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VIZIO BCS NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP GAME: AUBURN v FLORIDA STATEJanuary 2, 2014Jeremy PruittPASADENA, CALIFORNIA Q. Do you and Coach Malzahn share a philosophy or are you just relaying? I didn't realize he was such a defensive guy is what I'm trying to say. COACH PRUITT: Right. He's a football coach. It's his program. He wanted to lay out the ground work of what he wanted his defense to be. He wanted to be an aggressive, attacking style. That's what he was used to. He wanted to be able to deny the ball. He just said, hey, this is what I want to be. This is who we've got. So we just kind of worked through it together to come up with who we are. Q. Part of that group you inherited was a defensive front four and all former five‑star recruits. I don't think there is a defense in the country that can say they have that. When you saw that group in particular, what were you thinking to yourself about those front four guys? COACH PRUITT: Those guys are good football players. They're all big, first of all, which is important. They have size, and they're every‑down players. Most of them are every‑down players. There is not somebody that is a specialist that only plays on first down. These guys, I think they can two gap, one gap. They can rush the quarterback. Good kids. Q. How do you compare them to the group that you had at Alabama or so on from the SEC in years? COACH PRUITT: Yeah, I don't think it's fair to compare them to the guys at Alabama. I think from a talent standpoint they're as good as any guys that I've been around. Q. How much does it help that they just played Alabama? Does that help you at all? COACH PRUITT: Absolutely. Q. In what way? COACH PRUITT: Absolutely. I'm very familiar, obviously, with the players at Alabama, the talent level, who they are. So watching individual blocks, playing in space, covering, quarterback getting away from guys. I know who the guys are at Alabama, how well they run, what kind of athletic ability they have. So it's helped me from that standpoint, definitely. Schematically, obviously, us and Alabama are very similar. So how Coach Malzahn attacked Alabama, you know, is what he had success with, what he didn't have success with, I mean. Q. You can't quantify, but how unusual is that to have that base of knowledge before you sit down? COACH PRUITT: Yeah, it's been beneficial for us. There's probably nobody else out there that could say, okay. All right, they've made this call. That is exactly some calls that we have. This is how they're going to block it. This is what you're going to get. Q. Have you spoken with Coach Saban or Coach Smart about that game? COACH PRUITT: Not really, not really, no. Obviously, me and Kirby, we talk regularly anyhow. But Kirby has kind of took the stance of me and you are friends, but they've still got the old SEC going in them now. There is some pride there, so not really. Q. You use that approach to open things up for them, and do you see fullbacks like him very often anymore when you're scheming against offenses? COACH PRUITT: No, not a lot of people are playing with a true fullback, and he's the guy that makes them go. I think he's an outstanding football player. You know, he never takes a play off. There are very few times that he's not knocking somebody back. He's a really good football player. Q. (No microphone) parts of the first half of the season considering you're doing so many different things? COACH PRUITT: Well, the thing about it is if you look at Coach Malzahn's whole body of work, the things that he was doing at Tulsa, you know, and all the way back to his early days at Auburn, I mean, it's still a lot of the same family of stuff. There's a lot of things that they're doing now that he had done before. I think he adapts to who he has. When he has running quarterbacks, these things show up. When you don't, these other things show up. He does really nice. Q. How much of that is the old high school coach mentality of you play with who you've got versus I'm going to run my system and that's it? COACH PRUITT: Well, I think that's part of being a coach. You've got to adapt to who you've got. I think that's probably helped me, you know, and anybody because you don't recruit them in high school. You've got some years you've got a 280‑pound three technique, and some years you have a 375 three technique, so it is what it is. Q. Jimbo was saying he likes the guys from high school because they've learned a ground‑up coaching philosophy instead of just working on techniques and stuff. How much did you take from that experience? COACH PRUITT: To me, the best teachers are the high school coaches. When you go out there with a 12‑year‑old and you're teaching them how to get in a stance, you're teaching them how to tackle, teaching him how to block, teaching him how to use his hands. It's kind of like when you have a child. You teach them how to walk. You teach them how to ride a bike. They say your name for the first time. To me it's very gratifying to help mold and develop these young kids. I think the high school coaches are the best teachers. Now when you're at college, they are who they are. You just kind of tweak them a little bit. Q. That being said, Nick Marshall has almost been remade three times. Played defensive back at Georgia, gets on the field, played defensive guard, and now this. What's it say about Gus and this and everything he has been through? COACH PRUITT: And he can go play point guard if they need him to. Q. Yeah, right. COACH PRUITT: Yeah, it's very unusual to have the guy who has the ability to be an SEC corner and have the success that he's had as a quarterback. That tells you right there about his ability with his feet. The thing that I think is overlooked is his arm talent. Nick Marshall has as good of arm talent as anybody in the country. I mean, he can flat foot throw it 80‑something