Are you surprised in the team's sudden turn around?
I kept telling you guys we were going to be a pretty good football team. We dropped passes, we did dumb things, we killed ourselves in early games. We weren't that bad.
I know we weren't getting a lot of yards and things, but it becomes a mindset.
On Bryant Johnson
Well Bryant Johnson always has had a lot of ability. Bryant Johnson was one of the most sought after kids in the country coming out of high school. He can run, he's a long armed kid, he has height. He's what your looking for in a wideout. He had a little slump and dropped some passes and was wondering about it. Now all of a sudden he is catching them and he wants the ball now. Same thing with Tony (Johnson), he is the guy that has really improved.
On David Royer
Dave Royer is a guy where I don't know if we give him enough credit. In preseason practice he really was struggling and he has turned out to be a really excellent punter.
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On R.J. Luke's playing time
(John) Gilmore is hurt and (R.J.) Luke has been a backup tight end, slotback and fullback but today he had to play tight end. Luke is a good solid football player.
Talk about the difference in the offense's performance
You see something on television and you make a note of it. I mean there is almost nothing new. I can bring out a book that was written in 1912 on offensive football and you'll see plays in there that are all out of the shotgun. They were using those plays on the single wing. It's hard for me to say we took this one from there and that one from here, but its execution and able to keep kids healthy. Zack (Mills) has been able to make some big, clutch plays for us. He finds people and gets the ball to them. We didn't have any 25 yards plays for a while. We had horrible field position in some of those early football games but we couldn't make a play to get ourselves decent field position. I used to have a saying that you never have a big drive unless you have a 15 or 20 yard play in it.
Talk about the success you have this season blocking kicks
We work hard at it. We have the right kind of athletes, there are a couple kids in there like Larry (Johnson) who had that one today and Omar (Easy) had one at Iowa, we spend a lot of time on it and when you are struggling you try to find a way to get something going for you. Knowing that we were not going to a great football team early we knew we were going to have to have some luck in the kicking game.
Talk about the fake field goal
That thing looked like it would set up against them and we just talked on the sideline and Fran (Ganter) said what do you think and I said go ahead and try it. If it hadn't worked I would have blamed it on Frannie.
On Zack Mills
Zack (Mills) is a good football player and a good quarterback. I have to look at the tapes but I think he made some play in there that were tough plays. But he did that last week too. Zack is going to be pretty good.
Talk about the Southern Mississippi pass defense
They were awfully good against the run because they stacked that thing up inside. They move around so much that sometimes they get stuck in single coverage. They might not want to be in it, but I think because they are moving around so much to stop the run they get caught in it.
Talk about the play of the defense
We were better today. I think we tackled better today. Towards the end we got a little sloppy on defense. When we had to be we were pretty good. The first touchdown was a bad play, but after that we were pretty solid.
Were you happy that Zack Mills didn't throw an interception today
Well let's be fair to the kid, he had three interceptions last week and one was at the end of the half when he just threw it up for grabs. He really has had only one real bad ball in my opinion. I might have missed one but I don't think he is throwing a lot of interceptions. He anticipates people being open, that's why he looks so good. That's Matt's (Senecca) biggest problem right now. I have to get Matt to anticipate more, because he has a good arm and a good head.
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