JonDMiller
Publisher/Founder
THE MODERATOR: We have Coach O'Keefe. Just give your observations on how things are looking offensively and we'll open it up for questions.
COACH O'KEEFE: We basically have had about five practices in preparing for the Bowl. Our guys are working hard. But we're really just working against ourselves at this point. Most of our focus has been on the development of younger guys, the fundamentals that they need to get better at their position, like it always is at this point in the year before we actually get into the game planning of Missouri, which we just basically had started this previous week.
The next three or four practices we have will have a segment built in where we'll begin to prepare like we normally would for our opponent and at the same time take a little bit of time out of each practice to work with the younger guys and develop them the way that we feel they need to be developed.
That's kind of where we're at. We can talk a little bit about Missouri.
They're a very good football team obviously. They're built on speed defensively. I would describe them as a very athletic team, especially their front seven. All their linebackers can really run. Their ends are extremely talented. I think right now, if you look at them from a statistical standpoint, the things that you notice about them most are they're giving up a little more than two touchdowns a game, but they are really stingy in the red zone, not only in allowing people to score, but letting people score touchdowns.
It's probably the lowest that I can remember ever seeing since we played anybody here at Iowa. So we've got to make sure we have a great game plan for them inside the red zone.
They're a wellcoached team. They'll bring pressure a lot of different ways. Again, that's part of the reason they've got 38 sacks on the season, as well. They take pride in really playing hard.
Q. What do those 38 sacks tell you? What do you need to be sharp on?
COACH O'KEEFE: Well, number one, you need to know where the blitz is coming from. That's critical. If you know where the blitz is coming from, we've got a chance to get it stopped. Rick can either change the protection or get us into a protection that can be better for us. Whether it's five man, six or seven man, doesn't much matter depending on the situation.
Part of that has come in the red zone. I'd say a good portion of that has come in the red zone in thirddown types of situations.
You know, we've got to be fundamentally sound. They are a quick team off the edge. They'll even substitute where they'll take their speed guys and put them inside, match them up against guys that normally aren't matched up with that kind of speed. That can really cause some issues at times. They use their hands very well. They have great feet.
They're not afraid to play a cover zero or cover one, try to run with you. In their conference, they've run with some of the best athletes there are in college football. They're not afraid of that by any means. That's what they practice against every week as well.
Q. Does this team blitz more than any other team you've faced this year?
COACH O'KEEFE: They'll bring a lot of pressure. There will be a lot of pressure on first down, as well, that's geared to stopping the run obviously. A good portion of it will come from the boundary. Looks like they like to bring their corners, get them involved with some things. They'll jump into some fronts that are going to really force you to have to run the ball one way or throw it another. We've got some work ahead of us to make sure we've got it all covered.
I wouldn't say that they blitz more than any other team that we've seen by any means. At the same point in time they've got their packages, and they're going to bring pressure. They can get in a little bear look that we see from time to time, bring a little more pressure, get their speed guys coming hard up the field.
Q. With this in mind, do you have to take extra emphasis to get your younger running backs up to speed?
COACH O'KEEFE: Good point. I mean, I must have talked about that before at some time. Yeah, we need to make sure that we're all on the same page. Lester has done a great job with that, whether it's been Marcus Coker or some of the other guys in the past of getting them ready to go. If we need to use Brett Morse or Paki O'Meara, they've got the experience and they know what they're doing in the system as well.
The key is, we're not going to know every time they come at us. Coker has got to be ready to go as well.
Q. How impressed have you been by Marcus since you've thrown him in there as a feature back? What are you expecting out of him in this game?
COACH O'KEEFE: I wasn't sure you couldn't be sure what to expect. Now that he's been in some games, you can expect him to run the ball physically and run it tough, which is what he likes to do.
We went back and looked at some of the ballgames that he got a chance to run it in, especially the Indiana, the Michigan State, and Minnesota games, he's done a pretty good job of getting where we wanted him to get and moving the pile at times himself when he needed to.
