COACH TRESSEL: I thought we came out ready to go and -- oh, aboutthat? I've been
here a long time. Earle said something to me this week,he said I don't know why everybody
wants to talk about this 100 win thing,what took you so long? No, he didn't say that.
He would. But, no, it'sexciting every time you win and we've had a lot of awfully good
playershere and our coaching staff has been outstanding and a lot of those 100 wins have been
here at home and we've got great fans and so this is a place that if they let you stay long
enough, you should win 100.
REPORTER: Jim, can you talk a little bit about your defense?Obviously you had a football
team coming in here that threw the ball, fourth ranked in the country, you guys pretty much
shut them down.
COACH TRESSEL: The thing about playing against our defense isyou're going to get a little
bit less time to get rid of the ball thanyou're used to, that's one. And two is that our
secondary breaks on theball and plays you close and because they're counting on the fact
that you're going to have to throw a little bit sooner and they're very, verywell
prepared. I mean, they just -- that defensive staff and those playershave such a commitment
and they know what they're walking into each week. They knew they were walking into some great
receivers and a good quarterback and I think Indiana was a little shorthanded without that goodback
quite honestly, and they know what they're walking into next weekendwith a great power football
team and a fabulous senior quarterback. So they know what they're heading into and they just
go and they give it their best and play hard.
REPORTER: I would like to ask you about two individuals today and have you reflect on
Lee Tressel, number one, with that honor, and what he meant to you and what -- this is something,
I'm sure, he would be extremely proud of you, Jim, and secondly your quarterback set a passing
record for himself today in the stadium, over 300 yards, could you talk about your dad
and then Terrelle Pryor?
COACH TRESSEL: You know, I thought a little bit about -- we had a lot of time to think in
that second half, I was like, when's this going to be over, and I thought a little bit about the
fact that my dad came here in 1943 and chose to, after spring ball, go serve his country. And
this was always his team, you know, no matter where he coached in high school or
college, Ohio State was very special. Paul Brown was very special to him
for recruiting him here. So I did reflect on that for a minute. And it was after
those 300 some yard passing and all that, that Terrelle -- I thought Terrelle made some good
decisions. The key to the passing game is protection and I thought our guys up front did
well. I thought our blitz pick-up was good. There were two or three of those,
especially early on, where the backs and tight ends and so forth did some excellent blitz pick-ups,
and Terrelle stood in there and he's coming along. The beauty of Terrelle is that -- and
maybe it's what's difficult for him, too, is he can escape what's going on if it's not so wonderful
with his feet, and sometimes he didn't really need to, and I thought he did a lot better job of
just staying in there and saying, hey, I'm going to read this thing out and, yeah, I could escape,
but -- and the protection was such that wedidn't need a whole bunch of escapes. We had a
couple blows in there, especially that one little drive, like two in a row, but I don't know what
exactly the numbers were, 24 for 30 is pretty good. And the big one is no
interceptions, and if we can do that, we have a chance in every game.
REPORTER: Jim, Terrelle did not have a carry today. Did you come in with a game plan
to try to limit him at all in the running game and did the quad strain have any effect on him
today?
OACH TRESSEL: I think he had -- seemed like about minus 200 yards to me. Didn't we get sacked a couple, three times? Oh, no, we didn't have -- as I've said to you before, we don't do a whole bunch of designed called quarterback runs. We think that he's naturally going to get some step-ups and so forth. We didn't really have that need, the protection was good. When it broke down, it broke down such that there was nowhere to go and unfortunately we had two or three sacks there that will reflect as minus yards. But could we have? Yeah. We could have, but that's not what we thought we needed to do. We wanted to try to get it to the running backs a little bit, so I didn't have to answer all those questions Tuesday about why we don't ever give it to the running games. I wanted to get it to the tight ends a couple times so I could sidestep that one, tried to throw a screen so you didn't bring up the screen thing, so, you know.
REPORTER: Coach, I'm curious if you'd see yourself replacing that one with a two or a
three there, one milestone begets another milestone?
COACH TRESSEL: Probably not.
REPORTER: No?
COACH TRESSEL: The one on the far side, I want to replace it with a one.
REPORTER: That's as far ahead as you're thinking?
COACH TRESSEL: Right.
REPORTER: Brandon Saine didn't get a single carry today, but he was second in receiving, I
wonder if you see him being featured more as a receiver going forward?
COACH TRESSEL: We said going into the game, we were going to try to figure out more ways
to get him the ball. I don't know that we necessarily went into the game thinking he wouldn't
get any of them from a hand-off, but we didn't have that many plays. I don't know how many
total plays we ended up with, 64, and 31 of them were passes. But we think he's really
dangerous as a receiver and as a runner and that long one was an important one. I don't know
if that put us up two touchdowns or three, but that was huge.
REPORTER: Jim, I just wanted to ask about the two guys we saw come off, J.B. and Cam.
COACH TRESSEL: Cam had cramps. J.B.'s foot's been bothering him and for, like, three
years, and it was bothering him a little bit more in practice this week and we just felt like we
didn't want to get it to the point where it was going to be something that he'd be out. We
have a lot of confidence in Andrew Norwell and I can't remember exactly what the score
was when we decided to take him out, but it might have been 21, but it's just he's had a
banged-up foot.
REPORTER: Jim, did you all tell Terrelle you'd prefer him not to scramble, not to run
today, or was that ever spoken about this whole week?
COACH TRESSEL: No, we talk a lot about that decision that you have to make to allow the
routes to express themselves and hold that ball for a fraction of a second, or when you see that
crack, take off and go because he can do some damage that way. We did talk a little bit more
this week in some film session about hanging on and letting it go and letting things express
themselves because we did feel like we could protect. Now, when it totally breaks down, it's all
bets are off, but we work hard on him keeping his feet nice and tight and continuing to
progress. We know that he can gain yards running, and we want to keep being a threat in
the pass game.
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