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BIG 12 CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYSJuly 29, 2009Mack BrownDALLAS, TEXAS PETER IRWIN: We're now joined by Coach Mack Brown from Texas. Coach, welcome. Your thoughts about this summer and the upcoming season. COACH BROWN: Thank you, Peter. Last year's season, we had a lot of question marks with our team, and we weren't really sure how good we would be. We had to base it on what running back stepped up. We had to base some things on what would happen in the secondary because we had very young safeties that had been played and opening up with four passing teams. And some other question marks that were going to pop up that the guys had to play better than we thought they might have in the past coming in. And they did that. They responded well. They answered the bell. They had a tremendous year. This year's team is in a position in preseason more like the 2005 team. It's more of a dangerous position, but, at the same time, you feel like that because the expectations are much higher, the 2005 team lived up to those expectations. They stepped up. They played well. They played well throughout the season. We had a big game at Ohio State. They won that. They had a hurdle to get over at Oklahoma. They won that. And then pretty much finished the season on a high. And I do remember watching the 'SC-Notre Dame game, the end of it, when Notre Dame looked like they were going to beat 'SC that year. We just played Oklahoma State. I walk into the dressing room, and the players are glued to the TV. Watching our team that night, they wanted 'SC to win. I wasn't sure. We'd be number one if Notre Dame won, and our team was unanimous. They were pulling hard for 'SC to win because they wanted to match up with 'SC in the national championship game. Thought being that this year's team will have to live up to the same expectations. They're going to have to play very well. They're going to have to play a very high standard each week. We still have some question marks. We have some youth on the defensive line. We still have question marks separating our running backs and trying to figure out how to do that. We've got the most accurate quarterback coming back in college football history. So we have to figure out how to continue to feature him but run the ball enough so when we're playing running teams our defense can be able to stop the run better. We have to continue to take care of the football on offense. And we have to force more turnovers on defense. So we feel like that if this team will play up to their ability, they do have a chance to be really good. That's obviously our goal. PETER IRWIN: Coach, we'll take questions from the floor. Q. Mack, have you seen the leadership that you were looking for step forward in the spring and summer? Obviously, you lost a lot of senior leadership off last year's team. COACH BROWN: Chuck, I thought two of the best leaders I've ever seen -- really three, Quan Cosby, Roy Miller, and Brian Orakpo, along with the guys that were turning, stepped up last year and turned the attitude of that team. It was not a very confident team starting the year and seemed to develop that throughout the season. We worked really, really hard this summer and throughout the spring trying to make sure we continue to develop leadership. Somebody's got to step up and take those places. I don't think that you really know what effect your leadership has on your team until you have a team that's behind in a tough game and they have to come back and win. And that's the question mark that we have. I feel very confident this team has the ability to lead. You look at Colt. You look at Jordan. They've done a tremendous job. You look at Rod Muckelroy is trying to step up, Sergio is trying to step up and take some of the leadership role. Earl Thomas and Blake Gideon are doing it at safety. Lamarr Houston in the middle. So we do feel like we have the ability to lead there. We just have to wait and see how it turns out during the ball game. Q. Talk about your running backs and how much you believe they've improved, how important that is to the overall balance of your offense, and maybe take some of the heat off of Colt not having to be the runner that he was last year. COACH BROWN: Yes, Fozzy Whittaker got hurt in the spring. Cody Johnson got hurt in the spring. So we really don't know much more about them than we did leaving last fall. I mean, you all know about as much as we do. We cannot be around them in the summer, so we ate dinner with the players last night, and they tell you how they think everybody's doing, and they think they're doing really well. So until they get out there and see, we're not sure. Fozzy needs to stay healthy. He's played well when he's in there. I thought Vondrell probably played hurt a lot last year. We need to continue to work with Cody on conditioning, and he had the bad hamstring pull in the spring. When you go back and look at one of the things that people talked so much about last year was Colt's running. I don't think it's a bad thing as long as he stays healthy. That's the thing. So what