Head Coach Doug Marrone Press Conference Transcript (Aug. 10, 2009)
2009 Syracuse Football Media Day
Carrier Dome – Syracuse, N.Y.
Opening Statement
"Welcome everyone. Glad everyone is back here today to cover our program. I have a great sense of appreciation for history and a lot of things about where I've started and about my career. Yesterday I got up quite early and went down to Cortland State to watch the New York Jets practice. It was kind of funny, as I was sitting there I started saying to myself, this was my first college job here at Cortland State. Here I am at Cortland State watching the Jets, my first professional job in the NFL. And this afternoon, I'm getting ready to drive back to Syracuse where I went to college, and it's my first head coaching job. It was a tremendous day to look back and think about how important it is what we're planning to do, how important it is for us to put a good product on this football field, one that we can all be proud of.
“To talk about a sense of our football team – meaning our community, our alumni, our letterwinners, surrounding areas in our state – how important it is for us to rally behind this football team right now. The sense of responsibility is tremendous. I feel very confident in the staff, from our trainers to our weight coaches to our assistant coaches. I'm excited about being here today, about starting. It's a long period of time to not play football or be able to coach or be able to interact with your players from a standpoint of football from spring football to now, so it's an exciting time.
“We appreciate the work of the staff in the Carrier Dome. Here we are, and obviously with the weather last night and again today, a chance for poor weather again, they do a great job getting the field ready. One of the things that we'll talk about to our players is the Carrier Dome. I feel fortunate that I played here. I know the advantage of playing in the Carrier Dome and it's one that we'll preach to our players. We'd like to get at least five to maybe eight practices, depending on the weather, here. That will create an advantage for our football team, especially early on. People have always said, 'What do you feel about having eight home games?' Well, I feel great about that, but I feel that in a sense the advantage we will have is playing in this fine facility, which I think Pat Campbell and Pete Sala do a tremendous job of keeping up with. I'm excited about opening up here against Minnesota. I think we'll be able to use that as a big advantage.
“Here we are and just to start off, I've always told everyone I'd be upfront and honest and today the team will be missing three players who are no longer a part of our roster – Zary Stewart, Romale Tucker and Dan Collier. I always say I don't comment on people who aren't with the team, but there are many different reasons for people who are not with our football team anymore. Other than that, we're waiting to hear from the (NCAA) Clearinghouse on (freshman) Rishard Anderson. We don't have direct communication with the Clearinghouse, that's usually between the parents and the NCAA. They've called back to the school today and they've asked for more information, so we're in the process of that. I'll keep everyone up-to-date with Rishard. Other than that, our players are ready to go. We're excited."
On the concern about the attention surround (transfer quarterback) Greg Paulus in the first weeks:
"I'm not concerned. I think our players are mature enough to understand that this is a unique situation. I think our players understand that this will be covered by more than just our local media. It will be covered from a national stage. We saw that at Greg's press conference when he announced what school he was going to, we saw it at BIG EAST Media Day, and I think our players understand that. They still know that at the end of the day, the best player has to play. Competition is a great thing. It is just like I've talked to the players about throughout my time here as the head coach – the competition is great. We put the players in the position where they can separate themselves so we can see who the starters are. Very rarely as a coach do you sit up here and you say, 'He's a starter, he's second-team.' It's very simple. When he's the first string, he's best player. Our players are excited about that. I think they're mature enough to understand the situation and to handle the situation.”
On whether he's been happy to put his own touch on the program:
"It's funny, I get this question a lot, 'What have you learned? Everything going according to plan?' This job has been in my heart for such a long time. I've been preparing myself for such a long time for this job that I've basically gone through every single day of what I was going to do to prepare myself for it, so I don't know if I've ever stopped to ask someone, 'What do you think?' I just know that this is the right way and that every decision I make is for the program, for the University. I never look back. I feel very comfortable sitting here today. I tell people, 'The only thing I wasn't ready for was the Notre Dame halftime speech (at the men’s basketball game).' That's the only thing in my mind I really hadn't gone over or something I had expected to do, but everything else, I feel very comfortable. I'm excited about coaching football. I'm excited about being on the field. It's going right now according to plan. I know there will be setbacks along the way, but there have been setbacks along the way my whole entire life, so we'll just sit back and we'll go full scale ahead as we attack those situations and everyone will be aware of them."
