Pat Fitzgerald Media Day Press Conference

8/12/2009 12:00:00 AM | Football

Aug. 12, 2009

Head Coach Pat Fitzgerald
NU Football Media Day Press Conference

Opening statement…
“Good morning and I want to express thanks to everyone for being here. As I mentioned at the Kickoff Luncheon, currently the market remains very difficult and it affects you as members of the media so I want to say thanks for coming out.

It's going to be a fun year in 2009. We came back in great shape with over 95 percent of our varsity passing the conditioning test and around 50 percent of the freshmen passing the conditioning test, which is about the same amount as a year ago. So that's encouraging and a great job by our strength coaches Larry Lilja and Jay Hooten as well as our young men. We're two practices in and our attitude has been great, we've been able to carry over a lot of momentum from spring practice and for us as a coaching staff it's great to have basically our entire staff back for a second year. If you think back to this time last year, we had two new coordinators, a lot of teaching going on for both our young men and our coaching staff. This year there's a lot of carry-over which I think has shown in the way we've executed the first two days.

Today will be our first helmet and shoulder-pad practice to put the physical aspect into practice with our first full-gear practice coming on Friday. From a standpoint of what we have returning, we have 47 returning letterwinners, 14 returning starters with eight on defense led by Corey Wootton, the preseason All-American candidate. We're very excited about the depth we have on defense with Corbin Bryant, Adam Hahn, Corey, Marshall Thomas, Vince Browne, I could go on and on. At linebacker, Nate Williams stepped in great next to Quentin Davie last year and now we'll see if it's going to be Ben Johnson or another young man competing for that third spot. And of course our secondary may be as deep as we've ever had.

On offense, none of you know any of our guys' names so I'll spare it for now, but you will. That's exciting for us as a staff and as a program. We have great competitive depth across the board on offense. All Mike Kafka did last year with his opportunity was run for a Big Ten single-game record 217 yards. You'll see if you come out to practice that he's throwing the ball as well as he has in his career and we're excited to have a Chicagoan, a St. Rita graduate leading our program. Our offensive line is young but experienced, and the names at wide receiver and tailback will be new but we have great competition. We have a depth chart as we go into camp but it will be fluid as we prepare to name starters for the opener. In the kicking game, we return our kickoff and punt returners, which was an area I thought we improved in each week last year. We have Stefan Demos back to handle kickoffs, punting and also placements if he needs to, and he's poised and ready to do all three.

On the growth of members of the secondary…
“You think back to early in their career and it reminds me to the defense I played on that played maybe a little too early and underwent a little baptism by fire there. There's a lot of similarities. Fortunately this group is a little more athletic than ours was in 1995 but there are similarities—they have a lot of experience, play well together and they do a great job leading the defense.”

On Corey Wootton's status in practice coming off an injury…
“Corey's doing great. From the get-go he's been ready to go full-speed. Will we be smart with him? Absolutely. He hasn't missed a rep yet by his choice but we'll rotate him out. If we're going a five-play segment he might go three to start and then be doing the full five by next week. He's all over Marty Long, Mike Hankwitz and myself to get him out there. He's ready to go and looks great.”

On newcomers at the skill positions…
“From a competition standpoint at tailback, Matt MacPherson and I are just chomping at the bit to get out to the practice field every day. Stephen Simmons, after the role he had a year ago with Tyrell Sutton and Omar Conteh going down, is kind of the elder statesman but he's being pushed by Jeravin Matthews, who is maybe the fastest player in our program and has bulked up to about 180 pounds now after a tremendous summer. Alex Daniel is a young player who redshirted last year and had a great spring so based on the empirical data from last year those would be the guys, but Scott Concannon and Jacob Schmidt are also in the mix along with Mike Trumpy and Arby Fields.

At receiver, Andrew Brewer has now moved to the outside after a great summer, Charles Brown is inside, with Sidney Stewart on the opposite side doing some nice things early. All those guys are being pushed by Lee Coleman and Jeremy Ebert as he comes off his injury. The position I think that gets lost occasionally for us is superback. Josh Rooks has done nothing but excelled at the point of attack blocking, his routes have been outstanding. We have a healthy Drake Dunsmore along with Brendan Mitchell and Mark Woodsum so our superback position will be involved in our offense. Mick McCall and our offensive staff have a lot of flexibility.”

On Mike Kafka's running ability…
“Mike's running ability gives us the option to run the quarterback and because of the similarities between Mike and Dan Persa, our No. 2, hopefully we can be more open with our playbook. We're going to ask Mike to run our offense and if that involves running then that's what we're going to do. But as I've said he completed more passes than anyone wants to give him credit for last year, right around 70 percent. Mike can throw it well, we'll spread it out and I think he's a true definition of a dual-threat quarterback.”

On how Mike Kafka is different from last season…
“In my opinion he's improved tremendously. First of all, knowing that he's the starter gives him a lot of confidence to go out and execute. Another thing that's a little behind the scenes, the guys that are now in the wide receiver and skill-set corps are the guys he's worked with on our No. 2 offense for the past couple years. The timing, rhythm and the trust have already been established as we've been preparing for this year. They haven't started but they've been working together and they've had a great start to camp. Mike asked a few months ago if we could change the time of our 7-on-7 voluntary workouts because they had some time conflicts. They played at 9 p.m. all summer sometimes until 11 or 11:30 at night. Mike and Brad (Phillips) were asking to be excused Monday night from the Kickoff Luncheon in Chicago because they had a 7-on-7 workout they wanted to be at, so that will show you the dedication and the drive that our football program has right now.”

