Here is the full text of his give-and-take with reporters. Warning: Not for the faint of heart. Let’s see if you can make more sense out of this than I can. Questions are in bold type, and interesting answers are in italics.
After the Georgia win, you guys looked a little reminsicent of 2008, did you think the offense was over this kind of inconsistent play?
You know what? Here’s what I want to say to you. I hear where you’re coming from, you know? This is a different team with a different identity. It’s like, you know, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There are some things we’d like to clean up, right? We’re saying we want to clean up red zone production. How do we do that? Well, turnovers cause that. But to say this year’s team is last year’s team, or last year’s team is the ‘06, it’s hard to do that. You got different cats, it’s a different deal. Sometimes I hear that a lot, and it’s like, you gotta accentuate who your guys are. We’re a really good rushing team. Why? Why? ‘Cause they’re good backs. Where are your explosive guys right now? You know, well, (Aaron) Hernandez has a tremendous amount of explosives right now, he’s an explosive guy. (Riley) Cooper’s got a tremendous amount of explosives, Jeff Demps got a tremendous – those are your guys. When your backs become those guys, they take on a different life, you understand what I’m saying? K? Whereas when it’s Percy Harvin, that’s a different life, right? He’s gonna run by somebody, and that could be an 80 yard deal.
So at the end of the day, at the end of the day, you’re fighting to make sure you have the best play that you can have within your structure. But at the end of the day, what do you want to do? Win. Win. You want to win, and that’s the goal. Our goal is not to go out there and say well did we – would it be great if you had, hey wouldn’t it, I would feel great too. Let’s go launch it and get like four 80 yard touchdown strikes. That would be terrific. But the bottom line is, at the end of the day, you know what really feels terrific? And I’m not even the least bit sarcastic right now, being 9-0, going to play for 10-0, is really terrific right now. So at some point you work your tail off to make sure that you’re as consistent and as productive as you can be, which I think we can be more of, OK? And you want to be comfortable in your skin, you follow me?
And what does that mean? We got a pretty good run game. In fact, it’s the number 1 run offense in this conference right now. So how do we find ways to keep that at a very high level? Because we’ve got some tailbacks that can be explosive, and that’s what we’re talking about – explosives. And we’re constantly working on the red zone, especially the throw game down there in the red zone. And of course the ability to be more productive. We got a great third down conversion and a great pass efficiency rating right now, but our total pass yards aren’t as high, OK? And again our rushing yards are, so that’s what I’m talking about.
It’s kinda like this – I don’t know if I’m answering your question, I’m talking a little bit for you, but I’m just trying to give you some feedback and some thought process. But at some point it’s really not about ‘08, ‘07, they’re all different years, very different reasons.
What I do love about what we do right now is, we have great time of possession, and that feeds directly with what? Great defense. We drive the ball, we hold the ball. That’s a good thing now, cause when you score compare, we drove the ball much more effectively against Georgia this year than we did a year ago. Much more. We just happened to have a couple, we got the ball in the short field, made a couple of big plays a year ago, but we didn’t have much consistency driving that ball. We drove the ball well, so at the end of the day those are important, but no one ever talks about that. Does anybody want to talk about time of possession? I know it’s boring (laughter), it’s boring, it’s boring, but guess what time of possession means? The other guys aren’t on the field as much. And we got a great defense now, we got a great defense. So the plan to win is really, and this is where I think we gotta do a better job, one area is what? Score in the, red zone productivity. Right now we’re taking care of the ball, we’re running the ball, we’re possessing the clock, and we’re playing with good field position, playing good field position game. Those are all the positives, OK?
And those are positives. That’s why, there’s a reason why we’re at 9-0. We didn’t just fall off the pickle boat and all of a sudden we showed up 9-0 now. And we’re 19-0 because I think we’ve done a good job managing our people, managing our people. If you try to be something you’re not, sometimes that fails. You gotta be careful, OK?
With all that said, Steve, are you a little surprised you haven’t had bigger chunks of yards with the running backs? In SEC play, Demps’ 25 yarder was I think the longest….
He’s got a lot of explosives. He’s got the most explosives on our team right now. We just did a study, I don’t know if you were here, we just did that study, we just did a comparison study from a year ago. We got the same explosives, a little less, 20 yards or more. I don’t know what we can do more. I thought, OK, we lost one of them in Saturday’s game, we lost a, what was that, was that a 30-yarder? 31 yards? We gave away a 31 yarder yesterday, Saturday, and we need to do that, They’re gonna come there, you know what I mean? That’s where those come.
But you know, what happens is, go back now. You go against Kentucky, we ran that ball and ran that ball and bam bam bam. Now we’re striving for what right now? More balance, right? That means less touches, right? That means the amount of touches are less, and you’re dividing them three ways. You see what I’m saying? So in one breath it’s throw it throw it, balance it balance it. Next breath it’s, well where’s the run? You know? It’s in there, I mean, it’s in there. There’s a reason why statistically we’re pretty good in every category in the SEC conference. We’re pretty good, there’s a reason for that.
But I’m a realist, man. I know where the warts are, and like every year you’re trying to fix warts, right? I mean, a year ago, trust me, we were trying to fix warts a year ago. Not may have seen that with you guys now. And scores sometimes, they come, you know? There’s other ways to score, are they coming now? What we’re doing right now is working a long field right now, and you know what? We’ve done that well. Let’s just do better in the darn red zone right now. It’s still got our attention and our focus, honestly.
Steve you talk about the defense being good, does your mentality change knowing it’s ….
Yes, yes. What’s the plan to win? I mean, yes, yes and yes. We went into the Tennessee game with that mindset. I know people don’t want to hear that, but that’s OK. We beat LSU at LSU with that mindset. I don’t know, how many wins did they have at LSU in a row at that stadium? 34? So people say, compare it to LSU a year ago. Well, we didn’t play LSU a year ago in LSU. At LSU what we did was we worked hand in hand with our defense, we controlled the clock. I think Charlie (Strong) said they ran 47 plays on defense against LSU. What were they talking about? Was it not a big thing? And that’s one of the huge reasons, we work well together. We got a great defense, and our coaching staff has really jelled well together. We all see it clearly. We have one objective – all for one, one for all, to do one thing – win. Along the way, don’t stick your head in the sand. You got a problem you want to fix a problem? You’re not consistent somewhere? You gotta fix that. And that’s on going. But that’s every year. Just pick which problem you’re trying to fix. That’s where we are right now.
I tell you, we’re ecstatic to be 9-0, man. We’re in the toughest defensive conference in America, is the SEC. Do you all agree with that? Right? Bar none, we are in the toughest conference in the country. And we’re 9-0, 19 wins, 9-0. So that’s a, I’m not sitting here, I’m just saying, so let’s – we gotta go, man, we gotta have a great week this week. We gotta have all our energy and all our focus on being a team and going to get win number 10. That’s all that matters right now. That’s all that can be locked into right now, and we are. I think we got a really good attention, our team right now seems like they’re right there, just like that, which is cool.