On what type of progression he hopes to see from (transfer quarterback) Greg Paulus:
"I get asked this question quite a bit every day. Friday is the first time we actually put pads on. I'm just as excited as anyone to go out and see, speaking about Greg specifically, 'Hey, is he ready to compete for the position?' I might say Tuesday when I talk to the press, 'You know what, Greg went out there today and he's going to be able to compete for the position.' And that's what I'm hoping to say. Then after that it's going to take awhile before everything starts going as far as the competition at that position. Just like I tell everyone else, there's a lot of competition at some other positions on our football team that is important to us being successful. Whether it's more important than a quarterback position, probably not, because of the quarterback position, but is it important for us to win games? Absolutely. I'm excited about it. I've talked to the players a lot about the roster pre-Northwestern last year, the roster the last game of the year, Cincinnati, the roster pre-spring football, the roster post-spring depth chart, and the roster in the pre-season. Then we will look at this roster for Minnesota. My point is that the roster always changes, at every level of football I've ever been– whether it's from injuries or whatever it may be. In between those periods of time gives the players the ability to create opportunity. They may say, 'Hey, give me another look,' or create the sense of 'This is my job and no one's taking it.' There are a lot of things that go on there that you have to go on the field and prove on an everyday basis. I'm excited about this football team and I'm excited to see the team that we have that shows up and takes this field when we play Minnesota. And we're going to find that out in the next couple of days."
On how important it is to have (senior defensive tackle) Arthur Jones cleared to play:
"I think he'll be important because he's a proven playmaker. People a lot of times will say, 'Coach, he runs this, he's this fast, he's this strong.' I look at football as people who are football players that make plays. Arthur Jones has made plays in the past. Have I watched Arthur make those plays in person? No, I haven't, but I've seen enough on film to say the way he moves his body, the way he creates things is something that I'm excited to see. He is an important part of the defense. Is it important for him to be back here? Yes, from a standpoint of making plays, and from a standpoint of leadership. I'm excited for him to get back on the field because I think it will take him time to get back into playing shape or playing mode. I think it takes awhile to get back into it."
On the differences and similarities between professional and college football:
"I think for me, personally, and I can't talk about anyone else, I go through the sense of responsibility that I have. Not only just as the head football coach at Syracuse, but the sense of responsibility I have for the people in the community, the sense of responsibility I have toward the sport of football knowing that I'm big on life skills and developing our players from a personal standpoint first before I develop the athlete. I think this game has so many intangibles that create situations for you later in life that you can learn from and really maybe separate yourself from the rest of the working class. Every day I remind myself about how important the decisions that I make for the players on this team and what I ask them to do are to make them better football players and to help make them tremendous students and leaders in our community. It's hard because a lot of times in coaching you like to make quick decisions. You have to remember why you make decisions – for the benefit of Syracuse University, the community, and what we do. I take that personally. I always have and as you learn more about me, I get very emotional when I talk about the game of football and what it should mean to people. It means more than just winning and losing. I understand I'll be judged by that, but to me, it's more about winning and losing games."
On whether he calls on his experiences at SU to help him:
"Sure. The worst thing you can do is have tremendous resources around you and not tap into it. I've been fortunate to have Coach (Dick) Mac (MacPherson). I can honestly sit here today and say Coach Mac and I have a much better relationship now than we did when I was a player and he was the coach. It's worked out well. And I do rely on him. I say to him, 'Coach, when I played I didn't really like this, but you did this and later on it helped me out so much, what was your thought behind that? What were you thinking about there?' I have the ability to ask a lot of questions now that I can get answered, when I couldn’t ask those questions when I was a student. So, it's a tremendous asset to have someone like Coach Mac around. It is tremendous to be around a lot of the players who I played with and to be around a lot of the past players – the players who came after me. To see the correlation within the program from Coach Schwartzwalder to Coach Mac to Coach Pasqualoni and the relationship between the different types of programs that were run here during times when they've been successful is one of the things that I've been studying quite a bit."
On making a decision on (transfer quarterback Greg) Paulus and a starting quarterback:
"Again, I think it starts for me when the clock starts on Friday. Now, are we doing anything now before Friday? Absolutely. But in my mind, we're not playing football. Are we doing skill work to help us prepare to be better football players? Yes, but we're not in full pads, we're not in high pressure situations. To an extent, it's still a controlled atmosphere for us. Like I tell the players, as fast as people can separate themselves from each other and we can make an educated decision, we will. Obviously, there's going to get a point later on, which we don't want to get to, whether it's 10 days, two weeks, 17 days prior to the first game, where you need to make a decision so you can start working on the concepts that you need to work on to become successful as a football team. The faster that we do that with all of our players, not only the quarterback, the better football team and the better chance we have of making less mistakes and executing on high level and also having more in the game plan."
