Greg Schiano Season Wrap-up Press Conference Quotes
Dec 06 | Football
Opening Statement:
“I’m not going to lie to you, I am not happy about having out season ending wrap-up on Dec. 5. It has been a while since that has been the case, but I am looking forward to getting our winning program back on the winning track. As I started the year, I knew we had an inexperienced team in some key spots but we would be a much better team in November than in September and I said that to you. There is no way to predict all the things that happened to this football team. I thought we would be a much better team because I thought we had very good inexperienced players that would get better with time and coaching and I thought we had very good coaching. Unfortunately there were some things that came down the pipe that everyone is aware of that sidetracked that a little bit. It gives me a great opportunity to evaluate everything in this program. I do it everywhere, but I am humane like everyone else. When you have a 4-8 season and you are not going to a bowl game, you certainly look at things with even more scrutiny and I will do that. It starts with me and that process has started at seven o’clock this morning. I will meet with every coach, every player and every person in this program. One thing we do have is a little bit of time on our hands. I will use all the information I gather to make some very tough decisions on where we go and I say they are tough; they are only tough because it is going to take time and effort. Once I recognize and analyze and come up with decisions for what’s best for this program then we will move in that direction. Like I said, get a program that is built on a rock foundation and get it back into winning ways. I never want associated with Rutgers football, whether it is players, coaches, media, alums, boosters, anybody to except a season like this. Certainly I will never accept a season like this. It is an aberration, it is a one-time thing; this program will be back and better than ever. That is what we need to be, better than ever, because we came here with a goal to be the very best and that is exactly what we are going to be. We have made steps along the way and we need to continue those steps. This is a small step back, but as I said once before, sometimes you have to take a small step back to take two or three steps forward.”
What can Rutgers fans expect as far as changes? How are you going to evaluate that?
“I am going to evaluate that, statistically it is right there on paper. One of the things you need to look at, when you have changes like we did in the personnel, I have to look… is it players, is it coaching, is it a combination. Generally it is a combination but there will be no knee-jerk reactions. I think people can rest-assured and know that everything I do is to make this program the best it can be and that is what I will do once we make the final determinations, but not before. There is not going to be anything done out of panic. There is no panic. We know what we are doing. We built this thing. As I have said before, in modern day college football, Rutgers had two back-to-back winning seasons. I think it was 7-4 and 6-5. We just went to five straight bowl games. This program is built and it is built on the right things… the things that will allow it to last. I said that when I took the job… it may take a little longer to build but it will be built to last and I believe it is. I know it is. It doesn’t mean that we don’t have adjustments to make; that is for sure.”
What about Kirk [Ciarrocca] and Kyle [Flood] are they part of the evaluation?
“Everybody is part of the evaluation. First though, it starts with Greg [Schiano] and then we work right through.”
Is it too early to get a sense of what direction you might go or what you may fix?
“I can’t tell you exactly. I know what we want to be. We want to be a physical offense that scores points and we have done that in the past and we will do that again… a physical offense that scores points. Now, we didn’t do a particularly good job at either one of those this year so I have to evaluate why. That is what you can expect. What does that look like… you can do that in a lot of different ways… you can do that with one back, two back, three back or no back, but you better be physical and you better score points. That’s what I am set out to do offensively. Defensively, we have had a great run on defense that really came sputtering from midseason on. We have to examine what we are doing. I am confident that the framework of what we are doing is what we want to do. Do we have to tweak it a little bit, we may have to tweak it a little bit, but that is every year. You have to make sure that it fits the personnel that we have in the program. I am excited about the personnel we have defensively… young kids that are going to be playing football for us. We have some really fine athletes and some bigger guys on the way that are going to allow us to do some different things. Again, I don’t see wholesale changes, I see tweaks.”
When you talk about physical play on offense, is it recruiting players, coaching philosophy, what is it?
“Like I said, it is players, it is coaches, it is scheme, it is all those things. It is an offseason program that puts us in position to do that. There was some things, that when you look at us from a strength standpoint, we got overpowered at times, Jay Butler, there is no better one in the country than Jay Butler and our strength program. That thing is as good as there is in America. We need to get our guys in there and we need to get stronger, but playing strength and weight room strength aren’t always the same. There is a lot of things that go into playing strength, the bar doesn’t always hit back. We need to compete. This whole program… recruit and develop…. Recruit the right players for Rutgers and develop them. Part of the development process is competition. Athletics is the greatest single parallel to life in the competition. Life is competitive and if you are not ready to compete, it will run you over. That is what this program has been built on from day one. No one’s job is safe, everybody has to compete. That is the way it has been built and that is the way it will continue and I think that is healthy. I think it brings the best to the top.”