But, you know, this is an opponent that's going to offer some different challenges to him, and one of them is going to be in the blitz pickup. We really like the progress Marcus has made. We feel like he'll continue to get better all the time.
Q. (Question about why scoring has dropped in the last four games of the season.)
COACH O'KEEFE: I think it took us a while to get going at times. We've survived a little bit on some big plays that made a big difference. We probably weren't as good in the red zone in those games as we had been previously, maybe since the Michigan State game probably is what you're talking about.
We couldn't get it going at times for one reason or another. We made enough plays at certain points, but not enough in the end to get it done. We certainly weren't very good in twominute drills, by any means. As much as we tried to change it up, something always got in our way.
We always talk about, in every successful twominute drive, you're going to face some adversity along the line. It could be a sack. It could be significant. You've got to just work through it like it never happened and overcome it and keep on marching. We never were able to do that.
Q. When you played in the Cap One Bowl, you were down to the fifth string running backs. Are you in the same dire straits this time around or is your feeling a little different about where you are at running back?
COACH O'KEEFE: Another great question. You know, I think for that game we had Simmons back, Sam and Simmons for that game. We were blessed with two deep at that point.
But it's probably similar in a lot of ways. Marcus, he's got a lot of experience at this point a lot more experience than maybe we thought he was going to have coming into the year. On the other hand, we were hoping we'd get him ready faster, even after some things transpired.
I think we feel pretty comfortable.
Brad Rogers is a guy who we have a lot of faith in, if we could get him in the game. Should probably be in the game a little bit more from time to time, as well. He's a big strong guy, who is doing a nice job at fullback, but also has the capability in our offense to get in there and run the zone stuff. He knows the protections well enough, we can keep him in and count on him to pick up any pressure.
But, you know, we feel pretty good about where we're at right now. Could be better.
Q. Is Keenan capable of giving you what Derrell did? You're looking to fill that void obviously.
COACH O'KEEFE: Keenan Davis is a good football player. We're going to find out. We'll find out. This is where guys that have ability or great players begin to emerge, show what they're capable of doing, show that they've worked hard for their opportunities by taking advantage of what they have in the ballgame.
So, yeah, we have confidence in Keenan, number one. Number two, I think there's a lot of excitement that he gets an opportunity. He's going to do whatever he can to take advantage of it.
I can't answer the overall question because, you know, that's like asking again how Marcus would do when you can't be sure. The proof's going to be in the pudding, how he plays, what we do on the field, what he does on the field is going to really matter.
He quietly has made big plays in games that nobody noticed because they haven't ended up in going to the end zone or whatever. But he has done some stuff. I really like where he's coming from in the run game, as well, becoming a more physical guy that can help those backs out down the field.
Q. When the team hits a rough patch, it's the nature of the beast, fans want reasons, point fingers, the offensive coordinator is not immune to that.
COACH O'KEEFE: Just ask my mother (smiling).
Q. Do you check the perception and the criticism? Kirk said he reads everything. Good or bad. Do you keep a pulse of when things are good or bad? Have you ever Googled yourself?
COACH O'KEEFE: Googled myself? My kids have. I haven't done it in a while. My wife will tell me she does this. I shouldn't even be saying this in public. It's too late. She'll do stuff like that every now and then.
I'm going to speak out of both sides of my mouth here. Number one, I really think you need to stay on top of that stuff as best you can. Number two, I never pay attention to any of it because I'm not a public relations guy, I'm a football coach. I don't need to be worried about my public relations. We need to be worried about making the next first down, finding a way for the team to get better offensively. Getting in that end zone, being better in the red zone, whatever it may be that particular week, go back at that, and not worry about everybody's opinion, including mom's.
But I also think watching a lot of stuff that goes on now in the world, staying out in front of that in some ways, in public relations, is great, but I don't think that's necessarily the case in our situation or my particular situation.
