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The University of Mississippi Athletics
Head Coach Tommy Tuberville's Press Conference Transcript
6/21/1999 | Football
September 8, 1998
OLE MISS FOOTBALL PRESS CONFERENCE
The following is a transcript of head coach Tommy Tuberville's press conference from Tuesday, September 8.
Opening Comments
"We're very pleased with the effort of Saturday's game with Memphis. I thought the young guys that were very nervous about going into the game--there were quite a few of them--did well. We were very pleased with a lot of things that the normal fan wouldn't see--organization on the sideline, pregame, all the things we're concerned about going into a game. Then when you kick it off you're concerned about execution. All the things that we had been a little nervous about went fine.
We got great effort out of our players. We looked like we are in great shape. We only had one player who actually had any cramps at all during the hot day, which was one of the hottest afternoons I've ever participated in as a coach in football. Cory Peterson cramped just a little bit in the fourth quarter.
I was very pleased with the offensive line and the defensive line and the effort we gave. We had probably the fewest loafs--we're pretty hard on grading our players on the effort they give each play-that we've had since we've been here, and on one of the hottest days. That's a tribute to the players, coaches and strength coaches and how they worked in the off-season and during two-a-days.
We had one injury, to Walt Hill. We still don't know the extent of the injury. He had an MRI done on Monday, and we won't know anything until they read the MRI. Right now it's at least two or three weeks before he'll be back. That's the only major injury we had. Of course, we had bumps and bruises.
Individual efforts--Cory Peterson, what a great job he did at catching the football and running routes and catching punts. He just did a super job of concentration during the whole game. I thought our offensive line showed the most improvement that they've showed since we've been here, being in the first game and doing it against a very good front seven.
Romaro Miller wasn't hit that much. There were very few missed assignments. The guy who graded out the best on the offensive line was Tutan Reyes. He's a first-year starter at left tackle. Of course Romaro Miller appreciates that because he always protects his blind side. We're very pleased with the offensive line. The running backs need to get better at blocking, and we were a little disappointed with the wide receivers blocking, but I think that had to do with it being a first game. The effort was there.
Defensively, we played hard. We had a few missed assignments, but we had fewer busted plays than were expected with all the younger players that we played. We had guys who really swarmed the football and made a lot of big plays. You just can't say enough about a group of guys who play with great effort. It was a good start.
The kicking game was pretty much average other than our punter. Our punter had a 45-yard average, and that's the best average he's had since he's been punting the last 12 or 13 games. Our kickoff coverage teams and our return teams have tremendous potential. We've got guys out there now that we feel great about. I think they'll get better and better.
I'm disappointed in our field goal kicker. He missed an extra point and a field goal. Don Juneau had a pulled muscle, but we can't use that as an excuse. We'll go through this week and see how he works and see if we'll use him or Carlisle McGee or Ross Barkley.
Q: Talk about the running back situation. Do you expect to play as many as you did against Memphis?
A: We plan on playing a lot of running backs. We've feel like we've got good depth. They work well together. Joe Gunn and Deuce McAlister got most of the playing time Saturday. Tony Cannion played well. He's also an excellent blocker and knows the scheme. Charles Stackhouse played some but was limited because of lack of knowledge of the offense, but he'll get better and better and he played well on special teams. We're still waiting to see if we're going to play Toward Sanford or not. I think we'll continue to play those guys. Some will go to wide receiver and some to slot. We're going to move it around some more. We didn't run all of our offense Saturday because we were afraid of misexecution. We've got some things that we'll start using now that we're in SEC play.
Q: Talk about Romaro Miller and how he handled himself.
A: We knew Romaro had tremendous talent. He's worked really hard at being our quarterback. He made a few mistakes but not near what we thought he would have the chance to make. He made the right checks most of the time, threw to the right receiver, threw the ball up for grabs a couple of times that we weren't really happy about, but overall his performance was good. He has the ability to improve on that performance. He can get a lot better in a lot of areas, but what I recognized about him was that he was a leader in the huddle and on the sideline. The players have a lot of confidence in him, and that's what being a quarterback is all about. If he'll continue to work on those things and iron out the small problems he had with the offense, he'll get better and better. I think our whole team played about 60 to 65 percent of what they have the potential to do, and we're not near what we can be. That's the good news. The bad news is that the competition is going to get tougher and tougher and it's going to be tough to show that improvement, so we have to understand where we are and hopefully everybody improves, including Romaro. He did a good job his first game, but he has a lot more games to play.
