Purdue Football’s Fearless Leader Holds Weekly Press Conference

The Boiling Point: Danny Hope held his weekly press conference with local media today.

Danny Hope held his weekly press conference today, meaning he hasn’t been fired despite the fact that he has led embarrassing efforts against Indiana and Notre Dame in his last game against each school. In it he talked all things Purdue football.

I know most people are likely to skip right to the QB talk and what was Tweeted yesterday, so here’s the quotes on each:

"Q. He put out something on Twitter yesterday, speaking of being a wild stallion, I don’t know if you saw what he put out on Twitter. What’s your reaction to what he put out there, and did you have a talk with him to find out exactly what he was trying to say?COACH HOPE: When I read it, I knew exactly what he was trying to say, and the only negative responsive to it is everyone else’s negative response. I wasn’t offended by it one bit, and he said exactly what we were saying, that he’s got to play within the system. Sometimes when you’re not around young people all the time, you can lose some things in the translation, and someone had approached me with his Tweet — I can’t hardly bring myself to say it (laughter), said this is really going to blow up, and I looked at it and said, I must not get it. So I read it again and I still didn’t get it.I understood exactly what he was trying to say. I think he was trying to say what we were saying to him, he just said it in his own words. Most of the time when I read these things or these things comes to me I’m trying to figure out what the big deal is all about. It’s amazing how people sometimes spin things for their own advantages. Sometimes people don’t have a whole lot to do other than to try to make something out of something that’s not much at all.A classic example was someone asked me last week in this room about how you keep things in perspective, big game like this, great opponent like this, big night like this, and I came back and said, well, obviously we have to keep things in perspective, and I’ve told the team that if things don’t go our way and we don’t win against Notre Dame, it’s not the end of the world. It certainly is an inconvenience, it’s not what we want, but it’s not the end of the world. But a win against Notre Dame could change our world, and I thought that was the best approach for us to take as a football team so we didn’t take the field tight and go out there knowing there was something really special out there, if we could play up to that level. And you can’t believe the ramifications of a quote like that because people took it and spun it their own way.I think the same thing has happened with Robert Marve’s Tweet and anything else that’s said or done. If you don’t take it and spin it as something that seems to be — if you don’t take it and make it good soapbox material or soap material, then people don’t really want to read it."

"Q. With your quarterback situation, where are you at with that right now? Do you still plan to split time between the two guys? COACH HOPE: When you say split time, you’re talking about 50/50, and sometimes it’s hard to get it to work out exactly that even. But we intend on playing both quarterbacks. Caleb TerBush I think has really gotten a lot better, and it was nice to go into a ballgame with a quarterback starting four games in a row. It’s been a long time around here since we’ve had that luxury, and he didn’t get to play enough on Saturday. We didn’t do a very good job of staying on the field from an offensive standpoint, and that negated some of the reps that we would have liked for Caleb to have gotten from a numerical standpoint.We also are committed to play Robert Marve or whoever the No. 2 quarterback is in the games, and we made a commitment, a decision to make sure we played even the first half, and we only had 12 plays in the first quarter, and then towards the end of the first half Robert Marve and the offense, they were able to manufacture a good drive, and we ended the half with some momentum and scored, so I thought it was a good plan to start Robert in the second half, hoping that we would still continue with the momentum that we had finally showed some of at the end of the first half.Then our defense was on the field way too much in the second half, and that negated a number of reps that Caleb TerBush was able to get in the second half. We anticipate and plan on playing both of those guys as long as they’re healthy and as long as they are ready. I can’t tell you exactly what their rhythm will be or how the rotation will go, but we definitely want to play both of them in the first half.The reason why we’re so committed to playing both of the quarterbacks at some point in time in the first half is you all well know, if you don’t get him in in the first half and it gets tight in the second half, you may not get the next quarterback in. So we have a plan to make sure that we get whoever the No. 2 quarterback is into the ballgame sometime in the first half."

Follow the jump for the complete transcript.

Q. First just in the aftermath of the Notre Dame game, how did the guys respond in practice? How did everybody bounce back from that?
COACH HOPE: We practiced very well Sunday, had a physical practice and went out and got after it really good. Sometimes that’s really good for a losing hangover, if you will, and I’m assuming that they’ll respond and bounce back. They practiced very well on Sunday, and obviously going into Big Ten play is a big shot in the arm for our football team. I think all will do well. We have a lot of really outstanding young men or our football team and a lot of potential, so we’re excited about getting into Big Ten play.

