COACH TRESSEL: We've had two opportunities to play in our stadium and came away with two wins and maybe more importantly a lot about who we are and what we've got to do to become better and some experience for some guys that haven't been in the game a whole lot, and so we're excited about moving forward. And we did have some good performances in the ball game, I think 12 or 13 of the defensive guys graded winning performance and three or four of the offensive guys did the same.
The special teams Player of the Week was A. J. Trapasso. A. J.'s first punt wasn't a great one, had good placement, so forth, good hang time, and then it bounced backwards, unlike their first couple punts that seemed to bounce just right. But after that, he averaged over 46 yards and netted over 44 yards and really, that's going to be a critical component of this football team, if we can have an excellent punt unit, because as the battles get tougher, the field position becomes even more important and A. J. Trapasso will be an important part of this along with the snapper and protectors and all the rest, but he was the special units Player of the Week.
The defensive Player of the Week was James Laurinaitis for the second week in a row. I think he had 11 tackles, unassisted and four assists. He had a tackle for loss and a quarterback sack and really continues to be a good leader of this defense and continues to work hard on his game and study the game and has a lot of goals in mind as to how good he would like his defense to become and how good he would like to be as a contributor.
The Player of the Week on offense was Jimmy Cordle and Jimmy was just in his second game as a center and his second game happened to be against a front that he had to make a lot of decisions and he did a good job of making those decisions, plus he had a nose man on him the entire game which puts a little additional strain on a center and really Coach Bollman thought he made excellent progress and was the offensive player of the game.
The Jim Parker offensive lineman of the game was tight end Jake Ballard. Jake continues to grow as an excellent tight end. We think he can become a great blocker and an excellent receiver as well. And the way that he's playing, it gives us an opportunity at times to have two tight ends in the game and some depth in our one tight end situations and Jake Ballard continues to get better and better.
The attack force Player of the Week was Doug Worthington. Doug is a young guy that's gotten in and had a chance to continue to grow and really works hard on his technique. He has a lot of pride in how he plays the game and he had an outstanding performance, not just as our attack force player of the game but he also won the Jack Tatum hit of the week as voted by the team. There were four nominations and he was the landslide victor in the applause meter for the Jack Tatum hit of the week and did an excellent job there.
We continue to have great work from our guys that don't get to play on Saturdays, those guys that work those special units, and I marvel sometimes at how much time and study they give to the opponents and Donnie Evege was the discount unit special player of the week. He's a young guy that's going to be a very, very good player. He's tuned in, studies it, all he does is study the team. Brian Rolle was the defensive scout team player of the week, he's a full-speed guy all the time, loves the game of football, whether he's running down the kickoff or going to block a punt or playing on the scout team or playing defense, he does it fast and he enjoys it and he's going to be an exciting member of our football team. And then the scout offensive player was J. D. Larson, tight end from out in California, and just a good, young guy that gives a lot of effort, and those three guys were the work horses on those special teams, and we'll continue to get great scout team play because of the character of our young guys and they do a great job.
Everyone in our building knows that it's time to turn it up a notch. You have to go on the road. You get to go on the road. If you want to prepare yourselves for the Big Ten and the environments you face in the Big Ten, then there's no better place to go than Husky Stadium. Many say that it's louder than, perhaps, anyplace in the Big Ten. It's an unusual makeup in that about 70% of the seats are inside the 20s and you have that overhang and it creates kind of a megaphone thing that everyone talks about as being loud and that's exciting, because our guys enjoy those loud environments, they enjoy playing in Ohio Stadium. We don't ever count on hearing when we're at home, so we're not going to count on hearing while we're on the road. I think our guys enjoy great challenges like that. They also have a great team to go along with that great environment. Anyone that knows Ty Willingham knows what he's all about, and knew when he went out to Washington that it was going to be a methodical, incremental growth in that program. He has great character. He's going to demand that from his players. He's coached at a lot of great places. He's got an outstanding staff led by Randy Hart, one of our graduates, who's been there now, I think, getting close to 20 years, does a great job with that D line, so it's not a surprise to me that they've gotten better and better and better. In fact, if you really study last year's films, they had every opportunity to win three or four of those PAC-10 that they lost to Cal in over time, lost to SC by four or five points, the Oregon game was a tight one, they went on the road to win the last one at Washington State, which was a difficult