Auburn head coach
Gene Chizik is on the podium for his weekly press conference. Here's what he's said:
- "Going to be an exciting week for us. We've got a lot of work to do to be able to travel to Tennessee and win the ballgame."
- "We all know how tough it is to play in Tennessee."
- "It'll be new for us because there are so many players who haven't traveled, period."
- Doesn't know if piping in noise during practice will help with communication Saturday.
- "We're not going to change anything. We're just going to do business as usual."
- Tennessee S Eric Berry is good. "I think you're always cognizant of where he is. He can take a guy out of a game. From a defensive perspective right now, he's one of the guys that if you put him on somebody and chose to have him take someone out of the game, you've got to know that. We'll always know where he is because he is that good of a player and can dominate a game.
- Thinks the wide receivers' success is due largely to Trooper Taylor. "Everybody loves him," Chizik said.
- Has Trooper cranked it up? "I think you get to the level where you can't crank it up any more," Chizik joked.
- Tennessee defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin is "one of the best in the business."
- Everybody will get a look at punt returner. "But we're not kicking the other guys to the curb, either," he said.
- Auburn's not ranked. "I don't control that. I don't even have a thought on it. I don't spend a lot of energy on things that I have no control over."
- Someone brought up Auburn's 2004 circumstance, when it did matter. "We've just got to win week-to-week."
- Chizik said he has not changed his coaching approach on special teams, despite Auburn's struggles.
- No change in S Mike McNeil's status. Chizik didn't say whether he would travel to Tennessee.
- Chizik on the importance of coaching: "The guy's I've got here right now I want to make sure can coach my 9-year-old son."
- Chizik said Monte Kiffin was very kind to him early in his career when he was at Central Florida and eager to learn more from the nearby Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive coordinator.
- "We've had a whole bunch of scenarios that we've played through and we're 4-0. So I'm happy to see that. But we're still feeling each other out, we're still learning. There are still a lot of things we're going to have to get through together."
- He reluctantly said QB Chris Todd has been better than expected. "We felt (in August) like Chris could be a very good player in this offense. How good? We didn't know, because we never saw him in game day. But I think that he's done some things we expected him to do."
- Onterio McCalebb and Kodi Burns, you guessed it, are day-by-day.
- "I think going to Tennessee to play there is going to be a huge indicator of who were are, not just for this month, but for the rest of the year."
- "If you play well and do win the game, it does catapult you over another hurdle."
- RG Byron Isom has had no change in his status, but Chizik said the lineman is practicing.
4 comments:
Great Job, Andy!
Great job with the info, Has CGC said anything more about the defensive issues and why we're still having some trouble with wrapping up and tackling? I didn't see much progress from WVU to Ball State this past weekend.
Also, did he elaborate any more on why Jamar Travis' redshirt was burned and whether or not we can expect to see him more in the rotation now?
Thanks again, great work.
Chizik said Auburn's making some progress on the tackling front. I guess we'll see if that's true this week.
As far as Travis, Chizik said if a player can help them win games, he'll use that player. I don't know if I buy that. He was on the kick return team late in the game. How integral is that? Plus, it doesn't appear he will be a factor on the defensive line this year. It's very puzzling.
I agree, with Antoine coming back & them flirting with Gabe on the DL I felt that our depth on the line was actually ok, I figured barring 2-3 injuries we could keep Travis in the red, but oh well, I guess we'll see hopefully they'll get him dome meaningful snaps & get him ready for next year. I just hope that we didn't burn a RS on a guy (D line, at that) just so he can work special teams.
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