Head Coach Doug Marrone Press Conference Transcript (Sept. 21, 2009)
Opening Statement:
"Coming back and looking at the Northwestern game after watching the tape, obviously I thought offensively we played with great effort. We played with our best effort for four quarters that we've had all year. The main thing that you look at is that we really produced the most explosive plays offensively. We had six runs over 12 yards, we had seven passes over 16 yards for a total of 13 and that really, ultimately, gave us a chance to win.
"It's something we've been addressing and we had the long 40-yard run taken away from us, that hurt with our holding penalty, so it would've been 14. We talked about this prior, too – play action. We need to get more play action. I think our linemen did a nice job with play action protection, which enabled us to get the ball down the field. One of the main concerns still on offense is the third downs. We have to do a much better job converting on third downs. I thought our perimeter run game was good. We were able to get our receivers in areas where they were quite open. (Quarterback) Greg (Paulus) was able to get them the ball. We still have to work on some of the decision-making, which is going to make Greg even better as the weeks go along. I see him improving every day.
“The thing that I have a concern about as a coach, as we all do, is our ball security. Even when the ball was not laid on the ground – which was seven times, five on offense, two on defense – our ball security has to improve and we have to start with the way we're carrying it and go back to the fundamentals. Not that we ever leave the fundamentals at practice with our ball security, but now we have to put more of an emphasis on it to make sure of how we're carrying the football, whether it's outside of our body, or just flat-out putting the football on the ground. That's a major concern right now.
"Defensively, when you look at the game, I thought throughout the game we did a poor job of our operation mode. Northwestern is a fast-tempo offense. We had far too many missed assignments due to the lack of communication. We have to do a better job of echoing and communicating our calls. I thought from a standpoint of the defensive line, Jared Kimmel stepped up and played well for us as far as his production which has been greatly improved over the past couple of weeks. Arthur Jones was solid, obviously in his play, which has been consistent for us. I saw Anthony Perkins do a nice job. Our linebackers showed a lot of speed on the field. They were very productive with Derrell Smith being the most active, and then Doug Hogue. I thought they both played well and did a nice job, especially Derrell on the pressures early on. E.J. Carter was sound. He has played the most he has, so with Ryan Gillum coming back, they will give us good production out of the linebacker group.
"The secondary, at times, had a lack of communication. They (Northwestern) were able to get the ball vertically down the field and we have to do a better job. (Freshman) Shamarko Thomas is probably one of the most productive performers, as a freshman, we've had. From a productivity standpoint, he played 48 snaps and he had a 92 percent production rating, which means he was involved for 92 percent of the plays. (Junior strong safety) Max Suter played well, especially in our nickel package. Our three down, when Max gets into more of the immediate coverage, he becomes more of a factor. He made the play at the end of the game to give us a chance to win the football game. I'm extremely excited about that.
"Special teams have to do a good job of not laying the ball down on the ground, which we did twice on fair catches. We had a good plan against the rugby style punt, which we thought he would roll out further on the rugby style, but he didn't. He actually stayed in the pocket and kicked the ball high. (Freshman kicker) Ryan Lichtenstein has been tremendous for us so far. We went through a lot of issues early on with the kicking situation back and forth, but Ryan hass stepped up for us and done a tremendous job. He went out there pregame and miss a 10-yard field goal with no pressure, no one on defense. I thought Coach Casullo did a very good job of talking to Ryan about that calmly and getting him going. All of the sudden, you go into the locker room, and as coaches we sit down and say, 'Can you believe he missed a 10-yard field goal? We have to make sure we score touchdowns.' Sure enough, you're sitting there at the end of the game saying, 'Holy cow, he's going to kick the game-winning field goal' and he kicks it through the uprights. It was an interesting change of events that went on.
“We're playing a good football team in Maine. I just came off the teleconference call with the BIG EAST and they said, 'Are you worried about your team being ready for a team like Maine?' We haven't won a lot of football games here. I coached in at the time what was called the Yankee Conference. (Maine head coach) Coach Cosgrove was there and I have a tremendous amount of respect for him and his staff. They have done a tremendous job. They're always big, they're always physical, they're always well-coached, and they're always disciplined. This is a very good football team we're playing and to think that we would take them any other way, I don't see any reason we would even be in that discussion and that's what I answered on the BIG EAST call. We have our work cut out for us this week. We are looking at them right now, they are good, they're self-scouters, which means they give you a lot of difficult situations. You don't really get a beat on what they're doing. I think they do a nice job. They have two coaches on their staff who played at Syracuse University. I think their players will be ready to come in and we better be ready for a big football game. And it is a big game for us. We are 1-and-2 and we have a chance to get to 500 and that is an important point for our program."