thing to do. People talked about the difficulty of their early season schedule, traveling coast to coast to play out at Syracuse, they handled that well and won decisively, coming back to play Boise who had won 15 in a row or so, and they handled that one really more decisively than the score indicated, and the thing that's obvious about Washington is they have great maturity. I think they have right around 15 starters or part-time starters who are seniors. I think seven or eight of which are fifth-year seniors, so they've been there and they have a passion to bring Husky football back to its proud tradition, and they've worked to do so and they're playing with that in mind and playing very, very well, and you can tell on their defensive side, they've seen everything that's been out there. They don't get ruffled. Boise's attack, they just kept under control and held them to 10 points there. Offensively they've created a whole new world with the speed of the quarterback. He does a great job throwing the football. I don't know anyone to be misled by the fact that he simply is a guy that can fly around the field, he's a guy in my mind that can throw the football well. He's got excellent command for a young guy. You can see he knows exactly what they're planning to do. Very quick release. Added dimension that he runs it extremely well, got great running backs with him, O line that's veterans, receivers who are big and strong, the one guy, number 3 is like 6-3, 240 and caught a post route last week that two guys banged off of him and he went 58 yards. So they've got all the things in place. You can see that they've been working toward this goal and I think it's exactly the type of situation that our guys who came to Ohio State to compete with the best are anxious to go line up and see if we can progress and see if we can handle the environment, which will be a great challenge for us, play against a great team, which will be a great challenge, and find out more about who we are.
REPORTER: Jim, your offensive player of the week was a center. You gave an offensive lineman award this week, which you didn't give last week, yet after the game Kirk Barton was pretty upset with the way the offensive line played. After looking at the tape, which way is it? Where do you assess your offensive line right now going into this game?
COACH TRESSEL: You know I'd never go against what Kirk Barton would say, that would be foolish, but I think there was some growth in a lot of areas. It wasn't all of a sudden we went from rushing for whatever, 100 yards to 400 yards, it wasn't that, but I thought our guys, after they had a little bit of tough field position to deal with, they were on the one, we didn't handle that very well, and were on the six and didn't go down to score that time, couldn't put that long drive together, turned it over too many times, but at the end of the day, I think our guys saw some progress, our guys learned some lessons. I think we got a little bit better during that second week. And all of us know we're going to have to get a lot better to compete with the Huskies.
REPORTER: Jim, you always say and I think Paul Brown said it first, about the punt being the most important play, is that because of the enormous yardage involved only or are there other factors? And also, I think (Dick) Vermeil was the first special teams coach, is that one of the things that happened in your experience that special teams are so much more important than they used to be?
COACH TRESSEL: I think it's become aware by people that it's important. J. C. Wilce, who was a great coach here, in his book, I think it was Page 51 points out, I showed it to a couple of guys, the punt is the most important play in football, so even prior to Paul Brown, Paul might have read his book, but I think it's for two reasons. One is because the amount of yardage as you mentioned, but two is the impact if you don't do it well, if you don't protect and it's blocked for a touchdown, that is unbelievable. If you don't cover well and they return it for a touchdown, you know, the momentum that that creates, if you're just fair at your coverage and they return it 17 yards and all of a sudden they're at mid field, that's huge. So the punt makes such a difference. I think what you're seeing, the change in collegiate football with kicking from the 30 would be an interesting study to see where the drive starts have been this year compared to last year. Well, if they've been at the 32, let's say, rather than the 26, or rather than the 24 as an average, all of a sudden now if you're not punting the ball well, where do you make up that yardage that's changed? But the special teams have always been huge. I just think football has been talked about more in the last 15 years than it was in the first 100, and some of those truths now have been advertised.
REPORTER: Jim, you won the toss Saturday and took the ball, which I can't remember the last time you did that. Is that because of the new kickoff rules?
COACH TRESSEL: Well, we thought we were going to be able to catch the ball between the 5 and the 12, the averages had shown that from what we studied. We thought if we could catch it between the 5 and the 12 we could bring it out past the 30. We thought that usually if you think, well, let's line up and just kick if out of the end zone and they're on the 20, you've created the field position advantage. If you start your drive out across the 30, that you've probably created that as well, so that's why we went -- if it was a guy that lined up and kicked it out of the end zone every time, we probably wouldn't have done that.