On the pressure of being a first-year head coach attempting to turn a program around:
"I put a lot of pressure on myself. I owe so much to this community. This is different to me than anywhere I've been. I have said this many times. I've seen what the sport of football can do to a community, I've seen what the sport of football can do to the surrounding communities, how it can pick people up, put a smile on people’s faces. I realize that and how I get that point across to this team is what I've been working on. From a standpoint of what we need to do to win, well we've already started that process from a standpoint of whatever you want to ask – recruiting, type of players we're bringing in, type of scheme we're putting in, trying to put our players in a better situation – we've addressed all those issues. I do feel more pressure than I did anywhere else I've been. I've always put a lot of pressure on myself as an assistant coach. I've always worked with guys who've done the same thing, putting a lot of pressure on themselves, but to say that this is the same amount of pressure as before in all my other jobs, it's not. It's not because I'm the head coach, it's because of where I am. I'm back where I started, I'm back where I've always wanted to be. I'm back in the place that I could never do enough for in return what it's done for me."
On whether it'll be good for (sophomore quarterback) Ryan Nassib to have (transfer quarterback) Greg Paulus around:
"I've said it before, I think it's good for our whole football team to have Greg here. Greg Paulus, and I am saying the same thing I said at media day, he's someone you have to meet and you guys will have a chance to meet him today. I don't know if people would ask me that many questions about Greg if they had a chance to meet him. I say that about Greg, but there are a lot of players on our team like that. From Greg's standpoint, he has competed at the highest level, he's a two-time (CoSIDA) Academic All-American, he's been through this process before and he's a highly competitive kid. I think that all of our players learn from Greg Paulus the same way when I picked the staff I picked – a veteran staff of guys who have been successful. I plan to learn a lot from them. You learn from people who have been successful. I feel very good, not just for Ryan, or Charley Loeb, or even Cam [Dantley], but also the other players on our team."
On how the feeling has changed now that the season opener is approaching:
"It's always serious. I don't mean that in a bad way. It's always serious to me. We meet every day, we talk about every player, and we discuss everything. I know that when you take over, when you're in the sport of football, there are not many opportunities. You have 15 practices during the spring, we have 28 coming. That's not a lot for a new system, new coaches, and new players. Every minute of the day is planned. Everything is well planned out, from camera angles, to how we're moving drills, time management, how efficient we can be, every point of everything we do is critical to us being successful. To say, 'We can take a breath right now,' you can't. That's why it's important for us to be able to continue to push our players, push ourselves as coaches, and to realize there is no margin for error. We don't have that opportunity, we have to go out and be the best we can be every time. We have to learn every day. We have to compete every day. If you g out there one day and you don't compete, then you lost a day. We can't afford to lose any days. If anything, we need a whole lot more."
On whether he wants to use one running back or if he will use more than one:
"I don't want to lock myself into saying that. I think that if one of those players really separates himself from the rest of the group, I would (say it). I see three competitive players coming from the spring who have done a tremendous job. They're very competitive among each other and they feed off each other. They have different styles, and at the end of the day, if we have to use three, I don't have a problem using three. If we just have to just use two, we'll use two. If we have to put the onus on one, we'll use one. If you look at my background, we've always had two or three backs in the backfield who we've used as a change of pace. For what we do from the standpoint of being multiple, that helps us. If we have the real deal in one guy who is so much better than everyone else, then, yes, we'll play one."
On how (sophomore running back) Averin Collier is different than the other backs (Delone Carter and Antwon Bailey):
"All of them can run with the football and have good vision. Collier does a nice job. He has very good vision, he has a very good feel for the holes and he can kind of feel his way into it. He keeps his feet low to the ground, he has good forward lean so can always gain positive yardage. If someone said today without going back out in the preseason, 'What's his strength?' He's a pretty darn good inside zone runner."
On whether the quarterback is always number one priority:
"It's always the one that gets the most publicity. The reason why is you build your offense around what can that person do? That'll judge a lot of the other decisions that you'll make. I'm not going to lie, that's what it is."