Q: How was he physically? That was the first time he had been hit in a while. How sore is he?
A: He was fine. He only got hit four or five times. He got clothes-lined by a coach's phone cord on the sideline. That was the hardest hit he got all day, but it was a little scary when he ran out of bounds. He worked quite a bit on the hook slide in practice. We don't want him to take any more licks than he has to, but he's going to get hit. He knows that. Auburn will get after him this week; we understand that. Bill Oliver does a great job with his defense. He'll mix it up and give him different looks. We'll be disappointed if they don't. They've got good speed, better than we saw last week. It will be a different defense he'll see this week, and he'll have to play a lot better than he did last week to get near what he did on the scoreboard and with the stats.
Q: Could you talk about Auburn and what you expect from them?
A: Well, it was their first game with a new quarterback, and by reading and watching what they were doing they wanted to come out and run the ball. They played a good football team in Virginia. That wasn't a slouch team at all. It was a tough opening game for them to make those changes on offense. As we miss John Avery, they miss their quarterback from last year, Dameyune Craig. Those two guys you can't replace, so you have to have different philosophies in what you do. They ran into a steel curtain, so to speak. They'll be better this week. They have a great defense. They have a lot of speed. Their defensive backs run very well. There's really no drop-off from the linebackers they had last year. Their defensive line is basically all back. We had a tough time scoring last year, and we'll have a tough time this year. We have to eliminate mistakes, and hopefully we can make them make mistakes. It's two young offenses going against better defenses. We're better on defense than we were last year when we played them, and I think they're better on defense than when we played them last year. It'll come down to the kicking game and who executes on offense.
Q: Will Syniker Taylor play this week?
A: Syniker Taylor will play this week. He practiced last week. We just held him out because he hadn't had any contact. He had an excellent practice yesterday. He'll see some playing time, but he's still got a lot to learn. He gives us more speed at safety, and you'll see him in different situations. We'll ease him into the game.
Q: You've talked a little bit about Walt Hill. How does that affect your linebacker rotation, and what will we see?
A: Fortunately, we've got more numbers than we've ever had at linebacker--not that we've got guys who know what to do, but we've got bodies we can put in to teach. The thing we'll miss with Walt is his experience, just being on the field. He's been a player for us the past couple of years. You'll see Ronnie Heard play more this week. He had an ankle injury and didn't play much, so you'll see him in that situation. Dexter Hines will also play that side, but neither of those guys played linebacker last year here at Ole Miss. Heard has secondary experience but no linebacker experience. It'll be an experiment for us to see the best combination, but we'll just have to wait and see.
Q: Will you use Strong and Rice at the same position?
A: We've got some defenses where we put Eddie at other positions, but we didn't run them last week. We wanted him to get on the field and play with Armegis and Al. We could possibly see those defenses this week. I think with those two guys playing with each other at weak linebacker, an experienced guy with a guy who has a tremendous amount of talent, Eddie learns a lot from Al. Al had a good game. He missed a couple of tackles, but I think he was our leading tackler. Both of them will get better. I think with the six-game stretch we have starting last week with Memphis, with no open date, we'll need both of those guys to play 50 percent of the time. I think it's good experience for Eddie to learn and play behind a guy like Al who has some experience. These six games are going to take a toll and hopefully we won't have any more injuries. If we do, we'll have to make some adjustments.
Q: Did you have some players who, after you watched the film, you thought were not as aggressive as they should have been?
A: When you have so many guys who have played for the first time, especially on defense, we kind of felt our way around and we didn't tackle. We're going to be more aggressive this week. We're going to tackle better. We're going to attack the ball. We've got to do things instead of thinking, go out and play. I think that has to do with how we coached them. They're a little tentative. I didn't like the way we played at times, but it was fun to watch our defensive line play. That brings up the point that Comone Fisher was our defensive player of the week. He's really practiced well and played hard, and it showed up in the game. I was disappointed in a couple of other guys. Kevin Thomas was our special teams player of the game, and on offense Cory Peterson was our player of the game. Kevin Thomas did a good job covering kicks.
Q: What is the injury to Hill?
