Northwestern University Athletics
Pat Fitzgerald Weekly News Conference Transcript
10/3/2011 12:00:00 AM | Football
Oct. 3, 2011
Head Coach Pat Fitzgerald
Weekly News Conference Transcript
Opening Statement...
"We're excited to get back home, only our second home game of the year. We've been on the road for three out of our first four weeks. It's been a tremendous challenge for us. There's been some good and bad but we're definitely battle tested and ready to get home and play in front of our students. It's going to be fun to be on BTN, primetime television, and obviously against an outstanding opponent. We had a good workout this morning; the guys' attitudes are in a good spot. We're looking forward to getting back on the practice field tomorrow. Couple of injury updates: Mike Trumpy will be out for the year with an ACL (tear). Dan Persa worked out today, and was great so we expect him to be great on Saturday. "
On Mike Trumpy's injury...
"Well losing Mike, it's tough for him individually, you never like to see anybody get injured. It was non-contact, stuck his foot in the ground and tried to change direction. It's unfortunate to see that. I still thought we ran the ball pretty well when Mike wasn't in there. I liked the way that Treyvon Green ran the football. Jacob Schmidt has been a tough guy and now with Adonis coming on and getting back off of injury-same thing with Tyris (Jones). We've got four guys there that have been involved in a lot of games, but I thought Treyvon played pretty well on Saturday for a young guy. It's so nice to have him out there. I'd love to be able to tell you which knee (is injured on Trumpy). He has two, it's right or left, not sure which one. I believe it's his left."
On patterns in the secondary breakdown...
"Communication. We had a lapse of communication. We had the game in hand and we lost momentum in three plays. We had the breakdown of communication and we give up the touchdown, two plays later we have a second communication breakdown and we give up a big play. Credit to our opponent, they took advantage of it. We've got some young, inexperienced guys out there learning and growing. It's a work in progress, but we're going to keep grinding, keep staying on them to understand the concepts, and just play better. Ninety-five percent of the game we played well, and five percent we didn't and it cost us the football game, which is disappointing. That group is talented, they've just got to keep growing and getting better."
On depth at the safety position...
"All hands on deck. There's a bunch of guys. Hunter (Bates) and Davion Fleming, Jared (Carpenter) and David (Arnold), all those guys. But right now it's Ibraheim Campbell's job. Unfortunately he didn't play well but if you remember back a week ago he was our player of the week. I know everybody has such a short memory, but that's life in the secondary, especially as a first time starter as a red-shirt freshman. Same thing with me, it's part of the experience and you've got to learn from it. You've got to have a short memory from the standpoint of feeling sorry for yourself because nobody does. You've got to learn from it and grow and move on and we'll have guys ready to go if negative play continues. It's hard to take a guy out, who the week before was our player of the week. It's just growing pains and youth, so just keep going."
On Jared Carpenter...
"Jared has played a lot of football for us, savvy guy, understands what we're doing conceptually. He's played a lot in the kicking game also, so it's nice to get that kind of guy back. He only had one week of practice so it'll be good to get him back out for a second week.
On rushing a quarterback like Michigan's Denard Robinson...
"There's no question he's a special player. Denard's a Heisman Trophy candidate for a reason. He is explosive with his legs, he's made great decisions this year, from what I've seen on tape, with throwing the football. He's a difference maker no matter when he touches the ball. You've got to be disciplined with what you do and then you've got to incorporate some other guys. You've got to have multiple sets of eyes on him. You can't just expect your front four, if you drop eight, to have just three. He's going to take too much advantage of it. It comes down to discipline, and I thought we did a pretty good job on Saturday, except for a couple of mental errors."
On the rise of mobile, athletic quarterbacks in the Big Ten...
"Over time now, it's changed a little bit and evolved. Prior to Ohio State, you look at Scheelhaase at Illinois, (Taylor) Martinez at Nebraska, Danny and Kain (Colter) here for us, as you mentioned, Denard. And there's about three guys at Purdue that are dual threat guys that can really run and are really, really athletic. Marqueis Gray at Minnesota would probably fall into the same category, when you look at that kind of explosiveness. Then I watched (Wisconsin's Russell) Wilson on Saturday night when I got home after grading the tape. He's a very dynamic guy too. There's no question that it adds another element. You have to account for the quarterback and as a defense you hope to be able to outnumber the offense, you know, play 11 on 10. But when that quarterback is involved it makes you play 11-on-11 football and there's no room for errors, there's no question about that. "
On linebacker Collin Ellis' first game back...