Q. The fact that you’re playing a Minnesota team that has struggled their last two games, what problems do they present?
COACH HOPE: I think they’re a very dangerous football team. I know what their head coach is all about. He’s an outstanding football coach. He hangs his hat on all the right things that make a difference to your football team and your football program. They have been without their head coach some, and that’s always difficult, without your top leader some. They also have been without a couple of their top players. They didn’t have Marqueis Gray last week, and he’s one of the great athletes in the Big Ten. They were also without their top kick returner Stoudermire, who is the top kick returner in the history of Big Ten football.
They’re a big football team. They have a big offensive line. They do an outstanding job executing their zone blocking schemes, they do an excellent job of timing it up as far as when and how they fit up on the down man and when and how they come off with the linebackers. Tough running backs, they have a lot of skill players, they have good size and good speed. They’re very good in special teams.
I think our football team is very good in special teams, and I think they match up with us very well from a special teams standpoint. I think they’re a very dangerous football team.

Q. When you look at it, do you try to prepare for both quarterbacks given Gray’s health situation?
COACH HOPE: Well, obviously we’re going to have to because both of them have played, and you never know how things are going to go from a health standpoint so we’ll have to prepare for both quarterbacks.

Q. And then as you’re looking at your own team defensively, I know the inability to get to the quarterback has been a problem. Any particular, I guess, changes you can make, whether it’s personnel, approach, or do the guys have to play a little harder and get to the quarterback?
COACH HOPE: Well, you answered all three very well.

Q. But any thoughts from your end on that?
COACH HOPE: Exactly what you said, personnel, scheme and them playing better. Absolutely.

Q. I just wanted to get your evaluation headed into Big Ten play, just what are a couple of areas you like of your team so far and what are a couple areas that you need to improve upon?
COACH HOPE: I like a lot of things about our team, and there are a lot of areas that we need to improve on. I think our special teams right now is really making a difference for our football team. I think it’s made a difference in the games that we’ve won, and I think it’s kept us in some games that we’ve lost. I think we’re really doing well from a special teams standpoint. We have the No. 1 punter in the nation. We lead the Big Ten in kickoff coverage. We’re second in, I believe, punting, net punting, in the Big Ten. There’s really a big four, if you will. There’s kickoff, kickoff return, punt and punt return, and when you add up where we rank in the Big Ten, we’re tied for first with Nebraska. We’ve also blocked, I think, three field goals already this season. So I think our special teams and our specialists are a real strong part of our football team.
I like the potential that we have offensively. I think that we have the potential to be a good running football team and we also have the potential to be a good passing football team. We have two quarterbacks that are still developing, but they’re both very talented and guys that we think that we can win with as they continue to grow and develop and play better. So I think we have true potential from an offensive standpoint, scoring points.
Defensively I think that we have big strong defensive tackles. I think Kawann Short at times has played as well as any defensive tackle that I’ve been around. I would like for him to play great all the time. I think he’s working hard to get himself in position to be able to do that. When it’s all said and done, he could be one of the top defensive tackles at his position in our league and potentially on a national level.
I think that the potential of our inside guys on the defensive side of the ball is really good. We have good defensive tackles, and we have some depth at that position. I think the linebacker position is one of the toughest spots to play on the football team, and I think that even though we’re still developing some at the linebacker position, I like what we have from an experience standpoint and a want-to standpoint.
Secondary wise we have four or five guys back there that have played a lot, so I think there’s a lot of areas of our football team that we can improve in, and I said this after the first game, I think this is the football team that’s going to continue to develop and grow and get better throughout the course of the season, and when it’s all said and done, I think we’re going to be a very good football team. We’ve done some good things, and a lot of things we still have to do a lot better.

Q. Obviously you had a chance to watch the Gophers without Marqueis. What does he add when he’s on the field based on some of the games that you’ve had a chance to watch?
COACH HOPE: Well, he’s a very special athlete. He’s similar in some ways to our Rob Henry, where his athleticism is so superior to most other athletes on the team that it gives the players some confidence and some hope that he can always make a big play to either get them back in a game, keep them in a game or win a game. The little bit that I know about him in the time that I’ve been around him, he seems like he has good leadership ability, a lot of want-to. He’s an outstanding athlete. He has a strong arm. He’s a lot like our quarterbacks that we have on our team now. He hasn’t played a whole lot in the games, and he still needs game experience, and it’s always a work in progress, but he is an outstanding talent, and I think his teammates believe in him.

