Nov. 6, 2007
Al Golden said yesterday that the Penn State-Temple game is a "win win" situation for both programs. I was wondering what you think Penn State gets out of playing Temple?
Al didn't check with me (laughs). I haven't talked to him. I'm not sure what he meant by "win win" to be frank. I think it's a good football game. It's good for our school to be in Philadelphia; we have a lot of alumni down there. And it should be a good game for Temple; gives them exposure and the whole bit.
They're a team that he's done a good job with and I'm proud of Al and Mark (D'Onofrio) and other guys, Jeff Nixon, who was a State College kid I think is still on the staff; I'm not sure about that. I think it's a good game. "Win win;" if we lose it won't be a "win win."
Could you comment on the development of two of your younger players, Evan Royster and Stefen Wisniewski, and will their roles expand in the final two games a little bit?
I don't think they'll expand any at all. I think both of them have done a good job, and I think they're both good football players who have a bright future. But, we have other people -- unfortunately we had one kid who fumbled the football, but was having a good football game, and we need to make sure he understands he has to hang on to the football. Wisniewski is playing behind a kid by the name of (Mike) Lucian, who is a good football player.
They're in a development stage and I think they have a future, but, you know, how much more they play they get in on our football team right away, really, I couldn't answer that.
You talked about Derrick Williams after the game on Saturday, and you said you thought he was pressing a little too much earlier this year. Can you talk about his game and what you expect from him the rest of the year?
There again, you give me these "tough for me to answer" hypothetical questions. What do I expect from him the rest of the year? I think Derrick has to go out and play a good football game every week. I think sometimes we haven't gotten the football to him, and I think he's been a little bit frustrated with that, and I think we've just got to play our game.
And hopefully Derrick will be an important part of whatever success, if we have it, in the next couple of games. But he's obviously a good football player, and I hope he just comes out there every day at practice and tries to get a little bit better.
With Paul Posluszny's breaking the tackle record last year, this year Dan Connor coming along and breaking it and Sean Lee doing so well, what does that say about your linebackers?
I'm not a statistics guy. Jack Ham and those guys played 10 games; we're playing 12 games now. I would hope that the statistics would go up with the amount of tackles you make and all that stuff, how many catches you get and all that business.
I think we've got good linebackers. I think Dan is one of the best linebackers we've had here, whether he's better than Ham or anyone - and I think Sean Lee is a fine linebacker. Thank God we have him for another year.
Paul Posluszny was an outstanding linebacker. He was one of those guys -- he was a coach's player. You only had to tell him once, and he went out there, and he knew how the game was played. He knew where things were.
Connor is very similar to that. I think we've been fortunate that we have a couple of kids like that with Sean Lee still with us, for those kinds of players. But to evaluate one -- I get nervous about doing that.
You said you were proud of the job Al Golden has done at Temple. Can you expand on that, given that it's been a tough place to succeed as a coach?
Well, you know, we had another one of my assistant coaches who went down there, and I told him not to take the job, Ron Dickerson, when he got the job. And they promised him a lot of things, including Bill Cosby, and I said, "Ron, black coaches have got to get good jobs. They can't turn bad jobs around all the time."
I didn't want Ron to take that job, but he took it. He gave it a good shot, and he didn't get quite the support he had to get. And whether Al is getting that kind of support, I have not talked to Al in a while, but they're playing hard, playing with enthusiasm, and I think you have to give the coaching staff credit for that.
Al was captain of our team' 91, '92, I forget which year it was. He's always been a strong leader and a bright kid and, he was on my staff for a couple of years. So I hope it goes well for him, not particularly well this Saturday, but most of the time.
Going back to the discussion of the linebackers, what are some of the attributes that stand out to you and your assistants when you're assessing linebacker talent?
Can they play? It's not a -- you guys take this as an exact science; it isn't. I had an interesting conversation with the people who did the television for the game on Saturday. Friday morning I spent time with them. I said, "You know, everybody wants you to say what does it take to do this, what's it take to do that?" You know, it's intangibles.
Some people can play, some people can't. You can get a guy that's 6 3, 235, 240 pounds, he runs like the dickens, is all over the place. He's not a good football player; he's a heck of an athlete. You think he's going to be a good football player, but he's not. There are guys that know how to play the game.
You have to make sure when you're coaching that you don't overlook some guy who is a player because he doesn't have - we've got pros (scouts) up here this week. They're all out there with clocks and that stuff, and to me that's bologna. Some guys can play. Dan Connor -- I looked at half a tape of Connor when he was in high school, and everybody was raving about him.