Is it safe to say this offense is going to look dramatically different next year?
“I didn’t say that. No, I don’t think it is safe to say that. Not yet, I don’t think we are at that point where I can sit here and tell you this is what it is going to look like. I can tell you what its goals are… to be physical and score points.”
How much can people realistically expect the offensive line to improve, given the troubles this year and the fact that the best lineman is going to be graduating?
“I think a lot. I think the position we are talking about is the slowest position to develop in football. I think that is universally known. You have a guy that moved over from defense, what eight months ago maybe, not even eight months ago in Andre Civil. He played the whole game yesterday. Is he a world beater… not yet but he has got skills. He is talented, he is strong. I look at him as a promising guy. I look at some other guys, I think Desmond Stapleton, as a senior will have this year of experience under his belt and then he will have another year in the weight room. Can he play like a senior… I hope so. There is an area. Desmond Wynn, there is a guy who really up until this point has missed both spring practices with injuries. He is a very talented guy but now can he really go play like a senior next year. The young guys that we have coming though, when you look at a guy like Antwan Lowery… strong, athletic, all the things he needs to be. He just has only been at the position for less than a year. You need those guys to grown in those positions. I wished that it happened… you know the Anthony Davis’ of the world are very rare in college football. They don’t come in and are usually ready to go. They all want to, but it is a position where you have to develop not only strength but technique. That is probably the least technique position in high school football. If you are a big guy that gets recruited in Division I football, you can usually overpower the completion in high school, generally. When you get to this level and you can no longer do that, it is about technique and strength. Those are the things that I think take young guys a little bit longer to progress. I do like our young talent. A guy like David Osei, who has been in the background for two years… you can recruit a better prospect than David Osei. I think he has got all the things, now will be play… that is yet to be determined that is what young guys, they develop. If he can have the kind of spring and offseason that we need him to have, he certainly has the ability. These guys that we have recruited that are in the pipeline right now, I think they are going to be very good lineman. I think we have a great offensive line coach. I think he is the finest teacher that I have been around in the position. The same coach was number one in sacks allowed and number two in sacks allowed not too long ago. I don’t think he forgot how to coach. Kyle Flood is an excellent offensive line coach. Maybe we had a little gap in guys that are ready to play at the level that we expect but I think that will come.”
Do you think you have to re-recruit Tom Savage to get him to stay?
“I don’t have to re-recruit him, no. Tom knows everything we are about. Tom is a very talented quarterback and a great young man. Is he in or is he out, I can answer that for you, only Tom can answer that for you. I think what happens is we sit down and we talk. The thing that he knows and the thing that every player in our program knows is that you have to compete at Rutgers. That is what we are built on. Tom will have the opportunity to compete this spring if he decides to stay. I hope he stays, I want him to stay, everybody in our program wants him to stay but at the end of the day, that is Tom’s decision as it was his decision to come here or not to. That is every guy’s decision. You can’t go wherever you want when you leave here, part of that is my decision. Tom Savage I hope will be part of Rutgers football and come back and compete. We have two very talented quarterbacks right now… Tom Savage and Chas Dodd. I just love to see them compete. The best guy will play and the second best will be second.”
Do you think the way the offense evolved and changed it wasn’t beneficial to Tom’s skill set?
“No, I don’t think the offense was much different. He won nine games in that offense last year. I think the offense was very similar to a year ago. I don’t think that is the case, no.”
How much do you think Eric [LeGrand’s] situation might have weighed on the team this year, do you think it had an effect?
“Of course it had an effect, but I refuse to… whether it is the injuries or Eric’s situation… that’s life. That is where we find ourselves. Did it have an impact on our team, absolutely. We need to do a better job of being able to work through those adversities, maybe you couldn’t have, I don’t know. I am not sure about that. What I know is we are standing here on December fifth. I also know we have very talented players that I am very confident in. We have great coaches and a program that has the foundation. It is not like we have to go re-invent the wheel. We know how do to this. I am excited about the opportunity that lays ahead and I am excited about getting back to playing winning football.”
What did you see from the guys on the scout team offensive line and how they have evolved?
“I am going to reframe from the scout team guys right now. I think we have some really talented guys. I think, especially some skill guys on offense and a bunch of guys on defense that we redshirted. Rather than put the heat on them, we will see how they do in the spring. Right now, I would like to comment on the guys that did compete for playing time. I think you can rest assured there are some really talented players. There is some guys that I kick myself in the rear end, we probably should’ve played them. They could’ve helped us down the last four or five games. You make decisions at a certain point in the season and once you make them, there is no turning back.”
Do you want to share those player’s?