Q. With your quarterback situation, where are you at with that right now? Do you still plan to split time between the two guys?
COACH HOPE: When you say split time, you’re talking about 50/50, and sometimes it’s hard to get it to work out exactly that even. But we intend on playing both quarterbacks. Caleb TerBush I think has really gotten a lot better, and it was nice to go into a ballgame with a quarterback starting four games in a row. It’s been a long time around here since we’ve had that luxury, and he didn’t get to play enough on Saturday. We didn’t do a very good job of staying on the field from an offensive standpoint, and that negated some of the reps that we would have liked for Caleb to have gotten from a numerical standpoint.
We also are committed to play Robert Marve or whoever the No. 2 quarterback is in the games, and we made a commitment, a decision to make sure we played even the first half, and we only had 12 plays in the first quarter, and then towards the end of the first half Robert Marve and the offense, they were able to manufacture a good drive, and we ended the half with some momentum and scored, so I thought it was a good plan to start Robert in the second half, hoping that we would still continue with the momentum that we had finally showed some of at the end of the first half.
Then our defense was on the field way too much in the second half, and that negated a number of reps that Caleb TerBush was able to get in the second half. We anticipate and plan on playing both of those guys as long as they’re healthy and as long as they are ready. I can’t tell you exactly what their rhythm will be or how the rotation will go, but we definitely want to play both of them in the first half.
The reason why we’re so committed to playing both of the quarterbacks at some point in time in the first half is you all well know, if you don’t get him in in the first half and it gets tight in the second half, you may not get the next quarterback in. So we have a plan to make sure that we get whoever the No. 2 quarterback is into the ballgame sometime in the first half.

Q. Are you waiting for one of those guys to have a performance that kind of separates them permanently, or do you plan to stick with this system for the foreseeable future?
COACH HOPE: I hope both of those guys play so well that I can’t decide which one of them is the best and we have two great quarterbacks to play with. That would be more ideal to me for both of those guys to be outstanding players. That’s the best thing for our football team. And again, one of the reasons why we are so committed to playing two quarterbacks is in the past a couple of years that I’ve been here, when the No. 1 guy went down, the No. 2 guy wasn’t ready yet. It’s a real setback for your football team. You can look on a national level at some great football teams in the National Football League or at the collegiate level that are trying to break in a new quarterback and there’s always some growing pains involved. I think our great football team up the road here, the Indianapolis Colts, right now they’re breaking in a new quarterback and they’re struggling to score enough points, and there’s lots of other teams throughout quarterback at every level that’s in the same boat.
Most of the time your offense goes as your quarterback goes, and if you lose the No. 1 guy and the No. 2 guy isn’t ready or he hasn’t had any game experience, it’s hard to play as well as an offense as you can. So we are committed to having two quarterbacks ready to play.

Q. Is that a philosophy you developed with the injury last year with Marve? Is that something that kind of you wanted to be more prepared going into this year for a potential situation like that?
COACH HOPE: Well, the situation last year with the quarterbacks being injured reinforced that philosophy. But when I coached at the University of Louisville with Coach Schnellenberger, he always made an attempt to get his No. 2 quarterback in the ballgame at some point in time so he was always developing a No. 2. There was one year that we were there that our No. 1 quarterback got every rep all season long because the No. 2 quarterback was a true freshman that really needed to red-shirt, so we went with a different master plan, if you will, that year. But my tutelage from Art Schnellenberger is to do all you can do to have two quarterbacks ready so if one goes down you don’t have a major dropoff at the most key position on your football team.

Q. As a coach, how do you maintain the rhythm of the offense with that system? Do some of your players get in and are used to it, or have you had some problems with rhythm this season because of that system?
COACH HOPE: I don’t think any of the players that surround the quarterback have any problem with it. Both of our quarterbacks are young in regards to game experience, and when they’re both playing really well and when they’re both playing as good as they possibly can and they’re both making a major impact on the game, I don’t see how that can be a bad rhythm at all.

Q. And speaking of Minnesota again, is it hard to not think that this is a pretty vulnerable team based on the way they’ve struggled? Can you talk more about Minnesota and your thoughts on them?
COACH HOPE: Well, everything I just said a couple minutes ago I still believe is true. I don’t know what else it is you want me to say. We struggled some, and I think we’re a dangerous football team.

Q. The two quarterbacks they might play are pretty different guys. When you have to prepare for that, I guess what are the challenges on the practice field? Is it almost like preparing for two different offenses?
COACH HOPE: I don’t think so. There’s always some subtle differences in some things that one might be better at doing than the other. There’s some throws that Robert Marve can make that I haven’t been around any other quarterbacks that could. He has a phenomenal arm. He’s an extremely talented passer. But I would like to be able to run predominantly the same offense regardless of which quarterback is in the huddle.