On having a more experienced offensive line…
“When you have guys that have been out there in the trenches, it gives you a lot of confidence as a coordinator to open the playbook. We're not going to bang our heads against the wall trying things just to say we tried them. We're going to try to be balanced and spread the ball out. It's not rocket science what we do on offense but we're going to put the ball in our playmakers' hands and put them in the best formations to execute the best plays.”

On having two senior starters at safety…
“On defense, it's like baseball in that it's important to have a great pitcher, catcher and centerfielder up the middle. Your safeties have to be able to come downhill and play the run but also be effective in the passing game. The play-making ability of Brendan Smith and Brad Phillips is as good as any in this league and they're being pushed by younger guys also in David Arnold, Brian Peters and Jared Carpenter, who we were pleasantly surprised by in his spring.”

On opportunities for true freshmen to play this season…
“That's hard to answer right now but I think it's a fair question for after the Saturday scrimmage in Kenosha. Without having any pads on it's really hard to evaluate. The class as a whole is in great shape, for the most part healthy across the board with no real surprises in physicals and I've been really impressed with their attitude. There are five things I look at, with No. 1 being how they're handling homesickness because again, we haven't even gone to Kenosha yet to take them out of their comfort zones. Also what kind of functional strength and conditioning do they have once we start really practicing. No. 3, are they picking up our system and going right when we tell them to go right or left when we tell them to go left? Then do we need them to play and do we want them to play. It usually takes at least 14 days to evaluate that five-step process on a freshman.”

On being able to win consistently year after year…
“Well, you look at our record in the regular season and we're 83-79 since 1995 so we've gotten over the hump of being able to say we can win consistently. When I was being recruited in 1993 that was the only thing being used against Gary Barnett's staff, that they'll never win consistently there. 6-6 is not the destination but I think our program has proven over time that we can win here on a consistent basis. The hallmark of consistent teams is winning bowl games and that's our goal. But that's down the road, right now it's more important to consistently prepare for practice and that's what we're focused on.”

On how the running back situation figures to play out…
“We're prepared to do whatever it takes for us to win, so if it means playing three guys in roles that help them be successful, that's what we'll do. If one emerges to be the guy, like Tyrell Sutton four years ago, then that's what we'll do. We're much further along in our evaluation than I'm willing to share at this time but we'll have a plan to use all those guys either at tailback or in some way, shape or form in our offense and certainly our kicking game. The top three are three of our better athletes.”

On the one thing he knows the team will excel in…
“I know that we'll play hard and give maximum effort in everything we do. You look at the job we did academically last year, that's one part of our character. The second is on the football field and one of our hallmarks is the effort our young men play with. It starts with the way we practice. I thought we had a great effort on our second day and I've always known our guys will play as hard as they can as long as they, from when I was a student-athlete to when I was an assistant coach.”

On his biggest concern for the season…
“Staying healthy. That's somewhat out of your control. Last year we had nine players that were a starter in some form go down and to see the guys pick up their role and be prepared for when it happened was why we were as successful as we were a year ago. We need to have the same drive and focus when we go into the Towson game and your name is No. 2 on the depth chart so when it is your turn you're ready. Nate Williams, Vince Browne, Jordan Mabin at Duke in the fourth quarter—all had their names called and stepped up in big time situations to assume a role and help us get where we are now.”

On a position group that he expects to take a big step forward…
“A year ago we had a lot of questions on our offensive line. We had a lot of first-timers stepping on the field. I believe with Al Netter anchoring our left side, Kurt Mattes on the right, Desmond Taylor coming back healthy with Doug Bartels and Ben Burkett at center, I see that group taking another positive step forward under Adam Cushing's leadership, No. 1 because of the competitive depth and No. 2 because of the experience they received in games last year.”

On his first bowl experience as a head coach…
“No. 1 the experience we had in Evanston, when we took our guys to a Bulls game, a Blackhawks game and experience Chicagoland when we weren't in school. The extra practices were critical for our young players and then we headed to San Antonio. The experience was unbelievable for our players, our families, fans, staff, students and alumni. To be on Monday night football with the time slot, the exposure, has been tremendously uplifting for our recruiting. But then you walk off the field and you didn't get the job done so you have that hunger and drive for the program to improve and get better. It was something we needed and it was well-deserved for our players and staff.”

On participating in events with the Cubs, Blackhawks and White Sox…
“I wouldn't say I “shot” the puck at the Blackhawks game. There are some things that rank highly on the embarrassing scale and that was one of them for me. But it's fun to be in Chicago, we're in the third-largest media market in the country, right in Chicago's backyard, and it's great to be part of the Chicago landscape. We're Chicago's Big Ten team. To be asked to be part of that is humbling and it's an honor as a Chicagoan. I went back to the John Humphrey Complex last week for the first time since maybe I was an umpire in high school, where I played football and baseball for the Pioneers, and I saw a lot of folks I hadn't seen in a long time. Through the support of (director of athletics and recreation) Jim Phillips and the athletic department I've gotten to do a lot of things. Our program is on the rise and to be part of the Chicago landscape is exciting and I look forward to it growing even more.”

On if recent success has eliminated the chance to sneak up on Big Ten teams…
“I don't think anyone has tricked anyone since I've been part of this league. I think the league is as strong as we've ever seen it even though we get defined by our bowl record, but if you look at our non-conference record and how competitive the league is top to bottom where anyone can win on any given Saturday…if I were a fan of Big Ten football and went to games, I'd be excited because a lot of times you don't know what's going to happen. I don't think anyone sneaks up on anybody. There's great players, great coaches in this league and for my role as a head coach, it's why I'm going gray at 34, because it's as competitive as it's ever been.”