we did with Vince is there were some games in Vince's senior year that we said, Don't run. Throw the ball away. Don't scramble. Or when the game's over, by play selection, we would try to keep him from running as much. Our running backs outgained our quarterbacks last year. It was just the fact that there were three of them. So everybody says your leading rusher is your quarterback. That could be the case again this year. And what we did in the two Rose Bowls with Vince obviously is turned him loose and said, Go win the game with whatever you have to do. So I think our thought with Colt's running is we don't mind him running. We do want him to be healthy. We don't want him to get beaten down, and we need to do a better job this year of trying to control through play selection and talking to him when he's going to run and when he's not. Q. Coach, you talk about your expectations for your receiving core. COACH BROWN: Brian, last year's receivers played really well. They didn't drop the ball very much, and they only lost one fumble. Quan lost one fumble, I think, against Rice going in. And they blocked really well. All of them are back except Quan, so we think they should be really, really good. And now we have the addition of John Chiles, and John's about -- I think he's 208 pounds. He was 216 maybe at quarterback. So he lost some weight. He looked good in the spring. The guys last night said he looks really good. So understand he's got a transition from quarterback, back to receiver, where he played some in high school, that he may not be the traditional receiver when the season starts because he hasn't gotten that experience with route running. But we need to get the ball in his hands as well as some of the other guys. We feel like the receivers can do really well. If you look at the strength of your team right now, you wouldn't want to feature Colt and those wide receivers because that's what we did best last year. Q. Was there ever a moment during Jordan's career where you thought he was snake bit, it wasn't going to work out the way you thought it had? COACH BROWN: I think the second time Jordan got hurt, it was pretty devastating for all of us. The first time was the last day of two-a-days. It was a little underneath route, and we were in shorts, and he caught his foot in the grass and just twisted his knee. Nobody hit him. So we didn't think it was that bad. Then they tell us it needs an operation. And then the next year he comes back, and he's worked so hard, and he has the horrible pull of the hamstring. And talking to him last night, I thought it's a true credit to him that he was able to keep the patience and stay strong and true to playing and continue to want to come back. I saw Bo Scaife do the same thing with four or five knee operations, and I actually told Bo Scaife not to play. There was a time where I was not sure Jordan would continue to play or not. Then when it came up for the appeal for his sixth year, he was 100 percent he wanted to come back and play. He didn't want to go to the NFL early. I think he's moved on and moved forward and feels great about the experience he's had and thinks he learned a lot from the two tough years. Q. You guys announced last week that Blaine Irby wouldn't be playing this season. How much will that change how you operate? Will you go into more four wide receiver sets? COACH BROWN: Tim, one of the things we have to decide as we start into two-a-days is who we do feature. Last year we were able to -- the offensive staff did a good job of moving Jordan Shipley in and going four wideouts and easing some of the pain. It's not as easy to run the ball without a tight end. That affected us some last year. We had too many zero-gain plays or negative-yardage plays in our running game. We moved grant in there, and he sprained his ankle and didn't do a lot in the spring. The kids are telling me that he did a really good job this summer of -- in seven-on-sevens and doing things. So I think he's really good. We've got some really good guys that have played there. We feel like we have a chance to be good at tight end, but we also have to reevaluate what we're doing with the strength of our wideouts and see if we'll need four wideouts in the game as well. Q. Coach, you mentioned the defensive backs being a question mark last year. Do you consider them a strength this year with the depth that you have? COACH BROWN: We really do. We are excited about the defensive backs. And not only because we think they're talented, but there's a lot of them. And the competition is really driving them. They can't take a lazy step. They've got to work really hard every day to play. It's exciting. They're having fun with each other, but they're really competing with each other at a high level. Q. Can you comment on the Conference deciding not to change the tie-break for the BCS? COACH BROWN: Yes, I was obviously against the decision. Not because it happened to us last year, because I thought it was best. It may work for us this year. You never know, as you start looking at tie-breakers. But I felt like the vote would be that way. I felt like the large majority of