Q. And obviously this is the start of Big Ten play. How much do you kind of talk to your team this week about it’s a new season now?
COACH HOPE: Well, we already talked about that, but everything you’re saying is absolutely true. We start Big Ten play and we start it off at home in Ross-Ade Stadium. I think we have excellent potential as a football team and a lot of guys that work hard and really want to do well. It is a work in progress. Any time you go into conference play and everybody is undefeated in the league, or at least we are right now, then there’s some real optimism as far as what we have the potential to do.

Q. How did you come out of Notre Dame health wise?
COACH HOPE: Very good. That’s one of the reasons why I’m excited about where we’re at as a team. Again, I’m disappointed that we’ve lost two games. We are not as good a football team right now as Notre Dame obviously. I think we’re at least as good a football team as Rice, and they played very well, not taking anything away from them, but we didn’t play as well as we needed to. But I would rather have lost two games prior to conference play and learned the lessons that we need to learn as a football team and find out the things that we need to find out about our team and our players prior to going into Big Ten play.
This time last year we had a similar record, and we had already been decimated with injuries. Thank goodness that we’ve learned some lessons, and sometimes the lessons are learned best in life are hard lessons, and thank goodness that we have good players and good people, and thank goodness that we’re still a very healthy football team.

Q. What are some of those lessons?
COACH HOPE: We tried to do some things from a schematic standpoint on both sides of the ball that we thought would really add to our arsenal offensively and to our package defensively, and some of those things have been good for us, and we’re going to hang onto some of those things, and I think they’ll help us win. And some of those ideas and some of those schemes and some of those plays, if you will, some of those visions, if you will, are not the best things for this football team.
I think from a coaching standpoint we’ve learned a lot more about our football team in regards to what we can be good at and things that we may not be good at, and I think those are really valuable lessons going into Big Ten play.

Q. Calvin Smith didn’t appear to be on your roster on line this morning. Can you address his status?
COACH HOPE: I’m not going to go into a whole lot of detail other than it just didn’t work out.

Q. Can you talk about your approach to practice this week? I know you’ve talked a lot about the value of tackling versus the potential risk in tackling, and just maybe what you’ll do, if anything, different this week?
COACH HOPE: We’re going to take more time during individual and spend a lot more time on tackling drills. We’re going to take some limited opportunities and work on some live tackling.

Q. Not all-out?
COACH HOPE: We’re not tackling Ralph or Robert Marve or Caleb TerBush or Antavian Edison or anybody like that.

Q. You mentioned injuries, but Jared Crank, is he progressing? Is he a possibility for this weekend?
COACH HOPE: I think Jared is ready to go. We came out and practiced really tough on Sunday. We came out in shells, just the upper part of the pads and got after it pretty good. We had a 9 on 7 drill, an inside run drill, and we were able to get Jared Crank in the game and have him be a lead blocker on some plays. Jared is a physical player, and even though he’s been injured he does come back with fresh legs, and I thought he did a really good job in practice on Sunday and felt like he was back to form. It looked like he was 100 percent to me. Now, I’ve been fooled before, but I think he’s going to be fine, and I think he can help us win.

Q. You’ve mixed and matched safeties a little bit, probably based on their strengths against your opponent. Just how do you feel like that is working out, and do you feel like you need a couple of guys to sort of emerge at those positions?
COACH HOPE: Which safeties are you talking about?

Q. Well, I’m just talking about the whole — you’ve played, I guess, four for the most part, right, Max and Albert and Logan and Landon? What are you looking for there with sort of mixing and matching of those guys?
COACH HOPE: Well, I think the nickel package and the dime package changes who you have lined up at the safety spot. I think Albert Evans is a really good safety and a very physical player and a very experienced player. I like the way that he kind of plays the game, with a chip on his shoulder. I think he’s one of our strong leaders, and he’s a get-after-it guy and really important I think in a lot of ways as far as the tempo of our defense.
We have had some rotation with Landon Feichter and also with Max Charlot, and they’re both good players. They both do good things. We’ve been able to keep them fresh. They’re both good athletes. Landon Feichter is very fast. He’s not quite as big as Max Charlot, so we’ve been pretty much rotating those two guys about 50/50, and we’ve been able to do some things with Logan Link sometimes at the safety spot, sometimes replacing our linebackers some, some of the defense they played with four and five wide receivers.

Q. We understand Robert Marve got poked in the eye against Notre Dame. Is there any change in his status being available for the game, or how is he progressing from that?
COACH HOPE: He’s fine. I waved at him the other day, he recognized me, he waved back. That’s about as good as it needs to be. He’s fine.