And I said, "He's a good player. Let's see if we can get him." Sean Lee, same thing. I get a kick out of the recruiters. "Well, he moves his hips this way, and he comes off the ball this way," and all that kind of stuff. It drives me nuts. They haven't got the slightest idea what it takes to be a good football player.
You've just got to evaluate a kid on whether he's a player. He makes plays, he's around the ball, he knows how to drop his rear end when he's going to tackle and things like that. There's no one -- I couldn't tell you exactly how we get guys. I know that when it comes down to the clutch, every once in a while they'll say, "Hey, Joe, look at this kid." And I look at the tape, and I'll say, "No," or, "Yeah, I like him. Go get him!"
(Anthony) Scirrotto was that way. He wasn't a highly recruited kid, and they were debating whether we wanted to get him. I looked at the tape, and he played a little basketball, and I said, "Hey, go get him." Why did I say that? The Good Lord is the only one who knows why I said it, because I haven't the slightest idea why I said it.
What can you do to improve the kickoff coverage unit? Are you disappointed with the efforts considering how good of athletes you have in that group right now?
There again, I go back to the fact that we have guys on our...we had a long, tough meeting this morning about -- it's one area we should be better at, and we've worked hard on it and, yeah, we've got to do a better job.
We have kids on our team that don't know how to play football yet. They ran a touchdown back right up there, ran right by one guy -- I won't say who -- who is supposed to be a great football player. He's not a great football player. He's a heck of an athlete, but he's not a very good football player yet. We've got to get better football players on that coverage team.
You like to say when talking about Evan Royster that he was the best lacrosse player in the state of Virginia. What does having been a lacrosse player how does that make him a good football player, and specifically his vision?
Well, when I was assistant coach and I was recruiting, I never took a kid in a skill position until I watched him play basketball. And I probably never took an offensive lineman or defensive lineman until I watched them practice. In those days we had a different timetable. Now you can't spend that much time, because people are trying to get kids to make early commitments, so you don't get to look at them the way I used to be able to look at them.
When a kid is a good athlete in other sports...that's the thing I mentioned before, Scirrotto. He was a kid that...Temple lost their quarterback (Adam DiMichele to an injury). We really wanted him, and then he wanted to play baseball, so he went down to the south, and we lost him.
But when I saw him play basketball, we were recruiting a kid here that everybody was excited about, and I said to somebody, I said, "You know the best basketball player you're going to recruit, we're recruiting," and he went down and played baseball, and then came back and played at Temple, and I think that's a big loss for Temple. He was a heck of a football player, a kid from western Pennsylvania.
Again, I keep going back to things. If a guy is a competitor, and you stick him into a different sport and he has a sense of what the game is all about, he understands, there's movement -- and lacrosse is a great game. Lacrosse and soccer are two great games -- lacrosse, soccer and basketball are great games to evaluate people, because they've got to see things, move around, they've got to avoid people.
They've got to have a head up feel, they can't be looking anywhere but downfield. Things that are involved on both sides in those sports. So when we were chasing Royster, I never saw him play a soccer game, but we were debating how hard we wanted to recruit him as a running back. When they (coaching staff) told me he was voted outstanding lacrosse player in Virginia, I said to Larry Johnson, "See if we can get him." He's a heck of a student. Has a brother at Stanford, another brother who graduated from college, 1200, 1300 on the boards, that kind of thing. So it was just a question of whether he had enough athletic ability, because he's not the biggest kid in the world, but he's bigger than you think he is. He's a 210 pound kid, and he's got a great future.
But to answer to your question about why lacrosse, because that shows that he had some things that you need to have in any sport you play -- eyes, quickness, feet, moving the head all the time and knowing where people are. Those kinds of things you don't teach kids. I don't care how fast they run; you can put a clock on them and they run :4.3, so they run :4.3. They don't know where anything else is. That's all bologna.
You said Ron Dickerson was one of your coaches that you didn't know Temple was the right fit for him at the time. If I recall, when Al Golden was thinking about leaving Virginia and going to Temple, you weren't sure that was the right move for him at that point either; is that correct?
Absolutely. Al Golden has a great future as a football coach. I mean, he's bright; he's got all the things you want to put in place to be a heck of a football coach. I just, you know, you hate to have anybody move into a dead end, because if you don't succeed, you get labeled.
But Al felt he could get it done there, and obviously he is getting it done there. I think the fact that Temple went into the MAC has been a big credit to them, a big asset to them, and I think Al and his staff, he's been able to -- the fact that he could get Mark D'Onofrio to come with him from Virginia who is -- Mark is another guy who will be a heck of a football coach, because he's got a lot of fire, and he's bright.
