University Southern California Trojans
Hackett, Tollner Preview Saturday's Game
September 14, 1999 | Football
Sept. 14, 1999
USC Coach Paul Hackett - Sept. 14, 1999
"I don't know about this bye business early in the season. We did it last year. I think the difference is, we have so many young players, particularly receivers and linebackers, that I think they were able to get a whole other week of practice without zeroing in on an opponent, which I think was probably pretty good. Other than that, it slows down your momentum. You have a win, a big win, and it slows you down a bit. So I don't know, we'll have to see on Saturday."
"We're back into the groove of practicing for SDSU. Obviously we know them, we played them last year. They have virtually the same team as last year. What's most impressive is the defensive line and very strong linebacking. On the offensive side of the ball, it's a good offensive line. They've got some quarterback issues that were already addressed by Ted (Tollner, in an earlier press conference) . . . but they've got one of the best centers in the country, a guy named Mike Malano who was a preseason All-American. They have four returners in the offensive line and strong running with two guys who can do it. Damon Gourdine, I agree with Ted. You say you're not going to get involved with him because maybe he doesn't look like you're supposed to look, but he plays like you're supposed to play and I've really been impressed with him. From a kick return standpoint, he's superb. He's their No. 1 guy, he wears No. 1 and he's a concern of ours. This is not a mystery. This is a game where we finally get a chance to play at home, which is always the best thing for us. There is a lot of behind the scenes rivalry that goes on here because a lot of our guys, over the years, have played with or played against in high school a lot of the players they have. Certainly we recruit the same kind of areas and that sort of thing. San Diego has been good to USC over the years, so there's familiarity there. And it's a natural good rivalry and a strong game. After one game, it's hard to judge where you are or how you're doing. You think you have an idea about some things, but when it comes right down to it, it's just one game, so we'll have to see where Saturday takes us."
(re: reaction to Pac-10 play to this point): "You have to be very careful early in the season. Every team in the country is beginning to find out who they are and what they are. When you look at Penn State from the game against Arizona to the game against Pitt, who knows what Penn State really is. They're somewhere in between. You have to be careful that you don't go too high or too down early in the year. We were all surprised with what happened with Arizona and Penn State, clearly. A better gauge will be when we hit midstream about mid-season. I think we have a strong conference because I think we can move the ball as a conference, we can score as a conference. I also believe you win championships with defense. The better defensive teams in the conference, as things unfold, will be the teams on top. I think it's hard to put a lot of stock in the things that have happened. Now six, seven games from now, if it continues to happen, then?..The ranking that counts is the one at the end of the season. We all know that. It's flattering to be in the top 20, but it's just one game and we have a lot of football to play."
(re: linebacking play): "If you go back to a year ago, in coach Bill Young's philosophy and my philosophy of defense, when we made the move with David Gibson to put him at outside linebacker, the idea was to be a fast front seven. With David moving back, he brings a lot of speed to the strong safety position, but it opened a spot for Markus Steele. When we saw him play as a junior college player, the speed and the range he had was what really jumped out at you. Clearly, he has been a wonderful addition. Zeke Moreno's move from the outside to the inside, I don't think we thought he'd play quite as fast in the middle as he appears to be playing. That's exciting as well. His range looks to be very good. He's not a guy who seems to have much wasted movement. He moves when he is supposed to move and doesn't get fooled or out of position much. That's exciting. The SAM position over the tight end, that's the one we were the most concerned about because Sultan Abdul-Malik has been away from the position for three years. I think the last bye week was good for him. He's going to do nothing but get better every week. Last week we asked him to rush the passer the whole game because we didn't play three linebackers against Hawaii. But for the key games in the conference, you have to play three linebackers and his development will be pivotal for our linebacking corps. The addition of Troy Polamalu?what he does is bring the speed that Gibson brought to the position. Henry Wallace has great speed and is playing in the MIKE position. We're getting involved with Aaron Graham and Darryl Knight coming back with his great speed. What you have is a group that has very solid speed and will help us as David did a year ago. We play wide open offenses. Rarely do we play offenses that just run between the tackles at you and you have to have speed to counteract that."
