October 21, 2002
Selected audio clips of Texas A&M coaches and players, along with quotes from Head Coach R.C. Slocum, from Monday's weekly media luncheon at Cain Hall:
On Nebraska's offensive line...
"They look about the same to me. We were watching our endzone copy and they've got some big, wide bottoms. They've always had those. Their tight end is 290-something pounds. They play a couple of tight ends, but their blocking tight end is 290-something pounds. What happens with Nebraska is they have been so successful and so good that when they lose a game or a couple of games, everyone over-reacts and over-analyzes that they, all the sudden, have problems. A lot of it is wishful thinking by a lot of people. When I see them play, they're still a very talented team. They're physical and they give you more preparation problems than anybody you will play with what they do. You've got a little bit of everything to get ready for. They really present a lot of problems."
Is it important for your team to not buy into this notion that Nebraska is down?
"We talked about that at length on Sunday. It's an age-old problem. It always amazes me that it seems like fans never watch games in the big picture. Oklahoma State goes into Austin a couple weeks ago and it's 17-15 (Texas) win. Good ballgame, very competive. The next week (Oklahoma State) loses 44-9. Last week they beat Nebraska. End of last season, they go into Norman and beat OU. That goes on all over college football every week. That's college football. This Saturday, it won't have much to do with what we did last Saturday or what Nebraska did last week. Or what we did four years ago. It's going to be these two teams this week. Their program has won as much as anyone. They've got good players there. The fact that they lost a close game to Oklahoma State on the road doesn't mean that Nebraska is in a state of disarray. It would be totally misleading to say that. But some people may say or the public perception might be that, but from a coach's standpoint, I don't see it. When I see them, I see them in the same light as Tennessee or Florida or Florida State."
It appears that Nebraska doesn't have the speed that they typically have...
"I don't see that. That doesn't show up on the tapes. I saw their punt returner (DeJuan Groce) run back two for touchdowns in one game. I see them racing back there blocking punts. In their kicking game, you can see the speed going down the field. When you look at them, you don't see that. You don't see what you hear. I was hoping that I'd look at them and they wouldn't be very good, but that's not the case. But I knew better before I ever looked."
You mentioned how hard it is to prepare for Nebraska, but at least you know what they are going to do. They're not going to just show up as a passing team on Saturday...
"Oh no, you know what they're going to do. But they do so much. You've got the whole I- formation package, you've got power game, sweeps, iso, belly, all the plays that an 'I' team could run. Then you've got the straight option and the lead option. You've got the belly option and all the option game components. Then you come back and you've got one-back with trips and all the one-back passing game stuff. And you can run combinations of all that stuff. They do a lot of offense."
Speaking of a lot of offense, there's no getting around the fact that A&M has done a 180 on offense over the last four weeks. Is it the new coordinator or is it the lesser defenses that you've faced?
"Those key factors and I think it's the sum total of everything that has been better. We played young receivers last year that had no experience. This year we had those same guys back and I thought they would be really good. Early in the season, they had some drops. Dustin was a guy that we thought would come on and be a good quarterback for us. The development of Dustin has been something that has helped us.
"We had in-depth meetings as a staff to look at everything we were doing. I'm not willing to accept, and none of us were willing to accept the lack of production that we had. So we looked at what we were doing, who we were doing it with and how we were doing it. And how we were calling things, in terms of trying to create more balance and being less predictable. We went through an early-season analysis, which isn't unusual. It's not unusual for teams to look at one or two of the elements of their team and say we're not pleased with this and we're going to make some changes. So it was a combination of all that and we haven't played great defensive teams. I'd be the first to say that we haven't been playing great defensive teams. But at the same time, there have been times when we played teams that weren't great defensive teams and we didn't gain 500 yards and score 40 points on them.
"We were in a situation where I decided I was going to make some bold moves. We decided to change things around and try to change what we were getting done. I was really frustrated at that point. Part of it, I'd have to say was a carry-over frustration from the year before. When you lose all your tight ends and all your wide receivers, you have to try to be fair. I said at the time that I didn't care who the coordinator was, who was calling plays, when you have no tight ends and no receivers and a true freshman tailback, it going to be hard to be good. In light of all the injuries we had last year, you try to take all that with a grain of salt. We thought we would get all those guys healthy and have those young receivers back and we thought we were going to be better, and I wasn't seeing us be much better in the first couple of games."
You'll see much better defensive teams from here on out...
"No question. No question. But I feel optimistic that we have a chance to make some plays. I feel better prepared going into this stretch than I was feeling a year ago."