What Bryan Harsin said to the media about Penn State, previewing Missouri
Head coach Bryan Harsin seemed a little defensive in Monday afternoon's press conference previewing Auburn's matchup with Missouri.
Things are not looking good for the Tigers following a 41-12 blowout to Penn State at home.
Here's everything Harsin had to say about both the Penn State loss and the Missouri Tigers.
Opening Statement...
“First, I want to congratulate Anders Carlson for being named to the AFCA Good Works Team. Congratulations on that.”
“We're on to Missouri this week. I thought the guys did a good job on Sunday. The energy, the focus was where it needed to be, to come out there and make some corrections and get on to the next opponent. To flush the last game and get ready for Missouri. Missouri is a very good team. They are 2-1. I know some of the coaches on the staff. I have relationships with Eli Drinkwitz, Bush Hamden, and Blake Baker, who all worked for me at one point. Blake was the defensive coordinator at Miami for Manny Diaz, so there's some connections there. They are all really good coaches, great people, and I know a few other support staff as well. I know they're going to be prepared, well coached, and ready to play. It's an 11 a.m. game. We're going to come in and work on that throughout the week, to just be ready to go early in the morning. We will show up Saturday, wake up, eat, put our suits on, Tiger Walk, and then away we go.”
“Overall, watching them you see a lot of things on the offensive side. They're creative. They have a bunch of different formations. They move guys around and try to create matchups, so there's creativity on that side of the ball. Defensively, no different. They play hard, still trying to win their matchups in one-on-one situations. They bring pressure, but they do play hard. On special teams, they have their better players out there and those guys give themselves a chance to make some plays. Overall, they're just a very quality football team. I don't know exactly where they're going to be in their prep. Our focus really comes to us and what we have to do. You have to make sure you focus on this week, and we'll do that. The guys are excited to get back to work on Tuesday. Practice will be a big one for us, just to get a majority of our game plan in there. We are focused on what we have to do this week to be a better football team and play against the good ones. The goal is to be one of them.”
On establishing run game early...
“We want to run football, but every game is different. You guys don't sit in the meetings and look at the game plan and what they're trying to do. There's really very little understanding of what (Penn State’s) defense was trying to get done as well. So, that dictates the game. We can run into nine or 10 guys sometimes when we need to. That's why we put together game plans. You have your openers, and you have your plays you want to hit in the first half. That's exactly what we tried to do. If we execute some of those plays, it will look at lot different at the end of the day.”
On Missouri freshman wide receiver Luther Burden III...
“You try to do it all for that guy, mix it up, play man coverage, and at some point, someone has to match up on him. I think that's the one thing that's a challenge for us. You have to match up on the guy sometimes. You have to cover one-on-one, and you can only get into zone so often. It is a mixture of defenses too. That's one of the things. There is one of the players on their side of the ball that we have to try to slow down. That is just one guy and they've got others that they can utilize too. They have a lot with the personnel and that's football. That is really what it comes down to. You have to be able to go against everybody that you're facing, and you have to be able to execute your assignments. We're really at that stage where we have to execute and do our job. But he's a good player. We have to know where he's at when they try give him the football. We've seen that they've done a good job with that. They will find creative ways to put the ball in his hands and when they do, we have to be in position to surround him and make plays on the ball.”
On the lack of execution from the team on Saturday...
“It is not necessarily the mentality of the team. There were mess ups, and there were things that we didn't do correctly. That's the execution piece. That's the part I talk about that execution is the key. If you have to be in a gap, you're in the gap. If you have to cover a man, you cover the man. If you have to run the right route, you run the right route. And that does not have anything to do with mentality. That's simply executing the job you're supposed to do. There are 11 guys who all have an assignment. Mentally, it's really nothing to do with ‘rah rah’ and things like that. All that stuff is there. The urgency, the energy, things like that. That happens in practice, that is all there, speeches and all that stuff. That's not going to change the fact that the guy can run the wrong route. It's not going to change the fact that the guy's in the wrong gap. It is pretty matter of fact, and that's what I shared with the team, that football is pretty matter of fact. You have 11 guys out there. You have assignments. You have to do your job. When you don't do that, and somebody exposes you on that, then things happen. Then you wonder why a big play happens or they rip off a big run or we don't have somebody in the flat when a quarterback is rolling out. That wasn't designed that way, so if we execute what's designed, we have a better shot of executing our plays and they're going to work better and at least give ourselves a chance. To me, that's really what it is. It's about execution, and not so much about mentality and all those things that create the drama. It's really just a matter of fact; run the route, be in the gap and do your job. That's really what it comes down to. That's the message I try to send to our players, and I keep it very simple from that standpoint. Why do we want to make it bigger than what it really is? If we do it all right, there's emotion that comes with that when you're executing what you're supposed to do. Then you get a play with that energy and emotion that makes you a good player, but you have to be able to do your job first.”
On changes with the offensive line...
