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ROSE BOWL GAME PRESENTED BY VIZIO: OREGON v WISCONSINDecember 29, 2011Hroniss GrasuMark HelfrichDarron ThomasPASADENA, CALIFORNIA THE MODERATOR: We have Offensive Coordinator Mark Helfrich, Darron Thomas and Hroniss Grasu. We'll go straight to questions. Q. Coach Helfrich, talk about this Wisconsin defense, the linebackers you're facing and preparing for that defense this week? COACH HELFRICH: They're outstanding. They kind of remind us of all the worst of what we've seen from our perspective from a lot of great defenses we played. Unbelievable tackling team. Very few missed tackles, I think there was basically one in the Michigan State game that cost them that the first one, and a couple in the second game. But outstanding, incredibly disciplined. You can always see like a team when an offense goes in motion and the entire defense looks like they're controlled by remote. That's kind of how these guys look. And relentless. The linebackers are incredible. Whatever they are, eighth and tenth in the country, something like that in tackles. And relentless. Tremendously disciplined. Very, very sound at what they do. Q. Hroniss, talk about starting as a redshirt freshman all year and being a captain as the center making all the line calls, your first Rose Bowl, talk about the experience, all that stuff? HRONISS GRASU: It's a blessing, first, but I've also got a lot of help from the whole team the other four O linemen, Darron Thomas, back there, and without them I wouldn't be able to do my job, and they've really helped me out in my first year to become comfortable every single game and try and get better every single game. Q. Coach Helfrich, can you also talk about Hroniss, pretty rare for a guy as young as he is to do what he's s done on a team like yours. What are some of the qualities maybe that stood out as far as you're concerned that helped him not only win the job but excel at it? COACH HELFRICH: Yeah, he's been awesome, and even with him sitting here I'll say some good things about him. He's a great‑‑ I think the one thing that permeates our team is he's a great guy. He's a date‑your‑daughter type of guy. He's smart. He's tough. Not my daughter, but somebody else's daughter. And a great teammate. He's going to show up every day prepared. I think he and Darron have a great relationship of communication. And those kind of six guys, the quarterback and the offensive line, they have to be able to operate when one guy says one word, all six guys are on the same page. And that takes time. Nobody ever wants to hear that kind of process takes‑‑ there's actual time that you have to make some mistakes. You have to go through some growing pains. But luckily we didn't go through too many because these guys are really high character guys, really smart guys and really tough guys. Because it takes them you've got to take a couple of licks. Q. Darron, what's it like to be the point guard of the highest scoring team in the land? DARRON THOMAS: It's really fun, because you have a lot of different players that can do a lot of different things, to get the ball in those guys' hands and let them perform. It's really easy on me. Because I think it's just a very neat deal that I get to go out and play with a lot of guys that can do a lot of great things and just put the ball in their hand. Q. Coach, I talked to a couple of linemen a couple of days ago at Disneyland. They thought the tempo in practice had increased. Is that the case? COACH HELFRICH: Did you say increased or decreased? Q. Increased. COACH HELFRICH: Increased? I don't know. I think we've done a great job‑‑ we're in the operational mode right now of we want to run the race fresh. And our guys have done a great job in preparation. I thought we had probably our best practice in a long, long time yesterday, and that's a good sign. And we have a pretty mature team. Like we said a pretty intelligent team. And we know that the game is on the 2nd and we need to amp it up in our normal way up and down. But our tempo has been great. We've ended periods‑‑ these guys won't admit it‑‑ but we've ended periods short after we get a lot of plays in because the tempo we practice with and play with we just can't get 700 reps in practice. It will just wear us down too quickly. But our guys have been great. We've been sharp and very, very focused. So hopefully that's a good sign. Q. Coach, what do you take from the last two years that you can apply to this year from the experiences from the last two years from the games from the last two years? COACH HELFRICH: Well, we've been‑‑ I've had asked that question obviously a lot here. The first thing that you have to point out in games like these is you're playing against really good opponents. And I don't think enough credit is being given to those teams. It's not that we came out and played on air. We made some mistakes in