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PACIFIC-12 CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYJuly 26, 2013Ifo Ekpre-OlomuMark HelfrichMarcus MariotaCULVER CITY, CALIFORNIA COACH HELFRICH: It's an honor to be here to represent the University of Oregon and to have these two young men up here that represent everything we're all about and we look forward to answering your questions. Q. Coach, how does it feel following someone who is considered such an offensive innovator, even having run the offense for them for a couple of seasons? COACH HELFRICH: It's an honor to follow in Chip's foot steps. Oregon has been unique looking back to Brooks, Bellotti and Chip Kelly following him and me following Chip, it's a unique thing in college football and the most important thing is all of our guys believe in our program and we don't look at it as someone replacing someone, we look at it as "the next guy up". And we were just talking this morning if the guy that followed John Wooden quoted him every once in a while would that have been the bad thing? We're going to talk the same, work the same, practice the same. We're going to tweak the margins; we have guys that grow up, get better, you have more wide‑outs this year, tight ends this year, those changes are going to happen and we'll adjust accordingly but we have a bunch of great guys that believe in what we do and that's the most important part. Q. Coach, looking forward to the season. I know many are looking forward to increasing the passing game. I wonder if you could talk about your goals for the passing game and what receivers might be standing out? COACH HELFRICH: We want to score. We don't care about the method. If Ifo has a pick 6, I'm all for that. If we throw it or run it or kick return it, I don't care. We're going to take advantage of what the defense gives us and they can dictate to a certain extent how the run game goes and obviously the play action pass and we have had success with that during our tenure, comes out of that. But as far as ratio and numbers, this guy is the best quarterback in the country but he doesn't care how many passing yards he has, he cares what it says before and after the hyphen in the team record and that's how we operate. Q. Coach, you have one of the most dynamic players in the country in De'Anthony Thomas. I think his only starts last year were in the slot. Is his role going to change? Will he start out of the backfield or will you use him any differently than he's been used in the past? COACH HELFRICH: To be determined. That's the great answer, right, it depends. De'Anthony likes that role, he likes to be a moving target that doesn't lineup in one position all the time and certainly we like that, too. We have had that anchor for a long time you go back to Jermichael, and other guys and we need to find more numbers than just that one guy. That's a position where we don't have a ton of depth, but De'Anthony like the role of wide‑out, motion guy, movement guy and we like that, too, to keep him versitle against nickel defenses or whatever defense we happen to be playing against. Q. Coach, when you were the offensive coordinator at Colorado, what were your career goals and what kind of a timeline did you give yourself? COACH HELFRICH: I've never done either one of those things. I've never been a guy that said I want to do this by that age or this title by that stage or whatever. I've been lucky everywhere I've been working with and for great people, great places. Obviously, lucky and fortunate to be in the position I am right now and we're going to work every day to kinda earn it. Q. Coach, you mentioned following in Chip Kelly's foot steps. How different or similar do you think you've kept that path? COACH HELFRICH: I think that's a great question for these two. They haven't spoken yet, but we haven't done much differently at all. I think from a player's perspective that's what you want. Chip is a great friend of mine and we will be for a long time and he's going to have success in the NFL, but we're different guys and we walk differently and talk different and that's fine. We're going to ton what we have done from a program standpoint. How we recruit is a little bit different, but we're going to continue to be innovative, attack, get better in every facet of our program every year. Q. Marcus, this league has lost a lot of really good quarterbacks in the last several years, and it once was known for great quarterback play, now maybe not so much. Some guys are still having to prove themselves. What do you think this league has to do or can do to show that it's a league of great quarterbacks? MARCUS MARIOTA: If I think we are still a league of great quarterbacks? A lot of guys are younger, just like myself, but as we grow and mature, I'm sure this conference will continue to show case the ability that these quarterbacks have. I'm looking forward to watching the guys around the conference and how they do. But my main focus is to continue to get better with my team and look forward to the season. Q. This is a fan question from Facebook. This is for Ifo. You have a tricky name to pronounce what is the worst pronunciation you have ever gotten? IFO EKPRE‑OLOMU: I would have to say Ifo Exspray something, I don't know. I don't understand. Sometimes people call me Exspray, I don't understand what they got the Ex from. Q. I want to know what it's like with you guys dealing with the sanctions that came down and just what that's been like and if you thought that was fair? IFO EKPRE‑OLOMU: Personally, I think we just looked at it day‑by‑day and took our role with this program really just continue to go get better every day and let our coaching staff and let the administrators of the program handle that and we trusted them in everything that they told us and really just kept going from there. MARCUS MARIOTA: Just to go off what Ifo said, as a program we weren't too worried about it because the coaches, they made sure that we didn't worry about it. They just made sure our focus was on the field and getting better the best way they could. Q. There has been a rivalry with you guys and USC the past few years developing with the close games and upsets. Is that a game you're going to miss having on the schedule? MARCUS MARIOTA: Yeah, you know, last year to be able to go to the Coliseum and play, that game was pretty unreal. It was a crazy experience. At the same time, you know, the schedule isn't in our control, so that's something that is out of our control. But we're looking forward to the opponents that we have this year and unfortunately we won't be able to play SC but if things work out maybe we will play them in the championship game. THE MODERATOR: All right, gentlemen, thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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