You're talking about a couple of bright, young men who have a passion, and I think if anybody can do it they ought to be able to do it.
Just wondering if you found since you've been in the Big Ten that it's any more challenging to get a team to play a non-conference game in the middle of the conference schedule as opposed to earlier in the year?
I haven't been happy with the 12 game schedule, and obviously I'm not happy that we don't have an open week, but, you know, I've got to sit back after this year and try to assess exactly the way we want to do some things. I don't like it. I don't like playing Temple in the 11th game of the year, away from home. I think we better be very, very careful. We have to play a good, solid football game or Temple will beat us.
And sometimes that's not easy to do when you get caught up in playing some of the Big Ten teams you have to play, and then all of the sudden you're playing a team that is a lot better than maybe a lot of people think they are and is as well coached as Temple is, and you get careless. And the first thing you know, you get licked. So I think the Big Ten has to take a good look at playing 12 straight games in a row.
I've said that 100 times, and most of the coaches in the Big Ten would agree with me. We should either play 11, or if we're going to play 12, we've got to have a week off, or there ought to be something at the end of the year such as the other conferences have. We're the only conference in the country that plays 12 games without an off day.
What do you remember from Mark D'Onofrio as a player?
Mark was a pain in the backside; you can tell him I said that! He used to drive me nuts, but he played with so much fire and enthusiasm, and he loved the game. Mark is a good kid. I keep calling these guys, I keep thinking they're all kids; they're not kids anymore. They're competitors. Mark will do a good job. They'll play with a lot of fire against us. They'll play intelligently, and they'll know what we're doing, because they're familiar with me and familiar with the staff, and it will be a very challenging Saturday afternoon.
How do you think the defensive backs played last week, and how related to their play is the fact that you guys got a bigger pass rush last week?
I think we played well Saturday. I think in all fairness to our kids, I'm not sure -- we may have overestimated some things they could do both against Indiana and Ohio State and then left those corners hang out there a little bit, and we talked about that.
But I think we did a better job in scheming Purdue, because we were scared to death of their passing game, and I thought the kids responded to it. Plus we've had good pass rush. But in all fairness to the people up front, I think they've given us good pass rushing all year. We have not - (Maurice) Evans has been good, solid all the time. The inside guys have put a lot of pressure up the middle. With Lee and Connor as linebackers, I think we've been pretty good, really, defensively.
Maybe Ohio State no, maybe because we felt we had to stack it up inside on the running game because of the running backs they had, but other than that, I think our secondary's played pretty good.
You mentioned earlier when talking about Al Golden that black coaches can't take bad jobs; they need to take good jobs. Can you expand on that?
I got your point, okay? No, my only point is that here is a job, and unless there is a commitment made to it -- Ron Dickerson was eventually going to have two, three, four jobs? I didn't want him taking jobs that I didn't think he could have success with, period, as simple as that. And I didn't think Temple was ready to make the kind of commitment. And he and I sat down and talked.
And he talked to me about Bill Cosby was "going to do this and this and that," and I don't know whether Bill Cosby did this, this, and that. Once he left, he left. But I was fond of Ron, and I thought was a heck of a football coach, and I hated to see him get into a situation where he couldn't have success. It was up to him to make that decision; my job was just to tell him.
Same with Jimmy Caldwell. When he left me, he went to Wake Forest, and when he left I said, "To be honest, I don't trust the president down there." And Jim went down there and won a bowl game, first one Wake Forest had been to in 25 years, and two years later he was fired. You know, they're friends of mine. They're people who made me look good. And so I care for them.
I try to do them as I would my own son. I try to just tell them what I think of the good and the bad. Thank God Jim Caldwell, now he's the offensive coordinator with the (Indianapolis Colts), and we go to him for advice. And Ron's kid -- Ron Dickerson's kid is an assistant coach, and he writes to me, we correspond. They're family. So that's all I was trying to do is make sure he got in the right situation.
I wanted to follow up on lacrosse and basketball. Kids seem to be specializing in one sport at younger and younger ages. Do you recommend that, or does that concern you? You would like to see kids play different sports all year round?
I've got a lot of grandkids. I have a 12-year-old grandson playing football down in the Philadelphia area, and he's a defensive back, and he runs back punts and kicks, and I keep saying to myself, "well" -- but he's also playing soccer. I think kids ought to play as many sports as they can get involved in. I think you learn from every experience you do -- whether it's movement, competition, so I think it's wrong to specialize kids.
