Weekly Press Conference, Continued

FOOTBALL

Head coach Mark Richt and several football players addressed the media Tuesday during the Dawg's weekly press luncheon. They offered the following comments:

Coach Mark Richt

On the Dawg's biggest issues it needs to shore up.....

“I always make the analogy of the team being a train. You want to get that train on the track and you want to get it rolling down the track and gain momentum and energy as you go. It’s hard to get that train going from a dead start. After losing that first game, we didn’t’ get it moving it all. The second game took a lot of effort to get it rolling, and now we are getting it rolling pretty good, but I think we’ll roll a whole lot faster if we don’t have the two anchors out the back of the caboose that are stuck in the ground dragging behind us, and that is our turnover ratio is very poor and penalties have cropped up on us. If we can just cut those anchors lose, I think we will fly even better and if we just improve in those two areas, I think everything will improve.”

On shoring up the Dawg's pass defense…

“It’s always the same answer, a combination of pressure and coverage. Which comes first? What helps the other one the most? The better you cover, the longer that quarterback has to throw the ball. If you’re in zone coverage, or man for that matter, we have some man coverage where it’s still only a four-man rush. We have a couple of high-hole and a low-hole player that are playing zone, a robber-type coverage. The better you cover, the longer the quarterback has to hold the ball and it allows your pressure to get to him. We also know that if we put pressure on the quarterback he tends to throw the ball too soon or a little bit off balance, and that helps your coverage. It’s as simple as that. We have to cover better and we have to put more pressure. One area where I thought we might be putting a little more pressure on the quarterback where we really haven’t up to this point on a consistent basis is right up the middle. We need to get more from the inside push. If the quarterback does step up he’s got nowhere to be comfortable or no space and we’ve had too much of that.”

On the Dawg’s defense against the run…

“We have been stout against the run. I think some of the passing yards have to do with the fact that people haven’t had a lot of success. Coach (Steve) Spurrier and Coach (Bobby) Petrino like a balanced attack. They found more success throwing so they did throw. Is it very unusual to be able to stop the run and not pressure the passer. I wouldn’t say it’s highly unusual. There are certain body types that can maybe stuff the run better than they can get after a passer but I wouldn’t categorize our guys that way. If you looked at it from a statistical point of view, you might start drawing that conclusion. But I’ve seen Jeffrey (Owens), Geno (Atkins), Kade (Weston), DeAngelo (Tyson), I’ve seen all those guys, and even young Abry (Jones), they all have the ability to rush the passer and push the pocket. We just haven’t done it well enough on a consistent basis. So that’s definitely a big point of contention for us.”

On the Dawg’s defensive identity…

“Game one, I think they actually played an outstanding ball game. Games two and three we certainly gave up a lot more passing yardage than we thought we would. Our defense to this point has been outstanding in the red zone. Once the team has gotten into the red zone whether it’s through a drive, which doesn’t happen that much, or more with the turnovers and the kick return yardage.

“Over half the time, they force field goals instead of touchdowns, which is a huge victory. We’ve had to start playing defense on the six, on the eight, on the 23, on the 42, on the 37. Before the last game we had six times where they started the drive in field goal range; three times we forced field goals and three times they did score touchdowns. We had three turnovers in the first quarter the last ballgame. We had a wonderful stop to start the game, and we are going to get great field position, and we fumble the punt. All of a sudden they have to roll back out there and play ball again. Then we fumbled the pitch to Richard (Samuel) and all of a sudden they have to go play defense on the short field again. The pick wasn’t quite as bad, because they did have the two penalties that pushed them back, but again two more turnovers where we put our defense in a very bad spot. I would love to see what would happen if we don’t have to deal with that kind of thing. When we’ve defended the long field, we’ve defended it extremely well. Going into last game, it was a rate of 28 percent that they scored on the long drives. Any drives over 50, the only scored 28 percent of the time, and one of those drives was aided by a fake punt, which ended up being one of the drives. Of course we had a snap over the head, we had an interception for a touchdown. As a team we have not helped our defensive unit when it comes to those things. We need to do a better job of getting our field position right. I would just like to see what happened if we did that quite frankly.”

On whether the stats are an indication of how well the defense has played…

“After two games we were averaging 19 points a game that we pretty much gave to them if you take the six drives that I think one was 43 and the rest were 32 or less where the drive started, and a pick six and the snap. That was a total of 38 points that was given up in those situations. It’s a miracle with our turnover ratio that we’re 2-1 right now and undefeated in the league. You can look at it a couple of ways. You can be upset about everything, which I’m not pleased with some of those issues, but you also can say if we could just clean up things that are very correctable, who knows how good we can be? I just want solid improvement. If we just keep getting better and better and better as we go, we are going to have a chance to be pretty good.”

On Richard Samuel’s turnovers…

“I’m not too thrilled about it. I don’t know if we are ready to move him from the No. 1 position, but I would say if that kind of thing continued, we’d have to really consider whether or not he should start for us. You can’t have two a game, that’s for sure, and continue to play the kind of football you need to to win. You just have to do a better job.”

On how criticism affects the team…

“I think people don’t understand how busy we are. We are working our tails off. I would guess we are working somewhere around 80 hours a week. We are going. We are looking at the next opponent. We are getting prepared for the next game and trying to correct any mistakes that we made in this game, but we are moving forward and constantly doing that. We don’t get too caught up in that kind of thing. We are a very, very strong team. The one game that we didn’t play that great offensively is the one game we lost; we won the next two. Winning is what it’s all about. You are not going to see anyone pointing fingers. You are not going to see anyone do anything other than encourage their teammate and their fellow coach. That’s just the way we’ve been operating here for the last nine years and that’s not going to change.”

On whether Vance Cuff will play Saturday…

“He’s possible. He won’t go today. At this point, I’d say it’s possible that he plays. We’re more hopeful than not. If he can’t do anything at all tomorrow, we’d probably get a little discouraged, but Ron (Courson) feels like he is going to have a chance.”