How good was it to have this week off seeing how LSU responded poorly to the big game you guys played when the Tigers had to play again on Saturday?
"I'll you after the game, but it was great for our players to watch all the college football Saturday and realize the parity there is right now. I've not really experienced anything like this. Seeing who you have in the top five, top 10 in the country, it's great for college football, but you also better show up and you better be prepared each week. How great it was, I'll let you know as we keep going?"
All the players are saying you told them after last year's game that Kentucky would be hard to beat this year. What did you see in Kentucky at that time that told you this was going to be a big game this year?
"I like their scheme. I know the coach very well and have seen what he's done. He's kind of done that, and it all comes down to the players. To see a quarterback coming back in his third year starting and to see those veteran players on the field, that happens, especially if they are well coached and have good chemistry and good character on the team. That's a veteran team. We watched the film from two years ago, and a lot of those guys are still playing."
You've only lost consecutive games twice as a head coach. Did you reach out to any of the mentors that you have to try to ensure that two consecutive losses doesn't become a streak?
"No. Everybody talks about the bye week, how does this compare to the other bye weeks of the past. This is such a unique experience for our team. Today we have to go out there and get better. We have to develop that rotation on the defensive line. We have to see our secondary improve. We have to get Riley Cooper and Bubba (Caldwell) back full speed, so there's enough issues to worry about, and I think there's a complete understanding the SEC East is wide open. There's enough motivation out there. We just have to get better. If we don't get a rotation on the defensive line, that's not a good deal. There's enough we have to concentrate on, the immediacy of it right now."
How difficult have the last few days been following the death of Michael Guilford, and was Cris Carter able to help a little bit (with his talk to the team) this morning, and how is Joe Haden holding up?
"We've got to make sure we respect all the families involved. Cris came in for one reason. He's one of my great friends, and he's experienced it twice as a player. There's nothing much more to say about that. Joe's dealing with it. It's obviously a very difficult situation."
How about yourself?
"It's a very difficult situation."
How do you feel this incident will affect the team?
"I don't know."
How is Markihe Anderson doing?
"Markihe's going to practice. I'll let you know after today's practice, but he's getting pretty close to being ready. He practiced last week with still a little bit of a limp, but we need to get him back. I say that every week, but we'd like to have him back as soon as we can."
Could you watch the Kentucky-LSU game as just a fan of college football?
"No. I'm going to do that some day. I'm pacing, I'm walking around, I'm looking at everything else, the environment. As a fan, no. Some day."
Dustin Doe talked about you lightening things up last week with the coaches' game (a five-on-five of players against coaches at Thursday's practice). Can you talk about what the intent was?
"With a young team I've done that kind of stuff before. The coaches just went out there and played against some of the players and we just tried to have a little fun with it. It's still a game. Today we're going to make sure we get a little smile on their face and let them go, but we've got to improve. You just try to do that as often as you can."
Can you talk about Jarred Fayson? Is he OK after not getting the ball much at all the last few games?
"Yeah. We're going to try to get him more involved."
Has he come to talk to you about it?
"A little bit, and I came to talk to him. It's not intent and it's not on purpose. I hope he continues to develop as a football player. He is a little bit behind. We've got Louis Murphy and CI (Cornelius Ingram) and Percy (Harvin) and Bubba and Riley, so there are some numbers there. There are certain things he does well and certain things he needs to improve on."
You just said you felt the need to maybe lighten it up today. Can you share with us how you are going to do that?
"I don't know. I'm going to be very up-tempo and very high energy. I called one our players on Saturday night after the Kentucky game, and just realizing the opportunity. Can you watch it as a fan? No, you can't. As a player you can't watch it either. All that's going through your mind is opportunity, opportunity, opportunity, and it's right there for you. Everything, the SEC East is wide open. College football has never been like this as far as opportunities for so many teams in the East and all across this country. How do you take advantage of that opportunity? We've got to get depth on that defensive line and got to get a rotation and gotta do this, this and this. There's a lot of big focus this week, but how do you lighten it up? That's one way, is making sure they understand there could be a lot of great things happen to this team.
"If you had said at this time last year, by the way, you guy are going to go to Glendale, Ariz. and win by three or four (touchdowns) or whatever it was, I would have said, 'Wait a minute, now.' That was a team that practiced well, prepared well and really got better. These next six weeks, who knows if it can happen, but we can become a very good team."
What jumps out at you most when you watch Andre' Woodson, particularly down 13 against LSU's defense?
