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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIP GAMEDecember 3, 2010Gene ChizikATLANTA, GEORGIA THE MODERATOR: Coach, give us your thoughts on the Auburn team coming into the game and then we'll take questions. COACH CHIZIK: Just an exciting time for Auburn University. Really excited for our fans, excited for our coaches and our players, just the Auburn family. One of our goals at the beginning of the year obviously was to, as everybody was in this league, was to get to Atlanta. And so just feel really blessed that we're able to be here at this time of the year and have a chance to play for a championship. And that was one of our goals obviously earlier in the year. We have a chance to play against a great South Carolina football team who's arguably, or inarguably, playing the best football that they've played all year. There's no question about that. So they certainly deserve to be here as well. We've had some good practices this week. I think our team has been focused and I think the energy level is really high. They've been good about week in, week out focusing on the task at hand, which I'm really proud of our team for. I want to address up front some news about Cameron Newton that came out earlier in the week. We're glad that the NCAA was in agreement with us that Auburn University and Cameron Newton have done nothing wrong. Cameron will be our starting quarterback tomorrow, as he has the previous 12 weeks. And I think that's pretty self-explanatory and will answer most of the questions you may have had. With that being said, I'll open it up to questions and I'll address any questions that have to do with this football game tomorrow and the previous 12 that we've played before that. So, again, glad to be here and I'll open it up. THE MODERATOR: Questions? Q. Going back to the last year, in this preseason, I don't remember a lot being said about Nick Fairley. He wasn't mentioned along the lines of Marcel Darius. What's the difference with Fairley this year in that he's become a dominant player in the last year? COACH CHIZIK: I think Nick's progress is definitely unique. Most people make a lot of strides between their first and second year, but you've got to remember the whole story here with Nick. He was a junior, he was a young man we signed out of junior college. And I think when you go from junior colleges to a program in this league, there's a lot of room for growth. And some guys -- some guys progress a little faster than others. He was one of those guys that I think last year was really coming on to his own later in the season. And he played well in our Bowl game. He played well in the Georgia and Alabama game the previous year and we could see that there was definitely strides being made in that regard. So we were really proud of the way he started the season and really, I think, he gained confidence. I thought he felt like, as the seasons went on -- I'm sorry, as the games went on in the season, I think he really felt like he could be a dominant player in the league. And a lot of a guy becoming that productive as a player, a lot of that is about how they feel in their own mind they're progressing as a football player. So I think there was enormous amounts of strides made. He's obviously a very gifted athlete. But I think he got better. He got used to the system. He got used to college football and the speed of the game at this level and I think he just continued to get better. Q. Can you describe what Cameron's reaction was to the decision, and does it take a load off of him, do you think, coming into this game Saturday? COACH CHIZIK: I'm not going to address those. I'll address the questions that have to do with the football game. Cameron, like the rest of our football team, is a very focused young man and we have one thing on our mind and that is the game tomorrow. Q. Do you have an advantage if this game comes down to the wire considering so many of your games have been decided at the end and you've won them, whereas maybe South Carolina, the games they've won, the two close ones they had, one against you and one against Kentucky, they didn't win? COACH CHIZIK: I just think -- in so many instances this year we've found different ways to win. And I think we all know that. And we really -- we've been able to do it on the road. We've been able to do it at home. And I think there's an advantage to that simply from the standpoint of the psyche of your team, knowing and believing and understanding that no matter what the situation is, we've got a chance to come back and win the game. We've done it a lot of different ways. So in that regard I think that we would have confidence if it gets to that point in the game that we could win it. You know, the question you asked was is that an advantage versus us versus them, I don't know about all that. I just know that our football team, when we get to those situations, our football team believes we can win. Q. You played 11 straight games. Had a week off. Played last week. Just how has that affected the stamina and health of this team and where are you at health-wise? COACH CHIZIK: I think we're probably, just about where everybody is this time of the year. This league is so physical week in and week out. And as a coach you've got to try to figure out what the fine line is on there on how you practice, how much contact do you have, how long you practice, all those things. That becomes challenging when you have 11 straight weeks certainly in this league. So those have been the challenges for us. I think we've handled it pretty much the right way. But as every other team is at the end of the year, after 12 games, we're nicked up and beat up a little bit. Nothing that's going to keep anybody, in our opinion, from not doing their jobs. But at this time of the year I think a lot of that stuff, those guys understand this is where I'm at and I gotta go play because we have a chance to win a championship. Q. You touched on the fact a while ago that your team has found a lot of different ways to win. This team never seems to panic. How much of that is credited to Cam's leadership and the fact that nothing really ever seems to bother him? COACH CHIZIK: I think Cam has been a tremendous leader for our football team. And I think our football team sees that. When you get into adverse situations, players are going to look to basically three entities. They're going to look to the coaches. They're going to look to quarterbacks. And they're going to look to any seniors that may be on the team and how they respond. And I've got to give a lot of credit to our coaches because our coaches have made really, really good adjustments. Our coaches have maintained a level of poise and confidence that has really at times been really, really challenging. We've got a lot of seniors on our team that I think have been through a lot in their four years at Auburn, been through a lot of good, been through some bad. And they've been through a lot of adversity. I think that helps. And then obviously when you have a guy like Cameron who is very focused. He's just an unbelievable competitor. I think everybody sees that. And when a group of people see that in any situation, if you're not particularly where you want to be at that moment, they're looking for leadership and guys that have that look in their eye, and I think we've been able to do that. Q. Is it a personal challenge for you to go against a guy like Steve Spurrier who has won this game five times? COACH CHIZIK: Not a personal challenge. First of all, I have a great, great deal of respect for Coach Spurrier and everything he's done in his career. It's incredible that