"It's fun to watch him. A lot of growing pains, he's a young guy. There's some positives, some young guy issues, but he plays with a lot of passion and he's going to be one heck of a football player. It's fun to see him out there playing. He's a very physical guy, can really run and he's just going to get better and better. I was excited for him, his first play in college football he runs down and gets on the hit in the opening kickoff. It's good to see him out there, I'm really happy for him. He's been through a lot early in his career here, in his life. I couldn't be more happy for him and for his family to have him out here playing."
On takeaways from the game at Illinois...
"I thought we controlled the line of scrimmage on both sides pretty well. We ran the ball, we still could have run the ball even more efficiently. But for the most part on passing game on offense, we executed. There were some things we needed to continue to move forward with conceptually, especially early in the third down, and then some series in the third quarter. We just missed some things and those will be some things that we are able to correct and look at. Same thing up front, there were some things in protection where the quarterback should not have been hit, that was our fault. Some things you grow from and learn from. I thought the plan was pretty darn good. I thought we adjusted well at halftime. On defense, like I said, I thought we controlled the line of scrimmage, getting three turnovers, taking the ball away the way we did. We lost momentum in three plays, and we're down and we got to go out and make something happen and our defense did that. We gave ourselves a chance to win the game. So far right now, as a defense we're 1 for 3 in closing the game. The one time we closed it we won, the other two we didn't. There's lot to learn from, we've got seven first-time starters on that side. Those guys are going to get better. Please keep writing negative things about them, you're doing a great job motivating them. I'd like our fans to continue to do that too; it's a beautiful thing. (The players) know who to listen to and they're just going to keep working their butts off to get better. We're much further along than we were a year ago at this time. A year ago at this time, we were not tackling very well. We can fix them and help them as coaches with the communication and the learning and through experience they are going to keep getting better and better. I'm excited about it; they're just going to keep playing. "
On facing Denard Robinson...
"He's the most explosive [quarterback he's faced]. Every time he touches the ball he can score a touchdown. He's just a dynamic playmaker, you look at the job he did at the Notre Dame game. Things didn't necessarily go the way they wanted it to early but they stayed the course and he stayed the course. He made a bunch of big plays down the stretch and led his team down the field with 30 seconds left in the game. Throw a great ball into the corner of the end zone with eight seconds left, it was nothing less than spectacular. You go back and watch him a year ago, and obviously a different coaching staff, but you know, the plays he's made, he's able to make with both his legs and his arm, which is nothing less than spectacular."
On Dan Persa's leadership...
"Dan is an incredibly dynamic player. It's great to have him back out there. We went through his first game back after not playing for a while, he played really well, I thought he was courageous. He's going to be his biggest critic, there's things I think he'd like to have back. Nonetheless, I thought he played really well. I thought the offensive staff did a nice job getting Kain back involved in different ways and when Kain went back in as quarterback I thought he played his tail off. We've got two guys that can help us win, there's no doubt about that. "
On preparing for Robinson...
"You've got to get lined up to their formations. You wish it was just him, he's got weapons all around him. They've got experience, it starts with their center, David Molk, we recruited David out of high school, really liked him. He's played a lot on their right side. Patrick Omameh has started 21 games and so has Huyge with 21 on their right side. That's a lot of experience over there. They've got dynamic receivers on the outside and plain and stable running backs. Denard makes a lot of plays, but he's got a great supporting cast around him. You're putting them all in positions to make different plays and that's why you just can't key up on one guy. If you just load up on one guy you're going to put a bunch of our defensive backs and linebackers in one-on-one match ups. You live by the sword, die by the sword. It's hit or miss."
On playing with a lead...
"We play the same, we haven't changed a thing in any of those games. We're not going to take the reins off and try to take our foot off the team's throat. We're going to try to keep the pedal down. We don't give up the explosion plays on Saturday, two touchdowns in three plays, it's a different ball game. It is what it is, you've got to learn from it."
On blitzing less late in games...
"There were only seven men protecting on Saturday, down the stretch. When you're throwing two and three man routes, you're giving up plays and it's tough to get home. So, no we don't blitz less."