Q. Do you have a perception of what is being said, good or bad?
COACH O'KEEFE: I have a perception because I'm around. But I'm not going to spend any time doing that stuff.
Q. Your name was linked to an opening that was out there that since has been filled. Is becoming a head coach again something you thought about maybe doing sometime down the road or are you content with remaining an offensive coordinator for the long haul?
COACH O'KEEFE: That question gets asked a lot of times even in recruiting. I think naturally that stuff will take care of itself if it happens or it doesn't happen. I think the guys that stay focused on trying to do the best job at the job they're at right now are the ones that end up being successful at what they're doing. That's really all we've tried to do, all I've ever tried to do here.
At one point, yeah, I think I had been a head coach for 16 years. It's been so long now that I barely remember what it was like at this stage. That part of it, I was going to make some snide comment about calling plays off the Internet or whatever. But time flies. It's been 12 fast years. A lot of that stuff doesn't even compute at this stage.
Q. The leading receiver on the team now (Marvin McNutt, Jr.), you got him out of Missouri, can you talk about his progression from quarterback to receiver, and getting him out of the state of Missouri?
COACH O'KEEFE: Eric Johnson did a great job recruiting him. Marvin, I think he might have been AllState in three sports as a quarterback, basketball player and he was a pitcher in baseball. I don't know if they played for three state championships. But he was a highly successful athlete. I think he was offered some Division I basketball scholarships, as well. I can remember going to watch him play. He had a couple of dunks, threepointers. He was a talented guy.
We brought him in as a QB and decided that we didn't want to waste his athletic ability. We moved him over and started to train him as a receiver. The first thing that had to happen was he needed to get himself in shape. Being a receiver is more like being a basketball player where you have to run that court every play for the most part. After spending a couple years at quarterback where you're only dropping back five, six, seven steps at a time, you know, your lung capacity isn't quite the same as it needs to be when you're running down the field on a post route for 40 yards and you're doing that four, five, six times in a row.
He had to get himself in shape, number one. We always felt he had great hands. The next thing was learn how to run routes. He's a big, linear guy. Being able to get his feet where they needed to be, weight where it needed to be for a great route runner is something Marvin is working on but has improved tremendously. His feet are quicker than you think for a guy that's big. That's why he's able to beat some people against press coverage, especially when you get up and jam him. His feet are good. He's learning to use his hands better as a receiver, getting off the line of scrimmage as well.
The biggest area he's got to continue to work on is probably no surprise for a former QB, and that's blocking, right? He hasn't had to do that a lot, but he's improved quite a bit. We need to grow there a little bit more.
Q. How flattering is it for you to be mentioned for other job opportunities as a head coach? Does that validate what you talked about?
COACH O'KEEFE: I don't know that it matters. This is something, in college football, you don't have a whole lot of time to stop and smell the roses or think about things until everything's past you for the most part. It's tough to evaluate or even think about stuff while they're going on in the immediate present time because you're preparing for practice, you're game planning, you might have recruits in, you could have a press conference, you might go up and have a staff meeting, get ready again to meet with some recruits, meet with your players, have practice, have dinner with your recruit, all that stuff. It just keeps going.
I'm surprised none of you guys have ever asked to come along for a day at work. People ride around with cops and stuff, police at times. I'm surprised none of that's happened.
Q. We tried.
COACH O'KEEFE: Did you? I forgot. Sorry. What's your first play, run or pass?
Q. Jet sweep.
COACH O'KEEFE: That's good. I like that (smiling).
Q. We see a veteran quarterback in Ricky, guys with experience. We wonder maybe why the twominute drill didn't go off as well this year as you hoped. What has been the key thing that bogs you down in those situations?
COACH O'KEEFE: The key thing? Making first downs. In a twominute drill, you have to make first downs. We have examples before a half where we chunked it down the field and did some stuff. Gets a little tougher now depending on where you're starting from and how things start out.
