Sept. 8, 2009
Joe Paterno News Conference
September 8, 2009
Can you discuss the transition that Syracuse quarterback Greg Paulus has made from basketball, and can you recall any similar situation?
Oh, I'm sure there's been some kids that have played basketball for a couple of years that switched, but I don't know anybody that transferred, such as he has.
Now, I'm sure that I'm just missing somebody, but it's not an easy transition. I think, regardless of how good a competitor you are and how alert you are, there's still some adjustments that have to be made.
Basketball's a different tempo type of game than football, but I thought he did a great job (vs. Minnesota). I know he had a bad play in the overtime, but other than that, I thought he did a good job. They got behind and he kept in there with them and did some really good things.
He's a good athlete, obviously, and he'll get better and better as they go along.
Could you evaluate the first game that two of your starters on the offensive line had, Matt Stankiewitch and DeOn'tae Pannell?
Well, I thought we did alright. We've got a lot of work to do with our running game. I think that was obvious. But you've got to give Akron some credit. They had a good scheme, and they were very aggressive, and they've got some kids that can play. And so I'm reluctant to be too critical, but I think we've got to be better. We've got to be more consistent.
We did a fine job with the pass protection early in the game, and then we got a little sloppy later in the second half, and the young guys got a little confused. There's no question about that, but they hung in there, and I think that game will be a good experience for them and it'll be much better this week.
Was Navorro Bowman able to practice yesterday and do you expect him to be at full strength on Saturday?
No, Bowman did not practice yesterday, and I don't know whether he'll be at full strength. He's got an awful lot of swelling in that muscle, and whether it's around the muscle, I don't know. But he didn't do anything yesterday, and I'm sure he won't do anything today, and it's probably an outside chance as to whether he'll play or not Saturday.
Looking back to the kicking game (vs. Akron), how are you going to go forward with Collin Wagner? Well, obviously he missed two (field goals) and I'm not happy about that, but I think that was the first time he was in there and the whole bit. I think he'll be fine.
He did an overall good job on the kickoffs, and I think overall our kicking game was solid. (Jeremy) Boone obviously was very good. The Akron kid didn't give us much chance to run back a punt. He punted the ball high, and that created distance, so we really didn't have much of an opportunity to run a punt back, but I think overall we were all right.
Your three tight ends are kind of banged up, it seems like, early on. Will they all play on Saturday, and if they do play, will their injuries affect how you might use them at all?
Well, the only one right now that came up bumped up a little bit Saturday was Bowman. He reinjured that pull he has, but other than that, I think we're okay.
We haven't practiced yet today. Today's a tough day in the week, Tuesday. We may get somebody bumped up today.
You said that Greg Paulus kind of impressed you. Did his first week back (playing football), did that surprise you, his performance, and if so, what are the concerns that you have about him?
Well, you come from one sport, which as I said earlier, is a different tempo and the whole bit, and you jump into something else, where you have a huddle, you've got to learn...whether it's a game that's on the move all the time or your instincts alone can't carry you. So I think overall he did very well, and I think he'll do a good job. I assume you're talking about the quarterback?
I think he's obviously an awfully good athlete. He's not quite as comfortable in the pocket, and you would expect him not to be. He hasn't been there for awhile. So he scrambles a little more than probably they want him to, but he'll get better and better.
I think there will be a tremendous jump from his performance in the first game, which was a good one against Minnesota, because they were down (SU trailed 14-3 in first quarter). It wasn't as if they went out there and everything went their way. They were down, and he hung in there with them, and his teammates hung in with him, and overall it's an entirely different Syracuse team this year than it was last year. They're playing with much more fire and enthusiasm, and I think a lot of that you have to give obviously to the new coaching staff, but I think Paulus would be a guy that's had a lot to do with their enthusiasm and the way they're playing right now.
Were you happy with what you got out of Jerome Hayes on Saturday?
Well, Jerome didn't get to play that much. I think he played maybe 20 plays. You know, it's a new position for him. He's been a linebacker, and he's playing a defensive end/linebacker, a combination of both, so he's got some things to learn. But I think he got in there, and he's playing with a brace on. I'm not sure that he'll keep the brace on much longer. That becomes a mental thing.
