Blue White Illustrated

C OA C H S P E A K| EXCERPTS FROM JAMES FRANKLIN'S WEEKLY PRESSER How did Wendy Laurent and Derek Dowrey do at guard at Ohio State, and do you expect them to be in the lineup on Saturday? I thought Wendy did some better things. Obviously, that was kind of the matchup in the game. When you watched the game or you watched the film, that's where they probably had a big advantage. That was a matchup that we did not win on Saturday. We went into it with our plan focusing on [Joey] Bosa. Bosa did some nice things, but I think the real issue was their D-tackles matched up against our guards. We're going to continue to look at those things, finding ways to give ourselves a chance to be successful on the offensive line going against talented teams like that, but that's still some- thing that we need to get solidified. I think Paris [Palmer] since the first game has played better. He and [Andrew Nelson] sometimes have a tendency to get pushed back in the pocket, but for the most part, our battle is at guard. So we've got to do a better job of that. How do you think Christian Hack- enberg managed the game against Ohio State? You had some issues on third down, obviously, and then on fourth down there were a couple of sacks. How do you think he played? Did that aggressive nature show up on third and fourth down? Yeah, it's a combination of everything. I think, obviously, there are some things and some plays he would like to have back and that we would like to have back. We've also got to make plays for him. I think that's going to be really im- portant as well, guys making plays for him. There's no doubt that there are plays he would like to have back and we would like to have back in that game where we thought we had some oppor- tunities and felt like we could have made some plays. I do think the push that they got on our tackles into our quarterback's face at times was a factor, and then obvi- ously our guards were not consistently winning their battles. And then when we had chances to make some plays, we didn't make the plays. It's a combina- tion of all those things. I have a part in it. The coaching staff has a part in it, Christian has a part in it, the players have a part in it. All of us together. Last year when your punters were struggling, you opted to move away from the directional kicks, just boot it and shi3 the pressure to the cover- age unit. Is that something you would consider doing again, or are there other ways to improve the consis- tency there? That's a great point. We just got fin- ished talking about that this morning at 7 a.m. in our special teams meeting. I don't think this is the week to do it with [William] Likely. That's part of the issue. When you play Rutgers and their return guy and you play Ohio State and their return guy, and now this week you're playing Maryland and Likely, who's got three returns for a touchdown – two punts and a kickoff, if I'm correct on that – the last thing you want to do is leave the ball in the middle of the field with 53 1 ⁄3 [feet] for a guy to work with. So that's something we discussed, taking some of that pressure off them and allowing them to bang it as far as they can down the field and putting the pressure on the coverage unit. I don't think this is the week to do that consid- ering the impact that Mr. Likely has had on games this season so far. You said a3er the Ohio State game that you might have to hold an open tryout for punters. I assume you're not really going to do that, but I am interested in the different things you've tried to improve the punting. We actually had a tryout with the punters and kickers on campus. I did bring that up this morning again. Do we possibly do that again? But at the end of the discussion, we've got two guys who have shown the abil- ity to do it in practice and do it pretty consistently. We've got to get them to translate that to the game and compare game situations last year to game situa- tions this year. Those things really haven't factored in. It's not a physical thing, it's a mental thing. It's confi- dence. It's having an SOP, a standard operating procedure, of how they do things all the time, over and over again, the routine of it. College is a little bit different than the NFL. A lot of NFL teams have kicking coaches. Most college programs don't have a kicking coach. You've got a spe- cial teams coordinator. But Charles Huff was a center, and I've never seen him kick a ball in his life, although he's gone around and done a lot of research and studied in the off-season. That's proba- bly an area where in college there's a lack of that, a lack of that personal coach, that personal development. We've just got to keep doing what we're doing and stay positive with those guys and have conversations with them and surround them with conditions of success. It's no different than anything else. They'll come out of it because they physically have shown that they have the ability to do it. Right now it's [a mat- ter of] getting over the hump mentally. How do you think Mike Locksley is going to approach this week? And how do you approach playing a team under a new head coach in midseason that had a week off? It's hard for me, obviously, to speak on that, but to me, one of the things that we're talking about as a staff is that we have to be prepared for the onside kick, like Indiana did. We have to be prepared for the fake punts. We have to be pre- pared for the double passes. They've got an opportunity to play Penn State and obviously get a win that's really impor- tant to them, and I could see them doing whatever they have to do to get it. We need to make sure that we're not chasing ghosts, but we [have to be] pre- pared for those things that they may do to maybe gain a possession or gain two possessions, create some momentum, and things like that. So fake punts, on- side kicks, trick plays on offense, shot plays. Obviously, they've got a mobile quarterback. They're going to look at O C T O B E R 2 1 , 2 0 1 5 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 14

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