News bullets and other important items:

• Brandon Moore and Stephen Hopkins still have unclear injury status. They may or may not play Saturday.
• The staff is wearing the Chuckstrong t-shirts on the way to the stadium. 

Brady Hoke

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Opening remarks:

“Uh, thanks for coming. Good practice yesterday. Liked how we’re preparing right now. I think the intensity level hopefully will be the same today from an offensive standpoint. I think talking to Al, they got a lot of good work done yesterday. Defensively, I’d say the same thing. I think both coordinators were pleased. I mean, not happy, but pleased with the preparation that we have.”

Were the practices as good as they were last week?

“Uh, I think it was comparable. I think coming off the bye week and not playing for a week, I think you always have a little more intensity it seems like. I think they’re comparable.”

Al Borges

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“How’s it goin’?”

All right.

“How we doin’?”

Great.

“What’s happenin'?”

Not much.

“Where’s your glasses?”

I don’t wear them every day. Yours look good though.

“You’re losing the effect. I’ve gone to all glasses. People started to think I was dumb. Now they just think I’m dumb with glasses.

"All right, you guys. Let’s have it.”

Were you surprised by how Purdue defended you?

“They played a little more 3-4 than I thought. They had -- it’s not like we didn’t prepare for it, but there was a little more 30 front than we thought, but the back end was kind of as we anticipated. There’s always a little nuance to handle Denard, the kind that guys borrow from other teams they watch on tape they think they might have had some success playing Denard, so they take pieces of that, and if they think it fits their team.”

Did you feel like they were trying to take away Fitz?

“Oh no doubt. If you watch the tape, they were following Fitz all over the field. Fitz had very good running opportunities on 17 carries. I went over the whole tape. It was the good news and the bad news though. We pulled a couple zone reads when they were all over Fitz, and Denard was wide open down field. It wasn’t like it was bad. It just didn’t make Fitz’s numbers look very good, but he helped us win the game, you know, kind of like a guy that has a sacrifice bunt. Helps you win the game. That was kind of the way they decided to defend us.”

Greg Mattison

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[THE SCENE: A member of the media (who shall remain anonymous) talks about being involved in a recent car accident. Enter Greg Mattison]

“… You really didn’t go get an ambulance to take you to the hospital, did you? You really didn’t do that, did you? Come on.”

I hurt my back and neck.

“Come on ...”

I hurt my back and neck! It’s not my fault they rear-ended me.

“Come oooon. I mean, just think of the force these guys out on the field that get hit with. Sheez.”

Hey, they might get hit with the same force, but … they’re expecting it!

[Sigh.] “What do we have? What do we got?”

You had to be pleased with the effort last Saturday, huh.

“Yeah I was pleased with the effort. We’ve stressed so much about you’ve got to run to the football, you’ve got to play as hard as you can on each and every snap, and when they feel, I think, that you’re sincere in having a rotation and having guys go in that game and you’re in the Big Ten, you’re playing for all of it each game. It was good to see them buy into that and play extremely hard on every play. There were plays in that game that I was very pleased, when you looked out there, it was the way I perceived Michigan defense, where you had all 11 running as hard as they could to the football. Not nine, not eight. And then when a young man had played a number of plays, then the next guy goes in and he did the same thing. Still our technique, still we’ve got a long ways to go that way. We had a couple missed assignments that you can have, but all in all the effort was very pleasing.”

Brady Hoke

News bullets and other important items:

• Kickoffs: There was one bad kick and nine missed tackles, but kicking it short and to the right was on purpose to avoid Raheem Mostert.
• Denard's wrist is fine. 
• Gallon's job as punt returner is not in danger.
• Hoke did not consider putting in Rawls earlier for Toussaint.

Televised Presser

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Opening remarks:

“Thanks for coming. Very pleased with the win. It’s great to win, obviously. I thought we set a tone early defensively and great to win on the road is what I should say because you look at this league on the road, it’s a tough place to play. I thought we set the tone with the three-and-out on the defense, and offensively, 17-play drive, almost nine minutes, really was what we needed to do. We play really good defense watching our offense out there on the field. That’s a good deal. I think we practiced well for the week. We prepared well. Liked how our guys came to work every day, and we need to continue to do that. We know we’re in a championship game every Saturday, so our mentality and attitude needs to reflect that by our actions in practice. We had a good day yesterday, and hopefully we can continue that.”

News bullets and other important items:

• Man it is awfully humid outside.
• UPDATE: Iss gon' rain.

Brady Hoke

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Opening remarks:

“Thanks for coming out. We had a really, really good practice yesterday. Really liked the speed, tempo that we practiced with. Liked the execution from an offense and defensive standpoint. When you look at mistakes or missed assignments or whatever, had very minimal of those. Competed really well with each other, and I thought it was a good day. Now we have to come back and have a [good] back-to-back [practice].”

Taylor Lewan said you had an unusually high number of mistakes (23) on offense. What do you attribute that to?

“Yeah. And I don’t know if it was quite 23. There was a number of them from different guys and different plays. Some of that is you look at how much you’re doing. Maybe you have too much in, maybe they don’t undersatnd it well enough, but for a lot of it, we’re playing at night, you get a little extra time with walkthroughs. I think it always comes down to your focus on every play. When you don’t do that you’re not going to play as well.”

Al Borges

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“What’s up?”

MGo: Not much. How are you?

“Wonderful.”

MGo: How’s kindergarten?

“Kindergarten is wonderful. Every day is just a new experience. It’s awesome.”

Think you’re going to pass?

“I already passed.”

Word of the day?

“I don’t know. I didn’t get one. I’ve been kind of -- no I didn’t get one. I’ll get you one next week.”

Not an easy loss to sit on for two weeks. Did you work on rebuilding Denard’s confidence over the bye?

“Yeah. I think to a degree. I don’t think his confidence is waning too much, though. The biggest thing about that situation is getting back to some of the basics of reading the defense and making good decisions and things like that. I think that’s really the biggest factor. A couple footwork issues that hadn’t shown up until that game too much. … The good thing about two weeks is you get a chance to really evaluate everything you’re doing, and that’s what we’ve kind of done is look at how we’ve played, you know, on the road particularly because we haven’t played well on the road, but overall just see what the structure of the offense is and get back to sending a message and knowing that we’ve got to play better in those scenarios.”

Is there a common thread with the road games and offensive inefficiency?

“I don’t know. Not any more than any place else I’ve been, I guess. It’s harder to play on the road. It’s always an issue, but you can’t always use that as an excuse because good teams win on the road. I mean the biggest issue, we had some breakdowns, but we just can’t turn the ball over. That’s the biggest -- you hear it every week and it sounds like coach speak but it’s so true. When you turn the ball over as many times we turned the ball over you have no chance. We were fortunate it was as close as it was.”