On the sellout game at home this Saturday...
"It's good to be home. We've been on the road forever. We've been on the road more than any other Big Ten team. Meet our fans, meet our students, it's going to be great to be in front of the class of 2015 for the first time. I was talking to Ron Zook before the game, and they hadn't been on the road yet, in Champaign, and it's a huge advantage. It's just a quirk in the scheduling this year where we've been on the road so much. You'd like to avoid it if you can but we're battle tested, there's no doubt about that. We've been in three dogfights, unfortunately we've come up on the short end of a couple of them. We've got a confident football team, we know how close we are, we've got the right pieces of the puzzle. We've just got to coach the guys better and execute better. A big part of that is communication. Communication breakdowns with the young guys on defense, we gave up some explosion plays. As disappointing as that is, it's just a great opportunity to coach them up. That was our thing that we talked about, are we asking you to do too much? Sometimes you've got to raise your hand as a guy and say I don't quite get it. We'll keep working hard to get better."
On Persa leaving the game...
"The only question about his health is from you, you the media. He's great, he's ready to go, he's running around great today. We're going to be smart. He's a guy coming off of a major injury. If he's a little dinged up, we're going to err on the side of being smart. It's amarathon, not a sprint. We've got all the confidence in the world in Kain. He's been a part of basically four games in somewhat of a starting role, going back to the bowl game a year ago. I think he has played moving forward each time he has a chance to get on the field. I think we've got a great situation, we've got two quarterbacks that can play, and we've had Trevor (Siemian) out there also in the past and same thing with Evan (Watkins). If Danny's got to go out again for a little bit, is Kain going back out there? Absolutely, he's been pretty spectacular. I've been really pleased with him. Especially coming back, I know he didn't feel like he played well against Army, he's really critical of himself, to play the way he did on Saturday, I was really, really proud of him."
On recovering from the loss to Illinois...
"They're all tough, my friend. Hardest game I lost was Oak Lawn high school back when I dropped a touchdown pass. That stuck. That was a bad deal; my wife still makes fun of me for that, which I deserve. It's football, you do everything you can as a coaching staff to put your guys in a position to win. The guys do everything they can to win a football game. When it doesn't go your way, you take a look at the tape and you look at it critically. You look at the calls you make, the position you put the guys in, you look at the way we executed and you stay the course. I'm sorry that we don't have the "sky is falling" attitude around here. You watch the tape, you go home and I have a 6-year old, a 5-year old and a 2-year old who were playing football and I got my tail whooped in that game even worse than I did on Saturday afternoon. It is what it is, you get back and you coach them up. It's football, it's football. You got to go out and work and get better. Each game is a one-week season, we know the challenge ahead of us this week. We're excited to get out in front of our fans. We're excited to back to work and get better. Our guys believe, and I believe, we've got a darn good football team. We're about five plays away from being undefeated. But we're not, so what are you going to do about it? You see it to my left, we're built on how we respond to things, positively or negatively. We've been here before, unfortunately, it's not our first rodeo, not our first time being through some tough stuff.
On Persa's ability to throw the ball...
"We want to have balance. Danny can do both, he can run and throw and so can Kain. We try to always play to their strengths and put them in a position to be successful. We got to have balance. I'm shocked that I'm not getting questions about how well we are running the ball. We're running the ball well, maybe the best that we've run it in years. I'm pleased with that, but we've got to be a little more efficient on first down and not put ourselves in as many third-and-longs. That's going to be a recipe for disaster as we move forward. If you score 35 points on the road, you should win. That's the bottom line, we've got to play better."
On Brady Hoke and Michigan coaching staff...
"Brady's a tremendous guy, he's a great coach. He's a D-line guy like I'm a linebacker guy. There's that toughness, you can see the physicality they are playing with especially up front on both sides you can tell the fundamentals that they've worked on, on both sides of the ball. Dynamic playmakers on the perimeter on both sides have always been there. But to see the way they are playing fundamentally up front is obvious. Greg Matteson is one of the best coaches in the country from the standpoint of schematics. Jeff Hecklinski and I are good friends, we've been good friends for along time, going back to when he was quarterback at Palatine. We've stayed in touch. I knew Brady when he was an assistant coach. And obviously when he was at Ball State he did a great job with the success they had there."
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