"There are some major concerns I have about this week. There are red flags everywhere. There's one person on our staff (co-defensive coordinator Charlie Strong) that knows about taking this trip. It's an 11:30 (a.m.) game. It's an hour bus ride. I want to say there are 40 guys making their first trip and getting on a plane together, so the red flags are up. We are going to enjoy this win and then our goal is to have the most difficult Tuesday we've ever had here at Florida and make sure our focus is on what's important. I know what's going to happen. There are a lot of people with answers around here. We just have to make sure that those answers disappear. Outworking your opponent, that's our goal this week."
Can you talk about having an 11:30 game? It doesn't have anything to do with your team, but five years ago Florida had an early kickoff in Oxford and looked like it was still asleep. How important is it to manage the morning?
"At Notre Dame we played every game at noon. I was so excited to be able to go home and see the kids and be able to hang out a little bit. Then it starts these night games, and when you don't play any early game for a while, it's . . . the biggest concern that we had was our Outback Bowl. We talked about it as a staff. I called coach (Lou) Holtz. How do we elect to charge these guys up? First of all you make them go to bed a little earlier, and when you wake them up, it's a circus. There's no alarm clock going off. There's assistant coaches kicking doors in and ripping the curtains open and opening the windows and giving them orange juice and throwing a newspaper at them and having fun with the guys. We started it at the Outback Bowl and have continued it ever since for every road game, even when we play at night. I think the players, some of them look forward to it and some of them probably can't stand it. That is a major concern. We are just going to keep researching it. I even asked some of the players I trust, how do we make sure we're energized? Tebow's fine. He goes to sleep charged and he wakes up charged. I'm not worried about that. It's the dead fish I'm worried about. Believe it or not, we still have some dead fish we have to awaken."
Can you talk about the concerns you have taking a young team on the road for the first time?
"Number one is routine. The older I get and the more I'm around teams, it's a routine as a coach. As grown men you should have a routine and go about your business, but as a young player, from what kind of shirt you wear to what food is on the table, our focus needs to be on your assignments. That hour bus ride concerns me. I hear there's one road going in or something like that. We got kind of ambushed at Alabama a couple years ago and we got there late. Everybody was panicking about getting their thigh pads in as opposed of worrying about our third-and-6 and the first call's this and we expect this defense. We'll spend an enormous amount of time on that. John Clark, our director of operations, called every school that's played there recently. If there's any chance of the bus being late, we'll leave a half-hour early. We can't have an issue with that, not with a young team."
Why does Tim Tebow throw the deep ball well?
"You can't practice that a lot because you just blow your receivers out. First of all he's got a very strong arm and a lot of confidence, and he's also throwing to some people that adjust to the ball very well. If you look at some of those deep throws, the one that Percy caught Saturday, maybe there's three people in the country that come down with that, the one from our own 1-yard line. It was a great throw, but the acceleration to the ball was as good as I've seen. You have some good size. It's a combination of Tim throwing the ball well and having some guys that adjust real well. There is some confidence between that group, and that's not developed during the week. That's developed in the summer and spring practice."
How are Maurkice Pouncey, Markihe Anderson and Riley Cooper?
"Riley has a sprained ankle. He'll won't go today and he'll be limited tomorrow, but I'm told he'll be fine for game time. Markihe Anderson has a PCL injury. Not ACL or MCL. PCL. It's a rare injury, but you can play with it. I'm told there's a probable not play this week. Maurkice Pouncey is a day-to-day with a low ankle sprain. Bubba (Caldwell) and Bryan (Thomas) are still a week away. Brandon Antwine had a hyperextended elbow in (last) Wednesday's practice. We thought we could get something out of him and probably could have, but the other guys were playing so well, so we expect him to be ready to go this week."
Can you get a good pass rush straight up or will you have to be more creative?
"Our pressure right now, every time you do see pressure it's coming from some type of blitz. We do have a very good three-down package. We have not had a lot of pressure from four down. I trust Greg Mattison. I'm certainly not going to tell him what to do. I'm going to find out what our plan is, but we're still working through that. I grade that area of our team right now as a negative. Pressuring the quarterback, we all know at some point that's going to get you if you don't get it right."
Florida could not finish games a few years ago. In the three years you've been here, you've outscored Tennessee 34-3 in the fourth quarter. What has happened in that time to make your team better there?
"We've made that a huge deal with our team. And that's not discussed on Tuesdays of Tennessee week. That's discussed in February, March, April, May and June and obviously all summer. The bond that has occurred between our strength program and our football team is as good as I've ever seen. I'd have to think it's one of the best in college football. When it's 34-3 against Tennessee in the last three years and in the prior years it was the other way around, that tells you there's something going on in there, and that's great confidence and great work ethic between our strength staff and our team. And they believe in him. I've heard people say statistics are for losers. Losers are usually the ones saying that statistics are for losers. I love statistics. I think how you evaluate a strength coach is not what he says in clinics. Are you healthy, do you dominate at the line of scrimmage and do you win in the second half? If you do those things, you've got a good strength coach. We have an excellent strength coach."
