Greg Schiano Press Conference Quotes - Oct. 30
Oct 30 | Football
Opening Statement:
“We just had a good practice. The guys are working hard, preparing hard, are excited to get down to Tampa and play a good game at South Florida on Wednesday night.”
Is it difficult the keep everyone on a normal schedule with the game on Wednesday night?
“I think the routine the football team has because it is Tuesday Wednesday, Thursday, makes it much much easier. If you didn’t have that routine, other sports you play all the time and I think it is hard, but these guys are just dialed in and today is a Tuesday. The only benefit to that is they don’t have class today this afternoon and this evening so they can, if they choose to, watch a little more tape or get a little more rest, so that is a positive. The bad thing about a Wednesday game is they are going to miss class. We leave here Tuesday afternoon and we don’t get back here until Thursday morning probably four or five in the morning. Then after a few hours, they have to get up and go to class on Thursday afternoon. Certainly that is a challenge. I say that in football we call it a challenge but in basketball and baseball and other sports they are constantly on the road during the week. It is just something we are not probably used to.”
Who starts at quarterback?
“I listed ‘or’ on the depth chart. I think I have pretty much made a decision but I am going to wait a little bit to make sure. Both guys now are healthy. That wasn’t the case up until now. I wanted to make sure that we ran the course. We may go one more day before I make a final decision before without boxing myself in. I will let you know when it is appropriate.”
Will it be a game time decision?
“No. It won’t be game time.”
How important is it to play down in Florida with the amount of recruiting you do in the state?
“I think it is good anytime you get exposure. Hopefully you go down there and have a successful night then it is even better exposure. I’m awfully proud of the way our football program, when we go on the road, the way we handle things. As far as putting forth Rutgers and our program’s best foot forward, it does every time we hit the road.”
Are the guys getting re-focused with everything that has occurred with Eric LeGrand and the Pitt game?
“That is their brother, I don’t think they will ever not have that on their minds. In life, you always have something else going, you don’t just play football in a tunnel. I think as time moves on people will adjust emotionally better to the situation. Hopefully, it becomes where we can have a little more normalcy, but it will never be normal. Things have drastically changed for us… not nearly as drastically as they have changed for Eric. That is part of life. You try and find positives in everything and what a great opportunity for our football team to learn about life and how hard it is and how you have to keep battling through. As I told them before the Pittsburgh game… Pittsburgh is a great group of people and Dave Wannstedt is one of my good friends, but it is competitive athletics and they are trying to beat us. That is the way it is in competitive athletics. Make no mistake about it, South Florida is trying to do the same thing. You need to buckle it up and be ready to go on game day and you need to buckle it up and be ready to prepare during the week. We have multiple responsibilities. Isn’t that the way it is the rest of their life. As they get older, they get more and more responsibility.”
Are you still tinkering with the offensive line?
“Yeah, we have continued to move some guys around. I’m not going to get into who, where when because that could be a game time decision. I think we have guys that understand it pretty well. I think there is some flexibility in moving some guys around so we may do that.”
Could De’Antwan Williams possible get some reps?
“As I have said before, De’Antwan is one of the three guys that rep for games. He has been for the last five or six weeks. When you are getting reps in practice, you have an opportunity to get in the game.”
What is the status of Casey Turner?
“Case is not well. He is not ready to go yet.”
What is the status of Mohamed Sanu?
“Mohamed is feeling better. We are going to be very cautious with him because it is one of those things in his foot that you can re-tweak at anytime. He is not 100 percent, but he is much better than he was. Hopefully by Wednesday he will be feeling really good.”
How has Jeremy Deering done in taking over more of a role with Mohamed Sanu’s injury?
“Jeremy is a very good athlete and really has a very low key mannerism about him. He doesn’t get too fired up about anything and he doesn’t get too down or too excited. I think that has helped him. Initially, I think he was a little nervous. I forget which game it was but he was tripping a little bit because he was just a little bit anxious. Now, he feels more comfortable playing college football. You can see he is very explosive. He has some really good days ahead of him, god willing.”
David Rowe talked about how he has learned from last week’s game at Pitt... have you seen that at practice?
“No, not yet because we rested David a little bit last week. I’m sure I will see it when I watch the tape… I just came off the field, showered and came here. I am anxious to watch the tape from practice today.”
Has Brandon Bing impressed you this season?
“Brandon is getting better. It is just a matter of understanding exactly what each situation calls for and then trying to apply it. We have kind of done corner by committee and we will probably keep doing that for the remainder of the season. I think we will play a bunch of guys there. Brandon has been the one that has played the most, he and David. We have played four guys there, maybe five guys there. That is a good thing with depth.”
Did Marcus Cooper play in place of Logan Ryan last week?
“That was a decision we made by performance. Nothing against Logan, it is just Marcus Cooper has been performing well. That will be an ongoing competition. You can see that they are both good players.”
How is the health of the tight ends and will it cause you to alter anything going into the South Florida game?
“We may. All three guys are banged up to different degrees and I am not sure how they will be come Wednesday. Depending on how they are doing will be how many multiple tight end sets we use. It doesn’t do any good to play guys that are 60-70 percent out there, not when you have a guy that is 100 percent in every personnel group.”
Aside from B.J. Daniels is there anything else about South Florida’s offense that really concerns you?
