Northwestern OC teaching MOE & NBT
Northwestern offensive coordinator / quarterbacks coach Mick McCall helping quarterback Dan Persa by helping him understand MOE & NBT.
In the Wildcats’ spread offense, it’s important for Persa to know his “margin of error” and “next best thing.”
Persa, who leads the nation in passing efficiency, explains, "If you don't like something, go to the next best thing. Don't force anything. And know where you have your margin of error. On a sideline throw, throw it outside. Over the middle, throw it low. These are little things that click in your head that do help."
Persa is 38-44 passing with 5 touchdowns and 0 interceptions in two games.
McCall knows it’s important for Persa to stay healthy.
"You have to manage that guy because you can't get through the season with him getting blipped up," McCall said. "I would much rather have other guys run the football. If he needs to make something happen to get a first down and then slide or get out of bounds, that's what we'll do."
Northwestern travels to Rice this Saturday. Kick-off is set for 7 pm EST.
Friday morning Coaches Quick Hits
Tim Brewster talks Minnesota money: "(We are) spending enough money on football for me to win football games."
"We need to spend more money on football and basketball. That's a fact. I've talked at length to [athletic director Joel Maturi] about what we need to do to help take our football program forward. He understands we need to put more money into the football program. ... If we want to have championship success, we've got to get more involved with helping the football program."
Dan Mullen says he would call same 4 plays on GL against LSU last year: "I watched it over and over and over again. I guess because it didn't work I would second-guess myself, but if you put me in the exact situation, I would have called the same exact four plays with how that game was going at that point."
Pete Carroll wants Seahawks to be energetic & emotional: "We're really letting our guys know that we want them to be energetic, to be emotional about the way we bring our game to game day. I want them to feed off one another and to do that they have to let it out, and there's nothing wrong with that."
Lane Kiffin unhappy with Trojans preparation for Minnesota: “We've got a long ways to go. They need to understand that this is a very serious game and not take this opponent lightly because of what happened last week [when Minnesota lost, 41-38, to South Dakota], which doesn't mean anything Saturday."
"Our standards are so high because we are at 'SC and because we have high standards in general, coaches and players. I think everyone, including ourselves, forgets that it is our first year. We expect our players to have picked up three new systems. There's only one coach here from last year out of all the 10 coaches. We do sometimes forget that because we expect our guys to play great and never make mistakes in our new schemes."
Quoting Purdue head coach Danny Hope: “I'm not concerned with the statistics right now. We have great promise as a team, but we've got to make it happen. We're a work in progress, but we've got something to work with.”
Ruffin McNeill says ECU defensive improvement is coming: “It’s going to happen. With nine new starters, you can’t rush experience. There’s no substitute for it. You can’t make it up. You can put them in as many game situations as you can, but the reality of it is they have to go through it actually in a game, and the group has. And each week, they’ll get better.”
WVU OC Jeff Mullen describes Maryland defense: “They use two different styles. They play a gap controlled 4-man front and a zone pressure odd front. We just know they are a big, strong, fast, and physical…so we are going to have our hands full. I think change of speeds is important. We’ll still be a team that plays with and without tempo.”
(on criticisim) “I’ve learned something after being here three years. It don’t matter what you do, something is getting criticized. That much I know. Win, lose or draw. I don’t mean that in a negative way. In response to the criticism of the offensive line, something needs criticized. I’m going to get it; I’m OK with it. I wish it was more me than our players. It bothers me when our players get it because they’re college kids and more goes on than the eye sees.”
“Last year the same group led the Big East in rushing, had a 1,500-yard back, gave up the league low in sacks. This year Noel Devine has gone over 100 twice. We lead the league in offensive passing.”
Quoting Rick Neuheisel: "I think the most important thing for us is to realize that we are only two games into a 12-game schedule. While we are discouraged being 0-2, we can fix it as early as this week.”
"To fix it, you have to stack great practices together to have the freedom to play at your highest level on Saturdays and not worry if you are going to play at your highest level."
All-Access with Mack Brown
ESPN’s Pat Forde followed Mack Brown throughout the day of the Longhorn’s season-opener against Rice, a game the Longhorns won 34-17.
