Blue White Illustrated

S E P T E M B E R 2 4 , 2 0 1 6 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . c O M 7 C O A C H S P E A K • E X C E R P T S F R O M J A M E S F R A N K L I N ' S P O S T G A M E P R E S S E R Opening statement: Have to give Michigan credit. That's a good football team. That's a mature football team. One of the oldest teams in the country. One of the most mature teams in the country, ranked No. 4 for a reason. They're a good football team. Have to give them credit. We didn't play well. Our linebacker situation, I don't know if I've ever been through something like this or seen anything like this. We've got [Brandon] Bell, [Nyeem] Wartman and [Jason] Cabinda out. Brandon Smith gets thrown out on a targeting call, and that's the rule. I don't know what to tell the kid. He's going for the ball, he's going for the interception and his hands are out and they hit helmet- to-helmet, so I get it. I understand. I don't know what you tell the kid. He gets ejected from the game from it. Then Jan Johnson comes in and we lose Jan Johnson for the season as well. Our linebacker situation, again, I don't know if I've ever seen anything like it. So you have to give Michigan credit, No.1. They were physical on both fronts. O-line, they were physical, big strong, psychical, and then on the D- line, the same thing. They're going to do some things defensively: high-risk, high-reward, load the box. They have one of the more talented secondaries in the country. We had a hard time with their D-line. Then you combine that with all the pressures and blitzes they did. We took some shots down the field late. Probably need to take more of them. On calling timeout before the field goal attempt: That was not a good de- cision on my part. We second-guessed ourselves there and thought maybe we should go for the touchdown. But still, there was a lot of time le@ in the game. Obviously, you don't want to take the penalty and take us out of [position to go] for a touchdown there. Then we had a discussion and everybody felt like we need to take the points, and at that point there was a lot of time le@ in the half. If you're going to kick the field goal, obviously we should have taken the penalty and kicked the field goal, but I second-guessed myself, going for a touchdown, trying to get back in the game. But if you come up with no points, we didn't think that was the right thing to do. On going for it on fourth down in the first half: We were having a difficult time stopping them. They were able to control the ball, control the line of scrimmage, run the ball, play-action pass. We weren't able to get pressure on their quarterback. When we did, we had a couple opportunities for tackles for loss and sacks and he always seemed to get out of them. So I just felt like we needed to try to make a move on offense and try to get some points and be ag- gressive when it didn't look like at that point we could slow them down on de- fense. On Brandon Smith's ejection: It's the right call. If you have helmet-to- helmet contact with a defenseless player, there's no gray area. There is no intent. My argument was that we have just as much of a right for the ball as they do, and you see clearly he puts his hands out going for the ball, but that's not how the rule is written. That would factor in intent, and [the rule] doesn't factor that in. If there's helmet-to-hel- met contact with what they character- ize as a defenseless player, it's a penalty. So again, I don't know what you tell the player. He was going for the ball. The ball was low, so that made him go down low and it was helmet-to-helmet con- tact, so it is the right call. On Jake Cooper: Coop has been a guy who has always played the Will and backed up at the Mike, and he's gotten some reps there, obviously not to the degree that he took today. We'll con- tinue to get him opportunities to get reps in practice and get confident in that position calling the defense. On the team's options at linebacker: We just have to keep moving guys. Right now we're going to have a hard time practicing, with the number of guys we have [injured]. We're going to have to continue moving guys from different positions. That's what we're going to have to look at right now. Again, I don't know if ever seen anything like this be- fore. But it is what it is, and we've got to find a way to solve the problem. PSUtixman@gmail.com www.PSUtixman.com Get your PSU Football Tickets at go t ti cke t s? k c i t t t e k man@g .PSUtixm www.PSUtixman.com at ootba Get yo k c i t t o gm .PSUtixman.com all ur s t s e k

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