For instance, Northwestern, that was a twominute drill. I think we had 18 plays. Three first downs is all we were able to make. I think we had to go to two fourth down situations in order to get it down did there and another third down.
I can't say that I've ever been in a twominute situation that ever had that many plays in it and you didn't put yourself in position to score. It was a little odd. Everything took place there that you don't want to take place: sacks, dropped balls, bad balls, whatever. I'm sure there was a bad call or two involved in there, as well. But that's kind of it.
We talk to our guys about the twominute drill. Let's keep cool, stay poised, keep your calm. Let's think about making first downs and conserving the clock. That's really how we go about it. There's going to come a point where you really have to push the ball down the field depending on what's going on. But that's how we'd like to go about it. Make the first downs, okay? We talk to our guys about if you're on the numbers or outside, get outofbounds. If you're inside the numbers, get up there and do what you can to get the first down. Get the ball back to the officials as fast as you can, keep moving.
We work on it every week. We work like crazy on it preseason. We even worked extra time on it here in the back part of the season. But it's all got to be executed.
Q. Are opponents giving you a common look in a sense they've seen, We can do this against them?
COACH O'KEEFE: It's a little bit easier to do stuff knowing you've got to go 80 yards in a minute and whatever. They can afford to possibly sit back and do things. We've beaten more people this year when they've tried to blitz us than when they sat back and tried to drop us off. It becomes a guessing game.
You can use multipurpose coverages to a certain degree that can help you. But if the defense isn't cooperating, they get in a pattern of using, let's say, three different coverages at different times, you got to be careful about trying to outguess them. You could end up with a bad call where you can't get what you want out of it. It either has to be thrown away, which ends up being a wasted down, or just becomes a bad completion that doesn't get you anyplace.
Q. Last year you were winning those close games. Coach talked a lot about the five losses. Does the offensive coordinator not get enough love when those things happen and get too much grief when you lose like three or four there?
COACH O'KEEFE: I don't know about me. I'm not worried about the love factor, but I know it's tough on the quarterback because he's doing everything he can. Those are tough situations to be in. We're counting on him to make all the correct decisions out there all the time.
I don't care if you're a coach or the quarterback, you're always wishing you had a few things back a lot of times. Even when you're winning games, you look at things, We could have done this or that different, wish we did this or that. But you're not saying it the same way as when you lose a ballgame. It certainly feels a lot differently in those situations because it's just kind of how the whole thing is.
Q. How do you react to Joe Fan who runs up to you and says, You need to unleash the shackles in the first half?
COACH O'KEEFE: I mean, again, we haven't gone back through everything. This year more than ever we've taken a lot of shots down the field. If it's working, it's great, you can get a big lead. In some of those other situations we talked about, the games we had at the end of the year, we didn't hit those shots down the field so it took us a longer time to get going. We had to do it the oldfashioned way with a drive or whatever it may be.
I think this year more than ever we took shots. We went into every game wanting to do that. I think the last two years especially. That's kind of who we are. But you've got to make those, otherwise it's second and 10. That means it could be third and 10. If there ends up being a sack, there hasn't been a million of those by any means, everybody has done a nice job, it could be even third and longer than 10.
It all factors in. But you just keep going at it, working for the next play is what you do.
Q. Can you talk about the development of your reserve quarterbacks, with Rick playing his last game, how they developed this year.
COACH O'KEEFE: Well, how do you think they've developed this year?
Q. We haven't seen them much.
COACH O'KEEFE: Right. You're seeing the same thing I'm seeing. Without game experience, again, you're asking me to comment on something that would be totally practicebased.
James has had a great year in practice. He was a redshirt and no one's hit him. He gets chased around a little bit. He usually has the benefit of seeing what Rick is doing first, can check or read the coverage that way himself. It's kind of how practice is built.
James has grown up a lot, has made himself a better player. He's a better player than he was a year ago, even though he hasn't been in the game. If you're asking me to evaluate him on practice, I would say all of our guys are better in that regard. So where that takes us after that, neither one of us know.