those two games that were different. Coaches and players. Definitely on board with that. There were turnovers that were uncharacteristic. There were some unforced errors that were uncharacteristic. Assignment‑wise or whatever. But we've definitely looked at how do we prepare during this time. It's been a little bit different. Not measurably different, really, from a player's perspective, maybe. But we're definitely going to be fresh and ready to go. I think our guys mentally are fresh and ready to go. And that's probably the most important part of it. And then the common theme in both those games as well as the LSU game or otherwise, you can't turn the ball over. We know that. And when you're playing an outstanding team like Wisconsin you can't turn the ball over. And so that's‑‑ it's not some magic formula of we should practice four times in helmets and six times‑‑ I don't think that's been the issue. It hasn't been a stamina thing. It's not our X didn't do the job against their O a couple times. That's on us as coaches. And we have to take care of the ball a little bit better and that's an 11‑man process. Q. Darron, your offense doesn't work if the snap isn't good. It's a little different in that almost every play is a shotgun snap. How has Hroniss handled that? DARRON THOMAS: I think Hroniss has been one of the top offensive linemen, top players I've seen come in. He's similar to De'Anthony this year. He's come in, I don't think I've had fumbled bad snaps, any snaps going wild, anything like that. I think he's one of the best centers, and he's going to be the center here for a long time. He's a consistent guy. That's what's good about him. Never rattles him. If anything happens, he can come on the sideline, make the adjustments and we're back out there making it happen. So I just like the consistency out of Hroniss and he keeps playing his hardest. Q. Mark, I wanted to ask you about the time to prepare for the Bowl game, when you talk about your opponent preparing for your guys' offense. It's been wondered about if teams can do much better against your offense, if they have 30 days to prepare rather than six or seven. COACH HELFRICH: We'll find out. There's things that they're going to do differently that we haven't seen before. When you have this much time, coaches get bored so you have to tweak it a little bit. But, again, their deal is they're very, very sound in everything they do. They defend formations extremely well. They can attack. Protection's very well from the boundary, strong, weak, all the kind of things that great defenses do. And then they play really hard and tackle really well. So those things aren't going to change. They're not going to come out in something drastically different. We're going to be able to do some things differently, just in that time off and who knows, again, what that other magic formula is. You watch a few of these Bowl games that are 15‑14, a few of these Bowl games are 52‑51, something like that. So we'll see. We can't really focus on them. We always kind of deal with ourselves and try to focus on what we've done, and up to this point I think our preparation has been great. Q. Coach, I just want to get your impressions of the badgers you linebackers Mike Taylor and Chris Borland and how they jump off the page to you? COACH HELFRICH: I don't like them at all. No. Those guys are outstanding. I mean they immediately jump out on film of just again kind of relentless, incredibly good at shedding blocks. Slipping blocks. Avoiding blocks. Of offensive linemen, fullbacks. I think one of the greatest matchups I've seen in college football this year was Ohio State fullback against Borland in that game. I think that was just a war. But they're great players. They run extremely well. They get them lined up extremely well. Like I said earlier, it's something that jumps out immediately. And it's not something that we like to look at. But we know that we definitely have our hands full with those guys. And you're not going to trick them. We're not going to trick those guys. We just, again, have to kind of do what we do best and, you know, again, they'll probably have some nuances that we haven't seen and we'll have a couple of wrinkles for them, and it just becomes an execution game at that point. Q. Coach, are there consistent problems with having the kind of time off in between games that you have before Bowl games, something that you see every time? And then also are there particular problems for an offense like yours that's so rhythm‑based with having that kind of time off? COACH HELFRICH: I don't know. You know, again, we've had two not perfect days that we're talking about against two really good teams. I think our rhythm, I think our timing has been really good. You never know you're not getting struck by Borland in practice every day. And that's going to be an immediate thing. We're constantly working on ball