Highlights from Al Groh's Weekly Press Conference

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Sept. 4, 2007

Q: Are there positives to take away from the Wyoming game?
A: Hopefully, there is always something positive during the course of three hours worth of football. There were some things that we did at a level that we had expected that we might be able to do.

Q: Are Jameel Sewell’s issues now mostly mechanical and do you worry about a loss of confidence after a game like Wyoming?
A: One of the hard things about that position is that everybody knows what the result is, everybody knows what the performance is more so than any other position, and when a player’s performance at that position isn’t up to what he wanted it to be or what he expected it to be then that’s when you really find out who can play quarterback. Everybody knows what it was and everybody knows why, and that’s often the making or breaking of a quarterback on every level.

Q: Describe the mentality of the team after yesterday’s practice?
A: After yesterday’s practice, they were tired. I don’t really think it’s very important what the mentality of the team was yesterday. What is important is what the mentality of the team is throughout the course of the week and on Saturday.

The team’s mentality is good but the team’s performance wasn’t very good.

Q: Regarding your Sunday practices, during the course of your career you’ve probably done different things on Sunday. Has that always been a practice day and did you do what you always do?
A: You have to take one day a week off. As we research it, it’s kind of split with college teams as to whether they choose to take Sunday or Monday off.

You like to have them in on Sunday because you get the game behind you, but if you have them on Sunday that means you take Monday off. If you have them in on Sunday the players aren’t really ready to practice too hard, they are getting over the game from the day before and we’re not far enough along to get heavily into the opponent. Other than the workout part of things looking at the tape and getting that out of the way, it’s just not as productive as you would like your first day of the week to be, but it’s out of the way.

If we do it on Monday we are further into the opponent and we can do more presentation on the opponent, on the game plan. We’re still lingering on the former game a little bit longer than we’d like to, we’d like to get that out of the way in 24 hours, but after the first year here which we took off on Mondays, we decided that college football players need four days a week to practice. There is a lot of development that is going on (and) you have a lot of younger players who could really profit from that day, so we have taken Monday as our practice day.

Q: After a game like this one, what’s your approach as coach. Is it business as usual?
A: When you say business as usual, business as usual means every week adapting and responding to the circumstances and the situation of that week. I guess if we said `business as usual’ it means that every week is different. I would certainly say that this week’s week is different than say, things were a week ago.

Q: Going by your postgame comments after Saturday’s game against Wyoming, it seems like Peter Lalich was going to play at some time this year. Were you certain it was going to happen by the time the opener arrived?
A: We didn’t have any idea about that on August 6. We said that we certainly going to have to make a decision about this at a certain point. As he progressed through our training camp and we got closer to the game, we decided that there was a possibility that we would do that. We didn’t say we were going to this for sure. There are certainly a number of issues there to consider using him–one of them being that Jameel’s wrist has not been a hindrance to him throughout camp and certainly was not a hindrance to him in the game, it is an ongoing situation and it is a situation that we have been told medically could represent itself at any time. We’ve also been told that it could be in 10 minutes and that could be in 10 years. With that being the case, we decided that if we thought Peter was up to it, that it would be best thing to do should we have to do that at some point (during) the season (and) it wasn’t all of a sudden, `wow, he has never been in a game before’.

Q: This situation is different, but you did have a similar one with Bryson Spinner and Matt Schaub a few years ago when you had two quarterbacks. Did you learn anything from that that can help you if you’re ever in the situation again playing two quarterbacks?
A: We think a little better comparison one that we’re drawing from is –it’s not the same–but some similiarity to the situation that was in Florida last year. There’s a little bit of a reverse; the veteran quarterback was the in-the-pocket player, and the rookie made his first real mark (by) running it. In our particular case here, the incoming player (Lalich) has had more background and made his mark in throwing the ball. Jameel (Sewell) has demonstrated on occasion his ability to be effective as a runner. I’m not saying we have fallen into that type of cycle, but it presents that possibility.