“We will look at practice and we will let guys compete. I think that's the beauty of it too, that guys are still competing. This is not a set team. There are a few teams that are set that I've seen that are pretty good, but they have guys that want to play, guys that want to compete. We didn't play up to our standard or what I thought we were capable of doing, so some of that was us and some of that was Penn State. Sometimes you get in a one-on-one matchup and just get whooped. That is a fundamental correction that you have to make. Is it a scheme correction, or is it just a pure fundamental physical correction? Those are things that we assessed, and it's a little bit of both, so that's what you work on in practice. You're going to go out there and you're going to work on a scheme or you’re going to go out there and punch the bag, and really just getting better at the one-on-one situations. It's a combination of all things and we've identified what we'll work on this week, and we will let guys compete on the offensive line and get the best five out there.”
On what the team has done well the past three games...
“There's a lot of things that we've done well that I've seen. And, again, you guys get to see a very small portion of what we do. You see the game, which is the most important thing, right? That's at the end of the week. That's the test and you guys get to watch the test. All the prep and all the things that we've been doing, I think there's some really good things that we've done. I think there's still a long way to go and it just comes down to what we focused on. I think that is the biggest thing, and where our focus goes. What's important, what matters to us. This has to continue to be something that we address, but guys have gotten better in those areas. We're still just not there yet to raise that standard where we need to be, and we need to put in the work each and every day until Saturday so that we don't have the mistakes that we make. It matters on Tuesday. Tuesday matters for Saturday, but I think a lot of guys have handled that well. I think some guys are still working through it, but we have to get the rest of the team there. It's nine guys doing their part and two are not, and because of that, those two might become a point of attack guys, and then you're wondering why something happened. We weren't in the right spot or did not do what we needed to do, or we have to approach it better too. As coaches, if we're doing it right and it's wrong, we must fix it as coaches. I think guys really showed that on Sunday. Players don't hang on to this stuff as long as we do. They have practice. They have individual conditioning. They have to get on to what's next. I thought they did that and there was urgency. They were moving around, and I think there was a sense of, ‘you know what, that wasn't good enough.’ I can handle that. I can handle somebody when we make a mistake. If you come back and you want to work and you want to improve and you don't want that to happen again, if your attitude shows that, I'm good with that. If it doesn't matter, I'm not okay with that.”
On the health of the quarterbacks…
“They’re good. They weren’t the only two, on either side of the ball. There are guys laying out. I mean it is football, but guys get up. Those guys are good, and they’re feeling good going into this week.”
On evaluating the quarterbacks when trailing and in pass mode…
“It doesn’t make it difficult to assess. The situation is difficult, but you watch the plays, watch how they execute them, watch the operation. You can evaluate that. Sometimes you get into the last final few minutes of the game, and you try to do some things that may be crazy to try and get back into it and that’s hard. You’re trying to make plays, and we still had time if you think about it. At halftime it was 14-6, so that is something we learn from. We’re onto Missouri, and we are taking that information from this game. We’ve applied it, we're onto the next thing, and we’ll learn from it. If we get into those same situations, we will hopefully be better in some of those moments when we get back into those situations again.”
On categorizing Saturday's game vs. Missouri as a must-win…
“I would categorize every Saturday as a must-win. I don’t really have an answer for you there. Anytime you ask me that from this point on, yes. It is a must win. That is why we do what we do. I don’t think there’s a game I’ve ever told anybody, ‘Hey guys, we lose this one we’ll be alright. We’ll be on to the next one.’ I know what you’re asking, but every single game is a must-win. That’s what you do. It’s things like that. I know what the answer is and what’s hard is the guys in this room sometimes they hear that too. It’s always that way. That should be the mindset.”
On who the starting quarterback might be…
“Like I said, we’ll let guys compete this week. It's Monday. We haven't decided yet what we're going to do. Through the week of practice, it will be decided. But we'll let guys compete, and we’ll put the best guys out there on Saturday to go play.”
On the defensive line’s performance vs. Penn State…
“No, I’m not pleased with that result. No sacks. Teams get the ball out and you want to put pressure on the quarterback and you want to hit the quarterback. You want to get to them. I think we have guys that should be able to do that. That’s going to create hopefully some opportunities for us to create some negative plays, and maybe get the offense behind the chain. So, no I don’t think there’s anything in that question right there that I am happy with whatsoever. I don’t think the defense is happy. I don’t think anyone on the D-line is happy, or any linebacker that blitz. I don’t think there is anybody out there that’s like ‘Yeah, we came out with no sacks, we’re good.’ So, that’s part of it. But it’s one thing to want to and one thing to get it done. That’s really what it comes down to. We want to do these things well. Then we got to find a way to make it happen. If that’s coaching scheme, player, whatever, that’s part of the execution. If we’re coming after a guy, we have to get them.”
On Zach Calzada’s health...
“Do you know something I don't? He’s competing like everybody else. Every single week those guys get opportunities, and we try to play the best players. Again, that’s what happens from Sunday through Friday.”
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