you can come and play in this game at two different schools. His record speaks for itself. And again I've always admired what Steve's done. It's nothing ever personal with me. It's about the team. It's about the university. It's about another challenge for us as a group. So that's really more of the way we approach it. The dynamic is simple. Auburn has a chance tomorrow to win an SEC championship. And that's really all we look at. But again very high level respect for Coach Spurrier and South Carolina and what they've done to get here. Q. Any advantage at all having faced South Carolina earlier in the season to prepare for tomorrow's game? COACH CHIZIK: I've been asked that quite a bit over the last week, but whatever advantage we have, they have the same advantage. So you pretty much scratch those out. I think it gives you a little bit of an idea of what the game plans were the first time around. Everybody's going to look at what worked in the game, what was a good idea at that point in time two months ago, what wasn't. Everybody will tweak it a little bit. This time of the year you don't wholeheartedly make wholesale changes on anything with your team, offensively or defensively. You've got to do what you do and be who you are. That doesn't mean you can't tweak some things in an attempt to be better at whatever you weren't good at the first time around. But obviously we both have that same opportunity. Q. Speaking of the last time you played them. Marcus Lattimore did a pretty good job of limiting his success. But at the same time Alshon Jeffery had a tremendous amount of success against your team. Is shutting down one, does that affect the other? Do you feel like you can limit both of them or do you choose to float in one, the other one maybe has more opportunity? COACH CHIZIK: I think if you really look, Alshon, I know in league play, is averaging right around 110, 110 or more yards per game in terms of receptions. I know that Marcus Lattimore is off the chart. He's a great football player. And I think he's rushing for somewhere in the ballpark of 115 yards a game in terms of league play. But let's not get lost in the fact that there's a lot of other good players around them. Stephen Garcia in terms of his pass efficiency rating, top two or three in the conference. You know, they've got a very, to me, it's very glaring that their offensive line has made huge strides since two months ago. Not that they weren't good then. They were very good then. But I think they've gotten much better. You can tell they're playing with a lot more continuity and a lot more confidence. There's so many things that in that offense is extremely difficult to defend. I can't say really that anyone stopped one or the other completely. And I don't know that that's realistic. Obviously you go into the game and you want to shut down both. But they're very, very efficient at both of those. What you hope is you hope to play physical on defense. You hope to contain those two players, their run game and the explosive plays on offense, which Jeffrey has seemed to be able to do that every game, no matter whether it's double coverage, single coverage, he always goes out and makes a great play. We're prepared for us to be able to do our best job to slow them down and to contain them. But they're going to make their plays and we just have to respond to them the right way. Q. Everybody knows Steve Spurrier's background and his playing time. You actually played at the same school at Florida. People might not know how much your background shaped you. Could you talk about that, how your college time affected you and made you a coach? COACH CHIZIK: Football has been a huge part of my life. I obviously was a graduate at the University of Florida and was fortunate to play football there a short time. And obviously all the football that I've played in my career has led me to want to be sitting in this seat and the coaches in my life have had a huge part and football's had a huge part of my life growing up. When I graduated, I wanted to go into coaching. That's what I did. I started in high school. I did that for two and a half years in the state of Florida and then got into the college world, and have been very blessed to be again 20 some odd years later sitting here. Q. Even when your defense is playing poorly, it doesn't seem to get discouraged, going back to the Oregon game, where they were having problems with their passing game, it comes back and they makes plays in the secondary late in the game to turn the game. What's the key to that mindset? COACH CHIZIK: Well, as I've said earlier, and probably too many times, it's usually an Auburn problem that we can get fixed. It's usually a communication problem or a technique problem. Once we really identify what offensively people are trying to do and who they're trying to go after, who they're trying to attack, what is their idea for the game, we can usually get a handle on it. And we can have some answers for it. So I think that's probably been the case with our secondary. But I think it needs to be real clear that when you're giving up passing yards, which we've done some. We played well back there some, and we've played poorly back there some. Generally what happens is that that's the only part that everybody else sees, but you can go back and point to a pass rush lane that was vacated and the cornerback bought himself an extra two seconds himself to scramble. That's not okay. It was a linebacker that was supposed to be in a window where the ball was being thrown. He caught it and made a 10-yard coach into a 40-yard catch because he outran everybody. So it's not a secondary problem. It's a defensive problem because anytime they're moving the ball on you in any way shape or form, running it or throwing it, it's an 11-man defensive problem. And so, again, our job is to get the 11-man problem fixed and it's not necessarily just one fax of your offense or defense. Q. When you played the first time against the program, was considered a national contender at that time, what did that do for you in terms of your confidence in terms of what this team could do long-term this season? COACH CHIZIK: I think the significance of that win was, looking back on it, I think was big, because that was two weeks in a row that we felt like we played two very physical football teams, where we had to find different ways to come back and win. At that point when we had done that back to back, and even back before that, we had to go on the road and play what turns out to be a very good Mississippi State team. We had to go to Mississippi State and win that on the road in a very difficult way. Then we had the Clemson game come in where we knew we had to win that one overtime and come back from a point deficit there and turn around and do it against a really good South Carolina team. At that point in time we felt like we need to get a lot of things fixed in terms of offensive and defense and what we were trying to get accomplished. But what we did know at that time was our team would fight, and we did know that our team would play for 60 minutes and we did know that our team, in all those different circumstances, because that early in the season you're not sure of the personality of your team. You don't know yet because it's a whole different group of people. But after those three games in a row, South Carolina being the third of the three, we felt like we had a chance to be a really good football team, simply because we knew they were going to play for 60 minutes and they were going to fight. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. End of FastScripts |
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