COACH O'KEEFE: We basically have had about five practices in preparing for the Bowl. Our guys are working hard. But we're really just working against ourselves at this point. Most of our focus has been on the development of younger guys, the fundamentals that they need to get better at their position, like it always is at this point in the year before we actually get into the game planning of Missouri, which we just basically had started this previous week.
The next three or four practices we have will have a segment built in where we'll begin to prepare like we normally would for our opponent and at the same time take a little bit of time out of each practice to work with the younger guys and develop them the way that we feel they need to be developed.
That's kind of where we're at. We can talk a little bit about Missouri.
They're a very good football team obviously. They're built on speed defensively. I would describe them as a very athletic team, especially their front seven. All their linebackers can really run. Their ends are extremely talented. I think right now, if you look at them from a statistical standpoint, the things that you notice about them most are they're giving up a little more than two touchdowns a game, but they are really stingy in the red zone, not only in allowing people to score, but letting people score touchdowns.
It's probably the lowest that I can remember ever seeing since we played anybody here at Iowa. So we've got to make sure we have a great game plan for them inside the red zone.
They're a wellcoached team. They'll bring pressure a lot of different ways. Again, that's part of the reason they've got 38 sacks on the season, as well. They take pride in really playing hard.
Q. What do those 38 sacks tell you? What do you need to be sharp on?
COACH O'KEEFE: Well, number one, you need to know where the blitz is coming from. That's critical. If you know where the blitz is coming from, we've got a chance to get it stopped. Rick can either change the protection or get us into a protection that can be better for us. Whether it's five man, six or seven man, doesn't much matter depending on the situation.
Part of that has come in the red zone. I'd say a good portion of that has come in the red zone in thirddown types of situations.
You know, we've got to be fundamentally sound. They are a quick team off the edge. They'll even substitute where they'll take their speed guys and put them inside, match them up against guys that normally aren't matched up with that kind of speed. That can really cause some issues at times. They use their hands very well. They have great feet.
They're not afraid to play a cover zero or cover one, try to run with you. In their conference, they've run with some of the best athletes there are in college football. They're not afraid of that by any means. That's what they practice against every week as well.
Q. Does this team blitz more than any other team you've faced this year?
COACH O'KEEFE: They'll bring a lot of pressure. There will be a lot of pressure on first down, as well, that's geared to stopping the run obviously. A good portion of it will come from the boundary. Looks like they like to bring their corners, get them involved with some things. They'll jump into some fronts that are going to really force you to have to run the ball one way or throw it another. We've got some work ahead of us to make sure we've got it all covered.
I wouldn't say that they blitz more than any other team that we've seen by any means. At the same point in time they've got their packages, and they're going to bring pressure. They can get in a little bear look that we see from time to time, bring a little more pressure, get their speed guys coming hard up the field.
Q. With this in mind, do you have to take extra emphasis to get your younger running backs up to speed?
COACH O'KEEFE: Good point. I mean, I must have talked about that before at some time. Yeah, we need to make sure that we're all on the same page. Lester has done a great job with that, whether it's been Marcus Coker or some of the other guys in the past of getting them ready to go. If we need to use Brett Morse or Paki O'Meara, they've got the experience and they know what they're doing in the system as well.
The key is, we're not going to know every time they come at us. Coker has got to be ready to go as well.
Q. How impressed have you been by Marcus since you've thrown him in there as a feature back? What are you expecting out of him in this game?
COACH O'KEEFE: I wasn't sure you couldn't be sure what to expect. Now that he's been in some games, you can expect him to run the ball physically and run it tough, which is what he likes to do.
We went back and looked at some of the ballgames that he got a chance to run it in, especially the Indiana, the Michigan State, and Minnesota games, he's done a pretty good job of getting where we wanted him to get and moving the pile at times himself when he needed to.