(re: Lonnie Ford's switch from tight end to defensive end): "It's always a major issue. You play two positions in high school and when you get here, you kind of get earmarked for a particular position, which is what happened in Lonnie's case. Lonnie got earmarked as a tight end and when we arrived, that's what he played. He had redshirted a year. I had a meeting with everyone on the team, everyone for 30 or 40 minutes, one-on-one. He seemed content to the fact that his redshirt year was over and he would get a chance to play. I think that's normally what happens. There's not a lot of dialogue if a guy comes in and redshirts. That's what happens. When the season was over, Lonnie came to me and said, 'I was nervous to ask you, coach, but what I'd really like to play is defensive end.' And I said, 'Well, goodness gracious, why didn't you ask me a year ago? Are you telling me that you played a position you didn't want to play.' My philosophy has always been that when a young guy is in a program and in his first year or two, particularly if he's a redshirt, he oughta be playing where he wants to play because it will give him the opportunity to show us best what he can do. This was clearly not the case with Lonnie. He was playing at a position that he was not comfortable with. We put him there a second year, so he goes through two years of playing a position he's not comfortable with, and all of sudden, in the spring, you see him just blossom. You see him playing where he's comfortable. You see his enthusiasm go up. You see the guy really excited and it has carried over. You saw the two plays he made at Hawaii. He's a natural pass rusher. He has enough strength to play against the run as well. It's a matter now of making up for the last two years that the coaches had him at the wrong spot. This defense will be together two years. That is very exciting to me. Someone like Lonnie is really going to improve as the year unfolds. By mid-season, we anticipate having a good defensive football team. He's been a delight ever since we moved him and he's got a great future in the defense."
(re: rapport with QB Carson Palmer and WR Windrell Hayes): "Carson through the summer, collaring as many guys as he could to throw the ball around, what happened was there were four or five guys that were there more than the other guys. I think Windrell was one of the guys collaring Carson some of the time. This is a young man's senior year. He did have a transfer in the middle of his career. He did come in overweight and have limited playing time last year. He knows this is it for him and he and Carson spent a lot of time this summer. It will show. Not necessarily in the opening game, but as the season unfolds, we'll see Windrell Hayes have a big impact on this team. The bonus that Windrell has is that he will not get a lot of double coverage. Because if you're doubling him, it's pretty hard to double R. Jay and pay attention to the running game. We're hoping we've put a little more of a burden on the defenses to think we have two guys to throw the ball to. If you play the two-deep configuration that many teams play, it's pretty hard to play an eight-man front. There are some things happening with our offense that we think have given us an advantage over where we were a year ago."
(re: Malaefou Mackenzie's comeback): "I'm really excited about him. Much of it was a mental part of it. Anyone that goes through that type of extensive surgery is always going to find himself wondering if he is indeed healthy. The doctors say you are healthy, you're 100%, you're ready to go, but there's that question in your mind until you actually do it where you say, maybe. That's what we saw in Hawaii. He got off to a good start, made a couple of runs, got some confidence, started to feel better and the sky is the limit for him. We're going to be careful. We're going to go a little slower with him than normally. But, basically, he'll be someone who will constantly improve and get stronger as the season goes on."
(re: R. Jay Soward's role in the offense): "When you have a player of R. Jay's stature, there's no question that he influences some of the things that you do in the gameplan. But it's important to understand that great teams are just that - they're great TEAMS. They're not about one or two players, but about a group of players, particularly when it relates to offense. The thing we cannot do is try and create things for R. Jay and have a defense come in and say 'Look, you may beat us, but not with R. Jay.' The question is are you going to see something different than what R. Jay faced last year. Well, last year against them, they played man-to-man coverage most of the day and R. Jay, most of the day, was singled covered. That's a tough assignment for anybody. We anticipate that they will double him. We have a decision to make. Are we going to be happy to throw the ball to Hayes, throwing the ball to the tight end and running the ball and be happy with that or are we going to say I don't care what you did, we're going to throw the ball to R. Jay. There's always a blend of doing both. The best strategy is to have three of four things in your gameplan but you also react to what the defense does. We're a different team than a year ago. With Chad Morton and the running game and with Carson Palmer's development along with the passing game, we have more weapons without singling out and saying we have to go to No. 18. Now No. 18 will get his share. He's a huge part of our football team in special teams. The first time he touched the ball on the punt team, he's in the end zone. This guy's impact on a game is far more than just how many passes he catches. He makes defenses adjust, he makes special teams adjust and we have to be smart and utilize him, along with everyone else, as well as we possibly can. It's early, it's just one game, and we're now going to play people that know R. Jay. The next three opponents know R. Jay. We'll see a different approach than we did in the opener."