You can watch the All-Access video of Brown’s hotel speech and his post-game candid thoughts right here.
Interestingly, after a sub-par performance, Brown asked the team, "How much do you like being at Texas and like being a football player?”
He added, “Some of you like being at Texas more than you've earned the right to be here. I was embarrassed for myself. I was embarrassed for some of my coaches, not all. I was embarrassed for some of you players, not all. … It was kind of embarrassing.”
"Boy, I'm scared. I'm worried about this team. I'm worried about it. We've got some entitlement in this room. Got to get that fixed. Got some selfishness in this room. Got to get that fixed. This isn't Texas football.”
Texas is on the road at Texas Tech this Saturday night. Kick-off is set for 8:00 pm EST.
Thursday morning Coaches Quick Hits
Al Groh on the assumption GA Tech would handle the Kansas offense: "That's fantasy football; I just deal with what happened today. Coaches play the game that's played today. The rest is talk radio, those guys who have all the answers."
"I'm in charge of it. If there's any finger to be pointed, it's at me."
Zook happy with OC Paul Petrino: ''Everybody's bought into what we're doing, and that's 95 percent of the battle. He's a very thorough teacher. He makes sure you understand it, not only players but coaches. Everybody's on the same page. That's why we were better last week than we were the first week, and why we'll be better this week than we were last week.''
Monte Kiffin concerned about Minnesota offense “God-dang it” : “This quarterback, now, he’s in the process of breaking the all-time records of the University of Minnesota. Now, in 1960 in Minnesota with Murray Warmath, they won the Rose Bowl and the national championship. There’s a lot of records to be broken at the University of Minnesota. Now, this quarterback is breaking these records. I’m serious, god-dang it.”
“They got in a shootout and lost, but I’m telling you, offensively, they’re a god-danged good football team. This team last week was pretty good. This team’s better. I’m not making this stuff up. They put it on tape. Look at the tape. Look at the stats.”
Arkansas DC Willy Robinson says Hogs enter “man country” this week: “Now we go into man country. Now we go into the SEC. We’ve been working for it and working hard at it. That’s what we live for. Now it’s a different story. What’s happened in the past is in the past.”
Arizona State DC Craig Bray upset with defense: “We're not near as good as we need to be. We've underachieved for whatever reason, so this will be a good mark for us. We've acted bored. And you don't act like that if you want to be a great defense."
"I don't know what it is. I'm not sure a psychologist would know, either."
Dabo Swinney knows Clemson must be prepared to throw it: “We haven’t had the ball a whole lot and haven’t been challenged from a passing game standpoint. We’ve had some very big plays in the passing game, but that game where we go and have to throw it 30-35 times, it’s coming.”
Larry Fedora unsure of what to expect from Kansas defense: “Offensively for us, from the two films we have gotten, the first game was a two-back, two-tight end set offense that was just running and pounding the ball. The second game was an option team (Georgia Tech), so for the offense, we really do not have anything to go off of on film and that’s frustrating.”
“Its almost like it’s the first game of the season and you have to go into it not having any idea what they are going to do. It has been a little tough on the offense as we are game-planning trying to figure out what they are going to be when they get in the game. Neither of those two teams threw the ball much against them but hopefully we can change that.”
Wednesday night Coaches Quick Hits
Mike Riley compares Louisville game to Super Bowl: "It's hard for me to believe that anybody from inside our place would ever think of this as a trap game. This is our Super Bowl. We really have to play our best every week."
Texas Tech football launched a new website: Check out MaskedRaider.com
Cutcliffe preparing for Alabama: "Somebody asked me the other day, said fans just want to keep it respectable. Well I understand that mentality. I don't fault them for thinking like that, but we can't think that way.”
"I don't like to lose. But losing and having someone whip your rear end are at times different. If someone's capable of whipping you, then they're gonna have to take it from you. What we still do, and it's my responsibility – I don't like giving anybody anything. I haven't gotten anywhere in life doing that, and I don't expect our squad to do that."
Gus Malzahn explains slower tempo: "We did go slower. There were a couple factors: We were on the road, we've got a new quarterback. I wanted to make sure our communication was good. We wanted to be smart and to do whatever gave us the best chance to win the game."
