Coach Speak(s) Before Minnesota

After a rough start to the season there are a number of questions that need answered about this time. Will Sindelar be able to play after suffering a concussion and missing the TCU game last week? Will the injuries for this team stop mounting so high that certain positions look like my Sophomore year flag football team? Those answers and more, will not be given today because this is...COACH SPEAK!

Generalities about injuries:

As far as injuries at this point, we’re trying hard to get everybody back, and we’ll see towards the end of the week where we’re at, but I think everyone has put in the time to get better, but it’s just going to be a matter of where we’re at come Thursday and Friday.

On Matt McCann specifically:

Well, I think he’s getting closer, but it’s still going to be a matter of what they can do this week, and there are numerous guys that were not able to practice last week because we want to get them healthy, but there were a lot of guys that did. So some guys that need to get mended. We want to try to get that done, so we’ll tell by the end of the week where they’re at.

On Sindelar:

Well, we’re still doing exactly what the doctors say. I think he’s making progress. We’ll see how this week goes. Really last week we thought he was making progress Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. It wasn’t until Thursday where some things popped up again, and that’s where we had to start the process over.

On Jackson Anthrop moving to RB:

I think we’ve had some problems up front of creating holes and knocking people back and being physical at the line of scrimmage. The running backs need to run better, yes, but sometimes there’s not some big holes to run in. But I do think Jackson is a guy we want to get more touches. Even on special teams he gives great effort, he goes hard, he wants to win, he works hard, he competes, and he’s a guy we want to get in the mix, so you’ll see him playing both running back and the receiver position, and he is someone that we want to try our best to get the ball in his hands more.

“Do you have any relationship with PJ Fleck?”

Just like we have with all the other coaches. I think right now he’s got his team playing at a high level and got some experience and some guys that have played and done a very good job. I know he relies on their leadership skills, and when you find a way to win close games, that means you’ve got a tough hard nosed competitive football team. I think he understands that, and we have to step up to that challenge and see if our guys want to find a way to win and do some special things. You can turn at any point if you want to, so we’ve got to come back in front of our fans who were tremendous the last game and put out a better product, and I think when you -- if you commit to wanting to compete and play hard, that’s the first step.

In referencing last year’s game as motivation:

I think we have. I think our players know that we’re in a little bit of a rut now. We’ve had some games that haven’t gone the way we want. Minnesota is one of them. It just shows that we have improvement to make, and I think that’s why we took this past week and tried to work hard at improving ourselves before we got fully on to Minnesota and making sure that each and every day we’re trying to get better on the things that we feel like we’re not very good at, and I do think progress has been made, but we’ve got to make more. We’ve got to do it come game day. We’ve got to see more guys show up and compete and play hard and finish and want to find a way to win, and I’m hopeful that we can see improvement as we get going.

So there you have it. A lot was said, not much of consequence. These are the things that coaches say when they know they are contractually obligated to appear before the media. While it might be fun to try to ferret out a nugget here or there you don’t get a ton of answers or information from these things. Let’s just hope the team used the bye week to figure some things out.