I don't care whether it's basketball, football, soccer, lacrosse, whatever it may be. I just think, "keep 'em busy, all right?" Get them in there because every situation is a learning experience. You go out there to play a lacrosse game and something comes up -- even if you're a goalie, the anticipation of the shot, the jump, the run, the reach, all those kinds of things, and they're all athletic experiences that help you.
When I was a kid in Brooklyn, we played on the streets. Stick ball, punch ball, everything on the streets. And the cars were parked. I used to say, "You go around the Buick, and I'll throw the ball over the Buick!" "You go around the Ford, and I'll throw it underneath the Ford!" You know, those are the kinds of things that it's the experience, the anticipation, the ability to improvise. Great athletes improvise all the time. You can coach them all until your ears fall off, but if they have the ability to improvise, that's important.
Do you think last week was an aberration with regard to penalties?
I don't know. In all fairness, that crew was tough on Purdue, as tough on them as they were on us. We had 9, 10 penalties? 13 penalties? Yeah, I think that's something I would not expect us to have, but some of the penalties...well, don't get me into officiating. I've got enough troubles, okay?
Larry Coker is doing the game (TV analyst). I'm curious. I don't mean "when," but do you see yourself staying involved with football in some capacity at some point?
When I retire?
Right.
I'll figure that out in the year 2020, there will be a couple of openings in the NFL for me to...when I get out, I'm gone! But I'm having too much fun right now. Really, I'm enjoying myself. People keep saying to me, "When are you going to retire?" For heaven's sake, I feel good. My leg bothers me a little bit yet, and I've got to do a couple of things yet.
It was a year and a few days ago that I got run over (Nov. 4, 2006 at Wisconsin). But, no, I'm not going to I don't want to - "Fourth and two, why the heck didn't he punt the ball?" All right? I can't put myself into that -- that's not my cup of tea. I'll be frank with you. I'm trying to find out...my dad always said to me, "Whatever you do, make an impact."
When I retire, I'm not going to fade away into the wind. I've got to find something I can make an impact on.
There was an article yesterday that talked about you sending a memo to
Forget it. You're wasting your time. Forget it. What's your name?
Kevin Horan.
Good, Kevin. Nice to meet you. I'm not going to....I think most of you guys are smart enough to understand what that thing is all about. Anything else?
When did you guys know that you had a pretty good offensive lineman in Dennis Landolt, and what has he done well since the start of the season?
We always felt he would be okay. When? I'm not sure. I couldn't tell you. We woke up one morning, and we all got in the office and somebody said, "Hey, we got a pretty good" -- we struggled. We were making movements around and trying to find out the best combination.
But Dennis was a heck of a high school prospect, and we knew eventually if we could get him settled down, we would be okay. I think we're getting better. We're not a great offensive line, we have things we have to do better, but I think we're making strides.
I think you have to give Dick Anderson and Bill Kenney, who work with those kids credit on that, because I don't do it. Fifteen years ago I used to be out there coaching the offensive line, coaching everything. I don't do that much anymore, but Dick and Bill have done a good job. I think Dennis has gotten good. We knew we had a pretty good player in (Rich) Ohrnberger, in (A.Q.) Shipley, we knew we had a good player in (Gerald) Cadogan.
We were worried about right guard and tackle, and Dennis -- we settled on Dennis, and he's responded. We're still moving around on the one guard spot. Wisniewski is young. He's eventually going to be an awfully good football player, but we haven't put him in a position where he's got to carry the load yet. But I think we're doing all right there, I really do.
Andrew Quarless has struggled this year. What does he need to do to play up to his potential?
In what way do you think he struggled?
Dropped some balls --
They're all going to drop some balls. You need to tell me what you mean by "struggling." I can't answer a question if I don't know what you're talking about.
You took him out one game because
Because he jumped off sides, and every once in a while he gets careless, but that's not a -- he's a true sophomore and in a very difficult position. The thing about tight ends, people don't realize, we're spending more and more time with those guys involved in pass protection.
I'm sure you all are smart enough to understand exactly what's going on in the football game when we drop them back and put them in motion and he's blocking at the corner, pass protecting and all the things like that. That's a lot of work for a sophomore.
We've got two sophomores in there, and I think both of the guys have done a good job. Quarless has done well, (Mickey) Shuler has a lot of potential -- and he's going to drop a pass once in a while but, heck, they all drop them once in a while. I don't think we have any problems with him or he has any problems.