Here's a transcript of nearly all of Tommy Tuberville's 20 minutes with the Auburn beat writers this morning at the Wynfrey. I cut out a little chit chat, but this is all the relevant stuff. You can read a transcript of his time on the podium
here.
This was my first time around the entire group of AU writers and I met Tuberville for the first time today. Hopefully will get to stop by and talk with him and the staff a little more one-on-one next week before practice gets going. I didn't ask anything today because I wanted to kind of observe how things work and will probably need a little while to get a feel for the new group...but that just comes with time.
Anyway, here's what he had to say before he took the podium in the big room:
I saw this morning where all of you, or some of y’all, picked us No. 1 in the (West). We probably didn’t get a lot of votes out of this room because y’all know how good we’re gonna be or not gonna be. It’s kinda different to think you’re gonna be picked to win the West when your quarterback is unproven. I don’t think that happens very often because your quarterback is a guy that’s gotta really do a lot. This year we’ll play two quarterbacks, but we will have one starting quarterback, a guy that everybody knows is our starter. It could change during the year, might not, but obviously it’s gonna be a scenario too like we played in the bowl game, where Brandon Cox played and then Kodi came in at certain times. I don’t know who’s gonna be the quarterback. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Chris Todd is not our starting quarterback. Kodi would be as of today, but Chris has worked very hard, as Kodi has, and his shoulder’s much better. But we’re gonna need both of them. But I want everybody to know that we will have a starter on the depth chart. But we’ll use two, maybe three. We’re probably gonna have to use three. We’ll have to see how that’s gonna work out. Neil Caudle has worked hard. I’ll tell you, Neil’s throwing the ball well. It could be a scenario like Brandon, him going in and throwing the ball in certain situations. The quarterback situation is, I think, in good hands. I like what they’ve done this summer. Every time I’ve looked out the window, they are out there throwing and the receivers have really raved about all the quarterbacks out there throwing the football.
I look at our football team this year in terms of offense and defensive line. Every year I tell y’all that and it has to start there. This could be one of our better groups on both sides. I think offensive line, with three freshmen last year we started, all of them are coming back. Chaz Ramsey had surgery, has worked out quite a bit this summer, is not 100 percent. The question is where he’s gonna be when we start two-a-days. His availability, it’s totally up to him. I know how back injuries are and it’s a lot like Marcus McNeil’s, and we all know Marcus McNeil’s situation and where he ended up. But Chaz has worked real hard. Mario Fannin is back, ready to go from shoulder surgery. He’s 100 percent. He’s a guy that’s gonna have to play well for us in a lot of places and he’s ready to go. I think that’s the injuries on the offense. On the defensive side of the ball, of course Tez Doolittle’s back. He told me he’s 100 percent. The doctors say about 95. It’ll be a bonus to see what he can do. He’s been out for a year, Achilles. Torn Achilles is hard, but he’s been dedicated and worked. He’d be a bonus for us to get back to the position he was in. He was really playing well last year for us.
Bo Harris is no longer with us. You know, he got injured, and he’s decided to transfer. I don’t know where he’s transferring to, but he’s no longer with us. We’ll miss him because he’s a good football player, but it just didn’t work out. Let’s see, who else, oh the other player that I want to talk about is Tristan Davis, he’s gonna be a key for us. Tristan, he told me last night – he was at Chette’s deal – that he’s 100 percent for the first time. Last couple weeks he’s had no pain, no stiffness. He will wear a metal protector over the end of his foot. It might affect him a little bit, but we’ve got a lot of plans for him in a lot of places, situations. Not just running back, but also on special teams. Nothing really new to talk about. The freshmen that will play this year, there will be several, especially at cornerback. We will play probably two guys. Harry Adams is a corner. D’Antoine Hood … he’s worked hard. A lot of the receivers, I talk to them after they work out and they say both those guys are really looking good. So playing the nickel and dime defenses like we’ve played in the past, we’re gonna have to play a couple of those guys inside. We just don’t have the numbers after losing some guys to graduation last year. All right, questions.
