University Southern California Trojans
Hackett, Erickson Preview Saturday's Game
September 28, 1999 | Football
Sept. 28, 1999
USC Coach Paul Hackett - Sept. 28, 1999
"I've gone through a whole gamut of emotions. If we had had this meeting right after the game, it would be far different than how I am right now. You can only spend so much time pounding on the negative, and certainly there was some negatives to pound on. There was so much positive in the game, I've tried very hard and we're going to move ahead and understand that we were a team that was down 10 points in the fourth quarter at Oregon, playing with our backup quarterback and we had what appeared to be a 20-point swing. It didn't happen. We were not able to continue in OT and get the job done. It was an extremely difficult loss for us, but that's it. It's over with and done with and we have to move on. Oregon State is a dangerous team and a dangerous team for a couple of reasons. One, they are rested and had a bye. Two, they have a very potent offense. They spread you out, they try to make you believe they are a passing team and they hand the ball off to the No. 1 or 2 rusher in the nation. This is always been the approach coach (Dennis) Erickson has taken. They throw the ball well. Jonathan Smith is playing well. He's got confidence. They've improved the receiver corps. But let's face it. Ken Simonton is the guy. He's going to run the ball and run the ball and you better be able to stop it. This is a potent offense. When you're scoring 41 points a game, it's impressive. Defensively, they are improved. In the defensive line and particularly the defensive tackles, both Ball and Wells. They have really shown in their senior year, you're supposed to play better than you have before and they are showing that. They really control the defensive part of it. We've been watching Jonathan Jackson play for a long time. He was all-Pac-10 last year. We know about his production. The secondary is improved. Terrence Carroll plays around the line of scrimmage and makes a lot of tackles. He's a pure strong safety, but I see him in pass coverage well. They've had a week off, they've got momentum and confidence and the thing that I'm delighted about is that they have to come and play in the Coliseum. And that's the best thing we have going for us."
(re: what it takes to move on from Oregon loss) "We're to the point in the season and the season is still young and we're still trying to find our identity as a team. There's a couple of issues that need to be answered this week. One is the continuation of our football team to play at the tempo and to play with the intensity that we played with in the Oregon game. What we captured in the end of that game is as intense of football as we played that I can remember. That also dovetails into the fact that we are now having to change quarterbacks. We must play at that level as an entire team so that Mike Van Raaphorst can play like he did last Saturday. That comes from the defense, it comes from special teams and from the offense. I think reducing our focus, narrowing ourselves down to one week at a time, one game at a time, Oregon State is the only issue. Trying to get Windrell Hayes back as quick as we can, trying to get the PAT, field goal issues straightened out as quickly as we can. Trying to address and hammer the discipline with the penalty issue. That becomes important. I know it was in overtime, but four penalties against the Trojans in overtime and none against Oregon, I get a little concerned about that. We have to continue to address that as best we can. We'll make some adjustments in playing time. But I think we have to make our team more conscious of it than we have before, because now it's cost us. We could have had what could have been a magnificent victory in a very hostile environment, turned into a devastating loss. We were right there against a good team. We did so many good things. We just have to build on those and refocus on Oregon State."
(re: missed field goals) "Let's remember that last year we cost ourselves the game with field goals as well. Let's remember that in the last two years, we've missed six. David Newbury was somewhere in Texas last year. It's a protection issue, a snapping issue, a kicking issue. I think it's an astroturf issue and an Oregon issue, because it is noisy. If you remember, we jump offsides and instead of 46, it's 51. It's not just one guy. I've been delighted with Newbury's performance to this point. If you told me we would have missed four field goals in the fourth quarter, I would have said no way. You can't overreact, but you have to examine the whole system. It's the second time in two years that it's failed us at the same place. In both cases, it could have made the difference in the game."
(re: why the light use of TB Sultan McCullough): "Chad Morton. That's the answer. He's the main man on this team and he has had some rough sledding the last few weeks in terms of opportunities. He has just played as well and as hard as I've ever seen him play. In the end, he makes the big play that should win the game. It has nothing to do with Sultan. He's been excellent. He's done everything we've asked of him. It's just one of those situations that the last two weeks have been very tight games and as long as he is healthy and playing at that level ?? as I went up and down that sideline in the fourth quarter, I felt as good about a team as I ever have. This team responded in the fourth quarter down 10 points. One of the key people in doing that was Chad. He is infectious with his ability to bring people along with him and we were not going to play without him. The decision at the goalline, we decided that if we are not going to score on the goalline, let's have it be No. 7 that doesn't score. And he's so little, they can't see him behind Faaesea (Mailo). It's nothing about Sultan. He's going to be a fine player. Right now, when the game is tight, we're going with Chad.
