QUOTES: Todd Graham Weekly Press Conference

Oct. 15, 2012

On the danger of playing fast paced offense against Oregon...
"Yea I think it is important we try to manage our snap count. I don't mean by our cadence of on offensive but how many snaps we play defenseively. Our goal this game is not be playing eighty plus snaps on defense. I think in the Arizona game they played sixty-one plays on defense just in the first half. I think a scenarios like that is very difficult. I think on the same hand it is very hard to manage against them. The key to the whole thing is stopping them. When they are rolling and making their first, first down every time you are going to manage a lot of snaps. That is were the challenge is, but there are ways of managing tha when we have the ball.

We have to run our offensive at the rhythm we run it at. Right now its not that fast. It was pretty fast last week. I thought we were fastest weve been, but there are ways you can manipulate that and still be a no huddle."

Best coaching I've seen first half of coll fb season---Graham (Arizona State), OBrien (Penn State) Mullen (mississippi State) #statingtruth
-- Colin Cowherd (@ESPN_Colin) October 16, 2012

On how big a part does emotion play in a game like this...
"I think the thing about the blackout, and hopefully it sells out, is that the atmosphere plays a big part of it. When Oregon is on the offense, and this is the first time that they have been on the road in this type of atmosphere. That is what is a factor, the crowd is a factor. I encourage our crowd, when they are on offense, to to try to break the windows out of the new building over there. Lets get it loud. That is hard because they are not used to operating that way. They are an experienced team, they go on a silent count, that is something that is a positive for them, but still that crowd is a major factor. We have to do our part and give the crowd an opportunity to get excited. Our guys have played really well at home and have played our best football here. We just can't let it get too emotional and operate outside of the system. Obviously our guys will be really fired up for this game, but we have to execute our plan, execute our system. It has been really interesting to me how different that is. We have played some good games on the road but none of the games on the road have even come close to how we have played at home, so I am sure hoping we continue that. This week is a little different deal. This is as good of football team as there is in the country and they have some dynamics players and we are excited for the opportunity. I think the atmosphere and it being loud and it being hot, it is just a different deal. Game day atmosphere has been unbelievable. I mean we have had recruits come to our games and say `wow.' So fill it up. Black it out and give them something to cheer about and it will be a pretty special atmosphere."

On if there was a comparable game throughout his coaching career...
"I've coached in my career against the number one team in the country and it compares when I was as the defensive coordinator West Virgin in 2002, when Miami won the national championship. We were both doing well in conference, I think we were both undefeated in conference when we played, both 6-0, and that type of big game. As a head coach though, this is one of them I am excited to coach in."

On concerns regarding the depth of the team...
"The biggest concern is that they have a lot of dynamic players. You can tell that they have been in there system a long time. They are very well coached football team, offense, defense and special teams. There is a reason why they are ranked number two-team in the country. There is a reason why they have won this conference championship for three years straight. But it doesn't do you any good to worry about that kind of stuff. What I am doing, and what we are doing every second of every day is trying to do everything we can give our guys an opportunity to be in a position to win and be successful. If you spend your time worrying about that obviously there is a lot of concerns there. We don't have a lot of depth and were we have the biggest issues is on defense. I wish I could say you cant run more than a certain amount of snaps, but the odds that we are going to play a lot more snaps than we are used to playing is going to be pretty hard for that not to happen. The key to that, and what I am spending my time focusing on is, every turnover we get -in my years of coaching -you get five less snaps. So get four turnovers, you get twenty less snaps, keep it under seventy, that's the formula to win, and that is obviously easier said than done."

On the relationship between he's defensive background and his position now...
"Yea I actually was a wide receiver/tailback in high school, but my passion was always playing defense. From the time I can remember I loved playing defense. In college my last two years I spent a lot of time had a lot of input with the coach. I had a great relationship with my defensive coordinator, and really developed a passion for that. This is one of those games just as a coach you are exhilarated because you are playing against one of the best teams in America. No one has even come close this year. They are averaging 53 points a game and 303 yards a game rushing and no one has even come close to slowing them down so that is a great challenge. I am looking forward to that challenge and I am not saying it is going to be easy but I am looking forward to it."

On defensive coaches preparation...
"Coach Norvell and I are close. Our families vacation together and we draw on napkins in restaurants in Northwest Italy, in Paris, France, all over the place. That is one of the things that might be a little bit different about our staff, is my background of being a high school coach. When I was a high school coach we didn't think in those terms, you coached offense and you coached defense. So we met with our offensive game plan and had input from guys with offensive and defensive expertise and so fourth.We do that here. This offense we have from the time in was formulated it, which was about eight or nine years ago, and we worked through it. This offense was designed with a defensive coach thinking. We are trying to attack with the defensive being coached on what to do. Today I went in and took our defensive game plan in and talked to Coach Connely and Coach Norvell and said lets run through what we are doing and the coaches pointed out areas that would be harder or that would be hard, so we have that interaction. When I was defensive coordinator, an assistant coach at Tulsa, I never really spoke to the offensive coordinator, we didn't hangout together. It is just kind of like that in some places but here it is not like that. We do a lot out of that kind of interaction and I think that is one of the things that kind of helps us."