Q. Will he be available to practice, there’s no problems?
COACH HOPE: I’m assuming so. I’ll tell you, that’s the most that he has ran and the hardest that he’s gone and the most reps that he’s had. And again, the whole issue with Robert is just a lack of reps that he’s had over the years. He played down at Miami early in his career, then he came here and he sat out a year as a transfer based on NCAA rules, and then he got injured after the start of four games and missed all of last season and all the spring and really struggled to get reps throughout the course of camps, and there was a couple weeks where he could go out and get reps and the next week not have much swelling and appeared to be somewhat fresh. He struggled a little bit towards the latter part of the week last week, and then he was ill the latter part of the week last week and missed a little bit of meeting time. So he’s still rusty in some ways.
He still has to be able to go out and study the offense, play in the offense, get a lot of reps. He’s way behind reps wise, way behind reps wise for a senior quarterback. But he’s an unbelievable talent.
I really believe in Robert Marve, and I think he’s going to do some great things this year. I don’t know exactly where he’s going to be at from a fresh legs or swelling in the knee status today. He was really, really sore on Sunday but he ran a lot and he played hard and he took some hits. Is it just the regular soreness that you’d have after a game playing against a real physical opponent like Notre Dame, or is it going to slow him down some from a knee standpoint, I don’t know really for sure until we get out there. I met with our sports medicine staff this morning, and he is a go for practice, and we’ll see how he does.

Q. You said Sunday that he went outside the system a little bit in the game. I guess specifically what are you seeing that he’s not doing, and what do you need him to do to maybe stay in that system?
COACH HOPE: He’s got to stick with the plan more. When the plan that’s still in place he’s still in position to be successful. He’s a wild stallion in his own rights, and that’s one of the things I really like about Robert Marve. If he didn’t throw so well we’d make him an outside linebacker or safety because he’s a tough guy. If you needed someone in the foxhole with you, Robert Marve would be a guy that you’d want to have your back. He brings a whole lot of energy to the team, to the huddle, in the locker room. He’s a real football guy.
But sometimes he makes some decisions that he thinks are the best as far as what’s occurring on the field at the time, and sometimes that’s not exactly what we would have designed for him to do. It’s never the result of a lack of effort or a result of being selfish or anything like that, it’s a guy out there playing hard and playing fast, but he’s a bit of a wild stallion, and sometimes he makes it a little bit difficult to ride.

Q. He put out something on Twitter yesterday, speaking of being a wild stallion, I don’t know if you saw what he put out on Twitter. What’s your reaction to what he put out there, and did you have a talk with him to find out exactly what he was trying to say?
COACH HOPE: When I read it, I knew exactly what he was trying to say, and the only negative responsive to it is everyone else’s negative response. I wasn’t offended by it one bit, and he said exactly what we were saying, that he’s got to play within the system. Sometimes when you’re not around young people all the time, you can lose some things in the translation, and someone had approached me with his Tweet — I can’t hardly bring myself to say it (laughter), said this is really going to blow up, and I looked at it and said, I must not get it. So I read it again and I still didn’t get it.
I understood exactly what he was trying to say. I think he was trying to say what we were saying to him, he just said it in his own words. Most of the time when I read these things or these things comes to me I’m trying to figure out what the big deal is all about. It’s amazing how people sometimes spin things for their own advantages. Sometimes people don’t have a whole lot to do other than to try to make something out of something that’s not much at all.
A classic example was someone asked me last week in this room about how you keep things in perspective, big game like this, great opponent like this, big night like this, and I came back and said, well, obviously we have to keep things in perspective, and I’ve told the team that if things don’t go our way and we don’t win against Notre Dame, it’s not the end of the world. It certainly is an inconvenience, it’s not what we want, but it’s not the end of the world. But a win against Notre Dame could change our world, and I thought that was the best approach for us to take as a football team so we didn’t take the field tight and go out there knowing there was something really special out there, if we could play up to that level. And you can’t believe the ramifications of a quote like that because people took it and spun it their own way.
I think the same thing has happened with Robert Marve’s Tweet and anything else that’s said or done. If you don’t take it and spin it as something that seems to be — if you don’t take it and make it good soapbox material or soap material, then people don’t really want to read it.