“There is a lot. They have the best offensive line they have had since I have been here without a doubt. No. 81 Bogan is really a big time receiver. No. 3, he seems like he has been there longer than I have been here. I guess he is a six-year guy but he has been around a long time. He is a seasoned football player; he knows what he is doing. We have our hands full defensively. Offensively… now their defense is a little different than it has been. It is just different, not drastically out in left but it is different…. Some different zone blitzes so we have to adjust. I think they do a really good job in the kicking game. We need to make sure we are on point or they can exploit things.”
Does USF blitz a lot?
“They do, but it is not 50 percent or anything like that. They bring it though. They have a good feel… Mark Snyder is an experienced coach, defensive coach… was a head coach. He has a real good feel of the timeliness of when to bring the pressure. When you investigate through computer reports and things, he definitely does a good job of scouting himself because he is very hard to predict.”
How good is B.J. Daniels from last season to this season?
“You remember last year, I was scared to death of that guy and I put him in the Michael Vick class and going into the game he was hot as a firecracker. Our game kind of didn’t go his way. Then he had a new system that they implemented this year and he you could see that he was learning it. Fortunately for him and unfortunately for us, these last two weeks, really last week especially, he just seemed very comfortable. You can watch a guy that doesn’t look like he is straining at all out there. That didn’t make me happy to throw that tape on. You can see when a guy stops thinking and just starts playing and that what he looked like against Cincinnati. He looked like the guy that I saw when we were getting ready last year. I think he has a comfort level in the system now. We have our hands full. If he is not the best athlete in this league, he is one of the top three and I think he is the best athlete… pure, just run throw. He has got a cannon and can beat you in many different ways. It is hard to get a guy to simulate what he does because you need a guy who can run like him and a guy that can throw like him. We don’t have any of those guys. They would probably be playing quarterback for us.”
How does Terrell McClain challenge the offensive line?
“I know who he is, he is real good. They lost the end, which he is a very good player as well. The guy you are talking about, he is a physically imposing guy… very strong. As you watch him on tape, there are times when he just kind of swats 300-pound lineman off to the side… that’s not good. We are going to have to make sure we know where he is and study him and know his favorite moves and those kind of things. We have to run the football. We need to be able to run the football. How you do it, that doesn’t matter to me, but we need to run it.”
Can Joe Martinek be as effective as he was in the last two years against USF with his ankle?
“I’m not sure and I don’t know how good his ankle is going to be by the time we get to kickoff. We will have to see.”
Is there more emphasis on winning this game to return home with a 5-3 record and not a 4-4 record?
“No, obviously we want to win, but I would be less than sincere if this one-game season is when we are 6-0 or 0-6 but when it is 4-3 we want to get .500. I really believe in what we talk about… one-game season. I think that is the only way you live in college football. All you have to do is tune in every Saturday and watch the scores… ‘how the heck did that happen and how did that happen.’ Because a lot of teams, when you are dealing with 18-22 year olds, it is hard to stay in the moment and take this one game for what it is worth. The score watchers and the score comparers always say ‘oh that is a blow out… well ok here it is’ The more that is out there, the more they hear it too. I always said that it is easier for coaches… we get locked in this cave over here and we are here 18 hours a day and preparing a game plan. When we do get some time, we go spend it with our families. Nothing personal, we don’t read the papers and we don’t watch TV that much. The kids do though. The kids go out on campus and live a regular life and they hear stuff. I don’t care who you are, when it enters here [point to his ear] it has an effect. That is one of the challenges of coaching college football… you need to try and bring your guys back and teach them every day to the task at hand. That is easier said than done.”
Do you think the FIU game earlier this season helped you prepare for the weather in Florida?
“Anytime you have an experience that is similar I think it can help you. I am hoping it is not that bad… that was one of the hottest nights I remember and I coached down there for two years. Someone said to me that was like whatever 100th of a percentage of humidity below rain. Literally, you could cut the air that night. I don’t anticipate that being the weather [Wednesday], what I have seen is high 60s with possible showers. That hasn’t been an issue for us. Jay Butler and his staff do a great job conditioning the team and we practice very hard with a fast tempo. We will be in condition to play. We have to execute… conditioned and execution are two different things.”
In terms of recruiting, does it help to play in South Florida?
“I think anytime you are in an area that you specifically recruit it is important, especially when you have a guy like Jeremy Deering from that area. He is a well-known player as a high school player who comes up to Rutgers and as a true freshman is doing great things. I think there is other guys that say ‘hey I can do that and hey look at that’ and we hope that is the case. There is a lot of great football played in the Tampa area that is for sure.”
How do you feel about the show of support for Eric LeGrand from all around the state?
“I think it is great. As I have said a couple times, unfortunately it takes something like this to pull everybody together, but it does affirm to me that there is a special group of people in this state and people that care. As tough as New Jersey people are and as fast-paced as they are, it is kind of like you can fight with your brother or sister all you want but when somebody from the outside does it then that is where it stops. I think that is kind of with New Jersey and New York people is… this is a tough area right here but when something happens to one of our own… it has been incredible the people that people that have come and reached out to help Eric and to help his family. I guess I just say thank you and I continue to ask that people take time out of their day to pray for Eric. He has got a long road ahead of him and I don’t know if there is anything more important than our prayers.”