Q: How did the defense play Saturday in comparison to the amount of time they were out on the field?
A: Whether it’s offense or defense, there really aren’t any qualifiers as to how long you’re on the field. However long you were out there, then that’s part of the game. Some games you play long time, some games you don’t play. If your team scores five points on defense, you can only give up four. On offense, if your team scores 32 and your team gives up 34, then you didn’t score enough. That’s your job: to go out there and perform on each particular unit for however long it is. With that qualifier out of the way, we didn’t collectively–I certainly include the players in there–we didn’t really feel the defense played up to the level that we thought it would have risen to this year.

Q: After the game Sewell had throwing the ball accuracy wise–do you address the possibility he’s got some kind of mental block like some baseball players do when they can’t make easy throws?
A: We try to look at it from a lot of different directions, as is Jameel. Clearly I think he was hoping for a step up here to start the second year. We realize that it comes with different pace with different guys, just because it is his second year, some guys are highly advanced at that particular point and some guys are still taking a little bit more time. It’s pretty early yet in his second year to try and make a determination as what and why, but clearly it didn’t progress too far beyond what it was last year.

Q: How much do you have to manage what you tell Sewell so it’s not demoralizing and that you still have faith in him?
A: He’s got very high standards and he’s got high expectations of himself. As with most of us, he is the last person who needs to be told that it wasn’t his best, he knows that before you tell him. Sometimes to continue with that is just beating somebody over the head with it. It’s human nature that it’s more difficult for athletes to bounce back if they’re keep being told that they’re lousy. As I said before, particularly that position that comes under high scrutiny–he’s very visible, whether he’s walking around Grounds or sitting in class or going to the store–everybody knows who he is more so than with any other position. We made sure that he understood that we have a lot of confidence and a lot of faith in him.

Q: What is a scouting report on Duke?
A: (They have) a lot of wide lot of 3- and 4-wide receiver formations. (It’s a) quarterback oriented offense and a 4-3 defense, a little bit if a switch over from their scheme last year. I’m sure (they are) a team that has much the same mind set as our team does right now.

Q: Denzel Burrell is likely to get his first start at outside linebacker this week. Talk about where he is after coming off injury last year and playing a lot Saturday?
A: Certainly for being in there a lot longer than he probably anticipated (last week), he was in on the dime to start with, so he knew he was going to be in the game. He did a fairly decent job on that; he deflected the pass that Jeffery (Fitzgerald) intercepted. I am sure that he didn’t anticipate getting all the regular plays that perhaps that he did. It was a fairly positive performance, but he had some rough spots in there. When we say we going to put someone in the game, we are confident that they are going to perform. Obviously if he was performing up to the same level as Jermaine (Dias), he would have had the job or been in there on equal time. It’s a little bit of a setback there since Jermaine really has got the position down. We’re disappointed for (Jermaine). He was playing very well in the game and he was off to a really good start with this year. Now this the third year out of four, that he has been hurt early in the season with an ankle. I’m sure it’s disappointing for him and we’re disappointed for him.

Q: Do you feel like you have a leader in the offensive huddle?
A: There are very few teams where the clear-cut leader isn’t the quarterback. If you talk about the Green Bay Packers, who do you identify the team with? (It’s the same with) Indianapolis, New England, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Florida, USC, Texas when Vince (Young) was there, that’s the position. (There) can be a lot more (vocal) leaders on defense because that’s the nature of it. We don’t go in the huddle on defense, (we just) look over to get the signal. (The defensive players are) encouraging each other, talking to each other, but if they are doing that on offense, there is somebody there telling them to, `shut up, we’ve got to get the call.’ `Don’t talk in the huddle,’ that’s what linemen on all of these positions are coached at on every team. `Get in the huddle, be quiet, get the call, don’t interrupt the quarterback,’ so even those guys who in other aspects of your team, whether it’s in the locker room, the weight program, who are able to vocally lead, they have a difficult time doing it on offense.