Were you surprised you scored 45 points (offensively) on a good football team?
"That's a tough question. I don't want to disrespect anybody and I certainly don't want to talk like I don't expect our team to play very well. I'll say it this way, how is this Coachspeak 101? Every day I see playmakers in this offense. To see Riley Cooper catch a touchdown, that does not surprise me one bit. He does it all the time in practice. To see Louis Murphy, to see CI, to see Tim deliver the ball. To see Percy Harvin do that run, believe it or not I've seen him do that kind of stuff in practice. Without any disrespect to anybody involved, I'm not surprised to see our guys score touchdowns. When you see Maurkice Pouncey go out, and you're going to a guy that's not played a whole lot, Maurice Hurt, we call that competitive excellence. When your number's called to make a play, our guys are doing it. That happens on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in practice. To answer your question, I'm not surprised."
Have you ever been a part of a coaching staff who very actively marketed a player for the Heisman Trophy?
"Yeah, when we were at Utah we went after it fairly decent (for Alex Smith)."
What kind of stuff were you doing?
"The biggest thing was putting him in position to make plays. As far as the marketing went, I wasn't involved in that other than if someone asked me if he's worthy, I'll make that comment if it's appropriate."
Is that something that you would support doing at Florida if your marketing staff wanted to do it."
"Yeah. At this point, I'd say absolutely not, but if it reaches that point, absolutely. That's our job, to help the student-athlete. You support your student-athlete."
Do you like having stars on the sideline like Cris Carter and Kenny Chesney?
"It depends who they are and it depends whose sideline they are on. Cris Carter, absolutely. He's a great friend. Chris Leak was down there. The invested football player that has an impact and our players respect, absolutely, that's great, I invite these guys. These other guys, if they ask where's my sideline pass, I'll say, 'go see (sports information director) Steve' (McClain)." I don't know about the country rock stars at all that. That's not my business."
Jarred Fayson wants Lil Wayne for the next game.
"Who? Lil Wayne? The guy's name is Lil Wayne? Wow. No chance of that happening."
Tebow was getting so much hype before the season and now the Tennessee game has amped it up. How do you settle him down?
"We're pretty fortunate. Tin spend eight hours in there yesterday with us. It's not mandatory. He comes in and works out, spends time with the trainer, gets a massage and eats his food and comes up and studies film for about eight hours and does his tutoring. When I see it start getting to seven-and-a-half hours, then I'm going to call him in and say, 'Tim, you've got an issue here.' I don't foresee that. That's one driven human being. The human element's everywhere, so we've got to watch that. Dan Mullen is like a good mom now. He's all over that now. I've seen him do it with Josh Harris (at Bowling Green) when he became a Heisman candidate, and with Alex Smith and Chris Leak, so he has a little experience doing that."
BenJarvus Green-Ellis is going to be the best back you've faced. How much does that concern you?
"I asked our coaches, and they think he's one of the premier, a returning 1,000-yard rusher. They don't think he's a good back. They think he's a great back. He's a post-contact player. He gets a lot of yards after contact. We have very similar concerns to a week ago. The discipline that our defense played with as far as gap control, especially with a bunch of young players that hadn't done that, was remarkable. We just have to be disciplined. Last Wednesday's practice was alarming. Guys were out of gaps and our backs were going right by them in an inside drill. Obviously they got it worked out by Saturday. Last week's game helped us going into this week's game."
How has Kyle Jackson handled the up and down parts of his career?
"I called him about 10 o'clock last night on the way home. I love Kyle Jackson and his family. If he wasn't an invested player, then we'd just have to move on and do what we've got to do. He's certainly an invaluable leader of this team. There's a role for Kyle Jackson. He'll continue to fight like we all are. The one thing about Kyle is he's an extremely high character guy who loves football. I don't anticipate there being a problem."
Do you anticipate Major Wright being the starter there now?
"I can't say that yet. It's week to week. We'll see how we practice Tuesday and Wednesday. On Saturday's performance, Major played a little better than Kyle Jackson did. That's not a clear-cut thing."
Can you talk about the intangibles your defensive staff brings that they've been able to develop these guys so quickly?
"Well first of all, it's only week 3, so before we anoint anybody, we've got to make sure we (continue to play well). They've played very well. The good thing is you have a ridiculous amount of experience in that defensive room. That was on purpose. You have three major college defensive coordinators sitting in that room together, and another guy, Doc Holliday, who's coached 80 or 90 years or something like that. There's a lot of experience in that room. I get flustered. There are things I say on the sideline that aren't very nice when things happen. I never see that on defense. Charlie Strong is right on it. He's thinking about the next play, and so is Greg Mattison. If I have a decision to make in the game, I say something to them. That's how much respect I have for what goes on in that staff room."