But I think he's going to be good. He's going to be good at that position. But yeah, he's learning it. He didn't do much this spring. We kept him out of some things in preseason because we wanted to make sure he was 100 percent. So taking everything into consideration, I think he did well.
You already partly answered my question, but I wanted you to talk a little bit about the Syracuse program. Why do you think that it kind of sagged the way it has in recent years, and then what do you see now with the current coach and whatever is going on up there that would lead you to believe that they're going to turn it around?
I can't tell you why that program deteriorated, because I think we all remember that Syracuse had one of the great programs, not only in the East, but in the country.
Some of the best games we've ever been involved in at Penn State since I've been here were Syracuse-Penn State games. So it's hard for me to figure out what happened. But I think that they've got the right combination now. The coach is a Syracuse graduate. It seems as if he's been able to get some of the old Syracuse guys back into the pool, coming around.
They did a good job recruiting last year. So I think there's no reason why they can't be one of the better teams around. And I would expect them to be that. I thought their performance against Minnesota was good. Minnesota has got a lot of people back. Minnesota is a solid football team. And for them to have played the way they did and come within one play of beating Minnesota I think was a tribute to, as I said, the staff and the fact that here's a kid who hasn't played football for three or four years (Greg Paulus) - I don't know how long - come in there and take over that team, and even though they had a lot of problems early in the game, kept them in it and almost won.
So, I think they're on their way back. I don't think there's any question about that. They've got the right combination up there now.
Doug Marrone said yesterday that when he was coming out of high school as an offensive lineman in the early 80s, that one of the schools trying to recruit him and get him to play there was Penn State. How much do you remember from that whole process and trying to get him to play for you in the early 80s? Oh, boy. He's Italian, isn't he? Italian American, isn't he?
I couldn't tell you that. I'm not sure about that.
Well, what do you mean you couldn't tell me that? (laughter). That's the single most important thing about him, that and the fact that he's from the Bronx doesn't hold much water with me, although I was born in the Bronx. My dad was smart enough to get out of there and go to Brooklyn after three months (laughter). I don't remember a lot about it really.
You know, he was a good solid kid. I remember that, and I don't remember exactly what he wanted to study. But we used to...had a tough time with beating Syracuse when we got into New York City or started to work our way up north into the Albany, Schenectady, those areas, and of course, the old lower tier, Binghamton... So yeah, we gave it a good shot, as I remember. But you know, he thought that was the better place for him, and obviously it turned out well for him.
Just wondering, are you planning to stick with the same starters at cornerback or has A.J. Wallace worked his way back into the mix?
I thought (Knowledge) Timmons played well, and he and Wallace are both playing in the same spot right now. I don't think we'll make any changes right away.
I was...you know, you start jumping people around every week and you're never going to get very good. You're not going to get cohesive, and each week we've got a little different...some different problems, so I think we'll stay the way we played against Akron.
Now, that doesn't mean I'm going to do that the whole year, but I was pleased with Timmons. I thought Timmons played well, and I thought A.J. played well. And the other kid, (D'Anton) Lynn, did a good job at the other corner. So I think we were adequate. Whether we were as good as we're going to have to be, we'll find out. But I don't see any change in the way we played those two kids, Wallace and Timmons.
I think one of the things that surprised some people was that Devon Smith got on the field as early as he did and was there as often as he was. Has the success of other small, really best players like Trendon Holliday at LSU and going back a few years, Gerald McNeil, did that make it a little bit easier to take a chance on him?
I don't even know any of the players you're talking about. I really don't.
No, that had nothing at all to do with it. Devon Smith we had had at camp, at our summer camp. We knew what he could do. He committed to us very quickly. We knew he could run. We knew he could catch the football. We knew what kind of person he was.
He's really a great kid, very poised, and you figured he had a shot at doing something for you early because of his great speed. But he's just not a fast kid. He's a good athlete. He's a tough kid, too.