“You look at what happened with the injury situation at wide receiver… [J.T.] Tartacoff couldn’t play the other day because he got bumped in practice with a little bit of a head injury. If we had decided to play [Brandon] Coleman six or eight weeks ago, could he have helped us, yeah I think he could’ve helped us. He is a very talented guy… [Jawaun] Wynn… one or the other. We chose to go with Tartacoff. He was the most prepared at the time and that was the freshman we were going to go with in addition to obviously Jeremy [Deering]. You make decisions… how can you predict the things that are going to happen. It is very hard. How am I going to predict that Mohamed Sanu, who was our leading earner last year, our leading producer, wouldn’t play at full strength from the third game on. That is hard to predict.”
What are your thoughts on the play calling this year and do you plan to get more involved?
“I am not to that yet. I evaluate the play calling every week as you do I am sure. As we go over the tape, it is not only the execution on the film it is also ‘why did we call this.’ I will tell you one thing, when I ask Kirk Ciarrocca that question he always has a reason why he called plays. Whether I agree with him all the time… but that is human nature no two people are going to agree on the reason to call plays. What we try to do is game plan situations during the week. I am always in there saying I want this one to be one and this one to be two, no. As a head coach, I give him a vision of what I want. I trust those guys to make decisions, how to stack the calls in order. Do, I look it over, sure. Unless I have a strong aversion to it, I am going to say you guys studied it a heck of a lot more than I did let’s go with it. I think that is important. As a head coach, you have to believe and have faith in your people.”
How handcuffed was Kirk [Ciarrocca] calling plays with the offensive line?
“Absolutely. Just the fact that we had to keep the back in as much as we did. That may not seem important to the casual observer but what the back does when he releases is it clears out an underneath defender. Not necessarily you want to throw it to the back but they have to respect him so if it is a zone defensive football team, when you release a back, that zone defender widens. That opens up a lot of windows. But if you can’t protect it, the windows don’t matter. It certainly had an impact. That’s why when I talk about these young lineman that I think are going to be strong enough are going to be talented enough to be able to hang in there and protect… you need protect for three and a half to four seconds. When you can’t do that, it is very hard to have a pass game.”
What do you think happened to a defense that started six seniors?
“People want to talk about the emotional and mental impact that Eric’s injury had on the football team, but let’s leave all that aside and just talk about he was really a co-starter. He was playing in as many plays or more than Charlie [Noonan] each game. We lose a guy in the middle that game and we also lose Manny [Abreu] so those are two big losses to hit your defense right away. I think that affected us, I know it did. We go out to Pittsburgh and Ka’Lial [Glaud] played his best but it wasn’t as good as Manny was going to play. All of the sudden a young Mike Larrow is forced in and we didn’t get him in there soon enough probably so we got Charlie and Scotty [Noonan] playing tired. Those are two things that happened. I think the cumulative effect of not only playing tired in a given game but in our preparation. I think it is a defense that ran out of gas a little bit and a defense that made too many mistakes. We didn’t execute with the precision that we did even earlier in the year, unfortunately. That’s you sit there and you say as a coach, I get frustrated because I know we can do it and I am more involved with the defense than the offense so I put a lot of the blame on myself on that. I am responsible for everything, but I spend more time with the defense and am very disappointed in the way we performed, coached, played the whole deal, but as I said I am not sitting there thinking I don’t know what to do, I know exactly what to do. We have to get back to the nuts and bolts of doing it. We consciously didn’t get away from that, it just kind of evolved that way. I think when you lose your edge as a defense… our defense isn’t 6-5, 300 across the front. Our defense is based on movement, precision and really swarm, just out-hustling and out-hitting people. We kind of lost our edge a little bit and found it hard to get back. I thought the kids played extremely hard yesterday, just not precise enough.”
Do you expect Casey Turner to be back and to be the answer to the running game?
“I don’t know, Casey is going through some things. Again, I can’t tell you if Casey is going to be back or not, that is going to be up to Casey. He has had a tough, tough year. He has had surgeries than complications from surgeries. He is certainly a very promising prospect coming out of high school, tried to get back and just couldn’t. There were complications from surgery, we still are not exactly sure what it is giving him this trouble. When you come to college and that is all you have is adversity from day one I think it can really get you a little off the path. I am hoping that he can re-group and keep it together. I certainly would like for Casey to stay but again that is going to be an individual decision as it is for every guy on the team.”
Is Casey still having issues with the injury to his groin?
“He is still having issues with it, yes”
What do you think could be the answer to the conventional running game?
“As we move forward, there will be answers. I definitely think physical play adds to your running game. That is one thing that I can tell you. I think when we run the football effectively around here we win. We will do that again, there is no doubt.”