On how he celebrated his first win:
"I saw the chancellor, I saw the athletic director, I did the press conference. I went back to the coaches' lockerroom, I changed. I looked at the sheet again of what went on. I told my family to go home because it was late. I got a ride back here to Manley. I went home and I went to bed at 12:30, one o'clock. I woke up at 4:30 and came back in, watched the game, and started getting ready. I believe this, when you win, the thing about coaching is, you can never enjoy those wins for a long period of time. I think you enjoy it for that evening and you wake up the next day and you go back to work. You endure the losses for a much longer period of time, that's what's hard about coaching. Even though I know some coaches say you have to shake it off and the next morning you get up and move onto the next opponent, I have a hard time with that. It lingers with me for a couple of days until at least Tuesday or Wednesday when I have finally shaken it off and I'm totally focused on the next opponent. I usually get too upset with myself, that's the tough part about our profession as coaches."
On whether his daughter gave him a break after Saturday's game:
"No, we had two kids sleeping over Saturday night. It's funny, I've gotten a lot of these questions. I'll be honest with you, I never thought about it. My job is a profession, it's a business. I come in and I work and I'm happy for the kids. That's who I was happy for – the people in the community, the fans that stayed, that showed up for the game, the people that are excited about our program, our recruiting situation. I'm happy that we're able to go out there and win a game and help us in recruiting. I look at more of what's going on around me than what's going on inside me. I'm happy for my wife and my family for a personal standpoint. That they're able to go out and my wife's allowed to be in a carpool line and when someone at the school asks what's going, she can be honest and answer them."
On whether or not he sets an alarm to get up on Sunday mornings:
"I usually don't wake up to it, but I set it. In other words, I wake up, and then I shut the alarm off before it goes off because I'm too nervous. I get nervous about oversleeping. Coach (MacPherson) started that. If you overslept here, you were punished.
"The first thing I do on Sunday morning is I take out the sheets of the calls that are underneath. I've already gone through the game summary sheets. I've circled some things as far as penalties and third downs and situations that happened that might have been game-changing. I make sure I know who had the penalties – I get them during the game and I write them down. The first thing I do is go through the offensive tape, then I watch the special teams tape after that, then I watch the defensive tape. Then at 7:30, Coach Shafer and I watch the defensive tape together. At 11 o'clock, Coach Casullo and I watch the special teams tape. At 12 o'clock I watch the tape with the offensive staff."
On what he was looking for on Sunday morning's tape:
"The blocked field goal. I wanted to look at that. I thought it was low and I saw some penetration. It was a low kick, and he had to kick it higher. That was the only thing that was really on my mind other than just dissecting it and making sure we're going to be a better football team on Monday than we were on Saturday. I just always want to make sure that we're always improving, including myself."
On if he can say anything about the meaning of the win to him personally:
"I've gotten this question a lot and I look at it as important for our players because it's always important to win. Where it is, on where we are as a program and everything, right now I'm on Maine. All my focus is on Maine, they're a good football team. My concern with them is the same as any other one of our opponents on our schedule."
On the injury of freshman defensive end Brandon Sharpe:
"He's going to be day-to-day now until something comes up. I've always been fair with everyone. If someone's been out, I've told you as soon as I know. Hopefully everything will clear up and he'll be fine."
On whether the offense stepped up at Saturday's game:
"I think you can say that. I think our quarterback has done a very nice job – Greg Paulus. It all comes down to him knowing exactly, from a concept standpoint, what we're looking for. Obviously on the plays that worked very well, everyone did a nice job. The line did a nice job protecting at points during the game. Greg did a nice job reading the coverage and knowing who to go to with the ball. I answered this question at the press conference. It's quite remarkable if you think about it, that someone who has played quarterback for really just seven or eight weeks and to go out and play a team that can throw the ball quite well, which means defensively they're seeing that all the time and then returning eight out of 11 starters, he went out there throwing. Someone told me it was the sixth best outing for a Syracuse quarterback. That's a lot of credit for Greg Paulus now. I always say this to our players, for me, I know exactly what scheme I want to run, I know exactly where I'm going with the football, but I'm not playing. You can put in a lot of offense, and we did cut back, and for Greg to know where to go and everything with the play and the defensives and the coverages that we're seeing, is just tremendous. That's why I keep saying that he's getting better and better every week. The better he gets, the more production we should get together with the offensive line. The dropped balls, fumbles and ball security are big."