And we debated how much we wanted to play him in the first game. I didn't want to put him on the kickoff team, but I got out-voted, and he did a good job there. We had made up our mind we were going to try to get the ball to him on the outside, not necessarily with the very elaborate passing lanes because it takes a while to get that kind of timing, especially when you're dealing with somebody who's not as tall as you'd like them to be. You've got to get them in the right spot. The timing's got to be good, and the quarterback's got to get used to throwing the ball to him. He's used to throwing to (Derek)_Moye, who's a 6'-5 kid and then he's got to throw to Smitty.
But, the other things you mentioned about so and so at some school, some other player, no. Those things...you look at what you've got, and there may have been some other kid just as fast, maybe just as good an athlete, but maybe not have the poise and maybe not have the ability to practice as well as this kid has practiced and get himself ready to play.
The 40 yard touchdown pass (by Akron), is that a good learning experience for a young kid like that to kind of go through the emotions now and then as the season goes on?
I didn't quite get it, the first part of your question was?
Oh, sure. I mean...he got a little careless with it. That's all.
Is that just the formation that he saw there?
No. It's just a combination of anything else. We had the formation so he could throw that pass, but he'll do better.
You mentioned being out-voted by your staff. As your staff has gotten so much experience, do you find yourself where you pick your spots and you know how that all works, and don't you have two votes anymore?
It depends on the mood I'm in. If I'm in a good mood, I'll give in. If I'm not in a good mood, I might be an SOB. No, I'm teasing a little bit now, but no, it depends on the situation. It depends on, sometimes I went in and just try to agitate the staff, just to make sure that they've considered a lot of different things, and I agitated them about Smith because he was a true freshman, and hadn't been out before a crowd like that.
But, they were so strong in their feeling that he could help, and that's all I wanted to hear from them.
In the punt return, is (Evan) Royster a temporary (returner)? You usually haven't had your starting tailback all the way back there. Is it just waiting to get more (players) comfortable?
No. Right now, Royster is the best one we have. Eventually, we may....depending on how much he carries the football and if he gets bumped up a little bit. But, we've got (Stephfon) Green and (Brent) Carter, so that we can spare him a little bit when we have the football.
We think he can help us more with the punt return than carrying the ball another five times. When we have Green, we can give him the football, and when we have Carter, yesterday was the best day he's looked in a while in practice.
With USC at Ohio State this week, Notre Dame playing Michigan, just curious how big of an impact those games might have on some of the perceptions out there of the Big Ten?
I think that's something you guys can probably better analyze than I can. I know Ohio State is playing Southern Cal. I wasn't sure that Michigan was playing Notre Dame. That one I hadn't, I probably should have known it.
But as I said, what difference does it make how I perceive the Big Ten? It's up to what the public does and the media does. I'm only worried about us. I'm worried about Syracuse. I haven't got time to be worrying about the other things, to be very frank with you.
And actually, I would hope that the Big Ten teams would win. But that's like last night, watching Florida State and Miami, I had nobody I was pulling for. I just thought it was a heck of a football game and kept me up too late.
But, as a fan and also as somebody trying to learn something, watching people do things, I watched the game last night, and if I have a chance to watch - what time's the Ohio State game go on? It's at night? - So I'll have a chance to watch that. And I'll try to, obviously, make some notes for the future when we do end up playing them.
You've said a couple times over the years that how a team improves in the first week to the second week tells you a lot about that team. Why do you feel that way? Why is it not the third week or the fourth week or the seventh week and the eighth week?
That's my experience, is that when you get a good football team and a bunch of kids that have worked as hard as this group has worked, both in winter programs, spring practice, their preseason, that there's always a couple kids just a little bit jittery, the timing's just a little bit off (in the first game).
We had new wideouts. We felt they were going to be pretty good, but now they've got something under their belt, they can start to play with a little bit more confidence, don't have to think out everything. And I think you've got build on that first game. And I've always felt that way, that we'll find out how good a team we're going to be by how much we improve this week.
