Oklahoma State University Athletics
Gundy, Players Meet With Media
October 01, 2007 | Cowboy Football
Oklahoma State Head Coach Mike Gundy
“Back at it, looking forward to the A&M game. It's a good football team, a ball control offense. You obviously have to be option sound when you play against them. McGee and Lane and Goodson are playing well. Couple of the wideouts, it's like they have been there forever, those guys are still making plays. So, we will have to be option sound. Offensively we will have to find a way to move the football and try to use some of the clock. A&M has done a great job of eating up all the clock in the game. I think they had the ball maybe 25 minutes more than Baylor did this last week. They do a really good job of that. Our players are excited about the win last week and looking forward to practice this week. Back to work as normal and on the road at A&M.”
Regarding the OSU offense going into a hostile environment at Texas A&M:
“I would like to think that they will go play. As a coaching staff, our job is to prepare them to go play football and hopefully they will be comfortable enough with the game plan that they can just go out and play.”
Regarding the importance of getting off to a good start:
“Obviously we like to have a good start in every game especially when you play on the road. You like to get off to a good start, settle the crowd down a little bit, run the football effectively, and as I said earlier it is important that you are sound in the option game on defense.”
Regarding Zac Robinson:
“If we didn't see some things in him that we really liked then we obviously would not have made the change at that position. I think that Zac is a pretty sharp guy and he understands. He will be pretty composed. I think he will play well down there. As coaches, we have to put him into position to have success. He has had 175 more reps in live game situations and there is no substitute for actual game play and being out there, the plays and the crowd, and everything in general. He is 175 plays better than he was two weeks ago. It should benefit him. We feel confident that he will do fine or we would not have made the change.”
Regarding Jorvorskie Lane and the Texas A&M offense:
“When you play any good offensive player, you have to do a good job tackling and wrapping him up. Now, he is different than some of the other guys because he is so big and physical and if you are not careful you can bounce off of him. You have to be in the right spot to defend that style of attack and you also have to be able to tackle and get him down. It sounds simple but the key is to get him down. You have to hit him and wrap him up and get him down.”
Regarding the OSU offense:
“Well we would like to eliminate some of the penalties. Zac had a couple throws I wasn't too fired up about and then obviously Kendall did not do a good job of taking care of the football. When you are playing on the road, you want to take care of the football and you want to establish a running game.”
Regarding the Texas A&M defense:
“Their defense is playing well. They are running to the football. They are very big. They are 270 at the ends and 320 inside, which can give us some trouble for our style of play. We have to be really careful with what we try to do with those big guys inside. They are sound in what they do. They are based out of an eight man front. They are doing a little bit more of a four across in the secondary. They are getting to an eight man front a bit late, but they are running to the ball.”
Offensive Lineman Steve Denning
Regarding his adjustment to joining the starting offensive line:
“I had a lot of practice with them before that. I was ready.”
Regarding who has helped with his adjustment:
“Definitely Coach Wickline and this year David Koenig has helped me a lot and David Washington too before he got hurt. Last year Kurt Seifried helped me a ton. I always watched Koenig when I was a backup. I think he is a really good run blocker and I tried to pick up on that.”
Regarding Texas A&M:
“They have a really good defense and we have to play really well to win.”
Safety Andre Sexton
Regarding the challenges that Jorvorskie Lane presents:
“He is real big back. He runs the ball hard. He has really good feet and he is really agile for his size. He is somebody we have to stop. I think you just have to hit him early and keep the ball out of his hands. Last year we did a pretty good job at slowing him down except for that last play when he came up really big. You've just got to hit him early and go down low on him. You've got to gang tackle him, you just can't have one guy try to tackle him and [we can't] let him get outside to our corners and smaller guys. We need everybody's help to try to bring him down.”
Regarding Texas A&M's three-pronged running attack:
“They have a whole bunch of threats back there with the shotgun offense that they run with Goodson and his speed. They use him in so many different ways. We just have to know where he is on the field. That's the strong point of their offense, so we've got to find ways to attack them and get after them early and try to keep the ball out of their hands as much as possible.”
“Playing these teams early with the spread offenses is going to help us prepare for what comes later in the year. Facing great quarterbacks like Rhett Bomar is going to help us prepare for McGee this week because he can do the same thing. You've just got to feed off of what we did this week and bring it in to College Station.”
Regarding playing on the road:
“We had some younger guys and we got some kinks out. We should be more accustomed to playing now. We should be a little more relaxed instead of those earlier games when everybody was still a little nervous. Now we should be focused on what we have to take care of and go down there and take care of business.”
Offensive Lineman David Koenig
Regarding the Texas A&M Defense:
“I have been banging heads with these guys for a couple years.”
Regarding what he said to Steve Denning when he was elevated to starter:
“I told him to just go in there and get as many knockdowns as you can. Be as physical as you can and no matter what happens you are going to have good plays and bad plays. Forget about the bad plays and keep going. Keep moving forward and just keep trying to knock them down and knock them back.”
Regarding traveling to Texas A&M:
“It gets loud, it gets really loud. Our offense may stumble a little bit. We need to practice this week with noise. We've got young guys handling the ball so we definitely need to practice for the noise and for that atmosphere.”
“We are 0-2 [Koenig against A&M] and I want to forget about that and use it as motivation. This year we have to use [the two losses] for motivation.”
Regarding how playing at Georgia can help prepare OSU for Texas A&M:
“Yes it is definitely an advantage to have played at Georgia. Georgia is very comparable to A&M.”
Regarding Dantrell Savage:
“He is incredible. I enjoy blocking for him. He makes guys miss and makes us look better. It is incredible having him back there.”