security every day. And you know it's the old adage both teams have the same amount of time off blah, blah, blah. And I think we've taken advantage of our preparation time very well. And we have to come out playing our style. We need to attack. And I think our guys‑‑ I think our guys are confident. I don't think we sit here and go oh my gosh we haven't scored 70 points in the last two Bowl games, we have no chance. We're going to come out and play with confidence and do our best against an outstanding team. Q. Coach and the players, you guys seem to do so well right after halftime in the third quarter. I think you score the most points in the third quarter. Obviously you're trying to score every time, but do you place an emphasis on trying to come out of halftime and hit the other team hard with a score? If not, why is it do you think that the third quarter is your best quarter, that you seem to be so effective right after halftime in most games? DARRON THOMAS: We come out with our foot on the gas the whole game. Maybe seems like we're coming out in the third quarter with our foot on the gas. We come out after halftime, make the proper adjustments we need and ready to go. We make the adjustments and come out and do those things. So the third quarter we maybe come out with our foot on the gas pedal because we're now rested up. We're conditioned well. We've got juice to come back out 100percent. And we're ready to play. We know the game's on the line. We ain't got halftime no more. We come back and the game's going to be over. So we've got to get this victory. HRONISS GRASU: A lot of credit to Coach Radcliff with our summer conditioning. We're well conditioned throughout the whole game. So we're ready to go all four quarters. COACH HELFRICH: I think one too our guys are great adjusters. We can sit here and talk to the O line and it's a younger group, experience‑wise, but they can make adjustments great. Darron is one of the best I've been around in terms of making adjustments. And that's huge. When you see a team play against us, there's usually one or two things that you can‑‑ they're going to be kind of I don't want to say programmed but they only play certain things certain ways. And it's difficult to mix and match those throughout a game with Darron and Michael and Kenjon and De'Anthony, and so those guys are great at, hey, they're doing A, let's do B, and that's not always the case. Guys, you can't usually do that with everybody. And you know the other thing that these guys have earned they're going to get everybody's best shot right off the bat. That everybody wants to knock these guys down and you know not that we don't show up not ready to play. I think we're very ready to play. But that's always something that the emotional edge early and hopefully it's overcome by the conditioning and confidence and the adjustments they've been able to make. Q. Coach and Darron, how much has Darron improved as a passer from, say, two years ago to this year starting in fall camp? And then I'd like to ask Darron the same thing, how much does he think or how much do you think you've improved as a passer? Because sometimes I think your throwing game, your passing game is overlooked? COACH HELFRICH: Well, I think‑‑ I'll go first here. Darron's improved a ton. Certainly from two years ago. Darron's‑‑ don't tell him I said this‑‑ but he's never going to be Joe Montana 92percent making every 100percent perfect throw. But he will strive to do that every single time. That guy's a stud. He's one of the smartest quarterbacks I've ever been around, tough guys I've ever been around. He definitely doesn't get enough credit for what he's done with our offense lining up the younger guys and communicating with Hroniss and just running the show. If we had to throw the ball 70 times a game, we could do that. We have a couple of guys that are pretty good at running the ball. And we were joking about that yesterday of handing the ball to the athletic guy. But Darron has been‑‑ we're always kind of criticized for some guy having 300 yards rushing and another guy only having 12 yards rushing. That's still 312 yards rushing. That's decent. If David Paulson has 200 yards and De'Anthony has 200 yards, Darron Thomas can't run for 400 yards. That's very difficult. But he's done a great job of running the show. Our team believes in him 100percent, which is probably the most important part in all of that. And hopefully we're able to make the adjustment or do the right thing as far as the passing game, running game type of ratio deal. But we have 100percent confidence in Darron in all aspects of that. DARRON THOMAS: I think I've improved a lot, just the knowledge of being a quarterback, learning from two years ago, starting with Coach Helfrich, just learning a lot. I've made a big learning curve just in the pocket. Maybe throwing the ball, taking‑‑ used to throw the ball real hard. Not