Joe's Press Conference: Week 1

Joe held his weekly press-conference on Tuesday, judging from his answers, it was good old, self-deprecating, Joe. He also seemed to have quiet confidence about a number of positions which a number of prognosticators have judged as one of PSU’s weaknesses. Here are some excerpts of Joe’s thoughts.

On young D-Linemen getting to play on Saturday:

I think some of the young guys are going to have to play. Whether we can get them in there as much as we would like in the first ball game, I don’t know whether they are ready for that. As the season goes on, they are going to have to play because you can’t get by with just one set of defensive linemen anymore. The pace of the game is so fast and the pressure that the defensive linemen are under all the time and what they have to do in the way of a pass rush. All of those kinds of things take an awful lot out of them. You have to have some people who can backup. How many we have right now? Hopefully, we have a couple and I think we do. I am not sure exactly where we are with them, but we will probably play a couple of kids on Saturday.

On AMMO:

I think Anthony will be fine.

(good old Joe)

On the secondary:

…outside of the fact that they are inexperienced, I think we have some awfully good athletes back there in the secondary. I think we have some very fine athletes. We have experienced linebackers. We have some places where we don’t have the experience you would like to have, but we have good athletes. I think, eventually, as we play the season out, those guys will get better as we go along. I don’t quite look at it the same way as you suggested it.

On the O-line:

That is probably my biggest concern because a lot of those kids have never been in a football game. You mentioned Levi Brown and A.Q. Shipley. Shipley hasn’t played much at center. I think that offensive line is going to have a lot of pressure on them; particularly, the way Akron plays football. They do an awful lot of stunting from their 3-5 and they come from every different way. We have not practiced against it that much because we are a stack 4 defense with an over shift and an under shift, which is what we see most of the time. We have to get a foreign team that will give us the kind of look that these guys are going to see. I think we are going to have troubles. I think they are all going to have troubles on the offensive line. Levi can’t carry them all by himself. Shipley, even though he played a little bit, hasn’t played a lot. He is playing against a noseguard that is one of their better football players and he doesn’t offset one way or the other as most of the people we have played take that nose and offset him. He is sticking his nose right up on Shipley. Shipley is not a big man. So I think we have some work to do there. That would be the number one concern I have right now.

In other notes, Antonio Longan-El can’t practice because an NCAA clearinghouse issue. This last bit I only mention because it has been the subject of blogs/articles: Austin Scott will not red-shirt this year.

Judging from Joe's comments he feels pretty comfortable with most of the team, the O-line seems to be what is giving Joe the biggest headache. Lets hope it all works out!

Go State!