But, you know, this is an opponent that's going to offer some different challenges to him, and one of them is going to be in the blitz pickup. We really like the progress Marcus has made. We feel like he'll continue to get better all the time.
Q. (Question about why scoring has dropped in the last four games of the season.)
COACH O'KEEFE: I think it took us a while to get going at times. We've survived a little bit on some big plays that made a big difference. We probably weren't as good in the red zone in those games as we had been previously, maybe since the Michigan State game probably is what you're talking about.
We couldn't get it going at times for one reason or another. We made enough plays at certain points, but not enough in the end to get it done. We certainly weren't very good in twominute drills, by any means. As much as we tried to change it up, something always got in our way.
We always talk about, in every successful twominute drive, you're going to face some adversity along the line. It could be a sack. It could be significant. You've got to just work through it like it never happened and overcome it and keep on marching. We never were able to do that.
Q. When you played in the Cap One Bowl, you were down to the fifth string running backs. Are you in the same dire straits this time around or is your feeling a little different about where you are at running back?
COACH O'KEEFE: Another great question. You know, I think for that game we had Simmons back, Sam and Simmons for that game. We were blessed with two deep at that point.
But it's probably similar in a lot of ways. Marcus, he's got a lot of experience at this point a lot more experience than maybe we thought he was going to have coming into the year. On the other hand, we were hoping we'd get him ready faster, even after some things transpired.
I think we feel pretty comfortable.
Brad Rogers is a guy who we have a lot of faith in, if we could get him in the game. Should probably be in the game a little bit more from time to time, as well. He's a big strong guy, who is doing a nice job at fullback, but also has the capability in our offense to get in there and run the zone stuff. He knows the protections well enough, we can keep him in and count on him to pick up any pressure.
But, you know, we feel pretty good about where we're at right now. Could be better.
Q. Is Keenan capable of giving you what Derrell did? You're looking to fill that void obviously.
COACH O'KEEFE: Keenan Davis is a good football player. We're going to find out. We'll find out. This is where guys that have ability or great players begin to emerge, show what they're capable of doing, show that they've worked hard for their opportunities by taking advantage of what they have in the ballgame.
So, yeah, we have confidence in Keenan, number one. Number two, I think there's a lot of excitement that he gets an opportunity. He's going to do whatever he can to take advantage of it.
I can't answer the overall question because, you know, that's like asking again how Marcus would do when you can't be sure. The proof's going to be in the pudding, how he plays, what we do on the field, what he does on the field is going to really matter.
He quietly has made big plays in games that nobody noticed because they haven't ended up in going to the end zone or whatever. But he has done some stuff. I really like where he's coming from in the run game, as well, becoming a more physical guy that can help those backs out down the field.
Q. When the team hits a rough patch, it's the nature of the beast, fans want reasons, point fingers, the offensive coordinator is not immune to that.
COACH O'KEEFE: Just ask my mother (smiling).
Q. Do you check the perception and the criticism? Kirk said he reads everything. Good or bad. Do you keep a pulse of when things are good or bad? Have you ever Googled yourself?
COACH O'KEEFE: Googled myself? My kids have. I haven't done it in a while. My wife will tell me she does this. I shouldn't even be saying this in public. It's too late. She'll do stuff like that every now and then.
I'm going to speak out of both sides of my mouth here. Number one, I really think you need to stay on top of that stuff as best you can. Number two, I never pay attention to any of it because I'm not a public relations guy, I'm a football coach. I don't need to be worried about my public relations. We need to be worried about making the next first down, finding a way for the team to get better offensively. Getting in that end zone, being better in the red zone, whatever it may be that particular week, go back at that, and not worry about everybody's opinion, including mom's.
But I also think watching a lot of stuff that goes on now in the world, staying out in front of that in some ways, in public relations, is great, but I don't think that's necessarily the case in our situation or my particular situation.
Q. Do you have a perception of what is being said, good or bad?
COACH O'KEEFE: I have a perception because I'm around. But I'm not going to spend any time doing that stuff.