really accurate, but really just maybe trying to be accurate with the ball a little bit. I take my hat off to my coach teaching me every day. He's not a guy going‑‑ if I mess up, he's not going to get on me about it, he's going to show me the way to do it and come out and make the adjustments. I just strive to continue to get better and not worried about the media who is doing the best things on the team. I just want to come out and get the victory and participate on this team as equal opportunity offense. Q. Mark, and guys if you could weigh in on this as well, last night over at Lowery's the thing with Mark Asper, if there was a guy who was an Eagle Scout and save someone's life, wouldn't it be Asper? COACH HELFRICH: No question, he was probably doing the play‑by‑play in Spanish as he was saving a life with one hand and playing the piano with the other hand. Unbelievable, unbelievable but very believable at the same time. HRONISS GRASU: I saw it happen, and I think the guy's son tried to do it. And I don't know if he didn't have enough strength to do it. But Mark just, we always make fun of Mark, because he's the father of two girls. And we always say he knows how to do everything. But he just all calmly got up out of his seat, walked through the crowd, and you know maybe saved his life. DARRON THOMAS: I wouldn't expect nothing less out of Mark Asper. He's one of the best guys you can be around, not just football‑wise, but all around. He's an all around purpose guy. I think any type of adversity he takes, he's one of the calmest guys. He's never rattled by anything. And I wouldn't expect anything‑‑ I would expect him to do it if anybody on our team I would expect Mark to do it with a smile on his face. Q. Darron, it seems as the game is painted as two high‑powered offenses where the first team that might get a defensive stop could win. Do you see it as that kind of way where just one mistake for either offense could be the difference, and where do you draw the line between pressure and excited by that kind of challenge? DARRON THOMAS: No, we don't put too much pressure on ourselves. We've got a great defense. We make a mistake, we got guys on the other side as part of our team that's going to do great things. There's two power offenses down on paper but you never know what the outcome is going to be. We don't come try to come out execute, we don't expect to score 100 points on them guys. I don't think they expect to score 70, 80 points on us. It's going to be a well‑executed game. Gotta come out and be a battle out there. We just gotta execute. Q. Mark and the players, if you could each maybe quickly address how this team might be a reflection of Chip's personality? COACH HELFRICH: I think every‑‑ you know, I think that the adage that the team reflects the coach's personality is very true. He's not nearly as athletic as some of these guys. So maybe that part is not true. But I think kind of‑‑ I mean Darron's from Houston. Hroniss I'm sure he's from Belair, is that the area? We've got guys from everywhere. Just a lot of really good‑‑ that's the neat thing about being a football coach and part of a football team is there's guys from everywhere, every possible background, every possible socioeconomic deal that come together for the common goal type deal. And Chip is relentless. Our team is relentless. He is contrary to media interaction, very positive and fun to be around. A very fun group of guys to be around and be involved with. And I think that is definitely reflected from the top down. HRONISS GRASU: With Coach Kelly, when I'm out there, I'm not always scared or worried about making mistakes and getting off the field and worrying about him yelling into my ear. Coach isn't like that. He always coaches me really calmly and doesn't just yell into my ear. And he's a great coach. And I really like the way we practice is, makes the game a lot easier, the tempo and all that stuff. So it's great. DARRON THOMAS: I think Coach Kelly is one of the brightest guys. He's really the foundation of our team. Gotta have a good foundation to start out teams. And to come from the bottom up. He's one of the guys that he's never‑‑ he's never going to pat us on our back about something. He always wants us to get better. That's the type of coach and I need. A guy that's always ready to improve and keep battling. When the game's over in the fourth quarter he still looks like he wants to coach two or three more quarters, put on more points. That's the type of coach I like. It really resembles our team, because we're a fast hearted finish team. We like the finish part about it, keep finish to the hardest and never give up. That's the type of guy, that's the type of coach, teach us to never give up and just finish everything. And so that's what I love about him. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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