(re: special teams play so far): "It's early, but the one thing we saw that was different was we saw kickoff coverage with some hungry young guys who wanted to establish that you weren't going to get the ball beyond the 20. I think we saw excellent kicking. I thought David Bell did a nice job pinning them. I think our defense is good enough that if you have to go more than 80 yards, it will be tough on you. Punting, we really didn't get a good chance to do very much. The most exciting part of our special teams is the emergence of David Newbury. You know how tough that decision was. We talked about it. It could go either way. We told him in the lobby of Hawaiian Airlines. They get on the plane at least knowing who the guy is going to be. I wanted him to have that flight where he knew. Quite frankly, Shawn Slocum looks to me and says are we really going to kick this one? And I said, well, yeah, let's kick it. (You think) well, let's get one right in front of the goal posts at about the 15 and let him get one. We kick a 47-yarder from the left hash, they come from both edges, guys are flying through the air and he nails it. I've got to feel pretty good about that. We're off to a good start in that area. We're going to play games that are very close this year and I've got to have enough confidence to say, 'Of course we're going to kick it.' And that's where it starts. We've got a veteran snapper (Pat Swanson) and John Fox has done a great job of holding and we know we have Bell for the super long ones if we need him. Punt return, the thing I've said is how many times can we get him the ball. How many ways can we get No. 18 the ball. Punt return and kickoff return. Let's get him the ball anyway we can. It's hard to gauge based on last year, but the signs are we may be improved in a couple of phases."
(re: John Fox and the multiple positions he's played): "John is a little bit of a victim of the fact that there was a coaching change. When a change happens, normally what happens, everyone has to start over again and everyone has to prove themselves again. Certainly, John did not have a great spring that first spring and John is a good quarterback and he knows that and we know that. When he came to me a year ago to make the decision to move to tight end, I was very hesitant. I did it because he felt very strongly about it. Clearly it was not the right thing. He came back and played in the spring. But then what he did was go through a shift in his mind. It was John Fox the man. He said 'I love USC, I came to USC because this was where I wanted to come to school and I know that my role and the way I can help this team is on special teams. I want to move to linebacker and the reason I want to move to linebacker is because the linebacker coach is also the special teams coach. I will help anywhere I can in terms of playing at linebacker, but I'm going to play in every special teams and I'm going to be ready to go.' From kickoff return to the holder to the punt team, he's everywhere. He's a good athlete. We all know that. He's won games as quarterback. I told somebody that we have the best third-string quarterback in the country because the one thing our team will do, if he ever has to play, is have total confidence that John Fox can go on the field and win a game for us. Things have not unfolded in his career the way he wanted, but this guy is making a contribution to USC football. And we need everybody. If you think in this day and age of playing 13 games, that this guy gets lost, you can't do it. People need to understand their roles and roles change. Roles change from week to week. Who would have thought that Kevin Arbet would start the Hawaii game at nickel? He lasts one play, his ankle is hurt and all of the sudden we have No. 43 (Polamalu) playing nickel, he's never played a down of nickel in his life. How do you know what's going to happen? You don't. The beauty of John Fox is that he's here to help this football team in any way that he can to do one thing: be a senior playing in the Rose Bowl. That's how you build football team. I get emotional about it because he's been sensational. There I was in the Hawaii game. I say 'We want you to play quarterback this last series.' He says, 'Yeah, but I'm playing linebacker.' 'Well, there will be punt in between and you can take your gloves off.' Well, there's a turnover, we don't punt and he's taking gloves off, looking at me and throwing the gloves at me and running over to play quarterback. It's a great story. He's quite a young man."
San Diego State Coach Ted Tollner - Sept. 14, 1999
"Our (first two) opponents were dramatically different, playing South Florida in our opener. We played decent and won a game where we got to play everybody and felt good. We felt we would go back to Illinois and play a competitive game. We thought it would be a game decided in the fourth quarter and it wasn't. It was over early in the third quarter and that was the disappointing part. We were ineffective offensively, both run and pass, which was disappointing. They dominated the front and we gave up some big plays. We played better defensively than 38 points would indicate, but we gave up some big plays, which makes us really nervous against USC, because their team speed is quite a bit better than Illinois'."
"At this point, we're disappointed with where we are because we think we're a better football team than what we showed at Illinois, but you are what you showed. We have another week and a new challenge and we're looking forward to it. And even though USC is ranked and highly talented, we're just looking forward to righting ourselves to where we play a more respectable football game."
(re: difference between 1998 and 1999 versions of Aztec team): "We're a little more experienced. We have a number of players who are back on defense who were key players a year ago. Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila, Rico Curtis, Jerome Haywood, Scottie Nicholson, all of our front guys, Joey Mayo, most are back and a decent part of our secondary. So we're more experienced on defense and we expect to be improved on that side. Offensively, we went into the season with most of our line back. Right now, we have a couple of replacements in there. But our running backs are back. We thought we'd be more experienced and efficient with our passing game with Brian Russell coming back and Jack Hawley, a highly touted junior college quarterback from L.A. Harbor, to improve our passing game. At this point, offensively, we haven't got there yet. I think we're more experienced and capable than a year ago, but we haven't shown it yet, at least against the one legitimate Division 1 team that we've faced."