(re: sticking with Chad as opposed to mixing it up with different-styled backs) "In games that are within one score, yeah. I'd like to incorporate it more and get it going. But when you're not playing with your starting receiver and your starting quarterback, you have to start to be careful with how much changing you do from the experienced players. We don't have the luxury of that yet. At some point, we'll have to get Chad some relief and certainly it will be Sultan that will get that opportunity."
(re: Windrell Hayes' return) "It looks doubtful this week but clearly that is a week-to-week issue."
(re: goalline look) "We will have the same look. Faaesea did well in the game and Chad did very well and that group we put together will be the short-yardage tank group."
(re: Mailo's celebration penalty for removing his helmet and why the rule is in place) "What happened was that it got too extreme and there was too much going on. People sat around and said, 'We're not going to have this anymore.' I take the responsibility because it was no surprise. It's not new. You're not supposed to celebrate with taking your helmet off. It was an emotional reaction from a guy who has just been moved to fullback, makes two or three magnificent blocks, we take the lead. It clearly made a difference. Although, a bad snap is a bad snap. He snapped it over his head. There's not just one issue. There's a number of issues. Once again, poise under pressure. I said it when we sat here this spring. The measure of this team -- can we go on the road in hostile environments and win in the first half of the season? We gave it everything we had and we came up short. Can we learn and regroup and can it be an experience we can build on? Yes, I believe that. I believe in this team. We're a good football team. We have some other things we have to adjust because of Carson Palmer and all of that, but the heart and soul of this team is headed in the right direction."
(re: R. Jay Soward's performance and others possibly overlooked due to the loss) "That's what happens in football. If you lose the game, you focus on the negative. I've spent too much time doing that in the last day and a half. R. Jay, you saw it in him when he prepared last week. You saw the focus in the responsibility. There's no Windrell. He's got to do it. He knows the young guys need someone to step up and he did it at every turn. He did a great job. Yeah, I would have liked him not to fumble and caught the long one, but my goodness. When we had to have it in the fourth quarter over and over again, who was there? No. 18. We're going to build on that. It was a shame that we couldn't come away with a win because we certainly played well enough to win the game."
(re: using Chad in space) "Yeah, I think that's probably one of the things that we've probably overlooked and been overly conservative about. I think because Chad has been playing so much and carrying the ball so much, 30 times against SDSU, we got a little sidetracked on our initial plan. Moving him around, bringing him out of the backfield, catching the ball, but also line him up outside. He did line up outside in a couple of critical situations in the game. We have that as part of our offense and we haven't done a lot of it yet and it's something we clearly need to move with.
(re: Mike Van Raaphorst) "The one thing we know about Mike is that he has done it. He has started and played and won. The great thing about Mike is that he has utilized his time as a backup to improve his own skills. He's thrown the ball better than he ever did. He knows the offense better than ever before. He's really taken really solid strong use of his time and now has the opportunity to let it show. I think he did it in the second half of the game. I think how our team feels about him, the confidence it has him was very obvious in the second half. They played well with him and it's something to build on for the rest of the year, not knowing the situation with Carson at the end of the year. I think Mike is very prepared and is as strong a guy stepping into that position as anyone in the country. Amazing how things happen. Here's John Fox in a position to be in the game at quarterback at any time. He will make the move from linebacker to quarterback. His only question to me was, 'Can I keep playing on special teams?' I said, 'Absolutely.' He will be a special teams guy and will play quarterback. He will not play anymore quarterback. Matt Dalton will be No. 3. That's the way we have to go. I said this last week with Windrell. This is part of college football. This is the worst part of football. Injuries. The most difficult part. It shows no favorites. To lose Windrell one week and Carson the next, no way you could predict that. But you move on.
(re: ways to prevent injury suffered by Carson Palmer) "If Carson would watch less footage of Jim Brown and people like that, it would help him. And if Coach Hackett would have got a sand pit out on the practice field and practice sliding, that would have helped. And we will do both in the future. Sometimes these things are things you have to learn with experience. The coach will say 100 times to get out of bounds. But have got to remember that getting out of bounds doesn't look like the right thing to do when you can leap tall buildings and scale mountains and all these things. This is a very significant injury to a young man who has a brilliant future, but he will have to learn this is not the way you do business at the quarterback position. Other than that, he was flushed out, made the right decision and was trying to make a play. He used, what would be clearly considered by quarterback coaching standards, bad judgement. He will be back good as new or better and I don't think you will see that again. Although next time he may jump over the guy. He's as competitive of a guy as you're going to meet."
