It’s Tuesday, so that means we have some Dooleyisms to deal with today. He started slow this week, but he put it into high gear.
Without further ado:
On Game Balls:
We gave players of the week to two guys. On offense, Justin (Worley) and Da’Rick (Rogers). Justin really played well and played like we’d hoped he’d play a week ago. He just was real confident in the huddle, confident in taking the snap, and pulled the trigger throwing the ball the way we thought he could. That allowed Da’Rick to make a lot of plays. We gave it to the whole defense. Any time you pitch a shutout in today’s game, everybody really played well. More than anything, they executed the plan against a fast-paced offense. Special teams, we gave it to Brian Randolph and we had to give it to Derrick Brodus too for the job he did
The Brodus story is great, likely his 15 minutes are nearly up, so I figured I’d give him another shout-out
I hope we see this soon. But let's not rush it.
On Tyler Bray’s thumb:
We have to look at the X-ray, feel his strength levels and if both of those things check out, which the likelihood is they won’t, and then we go to a CAT-scan, which I think is the final determining factor. The pain is not the issue; the pain is what he can tolerate. The issue is the bone has to be healed, because we aren’t going to put him out there and the bone is almost there but it’s not. The bone has to be healed, he has to be able to tolerate the pain and he has to be able to perform. If he can’t go out there and throw it like he’s used to throwing it, then why play him?
Bray wants to play, and who can blame him. He and Hunter both have to think the record would be different if they were in the lineup. You have to think we’d have won at least one extra game. But Dooley’s is right on about not rushing Bray back.
On kicking muscles:
Here is what happened. At the end of practice Thursday morning Mike Palardy felt a little something, which a lot of kickers always say that. Some muscle in my somewhere, they feel everything that happens to their body. So I was a little bit concerned, but there was no swelling and it was just a little pain issue and we had a lot of time before kickoff. It was about noon on Thursday and we aren’t kicking till 7 on Saturday. Usually that is a lot of time. Then I got a little nervous on Saturday morning when I could tell he wasn’t there yet. We had (Chip) Rhome and that is why Brodus looking back we should have dressed him. I thought Mike would be OK and at worst case he could kick field goals and Rhome kick off… He (Rhome) is hurt. He pulled something, you know. Kickers have muscles we don’t know about. They pull this: (gesturing to his leg)
This slayed me. Dooley pretty much called every kicker out.
On Missouri’s Academics
We all knew it was coming. I don’t really have an opinion on it and if I did it wouldn’t matter. I’ll worry about that in the spring. It’s a great academic institution, it really is. So it’s going to really enhance our academic reputation in the league.
I felt like he was being sarcastic. So hard to say here.
On the Secondary
I think the last two weeks we have played pretty well against the pass. Now we can’t deny that we didn’t play the Oakland Raiders of the `70s throwing the ball. That helps too. Neither of those teams were great vertical pass threats. Like I said, you have to start somewhere. We will see where our pass defense is this weekend
Still one of the fastest guys to ever play football: Cliff Branch
No Connor Shaw isn’t Ken Stabler coach. Nor do I see Cliff Branch anywhere, but hey, giving up just 14 points in two weeks? Not bad.
On Worley:
There were a couple long balls he had a chance at that he overshot, so we want to be able to hit those. We had about two other ones where Da’Rick got by the guy and it could have been another huge play. And then, of course, still getting some comfort level in the run game and the `mike’ calls and all that stuff…We can analyze it and work on it and we do. He just needs to do it, keep throwing it, figuring out who the receivers are, their speed – I think it just comes in time. And then some guys never can hit them. He threw a great one, though, on that touchdown. It was right on the stripe.
Worley definitely has the arm, no doubt about that. Hopefully the recent experience pays some dividends this weekend in Fayetteville. That would be a great great win.
On the continued ineptness of the running game and working like heck:
I don’t know where we’re going. Tauren (Poole) is still our running back and we’re going to keep working like heck to run the ball better. If we’re going to beat Arkansas, we’re going to have to run it better. But we’ll keep playing those three backs, probably, and see who’s running well. Jaron (Toney) did a pretty good job. He was efficient about 60-something percent of the time when he ran the ball.
Ahhh!!! Visions of Fulmer at his worst.
"We're gonna fight like heck"
On the Wildcat:
Yeah, we got some positive yards out of it. It was a starting point. We got 7 yards on a power. We didn’t get much on our sweeps the way we were hoping, but it helped us a little bit on the power. It was a good start. We’ll keep playing with it. It’s not going to solve our problems, but I’ve always liked it. “I haven’t run it here because I haven’t had a comfort level of the right guy running it. I think it’s a good way to take a few plays off the quarterback. If you don’t run your quarterback runs, the zone read stuff, it’s just a way to have that component in your offense. And it helps. But it’s rarely going to be the difference in winning and losing.