REPORTER: You're on the verge of your 200th career win as a coach. I know you're focused on this one, but what would that mean, that milestone, if you achieved that?
COACH TRESSEL: I guess it would mean I'm old, but --
REPORTER: A lot of old guys haven't made it to that figure.
COACH TRESSEL: Well, it would mean we went out and handled a tremendous challenge, that would be probably the biggest thing that would mean, but beyond that, all the other ones meant a lot and not one more than the other, but as you say, you prefaced it with saying what's important is what we're doing now.
REPORTER: Would you say that you and Coach Willingham's style are similar in the methodical and analytical traits you mentioned he had?
COACH TRESSEL: Style. I suppose we're both not real tall. We don't get too boisterous, unless it's really necessary, and I think we believe in a lot of the same things, but your situation dictates so much of what you do, who you are on your team, what's the situation, all those kinds of things. But in my opinion, it would be a compliment if someone said, hey, you're like Coach Willingham.
REPORTER: Since you were so good about the punt, did you ever see one single punt have four penalties like your old pro team did?
COACH TRESSEL: I didn't see that one, but that fits in with the column about the punt's pretty important, because that happened right away?
REPORTER: On the first possession, yeah.
COACH TRESSEL: That's a bad start. And so that could back up your feeling that the punt's very important.
REPORTER: What did the fourth quarter do for (Chris) Beanie Wells' confidence? It looked like he was running with more authority as the game went on, it looked like he became what we expected him to become in that fourth quarter.
COACH TRESSEL: I think the more times he got to carry the ball the more patient he became. That's the most difficult thing for a guy who's missed some practice time, is so anxious to show that, you know, "I'm ready," for a guy who's been hearing about all these expectations people have for him. You lose your patience a little bit and you want it to happen now and here. So I think by getting 20 carries or thereabouts which is what we were hoping he would get and having a little bit of success, I think he saw that the patience is so critical and the great runners have patience. I remember they used to ask Earle, you know, sometimes Keith Byars looks like he's tiptoeing, and I remember he used to get so mad because he was patient. He was a very patient runner. And when he saw it, there he went. Keith was a very analytical runner, that's something I think Beanie grew into rather than just wanting to make it happen, letting it happen and following things, so I think it was very important that he had those repetitions and hopefully we can take another step as we go this week. We're not going to go all the way to the top this week, we've got to just keep going step-by-step.
REPORTER: Considering the win over Boise State, you said it was more decisive than it looked, do you think Washington is a little underrated?
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, I think they are. But ratings, at the beginning, are always based upon what your record was the year before, so as underrated as they might be, there are others who might be overrated and that's why the ratings are irrelevant until you've played a bunch of games. I think you're going to see by the end of the year that Washington is going to be a very highly rated football team.
REPORTER: Does it make it easier for you to have their attention this week going into a game like this coming off one where you had five turnovers and obviously you won, but is it -- I don't want to say do you prefer it, but is it easier to get them to understand what you want when Washington has played so well early and you guys haven't?
COACH TRESSEL: I think the fact that it's Washington helps period. I don't know that had we played a game with no turnovers it would be any harder to get the understanding of what it takes. The fact that we did have a bunch of turnovers and didn't do as well as we want, that's a little reinforcement that, hey, guess what, you're not going to do as well as you want, if these types of things happen. But the fact that we get a chance to play a PAC-10 team out at their stadium, I think in itself has everyone's attention.
REPORTER: Where did you see progress? You were talking about seeing progress offensively.
COACH TRESSEL: Just from awareness and understanding and knowing what we were trying to accomplish, and plus I think we gained more yards than we did the last time rushing, I think. I don't look at it that closely, but I think we moved it a little bit better on the ground than we did the week before, so that's why I felt there was improvement.
REPORTER: Do you expect Ray Small to play this week?
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, Ray will play.
REPORTER: What do you think will be his involvement?
COACH TRESSEL: We went into warm-ups last week saying let's get him a good workout in warm-ups and see what he looks like, and to us he looked 90 to 95%. And Darrel Hazell just really felt that another day or two rested's be at 100, and really as you watched and in practice yesterday, he looked as close to 100 as I've seen him. I expect his role to be a part of that rotation. Darrell always plays five or six guys, and definitely expect him to get in and mix it up and see how he's doing and see how that evolves.