A: It's a knee injury. He got hit from the side by the center and turned his left knee. It's twisted, and we had an MRI done on it. He's out two to three weeks definitely but could possibly be longer than that, depending on what the MRI says. It's the same knee he had surgery on a year or so ago.
Q: Before the season, you beat the drum about ticket sales and challenged the Ole Miss people. How do you think they responded?
A: I thought it was great. We had a record crowd. It was great to see. We went into a stadium that now looks like a major college football stadium. In the past, we had to defend it, so to speak, but we made those improvements. I'm very proud of the Ole Miss fans coming out and being a part of the first time we played in the new expansion. I understand there's 2,000 or 3,000 tickets left for this game, but I think those will be sold. I think we will have the biggest crowd to watch an Ole Miss game in Oxford come this week, and of course we are looking forward to the Auburn fans. They always come to the game. They are a group that travels well, and we look forward to them coming over and being a part of this game also.
Q: Watching Auburn Thursday night, did it surprise you how much they struggled?
A: Well, not really, because they played a good football team. Virginia is very good on defense and has a lot of players back. They run very well and have strong linebackers. When you're playing with a new quarterback, you sometimes tend to be a little more conservative as we were planning to, but they (Memphis) put so many people on the line of scrimmage sometimes they forced us to throw the ball. You never know what's going to happen with a young team. They're playing with some young offensive linemen and a new quarterback and a running back that played very little last year and a new fullback. Anything can happen when you're trying to execute. Offense is very tough. You can play better on defense with younger guys, but having younger guys on offense is pretty difficult. They'll play better this week. I'm sure they'll make some changes. They want to run the football, but just like everybody else when they force you to throw it, you have to throw it.
Q: How about the kicking situation? Will Carlisle McGee continue to kick off, or will Ross Barkley kick off?
A: We're going to look at it again this week. Carlisle McGee will have a chance to earn it back, but every week we'll have kind of a contest. Our kickoff guy last week was Carlisle McGee at the beginning of the game. He was decent but didn't do great. Then we tried a freshman, Ross Barkley, who kicked one in the end zone and another one to about the two-yard line. We're just looking for a more consistent kicker. We'll make changes all during the year. Carlisle could do the field goals this week because we didn't do very well in that area. We're still not settled on a lot of situations. We'll go into this game and there will be some more experiments. We'll see how we can get the best guys in the best positions and win games.
Q: In the post-game interviews, Romaro Miller was saying he was surprised he wasn't nervous before the game. Do you think he'll feel differently this week with the SEC opener, or does he just not get nervous before games?
A: Oh, he gets nervous. I know last year he got nervous several times. It's just a different way he handles himself. I think he'll get nervous. If he didn't get nervous last week with their front seven--Memphis had a very good front seven--it was the first time he ever stepped out onto the field. He will feel a little different this week, playing an SEC game against a team we know what they have defensively because we played them last year. We know what Bill Oliver can do. He'll change it around and mix it up. He'll try to give him different looks. He has to believe in his teammates. He can't do it all on his own. We'll help him out a little bit coaching-wise. We can give him things we know he can't check out of and make sure we run it. He did a good job of changing plays at the line of scrimmage last week and getting us in the right situations. If he was nervous, he didn't really show it. I've got a feeling he's a little more nervous than he's letting on.
Q: How much better is your defensive line now than when you first got here?
A: That was one of our question marks we've had since we've been here. We haven't been very good. We've had to move people around. We've got a long ways to go, but we have more guys who fit into our defense now than in the past. We have more speed. What counts more than anything else is our depth. The guy who has picked it up the most has been Comone Fisher. I think adding Keydrick Clancy and Tyler Williams to our defense has given us a little more bulk inside with speed and athletic ability. I was pleased with our defensive end play last week to a point. We still have to make more plays on the outside than what we did. Overall, the biggest difference is that we have guys returning, and I feel good about eight or nine guys on our defensive front that we can put in and be competitive.
Q: Could you talk a little about dedicating the field to Dr. Jerry Hollingsworth?
A: He has meant so much to our program since we've been here. He's donated so much money, and he's put his heart into this athletic program. Because of him, we've been able to progress and not stay status quo. That's the reason we named the field after him, and it couldn't be named after a better guy because he's a symbol of Ole Miss athletics and Ole Miss football.
