, you know, we got to see what's gonna happen. But I think he'll help us. How much he's gonna play just depends on, you know, his knee, what he can do all the way through two-a-days going into the season.

Q. Talk about your special teams, particularly the kickers. Is Wes healthy? And your punters, do you see more consistency in those guys?
COACH TUBERVILLE: You know, we started out the season last year with both kickers graduating and two freshmen. I was scared to death. Going into the end of the season, both of them were leading the conference in either field goals, Wesley Byrum, and then punting in Ryan Shoemaker. Did not end up on top, but had real good years, considering they were freshmen.
I think that both have an opportunity, you know, to be good this year. The good thing about our football team is we've got some walk-on guys that have worked very hard that are going to challenge both of these young men.
Wesley has had some problems, leg problems, injury problems, as all kickers do because of the techniques that they use. But he's got a young man behind him that's gonna be interesting to watch and see how it goes.
Ryan Shoemaker, coming out of spring practice, he and Clinton Durst were neck and neck in terms of punting average, hang time, distance, all those things. So we're gonna have some competition in two-a-days. Again, that's big for college football.
Sometimes the kicking game doesn't get quite as much lip service in terms of information. But at Auburn, you know, we spend a third of the time, sometimes more than that, practicing the kicking game because it's been huge for us in the past.

Q. With the number of coaches in the league who have coached at two schools now in the league, up to four, all you guys are playing your old school every year, how does that maybe add to the intrigue or interest level? What does that say about the league that everybody seems to want to hire an SEC guy, raid another school?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Well, again, that's the way it goes. You know, I think there's great competition in coaching. There's a lot of people who want to come in this league to coach from other conferences. There's some coaches, including myself, that have moved around in this conference.
But it's just a little bit more intrigue when it comes down to it. The players are the ones that play the games. I think coaches, we get a lot of ink in this league because sometimes you guys are looking for something to talk about. But it makes it interesting.
You know, we compete against each other very hard one time a year, and then when it comes to December and January, we recruit against each other very hard in recruiting. Then after that, you know, you just kind of worry about your own team.

Q. Do you think being picked in the West with no proven quarterbacks and the new coordinators has more to do with the potential people see in this offense or is it just because you guys are better than LSU in terms of quarterback question marks?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Well, I think it's because LSU doesn't have a proven quarterback either. I think if they had a quarterback coming back, I don't think there's any doubt, with the type of players they're coming back with, with coming off of a national championship year, it would have been hard not to pick them.
But, again, it's all predictions. I mean, there's no way you can even come close to saying, you know, even pick the top six teams in our league. There's going to be a lot of competition of all the teams just in the western side.
It will be fun to watch. It's gonna be something to talk about. Again, the pressure will be on us. I'm going to use it, try to use it to our advantage with our football team. Hopefully it will get us cranked up and playing a lot better a lot earlier than we did last year.

Q. You mentioned that you had never before had 20 commitments at this time of the year. Would you be in favor of an early signing period if you could get some of those guys signed early? If so, how early would you like to see it?
COACH TUBERVILLE: I think it would be great for college football and the coaches and budgets, everybody involved, if we did it somewhere around the 1st of December.
It's not gonna happen. There's too many people against it. I've talked to too many of my buddies across the country in other conferences that just don't think that it would right for their school or their league.
You know, that's a reason it's hard to get anything changed, right or wrong, in college football.
But, you know, there's no really reason to change anything unless it's the best for, you know, everybody. So, you know, it's good to talk about it. I've been in a lot of meetings about it. I would like personally to see it. But, you know, it's a moot point. It's not going to happen. There's way too many people that think it wouldn't be an advantage for them. Everybody's got their own opinion. You know, we got a good system, so we'll just stick with it.

Q. You hear a lot of coaches talk about getting to the next level. In your mind, what are two or three elements that gets a program to the next level and kind of keeps it there?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah. Well, we've been pretty consistent. We've won 50 games in the last five years. Again, we've been one or two plays away from getting to Atlanta. That's what we all want to do, then have a chance to win there.
I think we've got to score more points on offense. I mean, there's no doubt about it. We've got to average scoring, get into the 20s somewhere, mid 20s, in every game. If we can do that, you know, we can help our defense much more.
I think that if you go back and look at us defensively, to have a championship football team, you can't give up big plays in a game. The games that we lost last year, we gave up too many 15- 20-yard runs. Georgia game, we gave up a 60, 70-yard run. LSU game, last play of the game, 35-yard pass.
I mean, in the past, we have not given up big plays on defense. And that's the reason I like Paul Rhodes is because he's a fundamental guy. We've gone back to technique, fundamental, gone back to basics. We're still going to be a pressure defense with a lot of speed on the field, but we've got to get away from that playing good, playing good, playing good and giving up the big play.
You can't do that and get to Atlanta. Now, you can win games, but for us, you know, we're to the point now where we got to break that barrier and get to Atlanta a little bit more often than what we've got in the last few years.

Q. Your new spread offense sounds pretty exciting for fans. Have you caught any flack from anybody since Auburn is traditionally one of the best schools in the country for runningbacks?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah. You know, we've got five or six runningbacks in the NFL. But, you know, it's not going to hurt us because we're still going to run the ball. But we've got to prove that.
When we go into games next year, if we throw it 60, 70 times a game, people can see that. All you got to do is look and it's black and white. But we are going to run the football more than we're going to throw it.
The thing about Tony Franklin and I, we sat down before I hired him. And he understands that. You've gotta be on the same wavelength. I'm not going to bring somebody in that's just gonna be a stat guy. I'm not a stat guy. I don't care how many yards we give up on defense or how many yards we pass for, how many we rush for. I look at the scoreboard at the end of the game.
I look for coaches on the same scenario. There's a lot of people that don't do that. I mean, they like to throw for 500 yards or whatever. You know, win, that's bottom line. And Tony Franklin is a win guy. He wants to do whatever.
There might be some games that we go into and find out, hey, you know, something's working in the passing game, and we might throw it 50 times. But our game plan is to go into the season, use our runningbacks, use our offensive line, you know, move the ball down the field. When people start creeping up, you know, get the ball deeper down the field and make big plays. I think this offense can do that.

Q. The NFL has a mandatory injury report that may or may not work, but it's about gambling. You probably saw where the ACC has sort of half-heartedly adopted a similar thing that they're not really adhering to. The coaches aren't required to do it, but some of them wanted to. How would you feel or would it work to have kind of a mandatory injury report policy for coaches?
COACH TUBERVILLE: I hadn't seen that. I really hadn't thought bit. The first thing that would come to mind is, you know, there's an obligation we have to our players, number one, about injuries.
I can understand in terms of who is gonna play, who's not gonna play.
It usually comes out in the wash. We have open practices early. We close 'em after the first 20, 30 minutes. I can see all the guys out there counting, looking at numbers, looking at who's running around. So it's pretty hard for us -- it would be hard for us to hide somebody in terms of an injury. And there's really no reason to do that. You know, somebody might not be full speed that you might not bring up or whatever.
I'd have to think about the injury thing. I know our team doctor and our trainers probably wouldn't be too fired up about it because there is a privacy law out there that you'd probably have to overcome. Most of you know me pretty good. We're gonna pretty much tell it like it is.
But, again, when it comes to the betterment of the players, now, that's a different story. And, you know, we'll do everything in the world to protect them in terms of what should be or what shouldn't be said.
THE MODERATOR: Coach Tuberville, thank you.
COACH TUBERVILLE: Thank you.

End of FastScripts

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