Q. Your name was linked to an opening that was out there that since has been filled. Is becoming a head coach again something you thought about maybe doing sometime down the road or are you content with remaining an offensive coordinator for the long haul?
COACH O'KEEFE: That question gets asked a lot of times even in recruiting. I think naturally that stuff will take care of itself if it happens or it doesn't happen. I think the guys that stay focused on trying to do the best job at the job they're at right now are the ones that end up being successful at what they're doing. That's really all we've tried to do, all I've ever tried to do here.
At one point, yeah, I think I had been a head coach for 16 years. It's been so long now that I barely remember what it was like at this stage. That part of it, I was going to make some snide comment about calling plays off the Internet or whatever. But time flies. It's been 12 fast years. A lot of that stuff doesn't even compute at this stage.
Q. The leading receiver on the team now (Marvin McNutt, Jr.), you got him out of Missouri, can you talk about his progression from quarterback to receiver, and getting him out of the state of Missouri?
COACH O'KEEFE: Eric Johnson did a great job recruiting him. Marvin, I think he might have been AllState in three sports as a quarterback, basketball player and he was a pitcher in baseball. I don't know if they played for three state championships. But he was a highly successful athlete. I think he was offered some Division I basketball scholarships, as well. I can remember going to watch him play. He had a couple of dunks, threepointers. He was a talented guy.
We brought him in as a QB and decided that we didn't want to waste his athletic ability. We moved him over and started to train him as a receiver. The first thing that had to happen was he needed to get himself in shape. Being a receiver is more like being a basketball player where you have to run that court every play for the most part. After spending a couple years at quarterback where you're only dropping back five, six, seven steps at a time, you know, your lung capacity isn't quite the same as it needs to be when you're running down the field on a post route for 40 yards and you're doing that four, five, six times in a row.
He had to get himself in shape, number one. We always felt he had great hands. The next thing was learn how to run routes. He's a big, linear guy. Being able to get his feet where they needed to be, weight where it needed to be for a great route runner is something Marvin is working on but has improved tremendously. His feet are quicker than you think for a guy that's big. That's why he's able to beat some people against press coverage, especially when you get up and jam him. His feet are good. He's learning to use his hands better as a receiver, getting off the line of scrimmage as well.
The biggest area he's got to continue to work on is probably no surprise for a former QB, and that's blocking, right? He hasn't had to do that a lot, but he's improved quite a bit. We need to grow there a little bit more.
Q. How flattering is it for you to be mentioned for other job opportunities as a head coach? Does that validate what you talked about?
COACH O'KEEFE: I don't know that it matters. This is something, in college football, you don't have a whole lot of time to stop and smell the roses or think about things until everything's past you for the most part. It's tough to evaluate or even think about stuff while they're going on in the immediate present time because you're preparing for practice, you're game planning, you might have recruits in, you could have a press conference, you might go up and have a staff meeting, get ready again to meet with some recruits, meet with your players, have practice, have dinner with your recruit, all that stuff. It just keeps going.
I'm surprised none of you guys have ever asked to come along for a day at work. People ride around with cops and stuff, police at times. I'm surprised none of that's happened.
Q. We tried.
COACH O'KEEFE: Did you? I forgot. Sorry. What's your first play, run or pass?
Q. Jet sweep.
COACH O'KEEFE: That's good. I like that (smiling).
Q. We see a veteran quarterback in Ricky, guys with experience. We wonder maybe why the twominute drill didn't go off as well this year as you hoped. What has been the key thing that bogs you down in those situations?
COACH O'KEEFE: The key thing? Making first downs. In a twominute drill, you have to make first downs. We have examples before a half where we chunked it down the field and did some stuff. Gets a little tougher now depending on where you're starting from and how things start out.
For instance, Northwestern, that was a twominute drill. I think we had 18 plays. Three first downs is all we were able to make. I think we had to go to two fourth down situations in order to get it down did there and another third down.