REPORTER: What was your evaluation from week one to week two of Todd after grading the film?
COACH TRESSEL: I thought one of the things that Todd did was he handled it a little bit when it didn't go as well as he liked, and it didn't end up being a setback for him. Some guys who, Todd's not unlike Beanie, he wants to do well. Everyone wants him to do well, and everyone's talking about him trying to do well and he wants to, so if it doesn't go well, the disappointment and the distraction didn't have him go south. I thought he hung in there and was able to say, okay, here's what occurred, here's what I've learned from it, now I've got to do what needs to be done, and so of all things, you're going to have those, there are going to be points in time in this next game that you're going to have to put something that didn't go the way you wanted it aside and concentrate on what he wants to happen, so that was a good opportunity for that exercise, if you will.
REPORTER: Jim, for a young quarterback, is a trip like this a major challenge then, what you're talking about?
COACH TRESSEL: I think it is. Anytime you go away from home, they're all cheering for you when you're at home and it's loud and so forth, but it's kind of like a friendly loud and you can't communicate real well, but then you go on the road and it's not the same situation. You don't have all of the same comfort levels. But I think our guys have always enjoyed going to the great environments. It's one of the things that I think is great about coming here to school. They've gotten to go out to play at Texas, and they're getting to go out to play at Washington, and those -- plus not to mention all the Big Ten schools. Those are great experiences. I think our guys like them, but, yes, it's tough on the quarterback.
REPORTER: The coach was saying the front seven defensive guys you have were the best he's ever seen. I wonder what do you see in the defense, is this one like you've kind of had in the last couple years, that kind of caliber, do you feel like?
COACH TRESSEL: Well, the jury is still out from that standpoint, you have to do things over time. I don't think there's any question about the fact that we've got some very capable guys. Obviously when you're talking specifically about the front, you lost a significant person in Lawrence (Wilson) and hope to get him back. The guys that are stepping in there playing, they're doing it with great effort. Jim Heacock is one of the best in the business at teaching the trade. We've got some very talented guys, so they can become good, but you're not good or not good after two games. Time is what decides whether you're good. So we've got a lot of time to prove, but I think we have the ability to be very good.
REPORTER: What is it that makes a first road game so difficult? What over the next few days will you try to impart to the guys who have not made a road trip what to expect and what the challenges are?
COACH TRESSEL: I think the guys who have never made a trip is one of the challenges. It's like most things, unless you do it, you don't really know, you look at the itinerary and you hear all the things and I don't know exactly how many of the 70 guys will have not made road trips in the past with us, it will be interesting to count, but you just -- we have to have the ability -- football is about not allowing anything to distract you from the task at hand, like anything else is about that, so we have to make sure that we're focused on the task and that we don't allow, the fact that it's a different locker room or staying in a different hotel or in a different organizational setup, because really once we get inside those stripes, it isn't any different. A little bit different noise level, can't let that distract us, so we talk about those things, now we have to be able to execute despite those things.
REPORTER: Is a lot of it that first time that something doesn't go right where you don't make it on a third and two or a penalty doesn't go your way, just how your team reacts to it?
COACH TRESSEL: I think that's the same thing home or away, I've often felt that what happens early in a football game has an impact, just like Bill (reporter) was talking about what happened early there with the punt, that has an impact on the whole game. You've got to make sure that every play is independent of one another, and that's hard to do, just like if you have a bad Monday, maybe your whole week goes bad. You can't worry about it, today's Tuesday. And now this is the second play, you know, so that's something that you work on.
REPORTER: Jim at UCLA when you went out there, did you leave on a Thursday?
COACH TRESSEL: Yes.
REPORTER: What was the rationale going an extra day early?
COACH TRESSEL: Well, because we weren't in school, just like we're not in school now, we just thought it would be a good experience, not many of our guys had been to Southern California at that time, we wanted them to experience a little bit of that. We happened to have through Dick Schafrath through Jimmy Brown set up a trip to the trip to the program in the Los Angeles county prison. We just wanted them to experience a little bit of southern California, it was the weekend after 9/11, and so it was a sensitive time. I remember the looks on the faces of everyone getting ready to leave. But really the big thing was we weren't in school and we'd been here in camp since August 1st or whatever and it was a good opportunity to get going. So we'll do the same thing, we'll get out and Thursday afternoon fly and let the guys experience some of the great northwest on Friday, because I don't know how many of guys have ever been to Seattle.