Is pass rushing something you want to work on?
“I think our sack production went down without a doubt, but our quarterback hits and our quarterback hurries did not go down. We were getting around them. I think people got rid of the ball against us in the fear of the blitz. I didn’t think we covered as well as we have. I really didn’t think that. A lot of those sacks occur as a result of coverage. You make the guy pat the ball one extra time and he is down. I think it is a combined effort, we didn’t cover as well, we weren’t as precise in the backend and when you lose George Johnson, now Jonathan Freeny is an every down player. Those kinds of things I think affect your overall pass rush as well. Without a doubt we weren’t as good in the production of sacks alone. No doubt.”
Can it be more frustrating when you have this kind of year in a season when the league is so wide open and you beat the team that is going to the BCS?
“We had so many issues this year… did I ever think of it, yeah I thought of it, we had our best year in my tenure and it was the league’s best year. Did I ever think of it, sure but that is the way it is. There will be another year. We have the pieces in place there and we will get it back going in that direction. We will have our chances. I am inpatient, do I wish it would’ve happened by now, yes but we will get there. As long as the commitment is what it is, we will get it, there is no doubt. I believe that commitment is going to stay from our coaches, from our players I believe that. It is a matter of time.”
Was it harder to deal with the losing season you had this year after several winning seasons then year’s past when you first took over the program?
“It is always hard. I am not used to it and I will never accept losing. The day I do, I need to get out of this thing. I could tell you that 50 percent of the teams lose each week, I don’t want to be that 50 percent ever. When I do it is very frustrating with the amount of work you put into it but you know what the guy on the other side puts a lot of work into it too. He gets paid, they have scholarships. We need to do a better job. That is what I come away from this with, just a focus to get this thing back on the winning track and we will.”
How does not going to a bowl game change your recruiting time-wise?
“Number one, it really hurts the development of your young players. You are looking at 10-15 practices that we miss out on. What we will do is we will have our surgeries a month earlier so usual surgeries that were down first or second week in January will now be done this week or next. Recruiting-wise you don’t have bowl practice, but the bowl practice is actually ok. I actually like bowl practice because they got to watch you practice during their recruiting visit. The preparation and the game planning will certainly be less hectic, but I am going to fill that time in with program evaluation which I feel really needs to be done to an even larger extent. You never let adversity go to waste. I believe that. We are going to use this opportunity to exam from the way we hand out equipment to the way we call plays.”
You talk about a lot of things conspiring against you this year, is talent in your mind an issue?
“I don’t think conspiring is a good word. I think adversity that came down our path. Conspiring has kind of like a hidden negative connotation. Things just happened. I think there was adversity. Is talent a question, do we have better talent than the people we play, I wouldn’t say that but are we better at some and are we better at some, I think our league is very balanced. You look at the way we played before some of our key guys were not able to play, they were close ball games. We didn’t win them, but what did we lose four games by 11 points total. I think this league is very, very competitive. As you look at the champion of our league that is going to the BCS, we beat them. I think it is a very, very competitive league. There is not a lot of margin for error. Are we well above everybody else, no, or we below, no. I think we are kind of on the same mix.”
Regardless of what happens with Tom [Savage] are you confident in Chas [Dodd] as your future at quarterback?
“Like I have said, we have two great quarterbacks in our program right now and I believe in both of them. Deductively, you know that I do, yeah.”
Will [Joe] Martinek and [Mohamed] Sanu need surgeries?
“There is going to be a bunch of surgeries, I don’t know if they will be your six or eight moth rehab surgeries. Joe I know has got some things planned and Mohamed does. There is some others as well that in the next two weeks, depending on their academic schedule, in the next two weeks will be getting stuff done.”
Is there a timetable on making any changes in your program?
“There really isn’t. I just want to make sure that whatever we do, when we do it, it is the best thing. Like I said, there is no panic. I want to make sure we do the best thing for the program. I literally am going to talk to every player and every coach. I have talked to a few coaches already today, starting early this morning and I will talk to some more tonight. I will talk to some of the players this week. I will be out recruiting so in between that, it will be a hectic time. I have not traditionally met with every player at this time of year, there just hasn’t been time. It will give me an opportunity to sit down with each guy and get some feedback. Usually, they can give you the best feedback.”
Are you going to hit the road recruiting right away?
“Yes, I am actually out tomorrow morning and then I will be in and out all week. I will be really in and out until they make us stay home again and then we will pick it up again in January. We will have a big recruiting weekend on the 10th, next Friday which I am really looking forward to getting to. We are going to have some really good guys on campus.”
Closing Statement
“It has been a pleasure working with you again this year and I am looking forward to the spring.”
