Missouri Football Coach Gary Pinkel Talks with the Media
10/30/2006 12:00:00 AM | Football
Oct. 30, 2006
Missouri Head Coach Gary Pinkel
Opening Statement:
"Nebraska, we all know, is a very good football team. If you look them up statistically, they're good on both sides of the football, which we expect them to be. Certainly, this is a great opportunity for us and a great challenge, so we're looking forward to it."
On Tony Temple being moved to No. 2 on the depth chart:
"That's mostly because of the fumbling situation. [Tony] will earn it back. Hopefully, this will help focus wise. I have dealt with this before, and since I have been coaching, I have never, not been able to cure a fumbling issue with a tailback. I remember Chester Taylor (Minnesota Vikings, RB), at Toledo University, when I moved him down once as a last resort. He worked hard because he's a competitor, and he ended up doing okay. I expect Tony to do the same thing."
On Nebraska's balanced offense:
"They're pretty balanced. Look at the numbers. They're good throwing the football, they're good running the football, they have good players, and their quarterback [Zac Taylor] is playing pretty well right now. Their offense has been executing better and better all the time. I think they provide a real challenge."
On the opportunity of scoring touchdowns:
"I think anytime when you don't score inside the two yard-line that's obviously very disappointing. I think what you do is go back and evaluate like we always do. We've been first and goal, within the five yard-line, 12 times this year. We've scored 11 touchdowns. So, what we do works when it's executed. We like what we did down there [last Saturday]."
On how to neutralize the run:
"Certainly, we have to do better against the run, and there's nothing magical there. We're not going to change the schemes because we believe in what we're doing. Sometimes it's leverage, sometimes it's contain, and other times it's miss-tackles. It's yard per attempt in evaluation. For example, yards per attempt versus Texas A&M was good, if they do it like [A&M] did running the ball all the time. The yards per attempt were really good. The last two weeks with K-State have not been good. We recognize that, and we're going to work very hard to get better at it because [Nebraska] has good running backs."
Quarterback Chase Daniel
On running out of the shotgun on the goal line:
"I feel very comfortable being five yards back out of the shotgun and it's worked seven out of nine times, that's a pretty good job when you're on the goal line."
On where the team stands heading into the Nebraska game:
"I don't have any complaints about what we're doing here at all. We're 7-2, and we're 7-2 for a reason. We put ourselves in a good position earlier in the year to go in there, and it's a title game, pretty much."
Defensive End Xzavie Jackson
On improving the run defense:
"We're just going to go out there and work on our fundamentals. We're going to try to have fun with the game of football and hopefully bring the game to us, and not let Nebraska take it to us. We just have to make sure Missouri plays Missouri football and have fun."
On making up for Brian Smith's absence:
"We have a lot of athletes. Our coaches did a good job of recruiting. Stryker Sulak is going to step up, and he did last week. He made some plays for us, and he's just going to keep getting better as the year goes on."
Linebacker Dedrick Harrington
On last weekend's loss to Oklahoma:
"I think we played a good game, but of course there were a lot of mistakes. We didn't do enough to win and there's some things we need to work on this week to get better."
On improving the run defense:
"That's definitely going to a big emphasis in practice for the rest of the season. We're going to take it one game at a time, but all the teams are going to want to run the ball. It's going to be colder, things are going to change, as far as the games, they're going to get bigger. All kinds of things are going to happen, the run is a big part of the football game."
