Brady Hoke

News bullets and other important things:

• Desmond Morgan and Richard Ash should return this week. Stephen Hopkins seems probable, Brennen Beyer is questionable, and Brandon Moore will be out.

Televised presser

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Opening remarks:

“Thanks for coming. It was good to win on Saturday, obviously. We have a lot that we need to keep doing better. I think we did some things better than we did a week before, but we’re still growing as a team in a lot of ways. We have to improve every week if we want to be the team that we want to be. So we just have to keep making progress from fundamentals, from techniques, everywhere across the board, do a better job up front on both sides of the ball. You’ve heard that many many times before, and you’ll probably continue to hear it. That’s where the game is played, and that’s where it starts, and for us going on the road playing a Notre Dame that’s 3-0 and has played very well -- they’ve been in tight games. They played in East Lansing well, they had a tight game with Purdue, won the football game at the end, so you look at them as a team and their front seven on defense is playing real well together. Disruptive. And offensively I think Everett Golson has done a nice job running the offense, managing it, a lot of tight ends involved, and they’re a good football team. We’re going to have our hands full, and we need to get a lot better as a football team.”

Denard Robinson and Vincent Smith

I'm so artsy.

Not to be a total buzzkill or anything, and this is totally the best way to open up a presser after a 63-13 blowout win, but can you talk about your pick six. What did you see there?

Denard: “Uh. Jeremy Jackson came open. I just threw it behind him. It was just a bad, bad throw. It was a good read, just a bad throw. I have to put my feet into it and follow through with the throw.”

On your ermahgerd touchdown, Joe Kerridge blocked for you. Did you notice that?

Denard: “Um… I mean, when you’re on the football field, everybody on the team has to be accountable. Even from the scouts and everybody. When Joey gets on the field I know he’s going to be accountable. He just told me about it. He said, ‘Man, I came in and chipped him,’ and he says [the other guy’s] mouthpiece came out, so it was pretty funny.”

With Notre Dame a week away, is this a game you needed to have?

Denard: “Yeah we needed to get a good win. Every day we need to come out and get better. When we came out today I felt like we got better but we still have some things we have to work on.”

(After the jump, more questions -- some fluffy, some confrontational, some misunderstood -- and maybe one or two interesting responses.)

News bullets and other important items:

• Frank Clark's recent hearing has no impact on his status.
• Sounds like Courtney Avery will be 100% for Saturday.
• Blake Countess's surgery has not been schedule yet.
• Richard Ash is out this week with a boo boo, but will return next week hopefully.
• Brennen Beyer is also out this week.
• Barring further injury, no additional freshmen are likely to play.

Brady Hoke

file

Opening remarks:

“It’s an important week for us as a football team as far as how we come out to practice, the improvement we need to make in all areas. We had a good intense practice yesterday. I thought we came out with the right attitude and we have to follow that up again today, obviously. Frank Clark’s situation hasn’t changed. Won’t change. The judicial system obviously, he’s paying for that, and he’s paid a very heavy price with us. He’s a teammate, and he made some bad decisions -- a bad decision that is not what we want. But he is a teammate, and he’s part of our family. So.”

Frank Clark derpy derpy derp.

“I just made a statement on it.”

How have you seen Elliott Mealer settle into his position at center?

“You know, I think Elliott is really settled in, and I think he has a presence about him in there at center. I think the one thing he wants to do a little better job with is maybe some pad level at times and keep finishing on blocks, but I think he’s really been consistent when you look at what we ask that position to do.”

If you had to challenge him on the beard, could you do that?

“No. Not even close.”

Al Borges

file

Opening remarks:

“What’s up. Did you count the bubble screens again?”

MGoRetort: You had two fakes.

“Oh those were actually laser screens.”

MGoABubbleScreenByAnyOtherName: Oh, laser screens.

“They’re different. A little different.”

Your daughter started school last week. How was that?

“It’s awesome. The teacher wants to take her home. [My daughter] is so cool, she’s great. She thinks she’s pretty cool, too. She talks a lot. She talks like four times more than my son. So she’s good at talking because she practices so much more, you know. And then I get home, she’s usually in bed, but if she’s up, she’s got so many things to tell me.”

So she takes after you.

“Yeah. A little bit. I’m going to start giving her like a word a day. ‘Condescending.’ ‘Exasperate.’ Stuff like that, you know. She’ll floor her kindergarten teacher if she throws that one in, if I can get her to say it in context. Pretty cool. What are you guys laughing about? There’s nothing wrong with that. My dad did that. My dad used to all the time give me a word a day.”

You never use those words in your press conferences.

“Oh no. Never. No. Sometimes I do. Okay.”

Did anything exasperate you Saturday?

“Uh, no, not really. Not too much. Not too much. It was -- other than not getting the ball to Fitz. We wanted to get Fitz off a little more. Obviously that didn’t work out real good, but we knew going into the game that they were going to have trouble with Denard because the speed factor in the secondary. We wanted to get our athletes out in space. He’s as athletic as anybody we have. That was an emphasis in this game, and we kind of accomplished that, so the next day what we have to do is we have to get our tailback more involved, working our tails off to devise a plan to do just that.”

Greg Mattison

file

Opening remarks:

“I guess the first thing I would say is -- happy that we got a win. You know, not pleased the amount of yards that we gave up and not pleased with the option responsibility at times. You just want everybody to know -- I’ll take the blame for that as a coordinator. One thing we always talk about with our defense is we will always have enough bullets and always have enough in our package to be able to stop anything that somebody does. You know I think for a number of reasons, we maybe didn’t have enough or enough adjustments or I didn’t adjust soon enough to take away what they were doing. As far as the players, I really am proud of them for how hard they played. That game could have been disastrous had they not played as tough as they did on a number of situations. The thing watching the tape, in the crunch time at the end of the game, I looked out there at the end of the tape, we had seven freshmen and sophomores in there at one time, right during the heat of it. But I don’t fault our players. I know there’s things they could have done better. That’s always the case. Technique-wise, if anything, I point to myself as far as not having a little bit more expansive plan going into that game.”

News bullets and other important items:

• No status change with Beyer. Knee injury. Will be out for a week. 
• Courtney Avery missed some plays late in the game due to a back problem.
• Richard Ash has a boo boo.

Brady Hoke

Televised presser

file

Opening remarks:

“It’s good to win a football game, obviously. That’s why you go out there and compete. I think when you evaluate and you see where we’re at, we’ve got to improve if we’re going to win the Big Ten Championship. We’ve got to improve at the point of attack on both sides of the ball. You’ve heard before, and that message won’t change. I think we went out with a mission offensively to get Denard very involved running the football. I thought he did a nice job of that. I think we did a nice job in the throwing game. The interception, I think Vince was fighting the umpire a little bit, but also it’s just one of those things that we have to execute that, but from that standpoint defensively, we played 98 plays. Way too much, we have to get off the field obviously, but at the same time those guys hung in there, and they hung in there when they had to at the end of the football game and made some plays. So that part of it is a very positive part of it. I think we adjusted to some things to some things they were doing, which helped in the second half. So all in all was it where we want to be? No. But at the same time, it was a good win to get.”