I think that's a big, big item for us, that we've got some kids...somebody asked me earlier about a couple of the offensive linemen. Well, it's their first time in there. They saw a lot of stunts that we hadn't practiced against because Akron did a couple of different things. We're going to play against a team this week that does a lot of different things on defense. They're a very multiple defensive football team, very aggressive.
Those kids will be better, and how much better they are will have a lot to do with how good we're going to be. If they go in and make the same mistakes, then I'd start to worry.
You talked about some of your fond memories in terms of playing Syracuse. Is there a game that stood out over the years that is one of your favorite?
Oh, there's a couple. I can go back to I think it was '54, '55, we played at Old Beaver Field. We won it 21-20. They had Jimmy Brown. I think Jimmy Brown carried the ball 14 times for 140 yards, and Lenny (Moore) carried it 12 times for about 130 yards. In those days they didn't carry the ball 20, 25 times. They were two of the greatest running backs to ever play the game on that field.
It was a great football game. Ended up 21-20. We won it. And then in 1959, the last year we were in the Old Beaver Stadium (Field), Syracuse was going for the National Championship, and we had a chance to win, went for two and didn't make the two, and kicked off to them, and Ernie Davis - I don't know whether it was Ernie Davis - stepped out of bounds on the 4 yard line on the kickoff and they had to go the whole field, and they did. We couldn't stop them.
(Gerhard) Schwedes was playing on that team (Syracuse) and a couple other kids. It was a great game. Ended up beating us by two points, and then they went undefeated and went down to Texas and beat the devil out of Texas in the Cotton Bowl for the National Championship. So those would be two of the games. There are a lot of great games we played. Some I don't have some great memories of.
I can still see Floyd Little running by me three times for three touchdowns on three punt returns, and he waved to me. (Laughs). I tried to get (recruit) him. He was from Connecticut, when he was in high school, played up there at Hillhouse up there. But no, we had a lot of great games.
Paul Pasqualoni had a good bit of success at Syracuse and yet he was kind of forced out there. Him being a former Penn State guy, were you in touch earlier this decade when some of that stuff was going on with him and how do you feel about the way some of that happened to Paul?
Well, Paul Pasqualoni is a very loyal guy. He was loyal to Penn State and he was loyal to Syracuse, because they gave him a chance, and he's very rarely talked about any of the stuff that...I still am not sure what happened. Paul did a great job for them. He was a good recruiter. He was a heck of a football coach. He was the kind of person that you'd want to coach your kids.
So I don't know what happened. Paul very rarely talked about it, and we spent a lot of time with Paul. He was with the Nike people and we went on a couple of trips with them. And so he's...you know, I don't know. I really don't know. I just know he did a heck of a job for them, and that was one of the reasons they went like this.
One of the other games that I would mention, somebody asked me (about memorable SU games) when my boy (David) fell off the trampoline and fractured his skull, and we had to go up, we took him (to the hospital in Danville), my wife (Sue) was on her way up to Syracuse. We were going to play Syracuse on Saturday, and he got hurt on Friday.
I didn't make the game up to Syracuse, and Sue came back, because we didn't know whether he was going to make it. But we beat them.
I wasn't there, but we beat them, and I think his name was either Hurley or Cochran. I forget exactly. He (Bill Hurley) completed a pass to about the three-yard-line and they had about two minutes to play, and they called it back for an illegal formation, which it was close. And we ended up beating them up there. And the guy who was, Frank Maloney, who was the head coach, went into the locker room, and you know, here they hadn't beaten us in years, and they had this one just about won, he went in there and before he even talked to his squad, he said, "let's all kneel down and say a prayer for Coach Paterno's son." And I've never forgotten that.
And, you know, Frank he lost out a couple years later for some personal reasons. So there's a lot of things about Syracuse I can talk about.
You ran four different guards on the first team line last week. Can you evaluate their play and what kind of challenge do you expect to the interior line with Arthur Jones in front of Syracuse this week?
Well, we've got to get better. I thought we played adequately. I don't think we were great. But I didn't expect us to be great.