Q. You probably answered this question before, Kawann has this knack of blocking kicks. Do you even teach a guy that or just kind of let his natural ability to take over in those situations?
COACH HOPE: It’s a little bit of both, really. I mean, that’s a very good football question. Kawann is an excellent athlete, and he has outstanding hand-eye coordination. He was an excellent basketball player in high school, played on a state championship football team. There’s a picture I have in the hallway where a couple years ago someone had disrupted a pass and he left his feet and he caught the ball by the tip of the nose of the football, just inches off the ground, which is a fantastic catch. We go out there and mess around, and he’ll catch kicks and he’ll catch passes. He has outstanding hand-eye coordination. He’s very athletic for a man his size. I think he runs well. I don’t know how fast he really is. He has really nice running form, he has very quick feet, he has quick hands, he has excellent hand-eye coordination, so some of that is the gifts of God, some of it is a multi-sport athlete and some of it, believe it or not, is coaching.
When you line up and you are rushing a PAT or a field goal, there’s right-footed kickers and there’s left-footed kickers and you’re on one side of the ball or the other and there is one paw preference that’s a better choice than the other, if you will. It’s the same thing when you’re rushing a passer and you want to disrupt the football; which hand are you going to raise up to try to bat the ball down. And those are things that we coach and that we hang our hat on. We spend a lot of time, spend five minutes every day of football practice any time we go out there and practice, whether it’s Sunday in shorts, whether it’s spring football, we spend five minutes in practice every single day from a defensive standpoint working on ball disruption.
So a lot of it is innate ability, a lot of it is him being a multi-sport athlete, and some of it is really good coaching by our defensive staff. Very good football question.

Q. We talked a little bit after the Notre Dame game about how you brought more pressure and kind of tried to bring different pressures. After you watched that did you like some of the things you did in that area and think you can continue to do that, especially if Minnesota is going to have a freshman quarterback back there?
COACH HOPE: Well, I like pressures anyway. I prefer to be an aggressive guy if I had a choice and like to bring pressure. I know as an offensive line coach for all those years, picking up the pressure and picking up the blitz was always a point of emphasis. If you can pick the blitz up, then you can really exploit the defense. I thought Notre Dame did a pretty good job of recognizing some of our blitzes and checking their protections to pick up some of the pressures.
There were several times that we had some pressures called, and we executed the pressures but we didn’t make a play, particularly in the run game. I looked at it on film from the end zone view, and we have guys going in the right gaps and we have someone free, and we think he’s going to make a tackle in the backfield and he didn’t get it done. I’m not discouraged one bit about our pressure package. I’m very encouraged about our pressure package. I want to land more, to hit more hits on the ball carrier with it. So it wasn’t as productive as we wanted it to be, but I think it looks very promising at times.

Q. You talked earlier today about learning things that you can be good at. Is that something you think you can use going forward?
COACH HOPE: Absolutely, some we’re going to have to. We can’t always just line up in one look and not keep them guessing, that’s for sure.

Q. You mentioned Albert Evans. His leadership style is very straightforward from what I understand.
COACH HOPE: That’s what I like about him.

Q. Can that rub some guys the wrong way? Does that take some guys time to get used to?
COACH HOPE: I am similar that way, and sometimes I take a little getting used to and sometimes I rub some people the wrong way. You can ask my wife. She’ll certainly support me on that statement.
But sometimes somebody out there has to be brutally honest. It’s always easy to say nice things, to say what people want to hear and keep things rosy and cheery. But I think Albert is a good leader.
Sometimes you have to have someone step up and say what’s really there, and I pride myself in doing that some, and Albert prides himself in doing that a lot, okay, but you have to have some guys that that that will call it like it is. He’s a surly guy, he’s a tough guy, and he takes some pride in that, and that’s his style. We need some guys like Albert Evans on our football team, and everyone does.

Q. Does he make some calls on defense, or is that all your linebacker?
COACH HOPE: No, he makes some calls on defense. Everyone makes calls on defense. There’s a lot more to it than a lot of people could ever imagine because you have different types of coverages based on different types of groupings and formations so you could have one part of the defense that might be running one particular type of scheme or package based on what’s lined up on their side and another part of the back half of the defense that might be working a different type of scheme or package. You could have one side in zone and one side in man or you could have guys that have to convert their coverages based on different types of formations. Lots of guys on our defense have to make calls and adjustments, the linebackers do, the safeties do, the corners do. It’s complicated in some ways, but Albert is a good leader, he really is, and I think he’s a good field general in a lot of ways.

Q. You said he plays with a chip on his shoulder. Why?
COACH HOPE: Because it’s fun. You know, it’s fun. In the beginning people played football because they wanted to hit each other, not because you could get your name on a video game or have a picture of yourself in your uniform on your Facebook. That’s not why we played football back in the old days. Albert would fit into football back in the ’50s and the ’60s and the ’70s and the ’80s and the ’90s and the 2000s, as well, because he does play the game with a chip on his shoulder, and I like that. I wish we had more guys on our football team that were playing the game with a chip on their shoulder.