(re: use of two quarterbacks): "We've played both. At this point we're going to prepare both and decide how we'll go later in the week."
(re: new Mountain West conference): "We think it's a positive. The schools now in the Mountain West were many of the original WAC teams and the ones that really had, at least in the 1990s and before that, more of the winning programs. Most of the bowl representation that the WAC had in the 1990s were from teams now in the Mountain West. What we're hoping for is the initial step back in identity will be a couple steps forward as the conference shows that it not only can play quality football within, but when we play opponents outside, we can play competitively against the BCS conferences. Now, we didn't do that against Illinois, but I think as a group, the conference has held its own. As a group, the future is a bright one for the conference. We need to do two things: play quality football within and beat some quality teams outside the conference. That's how you elevate the perception of a conference."
(re: USC): "They're a vastly improved team. You take the one spot, the quarterback thing being cleared up. Carson Palmer looks to me like he has a great future. I was impressed when he got into our game last year, just as a pure freshman out of high school. The composure that he had. A year later you can see tremendous improvement. The control of himself and the ability to throw the ball. As the season unfolded, we've exchanged those games, and in the Hawaii game obviously, he played extremely well. That's the starting point offensively. You knew already knew about R. Jay Soward and Chad Morton and the offensive was going to get better because most of them are back. Offensively, I think they're dramatically improved and mainly because they have everybody back. You're going to be improved, plus they're talented and have good quickness. Defensively, we feel the same way. Their athletic ability and their ability to run is eye-catching. We had difficulty moving the ball against Illinois, and it looks to us that the athleticism at USC is significantly better. We've got our hands full."
(re: running backs Larry Ned and Jonas Lewis and split end Damon Gourdine): "We think they're both starters. Jonas started the opener and Larry started the Illinois game. But they end up with comparable number of carries. If one gets a hot hand, he may play longer in a game. But we really like to keep one of them fresh. We think they're both good, tough downhill runners that played respectable last year against USC, both of them. They're improved. They're quality backs in our opinion. Damon Gourdine is really a tremendous football player. Once you get past not judging him on his physical stature, he's quick, he's tough, he's smart, he's experienced, he can catch in a crowd. He can advance it afterward. He's been our big play guy the last two years and is a very good player. Some people get concerned about his size. We'd all like to have that big guy that does those things, but we like what he does for us and we're very fortunate to have him."
(re: importance of games against the Pac-10 in regard to building the strength of Mountain West): "I think they're important. As a new conference, when BYU beats Washington or Colorado State beats Colorado, I think that's the only way you elevate the prestige and perception of a conference, to not only play the BCS conferences but to be competitive and win your share of them. For us specifically right now, we just need to not worry about the conference and the image and to get our team playing at a level we're capable of playing at. If that's good enough to beat USC, who knows, but I know we're a better team than what we showed against Illinois."
(re: breaking away from WAC): "You are what your record is. You can talk all you want, but the bottom line is you line up and you play people that are highly respected and either you can compete or you can't. I think if you compete and hold your own and win your share, then people will learn the name of you conference. If you can't it doesn't matter what the name of your conference is."
(re: quarterback system): "Brian Russell, all the intangibles of a quarterback, he has and has at the highest level. He's a great competitor, a great athlete. He's smart and tough. He's unselfish and has control of things. All those things, he really does well. We're having our problems of being more productive in the passing game. You can win at that position without having a great arm and he doesn't have a great arm. But we have to more accurate and get the ball to the right guy on time. We've been struggling in that one phase of being more efficient and productive with the pass, both the intermediate and the deep ball. That's the part we have to improve on if we're going to be a respectable team. He brings all those things to the table and we're continuing to work on the things where we're short. Now in Jack Hawley's case, he has some upside of being able to do some things because of velocity and how he throws the football but he needs to learn the things that Brian has. The composure, the control, the playcalling and the whole running of your offense are things that, because he's lacking in experience, he doesn't have right now. That's why we're playing them both."
(re: Ned and Lewis similarities): "They're very much the same. We played Illinois last week and they played two backs but they were very different. One of them was a speed guy and the other was a power guy. Our guys are very similar. We're predominantly a one-back scheme and they're downhill runners. We're not very interested in trying to outflank teams. We're a zone team trying to break seams going downhill, so you've got to run with power and you've got to hit tiny cracks with power. You can't be a looker and we're not looking for a big change of direction. They're very similar in their strength and ability to take it downhill. They're experienced now and can block for the pass. They can catch the ball when they're asked. They're very similar backs."