On Paulus' ability to improvise during a broken play:
"On the one play that happened, that turn had to be deeper. It wasn't designed for them to run into each other. It's good, running out, it's always one of those things, run, run, run, run, throw the pass, all of the sudden, touchdown pass, you're like, 'Hey, great job.' That's the story. He can make plays, there's no doubt about that. We're still working on him staying in the pocket because he can make throws and complete them. So, to answer the question, yes he does make good plays and he made good decisions the other night."
On whether Greg Paulus needs to improve on anything:
"Everyone does. Every player. Decision-making. When the coverage is changing, it's just a matter of getting on the field and looking at it and knowing if there's a too-high safety if you should throw the ball higher to Mike Williams or if you take the tight end going over the middle. There are so many situations. To play that position, it's no different than the quarterbacks I've been involved with – from Drew Brees to everyone else. It's the decision-making. How you get to be a better decision-maker is not by me standing up in the classroom and going over Xs and Os, or me showing film to help you understand things a little more. It's actually about being on the field and being able to see it. To see on the field at that position – that's why I like to stand behind the quarterback at times in practice so I can see what he sees – then what you have to do is get him in that position as many times as possible and see if he looks over, and if he doesn’t like what he sees to the left, to go here – pre-snap reads. A lot of the times, when that ball is getting snapped, that coverage starts to change. To be able to make those immediate decisions, it's just repetition. He's far beyond what I think anyone could have expected in his play right now. I see him getting better and better every day. He's getting a better concept of exactly what we're doing."
On senior center Jim McKenzie and the challenges with the snaps on Saturday:
"It does throw you off from the running standpoint, from the quarterback standpoint, having to bend down and take your eyes off the coverage is a dangerous situation. Plus your footwork and what you do there from a standpoint of your running game, especially when you're running any reads with the quarterback. It's a situation that we need to keep working on. We work on it in practice every day. Every day since I've been here as coach, we've worked on snaps before practice. We're working on them after practice."
"After the first game, no disrespect, there was an article about Jim on the snaps. I always talk to Jim and say, 'There are things you just have to let go, and there are things we ask of you that are difficult.' I have snapped before, so I kind of know what he's going through and it is the same thing with long snapper Dalton Phillips. We think Ryan made a great play kicking the winning field goal, but let me tell you something, and Coach Mac knows, when you're the snapper, there's a lot of pressure on you because you have to do that. I went to Dalton and said, 'I guarantee no one's going to ask you about this, but good job, because his heart is going on the sideline, too. It's happened to me before the game. We were driving down the field and I knew we needed a field goal to win it. I'm in the huddle when I was playing, and I'm going, 'Hey, let's score this touchdown so I don't have to snap this football on this field goal.' And you end up having to do it. Your heart goes. It was a good thing for Dalton. With Jim, it's hard because there are so many different angles that you're snapping at. With someone who snaps a football to a punter and someone who punts it to a holder, that's a stationary position and those players aren't allowed to be hit. That's an easier snap. Now you take someone like Jim, who if there's no one on your head, you just have to go right or left, and the quarterback's in shotgun, that's not as difficult because you're working on one thing. When you start moving and running the football – running right, running left, and your legs and body are moving, it becomes a more difficult position to snap. We're asking a lot of him to do that and we just need to keep working with him and he'll get better."
On what winning does to change the culture:
"I think it's important in anything you do. Winning is part of it. We haven't won in a while. I talk to our players about this, and I've said it before, our lacrosse team that won the national championship, I watch that game and I know that in their minds, they knew they were going to win that game. I watch teams all the time, and I've been involved with some teams that won the national championship and we knew we were going to win every game. It didn't matter. We fell behind in games, but it wasn't a problem – we were going to win it. I've been on some teams, unfortunately, where you fall behind and you think, 'Here we go' and everyone starts getting tight. Every time you win, you learn something about yourself and you become better. It's always difficult to win, but it becomes harder and harder to lose the more you win. It becomes harder and harder to take."
