Weekly Press Conference Quotes
September 30, 2002 | Football
Opening comments:
"We have Army coming in this weekend. They are working on some problems with their quarterback due to injuries at that position and playing a lot of people. [Head Coach] Todd [Berry] has been working on that because it has caused a lot of turnovers. Although, this last weekend they played Southern Miss very well and it was their best game played to date. So they are making some progress up there and we have our own basket-full of problems down here. We are going to spend a majority of our time this week worrying about East Carolina and try to go out there Saturday and play well."
On the defense and corrections that need to be made:
"For whatever reasons, we have played three football games and our front seven performed as they have been coached and played well. This last week we did not handle it well at all. We had a couple of young men, particularly on the backside flow of our defense, just did not do what they were coached to do. Part of it had to do with some misdirection that takes place in that style of offense. We had given them assignments to take any misdirection out of their thinking. We had misdirection being handled by some other people and they began to play two games at once. Cutting back on the zone play was devastating. We are going out tomorrow and work some full pad stuff. [We'll] work full pads on Wednesday and give ourselves about 24 live snaps and see if we can't correct that problem."
On personnel changes to the defense:
"No changes really. Most of the mistakes were made by redshirt freshman linebackers. We have had four football games and I have felt good about three of them on the defensive side of the ball. So I have to believe that part of it was an experience issue number one. Number two, the team we just got finished playing is a pretty good football team. Now you can't ever say it's okay to give up 400-500 yards, you just can't do that. I got to believe that we can go and get it corrected, and we will"
On Paul Troth getting aggressive:
"One of the good positives coming out of the West Virginia game, when it became apparent that we could not run the football--which is something else we are going to address--knowing that we were going to throw it every snap, Paul was 69 percent complete. Which was another piece of the puzzle for Paul to put in his resume as we go down the journey. I was really encouraged with the way he was throwing his intermediate passes. He got his footwork messed up a couple of times on some long balls. He has a better long ball arm than he showed Saturday. He held on to the ball a little bit too long, taking too many steps with a five-step throw, and suddenly the play does not express itself properly. We can get that corrected."
On the running game:
"We've got some subtle changes that we need to make. For us it was a work in progress. For instance with Leonard Henry, going back to his junior year where he had 800 yards running and finally as we got enough information and definition on film, we changed the angle of departure of our offensive line and we gave Leonard one cut, that's it. Every time we found him running on film east-west he got in trouble. Once we got him coached to be a north-south guy and to use his 215 pounds to his advantage, he jumps up and runs for 1,500 yards. We don't have that now--we've got two guys that are more Junior Smith-type running backs and we have to change some subtle things on the offensive line and plays checks at the line."
On West Virginia's running game being different from previous games this year:
"They did nothing different. They lined up and ran their offense just as they had the previous three games. They cut off the backside of our defense successfully over and over again."
On Doug White's injury:
"I am hoping that he will be able to get back for South Florida. He will miss this week as well and we have an open date [on Oct. 12]. Doug had a MCL slight tear in the right knee."
On how similar Saturday's game will be to an intrasquad practice:
"You can call each other's plays to a degree. Todd [Berry] obviously worked here a long time and took this offensive idea. He has got his own wrinkles, additions and subtractions to it. But that is one of the reasons we are going out Tuesday and Wednesday and work against ourselves full speed. Because it will be a great picture for both sides of the ball."