On being picked first, impact on players:
Well, I think they’re looking at us playing LSU at home this year, in one of the scenarios, which makes not a lot of difference because both teams usually play well at either place. I think that our quarterback situation is up in the air, theirs is more up in the air because of losing Perriloux. I think probably they’re looking at that. A lot will be told before we get to that game, anyway, on who’s gonna be the better team going into the game. We’ll accept it. It’s been a while since we’ve been picked No. 1, I think. You look at last year’s season, it could have been a great year for us. We lost three games basically on the last play of the game out of the four games that we lost. Hopefully we can play better early. Last year on offense we just came out slow. We made some mistakes defensively in a couple of the games that cost us. One thing I want to do this year is I want to have a few more big plays in the season. We’ve got to be able to score from a distance and not have everything be like pulling teeth to get the ball across the goal line. That’s what I’m looking for on offense. We’re gonna run the football. Defensively we can’t give up the big play. In every game that we played in last year, we gave up some big plays. That’s not Auburn football, so we’ve gone back more to fundamentals and technique, trying to play more consistent. I know we played great at times on defense, but there are times when we didn’t play great, and it cost us. It just wasn’t the offense. We’ve got to be a more well-rounded team and play better and especially with big plays on both sides.
On whether Chaz Ramsey’s injuries are career-threatening:
No. Again I can’t predict the future, but just watching him run and stuff … you look at all big guys and weightlifters and guys that have played football, I would say a majority of them have back problems. But again, you can’t predict what’s gonna happen. Just knowing Chaz and his love for football, we’re not gonna put him in danger. It’s gonna be his decision of how much he can (stand). He’s gonna always have pain. We have some on the team now that play with pain, with back injuries. He just got to the point where the doctor felt like let’s go ahead and fix a little bit of it, and he’s come back and he’s done some things. But now is he ready to play this year, we’ll have to wait and see. Is he gonna redshirt this year, that could always be a possibility, but don’t write that I said he’s gonna redshirt because he could be a starter in the first game. We’ve just gotta see how he’s gonna react in the first part of the year. But he does, he’s got that year left that we could get back for him.
On Andre Wadley’s condition:
Andre’s doing good. He lost weight. Everything kinda shut down on him. He’s probably gonna have to rehab for a while. You know, he hasn’t done a lot, so we’ll have to wait and see his situation when it comes to practicing early. It’s probably not gonna be much if any at all for a while. Again, he’s a freshman. We’re gonna take it slow, we’re gonna look out for his well being, No. 1. That’s the No. 1 thing, but football’s second right now. We want him to get back 100 percent where there’s no chance at all we’d take any chance with him.
Is he in Auburn or back home in Mississippi?
No he’s in Auburn.
What exactly happened to him?
It’s just one of those things that they really don’t know. He got hot. He came in in one of the best shape of any of the freshmen. We don’t put them in regular workouts in the summer. They work out in freshman groups and we kinda bring ‘em along slow. It was a hot day and I think it was on a Monday. I mean, he’d had no problem, and they didn’t know whether he got the flu while he was working out, had a bug or a virus, but they’ve done all kinds of test on him and really to this point there’s been no answer to what happened. I think it’s just his body just kinda reacted to the heat. He said he didn’t eat a whole lot and then he got to a point, it’s just taken him a while to get back.
Any fear of it affecting his career going forward?
No, not really. But again, like Chaz Ramsey, his health is No. 1. We’re not even considering football till the doctors … I think they want to find out what really is the problem. Again, he’s been run through the ringer, now, tests and all those things, so we’ll find out hopefully what actually caused it. Because I don’t want him back out there and put him in harm’s way until we find out just what he can do and what he can’t do. But again, he’s just a freshman. We want to get him in school, get him going, be part of the team and kinda let him get back into it slowly. It’s been a tough situation being in that hospital for a while.
Any word on Reggie Hunt?
As of this morning, I hadn’t heard. We’re all waiting, so … But he’s made his scores and stuff. It’s typical. Every year we’re always sitting here talking about one. The different scenario this year is the NCAA has taken the Clearinghouse back over. It’s not sent out to some other firm. I think it’s gonna be better, but we’ll just have to wait and see.