Q. Is he healthy? You mentioned he had a bruised thigh.
COACH HOPE: He’s listed as a go today so he should be fine. We’ll see when he gets out there, but he’ll be fine by Saturday. Should be.

Q. When you were talking about your quarterback situation, you had said Robert Marve or whoever is No. 2 quarterback. Did you mean that maybe Marv wouldn’t be No. 2 or did you maybe mean that that could flip-flop with Caleb being No. 2?
COACH HOPE: I mean, we’re always in position to compete. You can’t motivate people unless they have a chance to succeed and excel, and no one out there inherits a position. You earn your position. Football is a performance profession, it really is, and to sit there and say a guy is the heir apparent or he’s the starter and no one else has a right to compete for that spot to me takes something away from your team and from a morale standpoint.
We’ll go into practice today with Caleb TerBush No. 1 and Robert Marve as No. 2 and if they’re both healthy and if they both practice real well, then we’ll have to make a decision. But we’re always going to give the players on our team an opportunity to compete. I think that’s the American way.

Q. Are there any changes on defense do you think? When the question was asked earlier about maybe some personnel changes, you had said, yes, that’s one of the options.
COACH HOPE: Well, when I say personnel changes, that doesn’t necessarily mean that there would be a definite change on the depth chart. Sometimes you bring a guy into the ballgame because he has a particular skill level. Maybe one guy is really, really good against the run and one guy is really, really good against the pass, and that’s why there’s such a thing as a nickel package and a dime package and there’s some linebackers that are better suited for the run and some linebackers a little better suited for the pass. I was referencing more to that fashion of personnel.

Q. Carson Wiggs is 6 for 9 in field goals for the year. For someone who was named preseason All-American for kickers, that’s not super great. Is there something going on there?
COACH HOPE: I don’t think that that pressure bothers Carson Wiggs very much. He missed a 54-yarder Saturday on a cold night in the wind, and a lot of people wouldn’t attempt a 54-yarder on a beautiful day with the wind behind them, and Carson Wiggs is an outstanding field goal kicker, and we needed the points badly, so I put him in a position that a lot of coaches wouldn’t put their field goal kicker in. But I think ours is pretty special, and I bet the next time we put him in that position he makes one.
That’s a coaching decision on my part, and that doesn’t aid Carson’s cause towards his field goal percentage, but I’m not trying to aid Carson’s cause towards his field goal percentage, we’re trying to win the football game, and Carson knows that. If every time we lined up to kick a field goal, if it was over 50 yards and it was going to give us a chance to win and he missed half of them, he’d go out there and do his very best to help us win.

Q. You talked earlier about Robert Marve being a wild stallion. How much do you have to talk with him about that and talk about him staying in the system? Is that a daily, weekly thing?
COACH HOPE: Well, you don’t have to talk to him, you have to work on it. I don’t want to take it all away, that’s for sure, because he really brings some things to the table for our football team, his personality does and just the way he is I think is important to our football team. It’s something that you work on in practice. You don’t sit down and counsel him. It’s not a counseling issue, it’s a practice issue. He hasn’t practiced a whole lot so he hasn’t had a chance to get a whole lot of reps, and sometimes when things are changing in front of him, he can get outside the system some and do some things that he thinks gives him and the football team a chance to be successful.
Sometimes we may have good protection, and he may take off out of the pocket and throw a beautiful pass down the field and it moves the sticks and everybody cheers and we look at each other and I say, why did he leave the pocket? We’ve got to work on Robert, stay in the pocket more. But it’s not a counseling issue, it’s a practice issue and a reps issue. Does that make sense?

Q. So how does he react to that in terms of the practice and teaching of that in terms of him doing what you want him to do? How does he react to it in practice?
COACH HOPE: He does well. But obviously you’ve got to stay within the system on a lot more consistent basis. Robert loves football. He wants to be a great player. He comes to the meetings and he takes a lot of notes, and he’s probably more critical of himself than anyone. I love coaching Robert Marve, I really do. I wish we had — every player on our football team had the same passion that Robert Marve has for playing football and winning. That’s not a knock on the rest of our team, or somebody please don’t misquote me, but I love coaching Robert Marve. He just has to be a little bit more disciplined within the system.
It’s the same thing that as an offensive line coach you might really have to work hard on getting a guy to finish his blocks. He’s a really good player, he’s a really good athlete, he does a great job getting out of the stance, he knows his assignments, but I sure wish he could finish his blocks more. He sure does hit people hard and he sure does finish his blocks well, but he plays too high coming off the ball. Those are all technical things and assignment things that you work on in practice. It’s coaching.

