Greg Schiano Press Conference Quotes
Sep 28 | Football
Opening Statement:
“We got a good practice in today. We started on Tulane. Tulane is a traditional offense, a pretty traditional defense and they do some things in the kicking game. I think they are talented. In certain areas, I think they are really talented. Their secondary and linebackers are really good athletes. They can run. The offensive line I think is good. They have some guys returning there and they have some depth. Certainly, they have some injury problems as we do. They have some situations at quarterback right now and at running back but they have experienced guys that have played some at those positions as well. We have to be ready for everything. They utilize some wildcat with No. 5 who is a tremendous athlete. He plays in the slot and also plays in the wildcat so we have to be ready for all of that.
“I am looking forward to Homecoming. We have had a great turnout from our fans. I really want to commend our students. We have had a tremendous amount of students showing great spirit. That stadium was really loud Saturday and I look forward to it being loud again this Saturday.”
On any update on Tom Savage’s status:
“Tom did some stuff today. I don’t know. We are going to have to wait until later in the week. I think our trainers and doctors are doing a great job with him. I think Tom would agree. We will see. It will be later in the week before we know anything. He did some stuff. As I said before, we are confident in Chas [Dodd] if he has to go. The issue gets a little cloudy after that so that is really one of the concerns.”
On a backup to Chas Dodd:
“We would do a couple different things. Mohamed [Sanu] would do a lot of things. We might do some other things that I am not going to get into so we don’t tip our hand. We have a plan.”
On Tulane’s injury situation at quarterback:
“You are aware that maybe you will see someone different. No. 2, who was their starter before is a senior. He hurt his hand so he is not going to be able to play. He came in to finish the Houston game. No. 11 is bumped up. I think he is going to play from what I gather from reading between the lines… maybe not. No. 7 jumps in there, No. 12 jumps there, No. 5 jumps in there at wildcat so we just have to be ready for it all. That is the big thing, the awareness of who you are seeing, who you are facing and what you can anticipate them doing with that guy. Since they do have a wildcat component, it certainly changes things quite a bit.”
On Joe Martinek’s health and a possible bigger role this week:
“I don’t know. He played obviously. You saw him. He did some nice things. He tweaked the thing. When you have a sprained ankle and you put it in that position that originally hurt it, it is going to tweak it again. That happened a couple times Saturday. He is a tough kid. He kept playing through it. I think what is going to happen is he is going to be sore after the games. As the week goes on, he is going to be better and as he does that it is going to get stronger every week unless he significantly re-injures it. That is our goal to try and avoid significantly re-injuring it and let it heal each week. I thought Joe ran hard. I know he is not 100 percent, but he is a gutsy guy.”
On De’Antwan Williams possibly being in the mix:
“He is definitely in the mix. He is working with the active roster. He is not working on scout team. He is getting touches in practice. Whenever you are getting reps in practice with the offense or defense, you are in the mix. There is only so many touches to go around, we just haven’t called his number yet.”
On whether David Rowe is more physical this year:
“I think without a doubt. He is playing really good football. I thought that play when he stripped it out… I mean that is as physical as you get. You support the run as a cornerback and then you rip the football out. That is big time corner play. There are not many corners that like to support the run, it is a rarity.”
On Brandon Bing’s play so far this season:
“[Brandon] Bing has done some good things. He has done some really good things. Consistency is the key. You need to be able to make plays consistently at that spot. Having coached that position my whole career, you can go 20-30 plays where nobody notices you and then all of the sudden here is your opportunity to make a play. At the end of the day, you really get judged on six to seven plays, sometimes two plays if they are not coming at you. The key at cornerback is when those six or seven opportunities arise, how do you do. That is the tough part about playing cornerback. It all comes down to a few plays. There is nobody hiding out there. It is you and a guy you are covering or you and the run support you are trying to do.”
On assessing the play of Keith Stroud and J.T. Tartacoff:
“They are getting better. Stroud has been a great story. Here is a guy that is very much what we represent here at Rutgers. A guy come in, he is a talented guy but needs a lot of work. He just keeps pounding away, chopping away and doing his job and you know what, he gets a little bit better and a little bit better. I think his progress has really sped up with Coach [P.J.] Fleck. I think P.J. has done a great job of bringing him along. Keith Stroud is really maturing too. He is only a redshirt sophomore. I think Keith is a strong guy and a big guy. I think he can really do things.
“Tartacoff is a different story. He is a young guy. He can really run and jump as you saw the other day. He is a talented athlete. We have some guys that we are redshirting that are talented guys as well. It is a good crew but they are young. Your oldest guy is a redshirt sophomore.
“That is the little details where we have to get better… is it is 12-yard or is it a 10-yard out-route… are you angling four yards to the side line or are you angling two yards to the sideline. That may not seem important to the lay person but that is really what is critical to the overall designing and timing of the pass play. The quarterback’s drops are all tied in to the depths and angles of which the wide outs run their routes. It is critical that we get those little details worked out. You can see and I like seeing the athleticism that some of these guys have shown. We have to get better at blocking down the field. That’s how big run plays occur. You pop it but then you have to be able to run the ball in the secondary and if guys are shooting at you from every angle then we are not doing our job blocking down the field. The want to is there we just need to get better at it.”