"We're going to do what we do. We still want to play fast and score points. I think one of the things that is really good with this offense is the flexibility in the offense is there. It doesn't matter what pace we have to go at.”
Tuberville on Texas Tech’s white helmets vs. New Mexico: “We have mannequins we put all the uniforms on. They had one of them with all white. I said, ‘You know, that looks pretty good.’ Players liked it. When you’re on the road, traditional white looks nice, I think. To me, if you look at all the teams across the country, the tradition is white. We’re a black helmet team. That might be the only time we do it this year.”
Dantonio not pleased with Spartans’ perimeter tackling: "We did not tackle as well this week on the perimeter. I saw some missed tackles. I saw some big hits and they ran through those."
Urban Meyer talks about stopping Tennessee run game: “We’re looking at some big personnel … We’re going to have some big people on the field because I think they’re real clear with what they want to do to you. They want to give the ball to that great back and pound it. They got a real big offensive line, so we have to be able to spend a lot of time on that this week in practice.”
Skip Holtz likes 1 lone kick-off returner: "You're flirting with the sidelines. You may get more squibs and pooches and those type of things, which I look at as a field-position win for our kickoff return team. We play the game not by return yards but by field position."
Steele has interesting way of describing Auburn's offense
Clemson defensive coordinator Kevin Steele had an interesting way of describing Auburn’s offensive scheme under Gus Malzahn.
Steele said, “It reminds me of Canada where they have 12 men. Rich Rodriguez was like that in a lot of ways, had a very fast tempo.”
But don’t hype up the Malzahn’s tempo too much to Clemson’s second-year defensive coordinator. Steele said, "Hey guys … it is what it is. You’ll make a big deal out of it anyway, but … there's 11 men on both sides, the officials will spot the ball.”
“When they get in place, it's going to go. Yes, it is fast and yes you have to think and get lined up in a hurry, but it's still human beings having to get lined up. They’ve got to make a call, they’ve got to get lined up. It's not like they’ve got some magical power or something where it's a vapor that's going to appear all of a sudden and they're going to snap the ball. They have to get a call and they’ve got to get lined up. That should be enough time for us to get lined up correctly and we’ve got the right system.”
Kick-off is set for 7:00 pm EST on ESPN.
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Is the Virginia Tech offense tipping plays?
Virginia Tech head coach Frank Beamer suspects that his offense is tipping plays.
In fact, Virginia Tech coaches will or already have put in calls to Boise State and James Madison to find out.
Offensive coordinator Brian Stinespring explained, "I need to do a better job of coaching. We’re in position to be more successful than we are, and you don’t need to point at this guy, that guy, this position. I need to do a better job of coaching. ... It’s my responsibility to make sure we play better and we can and we will.”
The Hokies return to action against East Carolina on Saturday. Kick-off from Lane Stadium is set for 1:30 pm EST. You can see the entire Week #3 TV Schedule right here.
Sumlin refuses to update QB's injury status: College football is not pro football
Kevin Sumlin refuses to give an update on the injury status of quarterback Case Keenum leading up to Saturday’s game at UCLA. Keenum left the UTEP game in the 3rd quarter with an undisclosed injury, some reports suggest a mild concussion.
This morning, Sumlin told 1560 The Game, “I said Sunday that I wasn’t talking about it or giving an update any other day. It’s not any different than any other policy I’ve had for any other player. We just don’t update injuries.”
“College football is not pro football. We don’t have to update injuries. It would be different if the policy since I’ve been here would have changed just for Case. It’s unfortunate that certain people here in town think we’re trying to hide something. We’re not trying to hide anything.”
Sumlin also stressed that UCLA is UCLA and they have more talented players than Houston. The third-year head coach totally brushed off the Cougars possibly overlooking the 0-2 UCLA Bruins.
“Look, you guys make a big deal out of that. You turn the tape on and are they more talented than us? Yes. They have players that we haven’t seen. They’re backs are against the wall. We are going to get their best shot. It’s still UCLA, still the home of a hundred national championships, and they got really good players and they’re at a place they are going to play as hard as they can possibly play.”
Kick-off at the Rose Bowl is set for 10:30 pm EST on FSN.
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