In other words: It’s a gimmick, it might work, it’s fun, but still a gimmick
On the Future
Brian Randolph did really well. He’s playing better every week, made a couple of big hits and he was in position. He didn’t have a lot of opportunity on some plays, but he’s doing well. He’s going to be a good player.
“We’ve got a lot of guys who are showing improvement, especially on defense. Mo (Maurice Couch) had another good game, Izauea Lanier is doing well, Byron Moore’s coming on, Brian and A.J. (Johnson). It was good to get Curt (Maggitt) back out there. We have about six or seven young players who are progressing the way we need them to, so we’ve just got to keep going on that track.
“We need our young guys, and our young guys on offense. It was good to see Justin – whenever you’ve got another quarterback play like that, it’s encouraging. We need our offensive linemen to keep growing. We need Marlin (Lane) and Devrin (Young). Vincent Dallas had a chance to make a play and didn’t make it, but DeAnthony Arnett again made a play and he’s playing better.
“That’s all I’m worried about. Let’s keep getting better, playing faster each week and the results will come
Tiny Richardson was just so set back and needs a lot of reps. If we can put him in and feel like he can go out there and function – he’s got a lot of good qualities and brings a lot of energy and spunk. Of course, he’s huge. We want to get him in there as quickly as we can, but I don’t want to force it. We’re repping him a good bit.”
We have some guys who haven’t played. We have three offensive linemen who I think are going to be good, solid offensive linemen for us – (Kyler) Kerbyson, (Mack) Crowder and (Alan) Posey. They haven’t played this year. Is that it? Christian Harris hasn’t played; I think Christian’s going to be in the fold. He’s going to be a good, solid player. And Geraldo Orta’s doing well; he was hurt. So we’ve got five guys who haven’t played and I hope we don’t play them to ruin their year, and I feel good about all five of those guys. There have been a couple of guys who we’ve played and just haven’t been able to get the playing time we would like to. Tom Smith’s one of them. Antonio’s one of them. I think everybody else, though, has been in the mix pretty good.
Cam Clear had about 30-something snaps. He’s another one of those young freshmen, feeling good. We’ll probably keep playing him, get him integrated some more. He’s big and athletic – he’s got a lot of good qualities about him, so it’s good to see him coming. Brendan (Downs) is hitting that freshman wall a little bit, so it’s good Cam’s there. Cam hit the freshman wall when he showed up.
Patience Vol fans, patience. It’s getting better. Look at all these young guys playing well. His impression of Cam Clear not understanding what it takes to play in college was great.
On Artificial Turf.
I don’t know. Usually, guys who are fast, you go race them in the driveway and they’re going to beat you. Then you go out in the mud and they beat you. So it doesn’t matter what they run on. If we went to the track, they’d beat us. The turf – when you’ve got a field like we have, I don’t think it’s as big of a difference. The turf’s good when you don’t have a lot of money to put into your grounds crew, when you’ve got those bad fields. “They used to grow the grass, didn’t they? When you played those fast teams, they would grow the grass. Ridiculous. Like that really mattered. They were still faster. They might have run 4.5 instead of 4.4, but your guys were running 5.1 instead of 5-flat, so it didn’t matter. It’s like, `It doesn’t slow our team down but it’s going to slow them.’ I never did understand that. I used to ask, `Well what about your team?’ `It didn’t have any effect on our team. It just slows them down.’ That’s the beauty of coaches. We do some great stuff, we’re so smart
I’ve always wondered this myself. I actually wondered this when Tennessee went to Notre Dame in like 2000 or ’01. They grew the field up for us. What difference does it make?
FAst guys are faster than you whether you run on a great field or here.
ON SEC expansion
I really don’t have any opinion on all that. I haven’t had time. Before I give opinions, I want to think about it. And it’s just hard. “The only thing disappointing to me in all this is it’s happening in football season, and no coaches have time to put any energy into thinking about it. That’s probably why they do it because they don’t care what we think anyway, which is fine. That’s not our job. Our job is to coach the team and play who they schedule. I know there are a lot of models out there – that would be one of them. That’s an easy way to preserve the rivalries, I’m sure. Missouri’s in the (SEC) East, aren’t they? That fits right along with all this stuff…Y’all know I’m big on tradition, so I’m not looking (to change). Although I wish we didn’t have to play some of those teams this year. That wouldn’t have been bad to put the rivalries on hold for a couple of years.
I love how Dooley likes to infuse logic. It never works, but it’s entertaining.
Do you see Columbia, MO on this map? Derek Dooley doesnt.
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