(re: rep distribution in practice between Van Raaphorst and Fox) "That's going to be tricky. Obviously, it won't be 50-50, but a third of the time or a quarter of the time. Van Raaphorst will get most of the reps as Carson was getting most of the reps. We have to give that some thought. Clearly, we have to have him prepared, even if it's a reduced gameplan, we have to have him prepared to go in. Dalton is the backup. Matt will go over and take John's position on the scout team and we'll see what unfolds in the next few days."
(re: development of play-calling between Hackett and Hue Jackson) "Hue took a much more active role, particularly in the second half when we talked about the fact that Oregon was not going to let us run by design. They were going to put an eight-man front up there and I thought Hue did a great job through that. I was still a pain in the rear end in the second half as well. We're getting more and more on the same page with it and I think it's a matter of time until it gets further and further where it's a dual kind of thing. We'll spend a lot of time obviously setting the plan to start the game, but I'm feeling more and more like we're on the same page, so it doesn't matter."
(re: increase in the amount of passing attempts and whether that will continue) "I think so. I think that a lot of teams in this conference don't try to run. We're one of the teams that believes that running the ball is a key to winning a championship and we're going to always run the ball. We're going to try to run the ball first. But we're very aware that people understand our philosophy, they know what we're trying to do and they're not going to let us run. We've got to get better at running the ball on one hand, but on the other, we've got to bet better at taking advantage of the overloaded defense. There are two things we have to do and we need to do it on a weekly basis. Every defense you attack is slightly different, but philosophically, if they want to stop you from passing they can, if they want to stop you from running they can. They key here is balance. We were too run oriented the first two weeks and too pass oriented the third week. We haven't hit the mix which is one of those games you keep searching for when you can control the game from the get-go."
(re: using McCullough at receiver) "That is certainly a possibility. Definitely a possibility. Being the second tailback takes a lot of practice, but he could work there. Fortunately, the young receivers have continued to stay healthy. Steve Stevenson really came up big. He's kind of been there and all of the sudden, he's making these big catches. But I think we have enough depth there, but that's definitely a possibility."
(re: tight end use) "We have made a change that is fairly significant. We've moved Darryl Knight from linebacker to tight end. We moved him there because we feel like getting more speed at the tight end position can help us. He was great about it and is anxious to help anyway he can with the team. When you look at the balance of the passing game, clearly we are way overloaded toward the WR corps. That doesn't disappoint the wide receivers, but when you look at the difficulty of defending us, the more diverse we can become?.Jonathan Smith has thrown passes to 10 receivers in three games. They have the ultimate spread-the-ball-around philosophy. We need to get more and more to that."
(re: penalty situation) "If you make it an emphasis, if you make it a primary focus of what you're doing as a team and as a staff, it begins to repair itself. We've tried to do that and made added emphasis this week. Singling out and really focusing on it. The problem you have is there's penalties on nearly every play, particularly when it comes to the holding issues. You have to keep your hands inside and release at the right time and you have to get away with it at times. What I don't want to do is have no penalties and a bad team. I want a really good team and reduced penalties. The way we played that game, I'm very excited about our team. Terribly disappointed and pissed off about the penalties but we're aggressive, we're playing hard, we're playing good football, and I don't want to lose that. Now, how do we pull back and reduce the penalties? We're talking about it all the time.
Oregon State Coach Dennis Erickson - Sept. 28, 1999 "We've played fairly well in the first two games. In the third game, we didn't play as well. Obviously, nothing against our opponents, but we haven't played anybody as close to the caliber of a USC or anyone else in the Pac-10. We really don't know where we're at right now. I'm happy with the three wins. That's important to us. But we'll find out a lot more about our team and where we are in the Pac-10 after we play USC on Saturday.
"Byes are good and bad. Byes this early really aren't the best, but that's how it is. What we did during our bye week, we stayed in pads and practiced very hard and tried to improve. We practiced against ourselves, really no preparation at all against USC. This early, we needed to improve ourselves as a football team and that's what we were able to do. We had a chance to get some guys healthy during the week. There were about two or three guys that didn't play the week before that because of that bye week, we may get them healthy this week."
(re: RB Ken Simonton) "He's played well for us so far. Our offensive front has blocked pretty well. The thing that Kenny does well, particularly in our scheme offensively, which is a one back, is that he's got very good vision and really quick feet and can make cuts and you have to be able to do that with the type of running game that we have because a lot of it is read stuff and being able to feel the blocking scheme and cut back. For his size, he's fairly strong and he can break some tackles. He's played well for us running the football."