yards. The couple throws he's made especially down the stretch here are very accurate. He's been very accurate. The throw he made against Missouri, the first touchdown. I mean, he's running to his left. On the run he throws it 52 yards and hits between two Missouri defenders and hits a guy right in stride. Not many folks can make that throw. Q. Do you remember the game‑tieing touchdown against Alabama with 32 seconds left? I know you've seen the film. COACH PRUITT: I've seen it, yes. Q. Two minutes left, all three timeouts, six straight belly plays and he pulls up on left side option, sucks up the corner and throws it. Just talk about, I guess, how great that was to pull that off. COACH PRUITT: Well, I think the big thing that they're doing right now and what's happened on this play is sometimes they block you on the perimeter on these option type runs, and sometimes they're just running pass routes. That's kind of been the craze in college football the last few years. So you're kind of mixing run plays with pass plays. That goes back to being a point guard. He's attacking the line of scrimmage, sees the guy open, but bam, throws him the ball. That's something that we've had to stress with our defenders every day. Q. Is there anyone he reminds you of? COACH PRUITT: No, not offhand. Q. (No microphone)? COACH PRUITT: I've been coaching in high school. There aren't many Nick Marshalls around out there. Q. I know how everybody's talking about how you're going to fare against the running game. But if you do what you did against Boston College, force them into third and long situations, how do you feel they are in the passing game in those kind of situations? COACH PRUITT: I think the big thing is they've been throwing it when they want to throw it. They've been dictating to everybody else. I think it's important to get them behind the sticks early on and get them in some long yardage situations. But so far I'm sure that's what everybody's game plan has been going in. They ain't had a whole lot of success doing it. Q. The guy that caught that pass was Sammie Coates, and he's second in the country in yards per reception. As you mentioned that passing game, what do you think of the match‑up with your secondary, which is obviously outstanding and a guy that's such a deep threat and consistent deep threat? COACH PRUITT: That is the one thing about Auburn. I'm very familiar with a lot of their players. I actually recruited Sammie. He's an extremely good athlete. He's big, strong, fast and physical. I feel like we've got some good players in the back end that he'll test us. He's probably as good a receiver as we've seen this year, except maybe one of the ones we play against every day. That No. 1 for us is pretty good too. Q. How much has he changed from what you saw when you were recruiting him? COACH PRUITT: Well, a lot of people didn't know, Sammie had a stress fracture coming out of high school his senior year. That's why he was kind of under the radar a little bit there. He's from Alabama, I think he played basketball, baseball and football, you know, so he never got well going into his senior year. He hurt his leg his junior year. I kept trying to get him up to Tuscaloosa to a camp, but just couldn't get him well. But he is an extremely talented guy. Q. What is it that you see, why the changes after the Boston College game? You talked about this being a process and that was part of it. But just take us through that thinking and those conversations right after that game and what you did to get it all put together? COACH PRUITT: Well, the big thing against Boston College was first of all they'd done a very nice job against us. They outcoached us from an offensive standpoint to a defensive standpoint. You know, we gave up three‑‑ had three busted coverages in the game. They gave them points. Two of them were the throwback deals to the tight end. One of them was a wheel route to a running back. There were three times in that game when we actually stopped them on third down and got penalties on third down for hitting the quarterback late, so extended drives. So they've done a really nice job against us. We helped them along a little bit in that game, but after that game we had to make some changes as far as tweaking our personnel. We really didn't know who we were. Like I said before, a lot of the guys when we got there in spring were injured. So we didn't get to spend any time with them during spring training, and then you get out there in fall camp, and you've got guys who have played before and you've got to give them a chance at certain spots. Does that make sense? It kind of took us a while to figure it out exactly what would work. Q. Was Christian, in your mind, the one that brought it? COACH PRUITT: We needed to get more athletic on the edge. Losing three edge rushers last year to the draft and all those guys had really good years this year. We had to get a little more athletic on the edge to create some pass rush, to be able to get some of these teams, these zone read teams, to be able to get the quarterbacks on the ground. Q. What are some of the things in your practice preparation you've done to prepare for the tempo? Is it different than the Clemson tempo because they're more predicated on the run? COACH PRUITT: No, I think the tempo is tempo. They're going to snap it and go as fast as they can. Our philosophy has been all year, because we see it every day with our offense, you've got to beat them back to the ball. There are a lot of times the first thing you do is not get lined up. If you don't get lined up, which happens a lot, you watch Auburn's games and there are a lot of times people aren't getting lined up. It's not hard to run if there is nobody there. So you've got to get lined up first. Our philosophy has been all year to beat them back to the ball. Get back to the ball so we can get lined up. If that means we played one front one coverage all