the schools in the league have an advantage, if it is that way. So I understood. And we've moved forward. What I told the kids is let's play to the best of our ability. Even with the Big 12 tie-breaker like it was last year, if we had played better at Tech and won the game, we'd have been better in the conference championship game. A lot of that comes from us. We need to learn from that and move on, quit talking about the system and just go play. Q. Mack, do you think there's any way Colt can possibly duplicate the numbers he had last year? And can you win all your games if he completes like that at 70 percent? COACH BROWN: I do think Colt can improve, and just listening to him and watching him. He studied film so much to see every little glitch like he felt he had last year. So if there was an fumble, if there was an interception or incompletion, he's looking at how he can just do better. I do not feel like he's come back and put so much pressure on himself. That was a concern I had is you come back now, how do you beat being the best in the history of college football? I think what he's doing is he's trying to look at things that he feels like he can improve, instead of saying I've got to do better than the best, he's going back and looking at little things. He and Greg Davis have studied so hard that I really feel he's looking forward to trying to be better than last year. Obviously, the only thing Colt wants is to be one second better. Q. Mack, I know coaches don't like to say one game is more important than the next -- COACH BROWN: And I'm not going to, but go ahead. Q. Just looking at the Oklahoma game, is that game more significant or even bigger just based on the way last year played out with Big 12 South schedules? COACH BROWN: No, I don't think so. That game's big every year. You know, when you -- I coached at Oklahoma in 1984, and Texas was No. 1 and we were No. 2. That was the biggest one ever. Then the next one was the biggest one ever. After this one, next year's will be the biggest one ever. I think it's a great game between two tremendous programs that are having a lot of success right now. It's not only a conference-wide game, it's not only a two-state game, it affects what's happening in college football. That's what makes it so special. But if we say it's the most special this year, I thought it was pretty special last year. And I think it will be that way next year. I really do. Q. Can you -- defensive tackle, there's been a lot of question about inexperience there. Can you talk about how they've progressed. And how can the linebacker and the experience there help them out? COACH BROWN: We have two guys with a lot of experience in Ben Alexander and Lamarr Houston. They've been around for a long time, and they're kind of the strongholds. And we feel like you start looking at other young guys that can step up and do better, and then we've even got some young guys coming in that we haven't seen before. We do feel like you look at the experience of the end, the experience at linebacker, and they'll be able to help them. One of the amazing stats from last year at our conference, at our school -- and I want to say this properly because it sounds kind of weird. We had less than 100 runs against us last year, and we had more than 600 passes. That was for the year. And that's phenomenal that we had less than 100 rushes against us. So what we're looking at is if that trend continues in the Big 12, you've got to stop the run, obviously, on first down, but you've got to get packages for pass rushers. So as much as we're concerned about the big guys up front, we still have to make sure that we have packages for pass rushers in situations where somebody's going to throw the ball all day and your big guys stay fresh, because if you're not careful your big guys are the first ones that get tired rushing the passer and you're ineffective in the second half. We feel like we've got enough talent there. We just feel like they've got to grow up, and we've got to do a great job coaching. I would say that position right now is similar to where our secondary was last year at this time. It's a huge question mark, not on talent, but on experience. Q. Mack, four or five years ago, Big 12 Media Days, you would talk about how strong the program was at Texas. If you could just solve the OU problem, everything would be great. Well, you have solved the problem. What's the number one factor in solving that one problem where you've now won three out of four? COACH BROWN: That game is such an emotional game between two states. It's a national game. I do feel like that the team that lost the year before has more pressure because their fans are so hard on them. That's all they talk about. And I do feel like our guys are relaxed in the game more than they were previous years, and we're playing better in that game. And Oklahoma is playing great. It's back to where it's a great game instead of some of those lopsided games where I didn't do a very good job coaching. PETER IRWIN: Coach, thank you very much for your comments. End of FastScripts |
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