On Ryan Williams:
Well, we’ll have to wait and see. He’s worked hard this summer. He’s back, running and doing all those things. He got himself in a little bit of a bind, so he’s got to work hard to get out of the doghouse.
How long was he home in Mobile?
He went for a month. He had to go back there, academically.
So this will probably depend on how he does second semester?
Yeah.
On being picked first and its impact on players:
I think some will embrace it. I think some will be a little … but the experienced guys will understand that’s more talk than anything. That’s got nothing to do with reality. It’s just what people think about you in terms of possibilities. We’ve got a lot of room for improvement, two new coordinators that really don’t have a clue about this league, in terms of the speed. Tony does a little bit, but even Tony’s been out of it for a while. You’ve got to have a plan. That’s one thing I like about what we’ve done. We’ve got a great plan going into two-a-days to try and make this team, get the most out of it. If we can get the most out of this team, we’ll give it a run. It’s gonna depend a lot on the other teams, too, who we’re playing. We’ve got some of our bigger games at home, so. … The even years are a little bit better for us most of the time.
How different will this two-a-days be from the ones in the past?
That’s been a major topic of conversation with all of us. Because you know 105 on the team … You call it two-a-days, but really it’s not two-a-days anymore. You go out two times a couple times, four, five times. But this offense dictates the speed of practice. We want to make sure we get to Aug. 30 intact and not physically spent, because you can go out there and you can practice for 45 minutes and absolutely run them into the ground. That’s the reason we’re making sure with the, what, 35 walk-ons that we’ve got coming in that we’ve got good depth at each position. We’re bringing in another quarterback to make sure we don’t throw our quarterbacks’ arms out. We’re bringing in another running back to make sure that we’ve got some depth there where the guys don’t have to take all the reps. It’s just, we’re gonna have to, instead of going by time like we normally do on the clock, we’re gonna go by plays. How many plays we want to run in each period. So you’ll see the clock up there when you’re out there, but you’ll see times when the clock’s turned off and turned back on. There’s some things I want to time, there’s somethings I want to make sure that when we get in skelly, instead of having 20 minutes … Last year I think when Tony came in, we had a 20-minute period for skelly. We were gonna go that full 20 minutes and that normal time, we’d get in 30, 35 plays. We ran 60 plays. Well with two sets of corners over there, they’re over there with their tongues hanging out. So you’ve gotta be smart with this offense. You want to practice like you’re gonna be in a game, but you also want to make sure that you’ve got a little bit left at the end of the day.
Will Raven Gray be ready to go at the start of practice?
Yeah. He’s gonna be full pads and so will Tez. A lot of people think we’re gonna ease Tez (?), hey, time to go. We’re gonna put ‘em in pads. Yoxall and the strength coaches say that they’ve done great. We’re not gonna put ‘em in harm’s way, but they know that if they’re gonna be part of the team that they’ve got to go through two-a-days. Raven not going through spring practice set him back and Tez just missing the entire year, he’s gonna need 10 or 15 good practices to get back into playing shape.
How much of a concern is safety depth right now?
Well, we’re probably gonna move some guys around. Aairon Savage can always go back and play safety, and he’ll probably play some. It’s gonna depend a lot on the corner situation, some of the younger guys, how we feel about them and what they can do and can’t do. But we’ve got several positions, as everybody’s got, every year, that you can’t get anybody hurt. Look at the offensive line. We’re looking at, pretty much, after not signing anybody last year and Jermaine not getting in school, of just two-deep. And with Chaz beat up a little bit. So there’s some areas where the depth is a little bit of concern, not just for games, but also being able to practice this offense.
On why he brought Sen’Derrick Marks, a junior, to Media Days rather than a senior like he typically would:
Well, just the way he played last year. I like to bring seniors if you’ve got one that you think has played up to potential. We thought Sen’Derrick, him starting at tackle, moving to end and then coming back, that’s a great story. That’s a kid that’s dedicated to his team. He’ll play anywhere. He’ll play middle linebacker. I think he’s a good promoter for our program, on what it stands for. I think he’ll do good today. And you always look for somebody that has got a good story behind them. I always like to bring a quarterback, but of course neither quarterback has played much, nor do we know who the starter is gonna be.