Q. So by saying that on Sunday, that he was playing outside the system, was that a case of trying to get his attention in terms of your quotes publicly, or what were you trying to send a message to him about that?
COACH HOPE: Absolutely not. I was trying to answer the questions of the media, who very honestly — that’s not an insult or a slap in the face. That would be me like telling Kelly Kitchel that he’s too high when he fires off the football. It’s coaching advice, it’s not critique. Again, if you want to take it and spin it and make it something that everyone wants to read, then you can take it and spin it that way, but that wasn’t the intention. The intention wasn’t to put something in the papers that got Robert Marve’s attention. Someone asked me a very good question, I gave them a very honest answer. That’s coaching talk. We want to try to stay within the system. We have reads on every route structure, and you’ve got a first progression, a second progression, a third progression, and you can look at a pre-snap read of the coverage and have some idea where you might want to go with the football based on your pre-snap read, your first assumption may be the second or third progression, but you need to go through your progressions one, two and three. If you went to your third progression based on a pre-snap read, then you’ve really gotten outside of the system. A lot of it has to do with reps. Make sense?

Q. I was asking for clarification there, which is why I’m confused on what he put on Twitter about it did seem like he was being blamed for something. He was like, I don’t understand why this was being pinned on me.
COACH HOPE: I don’t think he used the word pinned on me, did he?

Q. Yeah, he did.
COACH HOPE: He did say pinned on me?

Q. He said I don’t understand how I was not playing in the system. It was rough from the get-go, don’t understand how that was on me.
COACH HOPE: That doesn’t offend me.

Q. I’m not saying it’s offending you, I’m saying it seemed like maybe he was being blamed. I don’t understand how I was not playing in the system.
COACH HOPE: That’s why we have to meet and show him on the film. Obviously he doesn’t understand how or why, and that’s why we meet and show him on the film. Does that make sense? I have guys come over to the sidelines and I’ll say, you know, how did you get beat? They’ll tell you what they thought they did, and then you look at it on film, and it’s nothing like what they’re talking about at all. We were struggling at one point in time in the game obviously to manufacture a run game. I got the offensive line over on the side, I said, hey, how’s it going for you, every one of them told me fine. Come on, man. It can’t be going all that good, or we wouldn’t be punting. That’s why we meet and that’s why we watch film and that’s why we coach and that’s why we teach. It all happens fast and there’s fur flying everywhere. Have you ever played quarterback?

Q. Just the backyard.
COACH HOPE: There’s a big difference between that and BCS football, okay?

Q. Absolutely. You mentioned the running game. How do you get that cranked up again starting this week?
COACH HOPE: Well, Notre Dame was really good against the run. We came into the ballgame with people averaging, I don’t know what it was, maybe a yard and a half or so per rush, whatever it was. But we really didn’t want to go into the game forfeiting the run based on everyone else’s past performance and going out there and being one-dimensional. There’s no way we could go out there and not establish the run game and let our opponent know we’re going to throw it every down. That’s not in the best interest of our football team.
I think a lot of our inability to run the football on Saturday was the quality opponent that we were playing against because they have shut down just about everyone’s run game. We went into the game Saturday after evaluating all the film of Notre Dame’s opponents prior to playing against Purdue, and a lot of their — a lot of the other teams’ best run game was manufactured by running the quarterback.
We wanted to run Caleb some. We didn’t know if Robert was healthy enough to run him a lot, so we put a little package in and put Justin Siller in back there in the backfield and thought if we would get somebody tackled it would be Justin and not Caleb or Robert right now.
We thought we had a good plan, but I think Notre Dame had a better one.

Q. In terms of your experience dealing with — between having a close loss now that can affect the kids as opposed to a game where it wasn’t so close, how do you compare the two in terms of how kids bounce back from a game like the Rice game and a game like the Notre Dame game?
COACH HOPE: They’re both losses. Very disappointed that we didn’t perform better against Notre Dame, and I’m very disappointed that we didn’t perform well enough to secure the win against Rice. They were both disappointing. I don’t think there’s going to be a whole lot of difference in bouncing back. We’re going into Big Ten play starting off with a clean slate, going in there with a healthy football team with four games underneath or belt, and we have two quarterbacks that have gotten more reps than they’ve gotten in years already.
I think our football team is excited to get started in Big Ten play and move on from our poor performance against Notre Dame and excited to play Saturday.