day, as long as we can get lined up, you've got to make them earn it. Q. How much time have you had recruiting this week and how do you balance that? COACH PRUITT: Well, I think the best recruiting for Florida State is to win this football game. I think being here is a good recruiting tool. Me, personally, I feel like we owe it to the players on our football team to spend our time right now to help them give them the best chance to be successful on Monday. We'll do the same thing with the guys that we're recruiting. When they become players at Florida State, we're not going to cheat them when they have these type of opportunities. So we're going to do everything we can to prepare for Auburn, to give our guys the best chance to be successful. Q. (No microphone)? COACH PRUITT: He does a nice job of that, and sometimes I'm not sure they're not calling it for him. But the big thing is whether he gives it keeps it or whatever, but they're having a hard time keeping it on the ground. To me their O‑line is probably one of the best we play or probably the best we've played. It's not like people are not throwing a lot at him. I know Coach Grimes, the O‑line coach, has done a really good job. These guys step to the right. They play hard and they play physical. You know, so they've got nice runners, you know. But those guys up front for them have done a really good job. Q. Are they exotic, or blocking schemes? COACH PRUITT: Just fundamental, fundamental. Get in the right place and play till the whistle blows. Q. You said earlier about talking to them they still have the SEC thing going. Are you saying he's not giving away any secrets because an Alabama guy doesn't want to hurt Auburn? COACH PRUITT: That's exactly what I'm saying. Don't think I didn't try. It's kind of unusual, but me and Kirby talk at least once a week anyhow along with other guys on the staff. So they've been getting ready for their game, and we're a little bit different. The type of players that are at Alabama right now compared to what's been recruited at Florida State, Alabama players are a little bigger. We're kind of built more for a 4‑3, you know? So there is some familiarity within what we're both doing, but we've had to tweak it a little bit based on the players we've had. Q. How much more difficult was it? You didn't have many of your guys for spring practice. How much more difficult was it getting ready for the season? COACH PRUITT: It was extremely difficult because you're trying to‑‑ you know, we had two corners all spring. We play nickel and dime, heck, he plays the start, but he had to play corner all spring. Darby didn't go through spring, Jalen Ramsey and Nate Andrews actually freshmen in high school. So it was difficult just trying to figure out who the best players were and when we needed to play them. Almost like we had to start all over once fall camp got there. Q. Do you and Jimbo want to try to go to the Alabama philosophy of bigger, or do you like the speed you have? COACH PRUITT: We like the speed. We like the speed. I think we need to get a little bigger in certain spots because you kind of got to be able to play situations. When playing against big teams and being physical, the Alabamas of the world who line it up and stick it at you more the pro‑style, just at the end of the day when their guys weigh 350 and your guys weigh 275 it doesn't add up in four quarters. They get to grinding it out. You want to have the ability playing against teams like that to get big. You're playing against teams that spread you out, that you can match that. Q. It's an incredible amount of offense in college football these days. How do you define that? COACH PRUITT: I would say the first thing is how many points you give up. If you don't give up a whole lot of points, you have a good chance to win. Q. Are there other stats that you're looking at? COACH PRUITT: No, that's the only one I'm worried about is how many points do we get? Q. Has the game shifted too far to offense at all? COACH PRUITT: I don't think so. I think it's when you look out there each week, there are a lot more folks scoring points than they used to. You wonder from a defensive standpoint if the numbers go up each year it's hard to stay on the low end. You kind of look at our goals and if you match your goals, then you're going to be in the top two or three in every statistical category. The thing is just find a good way to win. Q. How good is Jalen Ramsey? COACH PRUITT: I think he's got a chance to be physical. He was there their best corner in fall camp, had a couple of injuries, needed to make some changes to get the best guys on the field. He was a guy to play safety. He's actually learned two positions in fall camp. He's played extremely well for us this year. He gives us a guy with brains in the back end. He's a good tackler, and he still jumps out there and plays corner in practice. That's what he wants to be. But right now he's having to play safety. That's our best deal. Q. You're going to prepare your guys and teach them to play the play in front of you, don't worry about anything else, I get that. When you've got a team like Auburn that's done the magic they've done, how do you account for that either in your head or with your guys? COACH PRUITT: I'll be honest, I don't know that our guys know any of that. They may; I don't know. We've got to focus on what we do. Coach Fisher has said all year is he tells our kids, our opponent has no face. We're our own opponent. If we'll take care of Florida State, and the rest of it will take care of itself. Q. (No microphone)? COACH PRUITT: What now? Q. Do you have a little notch in your bed post with that SEC streak? COACH PRUITT: I don't know about that, but I'd like to end it for sure. Q. How come? COACH PRUITT: Oh, shoot, because I'm on this side and they're on that side. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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