Monday Q&A: Barry Odom
Each Monday, head coach Barry Odom meets with the local media. Read the full transcript of Odom's teleconference as the Tigers begin to prepare for Auburn.
Opening Statement: “Looking forward to getting into the new week. Suffered a tough loss on Saturday and didn’t play well enough really on either side of the ball to win a game and Purdue did a great job on executing their game plan. We got started on Auburn Saturday night and then again Sunday with our players. Look forward to getting back into game mode and game week, a conference game, obviously a huge game against a great opponent. Fairly healthy going into week four which is good for us. Walter Palmore is still out but beyond that we’re in pretty good shape.
Other than just execution can you pinpoint exactly how it went so wrong on Saturday?
“Defensively, I’ll start there, we were able to get them into a couple third downs early on. One had a coverage breakdown, where a guy trying to do too much, had coverage on his man and for whatever reason fell off and took another guy. That opened it up for a big gain. On another one we had man to man coverage on the back on two linebackers and ended up losing him in the line of scrimmage and they completed a long screen. I think on one of the deep over routes early on, I think it was in the first drive to extend the drive, we didn’t have tight enough coverage. The quarterback made a nice throw. We didn’t play sharp enough to get off the field early and by the time we settled down and started playing a little bit it was already a three score game really. That compounding with not being able to win on the line of scrimmage offensively, not being able to get a first down in our execution. When you’re playing that way on both sides of the ball it doesn’t usually result in playing well enough to win one. That’s kind of where we were.”
Everyone said the preparation was good last week. How do you get that to carry over to a game?
“We’ve got to make sure that our preparation carries over to execution. For whatever reason, we weren’t able to do that last week. We’ve revisited a lot of things as a staff and feel really confident in the plan that we have in how we structure the week. We’ve got to be really really mature competitors once we arrive to the stadium and go play. Also understand that we’re gonna have adversity, we’re gonna have things that really test your mental conditioning and the mental aspect of the game. There’s going to be some good things happen and you’ve got to withstand that and not get too high in the moment and then you’ve got to also withstand the things that don’t go in your favor and lock arms and keep your head down and keep playing. The opportunity for us to be able to go and execute and prove that, it’s time and past time to go do that. As a head coach I’ve got to find a way to get us to go execute and do that and then as assistant coaches we’ve got to do the same thing and keep pushing our guys forward and find ways to put our guys in position to be successful. Then from a player’s standpoint we’ve got to execute.”
You mentioned not winning the line of scrimmage. What’s concerned you most about that side of the ball?
“We’ve understood that a little bit of a comparison to some things we struggled with early last year speaking offensively. We were still trying to figure out identity wise who we we were. We’re beyond that, now it’s the execution of it and we’ve got to be able to win one on one blocking situations. Then when we don’t schematically we’ve got to make sure that we’re doing a good enough job to put ourselves in position to counteract that then we’ve got to be able to make the right read and deliver the ball in those situations. We’ve got to be able to run the football and we were not able to do that the other day. That’s a whole level of frustration because if we can’t run the ball that’s going to make it very difficult.”
Do you worry about the negative momentum snowballing and building up for your players?
“You talk about with our team a number of different things. I know that even though we’re three games in there’s plenty of negativity. We haven’t played well enough to win the ones we’ve wanted to. You look at the things that they’re probably hearing outside of our walls here. I told them last night it’s the same thing if we’re sitting here 3-0 you’d be hearing about how great we are and really we’re not. We’re 1-and-2 and we’re hearing probably how terrible we are. There’s always a little bit of life in between there. Never as good, never as bad as it seems. We’ve got to focus on what we can control, go prepare and stay tight as a team and enjoy the opportunity to go compete. You worry about a lot of things, but the only thing we can really do about that is stay close together as a team, which our team is. I like the way that we’ve responded the last couple weeks as far as practice and just the way it feels around the climate of the locker room. We’re still in pretty good shape and we also realize it’s game three of a 12-week season and we’ve got a lot of opportunities out there.”
Do you have an updates on Emanuel Hall’s status?
“It was a right shoulder. I don’t know, it’s more muscular than anything. He’s cleared to practice tomorrow. Excited that he’s going to have an opportunity to go help us.”
Eric Beisel mentioned good chemistry in practice and alluded to the coaching change. Did you get a sense that there were some good things that came out of that?
“Yeah, I really like the position that working together we had a great week of preparation, we had really good meetings and productive. It doesn’t make it any easier going out, all that stuff’s great, but then we don’t go play very well. We’ve got to obviously get that part figured out. Our team’s in really good shape as far as our mental aspect of togetherness and leadership. I don’t question any of that at all. I want nothing more than for these guys to keep working the way they’re working and then get some results for the things that they’re putting in. This is what I’m trying to get ironed out and figured out from this football team.”
Josh indicated the reason Damarea didn’t start was health related. Was that why he wasn’t in on the first drive and is he okay now?
“You look at the number of reps early in the week that really our tailbacks took and I just really felt more comfortable, without it in front of me, I don’t know at the end of the day the total number of reps that he and Ish and Larry took, but all three of them are going to have to play really well. Damarea we expect to play at a high level and, again, if a guy doesn’t run out there the first snap, that doesn’t mean a whole lot. Is he a starter or not a starter? Damarea’s a starter, he’s going to play a whole bunch. The number of reps will probably lean in his favor I would suggest, but as practice played out last week before the game, he was a little bit limited early in the week. We’re going to count on all three of those guys to be really productive for our team.”