REPORTER: Is jet lag any concern at all? I mean, you're going to be playing at 9:00 a.m. your body time -- I mean, 12:00, I'm sorry.
COACH TRESSEL: It will be 3:30 our body time, which is exactly when we practice. Isn't the game at 12:30? 3:30, right when we practice, should be perfect. Should have that advantage.
REPORTER: Are you doing anything out there, Jim? Do you have any special things planned before the team.
COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, but I'm not sure what it is.
REPORTER: You touched on locker a little bit and what they do offensively, is it anything like you related Akron's defense was like South Carolina's a few years ago, Washington, it seems like what they do is roll him out a little bit.
COACH TRESSEL: They do some of their running game a little bit like Texas did with the shotgun, like we had Northwestern style with him in the gun, he's under center a significant amount, a lot of things like you'd see us line up in. Again, I think because they're pretty veteran, you can see that they can handle conceptually a decent amount. I'm sure that one of the things that they're focusing hard on is what is it that we can focus with the young quarterback, because everyone else around them has done it all. So you'll see a pretty multiple situation from them.
REPORTER: Jim, when you guys recruited Cameron Heyward, what do you think it was that sold him on Ohio State and did you think you guys were going to get him or how tough was that?
COACH TRESSEL: I thought Luke Fickell did a great job creating a relationship, recruiting is a lot about relationship. Jim Heacock and he really hit it off. His folks were from up in Pittsburgh, so there wasn't a regionality and I just think he liked our guys. He met our players. Your players are your greatest recruiters. Coaches can take a bow for recruiting, but when the respective players meet your players, the questions they ask themselves is, would I enjoy being a part of this group, because they know they're not going to hang out with me. And would I like to be a part of this group. And I think our players had a good relationship with him.
REPORTER: Jim, you recruited Doug Worthington, he looked like physically the next great defensive end. How impressed have you been with his transition to defensive tackle and just talk about him a little bit.
COACH TRESSEL: Doug, I think, plays with excellent leverage, and I think he's tough for you to stay on him. He gets rid of blockers, very, very disciplined, he's a guy -- what you love about Doug is he's willing to do whatever the team needs and who says he can't go out and do some end for us at times, and he's just going to continually improve. He's going to be a very, very good player. In fact you'll get to talk to him in the next three minutes.
REPORTER: It seems like (Steve) Rehring and Bryant Browning have rotated, do you expect that to continue this week?
COACH TRESSEL: You want to get eight or nine guys ready to go. I don't know that we did quite as much as we'd like last week, but I would expect "Bolls" (Jim Bollman) to mix and match a little bit just because it's all about the long haul, and you can't expect a guy to just jump in there in the sixth game if you haven't given him a little seasoning. So I'm sure it's that way in all our positions. The defense rotates naturally. The linebackers, we've been rotating probably more than most people in the country. In the secondary, we haven't probably located quite as much, it's been similar to the old line, but we rotate a lot of running backs, a lot of receivers, tight ends. We've rotated three long snappers, that's unusual, but we're trying to get as good as we can get and we think we've got some guys that deserve it.
REPORTER: There's been some discussion by some of the Washington players in the preseason that they've fallen off the map nationally, they're not considered a top 25 team as they were for year after year after year, that they consider perhaps this game might be like a break-through for them, does this add a little more import to this that they've obviously taken notice of what it would mean to them to beat Ohio State?
COACH TRESSEL: I think there's no question that every time we go into a ball game, whether it's a conference game, a nonconference game, an intra sectional game, we always get everyone's full attention, and I think it's just one of those things that is real about being at Ohio State and our guys are aware of that, need to be aware of that, knowing that that's what you signed up for. Lori (reporter), I'm going to get Lori last, Todd, because I've got to get these guys rolling.
REPORTER: Considering what you said about building for the long haul, is this another week where the intention going in is to get Rob Schoenhoft some snaps at quarterback?
COACH TRESSEL: That would be a good thing if we could do that, and I think the plans as we go into it are to do that. It's just Tuesday, so we don't have the practice evaluation or for the three most important days, but our plan is going into the game. Again, Robby needs to be in Husky Stadium where he can't hear himself think and he needs to experience that as well.