You go into a first game, you're not quite sure what you're going to see. New coach. Well, not a new coach, but a new staff and new defensive coordinator, offensive coordinator. Brought back Walt Harris and the whole thing. So we didn't know what they were going to get.
There were rumors they were going to go to the four man front instead of...and get away from the three man front. So there were just so many things we weren't quite sure about. So you couldn't zero in. So our kids had to really adjust on the fly, and I think overall they did a good job. They did a good job, but having said that, we've got to obviously improve this week.
Could you talk about Jared Odrick a little bit, some of his impact and where he's going, because it looks like he's off to a really solid start.
Well, he's a fine football player. He's really, I shouldn't say, he's a really good football player, hard worker, tough kid, got a lot of athletic ability. He's one of the...he's a very fine football player, and the kind of guy that would make some other people good because he works so hard.
Coach, you seem to have a lot of good memories from Syracuse, telling a lot of the stories and everything, however, I hate to get into this, there is kind of this assumption from a lot of people that you hold ill will about Syracuse about the Eastern Conference thing in the '80s. Can you just clarify, are you mad at Syracuse, have you ever been mad at Syracuse?
No. I haven't got time to be...I tried to put together the conference. Jake Crouthamel, who was a Pennsylvania kid, was the athletic director at Syracuse. He was Dave Gavitt's roommate at Dartmouth. All right? And they were trying to save the Big East because of the basketball. And Bill Flynn was at BC. They had Georgetown in it. They had the whole basketball arrangement. Connecticut was in it. John Toner was part of it, and I was trying to form an all-sports conference.
In fact, I went up to Connecticut and had met with John Toner, who was the athletic director at Connecticut, Dave Gavitt, and we sat around, got a room in the airport in Connecticut, and we talked, and they wanted me to take Penn State into the Big East and, later on what they did with Notre Dame, just in basketball.
I said, "no, I don't want to do that." I wanted the thing (all-sports conference). So I kept working at it, and then of course, the people that pulled the rug from us were the Pitt people. They ended up going in the Big East for the basketball. And they were the ones that...because we had five, six teams. If Pitt had come in, BC would have come in and Syracuse would have come in.
But hey, you do what you've got to do. We ended up in the Big Ten, so why should I be mad? It's been pretty good for us.
What are the challenges of a young defensive end like Jack Crawford going up against a quarterback like Paulus this week?
Well, Jack's got to play his game...He's got certain responsibilities in any one of the defenses that we may call, and he's a bright kid and a really good athlete for a big man.
He never played football until he came to this country, and playing as a freshman (in 2008), he may have been a sophomore or a junior in high school before he played any football. But he's a good athlete. He's smart. He learns. He comes out, he knows what's going on.
So I don't...that's not a question of who's playing against who. He's got certain things he's got to do, and I think he's a good enough athlete to do that the way we want it done.
Joe, how important is it for, Syracuse to be doing well in terms of, I guess, for Eastern football? For us? Well, I haven't thought about that that way. You know, I'm interested in Penn State. I want us to be as good a football team as we can be, and then everything else will take care of itself.
So you know, with the media what it is today, and with the television coverage what it is, here's Cincinnati playing Rutgers on a Thursday (Monday) night on a national television network. Here's Syracuse playing Minnesota, you know, with tremendous (TV) coverage.
I don't know whether that label "East" any more is appropriate. I think conference, yeah, if you're going to talk about the Big East Conference, if you're going to talk about the Atlantic Coast Conference. Here's BC in the Atlantic Coast Conference. I mean, do you consider them an Eastern school or do you consider them an Atlantic Coast Conference (school)? I don't know.
I think the whole thing is jumbled up so much. Here's Florida State, deep down in Southeastern (Conference) country, Miami (also is) down there. They're both in the Atlantic Coast Conference. So I just don't think that's appropriate anymore for Eastern football.
Obviously there are people that say, "well, Big Ten isn't in the same league with somebody else," and somebody says the Big 12 is the Southwest. But it's always a conference. It's not really the Southwest. The Big 12 has got some people that are really not in the Southwest. Got some people outside that area.
So I don't know. I don't think that's something...I don't think about it. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think about it.