On whether Tulane presents a very aggressive defensive line with all the tackles for losses and sacks they have accumulated:
“They are. That is their game. They blitz. They even blitz maybe a little more this year than they have. They are going to come after us. In the run game and the pass game, they bring people. It is going to be very important, up front, we do a better job of staying on our blocks. Sometimes you can’t block them all, but just block the ones that you block and let the running back deal with the free guy rather than the running back deal with the free guy and the guy you just missed or the guy you just slid off. Our running backs need to do a better job of letting the plays develop. It is the details… one step… give it one more step when you stretch the play before you cut it back. That gets the linebacker to cross over one more step and that is the difference between popping a run and not popping a run. Again, until we get it done, it doesn’t matter. We have to get those details corrected and then we have to get it accomplished on the game field.”
On any possible personnel changes on the offensive line:
“We are going to keep tinkering with it. I think [Devon] Watkis is playing at a high level so does he deserve to play… probably. How are we going to work that in… I don’t know. I am not sure how that is going to work in. We made the change [with Antwan Lowery] but Caleb [Ruch] is by no means off the radar. We just felt that Antwan gave us a better chance right now and that is what we are going to do. Competition is constant there. Depending on each practice and each game performance we are going to continue to evaluate.”
On whether Tulane’s aggressive defense would change your game plan with Chas Dodd:
“I don’t know about Chas in that light. Sometimes with freshmen you do. I think he is mature guy. I think he is mature football-wise as well. He is kind of grown up with football. I think he is a little ahead of the learning curve there.”
On whether J.T. Tartacoff is the last freshman you are going to play:
“You consider maybe one or two more, but I am not sure that we are going to do that. Now we are getting into game four. We will see. They are getting some practice. We try and get them up with the varsity as much as we can… still a period here or steal a period there and get them a rep or two. That is what we try and do. It is nice that we are at the point right now and we can selective say we are going to redshirt these 16-18 guys. Not only is it that they are not playing but they are getting an extra weight workout or two every week. At the end of the year, they are getting 24 extra weight workouts. That may not seem like a lot but that is 24 in a three-month period. That is a lot. When they come back in January, they are much more physically mature. If you are up with the active roster, you may get three or four scout team plays and then you have to go over and watch the offense. If you are redshirting, you are going against what I think is a very good defense every play. You get better.”
On the tight end play:
“I think D.C. [Jefferson] is improving. I think D.C. can be great. Right now, he is not but I think he can be. That is, personally, one of my big goals. I think he can be a special player. The rest of the guys we need to develop, Paul Carrezola needs to get better. Evan Lampert needs to get better. Malcolm Bush has got to get better. Fabian Ruiz has got to get better. These are guys we really have to progress. D.C. has to get a lot better too, but I think D.C. is getting more mileage and understanding things better.”
On trying to get D.C. more involved in the passing game:
“We tried. They took it away Saturday. There were two or three passes that were called with his number and they took it away. They did a nice job. We didn’t exactly do it perfectly either. You can take it away through coverage and you can take it away through pass rush. It happened both ways. I want to get him the ball. I think he is talented with the ball in his hands. Plus, I think he is hard to defense. He is so darn big. If you put him on the other side from where the defender is, there are not many guys that are getting through to the football. I think we do need to work him into the play. I visited with Kirk [Ciarrocca] last night. We said here are some plays that we think we can definitely get it into his hands. We will see if we can get those calls. I do think he deserves it. Number one I think he will help us win by doing it.”
On how you balance running the wildcat and keeping Tom Savage in a rhythm:
“It is not about Tom’s rhythm to be frank with you. We did it last year very successfully in the latter part of the year and there weren’t any rhythm problems. I think sometimes what everybody wants to do is they want to have an answer. That is human nature. This isn’t what we anticipated… this wasn’t our expectations so there has to be a reason it is happening. There are but I don’t know if rhythm is it. Believe me, I have really thought about it quite a bit. I don’t believe that to be the case because we were running the wildcat last year successfully with Mohamed [Sanu] and we were also throwing the ball pretty well at the end of the year too. I think what we need to do is decide how we do the wildcat, when we do the wildcat. Looking at the tape, it wasn’t the wildcat, it was some blocking that we didn’t do exactly the way we were supposed to. We ran the ball for 87 yards. We have had games lately in the last couple years where we haven’t run the ball effectively where we rushed the ball for 29 yards against BCS level competition. We are getting better at running the football and the wildcat is part of it. We just have to keep getting better at it. We have to make sure we don’t abandon the base runs either. Some of those runs are some of the better runs we had Saturday. I think mixing it up is the key. Mix that, mix the pass game, mix the conventional run… all three of those things. That is what we do. That is what we have evolved to offensively. We just have to make sure we balance it out.”