(re: QB Jonathan Smith) "He has played good and bad. He's got to become more consistent. The games against Georgia Southern and Fresno State, he got better every week. He didn't have a great outing against Nevada-Reno, but against Fresno he played quite a bit better and did some darn good things against Georgia Southern. The thing about Jonathan is that he's not really gifted athletically as far as size and speed and all of those things. But he's very smart, understands what we're doing offensively and doesn't make a lot of mistakes. That's really the key to his success and I'm happy where he's at right now."
(re: return to college coaching) "It's been fun so far. It's been different. When I got here, we were in the middle of January, we were involved in recruiting and so forth and the reception has been awfully good. The boosters, so far, of course we're undefeated, are happy what's going on right now. It's been good. It's been nice to get back into college football. The biggest thing I've missed was the pageantry, the students, working with the athletes. It's something you just don't get as much in the pros compared to college. It's good to be back and now realism sets in for us in the next eight weeks in the Pac-10. Our schedule was good. We were fortunate the first three games. But now reality sets in and we need to see where we're at."
(re: changes since last stint as a coach in college) "I don't think things have changed very much as far as x's and o's, and the players I don't think have changed very much. The parity has changed some. My last year at Miami, I believe we had 95 or 100 scholarships. Now it's down to 85 and you're seeing a lot of parity because of the scholarship limitations. Now USC can't take 10 a year and UCLA can't take 10 a year ands whoever else, so there's 60 some players down there that normally wouldn't be there and you're seeing that all over the country. You're seeing more parity and seeing some very good athletes at other schools that six or seven years ago were at other schools and maybe not even playing."
(re: USC) "When I look at them, they've got tremendous speed on both sides of the ball. You start with them defensively. The front four to me reminds me of some of the front fours we had when I was at Miami as far as their athleticism and speed. In fact, one of my old coaches at Miami is coaching the defensive line now, Ed Orgeron. They've got great athletes in that area and at linebacker and the secondary. Offensively, the speed at tailback and at the wide receivers is really amazing to me to have guys with that kind of speed. Chad Morton's got great speed. I don't know if I've seen in the last five years as good of an offensive lineman as Travis Claridge. Watching him in the three games we've got, you talk about a dominating player. USC is a great team. They lost a tough one in Eugene, which is a tough place to me. They had some chances and had some penalties that hurt them and the kicking game a little bit, but when you look at them from top to bottom, they're as good as anyone in the country."
(re: parity of Pac-10) "I think parity has hit every place. You'll see it even more and more. When they went to 85, you didn't see it quite as much. But after a four and five-year period where you're talking 40 or 50 quality players going somewhere else as opposed to a USC or UCLA or whoever is dominating recruiting in California, at the beginning you didn't see it. Now you're starting to see it and seeing it all over the country. In the midwest, in the south, and in the state of Florida. It's starting to hit the last year or two because of the numbers."
(re: why the return to OSU) "It was the right time for me, right situation for me. When we were let go in Seattle, we sat down and visited quite a bit with what we wanted to do. I had the opportunity to stay in the NFL as an assistant coach. But I really wanted to get back into college and this job opened up. It was on the West Coast, which is where I'm from. I've been a lot of places and done a lot of different things. It wasn't the situation where I'm trying to climb up the ladder like you are when you're a little younger. With the parity I talked about and the successes that we haven't had here, there was an opportunity to put a signature on the program and get it turned around. When I say turned around, I mean get it competitive. Win more than you lose sometimes, go to a bowl games sometimes. That's what we're trying to accomplish here and I think it can get done which is why I took the job."
(re: backup TB Eric Mobley) "Eric's played well when he's had the opportunity. Eric's going to have to play more as the season goes on because Kenny just can't carry the ball that many times. He's carried it 30 or more times a game so far and he's stayed healthy. But Mobley is going to have to play a bigger part in our running game and will have to see more action. He's done well for us on special teams and caught the ball for really well, but you'll see more of Eric Mobley this week than you have."
(re: OSU community's hunger for turnaround) "I think it's starvation, not hunger. We haven't had it here in many, many years here. The boosters and the students are (hungry). This is a great community and a great school. They see the success we're having now, the excitement is unbelievable. As I caution these people, we'll see where we're at as far as the reality of it all this weekend and the next eight weeks. But they're excited about what's transpired and we've been exciting to watch the first three weeks. Our students and boosters are very excited."