On Oregon's away-game record and whether there is pressure to score quickly to keep the crowd in the game...
"I wouldn't generalize that. How I look at this game is that they don't have a quarterback that has gone through three years without losing on the road, this is his first year, this is his first game to play on the road. Their starting quarterback didn't play last year. So that is how we are looking at it. We are look at this year and the specifics of this year. The bottom line is that they have the most dynamic player in the country and maybe the second most dynamic player in the country on the same team, and those are the challenges. I don't listen to all that kind of stuff, were you are picked, what people say. I think through this point we've basically met expectations from my standpoint except when lost one game that I thought we should have one, but you have to play the game. It doesn't matter what everybody's perceptions or picks are. That is the great about this job, about college football, is that no matter what they say in the preseason or what the preseason picks were you have to go play the game and you find out where everybody is at. My deal is that this is a different year, different season. Their tradition helps them tremendously. Their experience helps them tremendously but obviously we want ever factor we can have and I do think the crowd, no matter how experienced you are, is a factor in the game, that is why it is so hard to win on the road and championship teams like them that is what they do. But they do have a new quarterback and he is a great athlete and great player but he hasn't been on the road and done that, so we are hoping we can do things to impact him and minimize the explosive plays. This game we have to win explosive play. We have to score points and create takeaways. That is the way I look at it. I don't try to look at every great thing they've done and try be scared to death. I'm going into this game to win it and that is our mentality. I don't mention their players by name. We show them one still and say here's there stats and the rest is how do we beat them."

On working with Arkansas State's Head Coach, Gus Malzahn...
"We spent a little bit a time talking. We actually exchanged film and stuff like that, trying to helped each other. I talked to him a bit, they played Oregon and played them in the National Championship game and then played them this year and he told me they were pretty good. He said you have to be able to obviously stop the speed. I mean we talk, I talk to Chad, Mike and Gus, talking to each other. I have certain people that we talk to that have had an opportunity to play them. Everybody says the same thing, this is as good as Oregon football team as they've had, I think."

On the similarity of the Arkansas State offense and whether they changed it up...
"He is trying to. He is in his first year. It was a very different system and he is trying to, but yes it is a similar system. But when you watch them it is going to look different., our players are different. Whether you are looking at Clemson, Arkansas State or us it is going to look different. It is the same book but it adapted to the payers so there will be some differences. They obviously all have different situations than what we are dealing with right now."

On managing the tempo of the game...
"Here is what I told Coach Norvell, we've had a lot of experience with this, playing against West Virginia last year and again we've had a lot of success doing this. The key is running the football. The number one thing I tell him is we have score. We cannot sit there and try to slow down our pace and shoot ourselves in the foot, we have to run our system. Obviously the key to making that work is running the football. How we define running the football is not necessarily is handing it to the back. There are lots of plays that we consider runs. The bottom line is that we have to sustain drives, we have to move the football and we have to score points. That is what we have to do. If you get in a situation were you are behind and start throwing the football, that is not where we want to be. We want to be in a situation where we are able to run the football. You run the football and that clock is running whether it is no huddle or not. No matter what happens you want that scenario where we have eighty plus plays and we keep them under seventy and that is a challenge. A huge challenge I don't know if they've had a game where they have had less than seventy plays in the last three years so we will see."

On Taylor running so much...
"I've talked to him about that a little bit. He is such a competitor, but he is such a tough guys so I don't really worry about it. I think there have been times when he has taken a couple of shots and I'll have to tell him to protect himself a little bit on that. There was one play on the sideline last week, where he could have run out of bound and he already had the first down, but he kept going and the guy just really hammered him so just stuff like that, but he'll learn. I don't want him to start being cautious at all. I am from a different school of thought on that. You've seen since last spring we were live, and I've always been that way. We don't do it all the time, I wont do that this fall but I want him to play in the left lane. I want him to be aggressive. I want him to play smart. Smart comes first. Some of things I am more on him about are reaching the ball out and to quit doing that. Just get what you can get and when you reach the ball out, the ball is out. That is going to be the key in the game, simple formula were we can save ourselves a lot of time. The bottom line we have to have take-ways and we have to have a 100% ball security. That is just like in any game I say the same thing evey week because that is just how it is. But this week it is even more important. We've talked a lot. Our guys are catching extra passes on the jugs machine. The difference in winning that West Virginia game and not is that we dropped four interceptions. We caught any of the four, which hit us right in the hands, we would have won that game. We cannot miss any opportunities on take-always, because every time we get a take-away we are going to get five less snaps on defense then obviously we have to do a great job winning special tams. The thing on offense is don't turn the ball over and don't try and operate outside the system. We have to be able to run the ball, move the football and we can't turn it over. That is the thing that they do. They really capitalize on mistakes. They are obviously very explosive but the difference in Oregon, I would say, is that they are as dynamic as they ever been on offense, but they are so much better defensively. Defensively they are very good, probably the best defense we will face."

On having a short fall break right before a big game...
"It has been nice. The guys have been able to watch film, us having the iPads' and all that has really impacted us too. I think our guys are studying a lot more film and I keep saying how impressed I am at how smart they are. This week has really allowed us to spend more time on film but we are not meeting with them really anymore, maybe an hour more in the course of a day. But it has been nice to have that this week."

On how Grice, Foster and Miles work on offense...
"I think our guys are really good backs. If you want to watch great running backs, this is a great game to come watch. I think the six of the best running backs in America on the same field. That is how good the running backs are. What I like about our running backs is the diversity among them. Obviously, D.J. Foster is dynamic, inside outside catching the ball. He is very dynamic. Cameron Marshall is physical, just downhill physical runner. Marion has got the speed and breakaway ability. So you have D.J. and Cam and Marion in the middle. The thing I like about all three of them is there toughness. When you take those six guys., their three running backs and our three, there can't be guys much better than those guys."