I can't say that I've ever been in a twominute situation that ever had that many plays in it and you didn't put yourself in position to score. It was a little odd. Everything took place there that you don't want to take place: sacks, dropped balls, bad balls, whatever. I'm sure there was a bad call or two involved in there, as well. But that's kind of it.
We talk to our guys about the twominute drill. Let's keep cool, stay poised, keep your calm. Let's think about making first downs and conserving the clock. That's really how we go about it. There's going to come a point where you really have to push the ball down the field depending on what's going on. But that's how we'd like to go about it. Make the first downs, okay? We talk to our guys about if you're on the numbers or outside, get outofbounds. If you're inside the numbers, get up there and do what you can to get the first down. Get the ball back to the officials as fast as you can, keep moving.
We work on it every week. We work like crazy on it preseason. We even worked extra time on it here in the back part of the season. But it's all got to be executed.
Q. Are opponents giving you a common look in a sense they've seen, We can do this against them?
COACH O'KEEFE: It's a little bit easier to do stuff knowing you've got to go 80 yards in a minute and whatever. They can afford to possibly sit back and do things. We've beaten more people this year when they've tried to blitz us than when they sat back and tried to drop us off. It becomes a guessing game.
You can use multipurpose coverages to a certain degree that can help you. But if the defense isn't cooperating, they get in a pattern of using, let's say, three different coverages at different times, you got to be careful about trying to outguess them. You could end up with a bad call where you can't get what you want out of it. It either has to be thrown away, which ends up being a wasted down, or just becomes a bad completion that doesn't get you anyplace.
Q. Last year you were winning those close games. Coach talked a lot about the five losses. Does the offensive coordinator not get enough love when those things happen and get too much grief when you lose like three or four there?
COACH O'KEEFE: I don't know about me. I'm not worried about the love factor, but I know it's tough on the quarterback because he's doing everything he can. Those are tough situations to be in. We're counting on him to make all the correct decisions out there all the time.
I don't care if you're a coach or the quarterback, you're always wishing you had a few things back a lot of times. Even when you're winning games, you look at things, We could have done this or that different, wish we did this or that. But you're not saying it the same way as when you lose a ballgame. It certainly feels a lot differently in those situations because it's just kind of how the whole thing is.
Q. How do you react to Joe Fan who runs up to you and says, You need to unleash the shackles in the first half?
COACH O'KEEFE: I mean, again, we haven't gone back through everything. This year more than ever we've taken a lot of shots down the field. If it's working, it's great, you can get a big lead. In some of those other situations we talked about, the games we had at the end of the year, we didn't hit those shots down the field so it took us a longer time to get going. We had to do it the oldfashioned way with a drive or whatever it may be.
I think this year more than ever we took shots. We went into every game wanting to do that. I think the last two years especially. That's kind of who we are. But you've got to make those, otherwise it's second and 10. That means it could be third and 10. If there ends up being a sack, there hasn't been a million of those by any means, everybody has done a nice job, it could be even third and longer than 10.
It all factors in. But you just keep going at it, working for the next play is what you do.
Q. Can you talk about the development of your reserve quarterbacks, with Rick playing his last game, how they developed this year.
COACH O'KEEFE: Well, how do you think they've developed this year?
Q. We haven't seen them much.
COACH O'KEEFE: Right. You're seeing the same thing I'm seeing. Without game experience, again, you're asking me to comment on something that would be totally practicebased.
James has had a great year in practice. He was a redshirt and no one's hit him. He gets chased around a little bit. He usually has the benefit of seeing what Rick is doing first, can check or read the coverage that way himself. It's kind of how practice is built.
James has grown up a lot, has made himself a better player. He's a better player than he was a year ago, even though he hasn't been in the game. If you're asking me to evaluate him on practice, I would say all of our guys are better in that regard. So where that takes us after that, neither one of us know.