"He's a very veteran player. You can spot a veteran a mile away. You can tell also his anticipation when the ball's coming out like that little slant-and-go pass (for the decisive touchdown in overtime). That ball was out before the route was actually complete. Inexperienced quarterbacks have a tendency to wait until guys are open to let it go, and I think (the Wildcats) do a very good job of checking the ball at the line of scrimmage – run versus certain looks and pass versus certain looks. He's a very veteran player, but you could see that coming the last couple years."
The defense is giving up almost 60-percent pass completions but not many big plays. You have a lot of young guys in the secondary, so are you giving up completions out of necessity that you're playing conservatively, or do you want that percentage to go down?
"We want the percentage to go down, but you also want to keep the ball in front of you in this league and certainly with young players. Against Ole Miss we didn't keep it in front of us and those were touchdowns. (The philosophy is) live to see another day right now with young corners. That means just keep the ball in front of you, tackle it and keep playing. We just have to get that correlated with a little more pressure on the quarterback. You do that, and that's how you start seeing a completion percentage go down."
In that scrimmage you had with the players, did you give up pick six that Justin Williams ran back for a touchdown?
"I don't know. How did you hear about this? No, I was wide open and I could have scored and (Tony) Joiner made a great play on me because I had him turned around."
Was it a bad throw or a bad read?
"Just a slow guy running around. If Joiner can catch me, it was a real slow guy running around (smiling)."
On this parity thing, teams keep emerging. Your Utah did it. Boise State did it. South Florida is trying to do it. Is there any explanation for why all this is happening?
"I think the emphasis in college football the last several years at places like Utah; the facilities, the amount of support that college athletics generate now. I don't know South Florida that well, but they have an excellent coach and obviously very good players. Fifteen years ago or 10 years ago, I remember coaching at Colorado State and you had aluminum lockers and it just wasn't a big deal. Now it's all a big deal. The teams that say let's go win games and let's really make this an emphasis, you can pick those ones out across the country. Utah's one. Boise State's a perfect example. They want to be good in football, and they sink a lot into that."
Does the mindset of kids have anything to do with that, what players look for and what they ask as far as can I play?
"Can you play and can you win? How serious are you? Obviously you look at academics when you're a young person but also your opportunity, how serious are they, what kind of commitment does the university have to athletics? And if they do, that puts the South Floridas and Boise States and Utahs and those guys maybe not right there, but they're heading in the right direction."
A lot of top teams are running the spread option or different versions of it. What has the evolution of this offense that you've been running a while done to college football?
"It's amazing to see how much of it is all out there. With the evolution and the athleticism on defense, I still go back, in the 1980s when I first started coaching, it was all very basic. It was I formation against Weak Eagle defense covering a weak roll. That's what they called it. The next week, you break it down, Weak Eagle defense, weak roll, I formation. Then all of a sudden you started seeing teams have some success (by spreading the field), and I think your quarterback has to be an active player to have success nowadays. You can see the Appy States and some of those teams are hard to defend, the Oregons. I enjoy watching those two. I'm surprised it hasn't leaked to the NFL a little bit. I know they say you can't let your quarterback get hit, but you also have to win games. It's intriguing. It's a real interesting evolution of football the last five years."
Is it a great equalizer for teams that might not have the size?
"Oh, absolutely. Fifteen years ago it was called the Wishbone. Navy's got an equalizer. Option football and empty passing are all equalizers."
Is it time to start getting more big plays from the defense? Right now your playmakers are all on offense.
"Brandon Spikes is a playmaker and Major Wright is a playmaker, so we are seeing some develop, and those are all first-year starters, but to win a game you have to make a stop. You have to intercept that pass and you have to go make a play to win a game. It is time? I'm with you, man, it is time. But I also understand the evolution of what's going on, and that's why we have to practice as hard as we can Monday through Wednesday this week."
How different is this Kentucky defense than the one you faced two years ago?
"It's the same players, only much better and much older. You can see that they have a very sound scheme. Not a lot of blitzing, I want to say 10 percent blitzing. It's four and three quarters, they keep the ball in front of you, they two-gap you on the defensive line and they run to the ball. They do a very good job. It's much different now. They are much more talented."
Did you see that coming two years ago?
"Sure. Rich is a very good friend of mine. Every year we saw him at SEC meetings, he would say, 'I'm back.' I think everybody in that room knew if he kept coming back and they gave him the opportunity to keep coaching, you'd see that develop because they were young. It would be different if they were all older players. Those were all younger players two years ago when we played them up there."
I don't know if you can compare the Ole Miss and LSU games, but they were both close and you had a lot fewer penalties against LSU. Do you feel like the team has learned from both road games and playing on the road again this week at a place that's not known as a great environment?
"It will be a great environment. Against LSU, I won't say we played great, but there were some great performances on that field. It looked like a team that was starting to grow up a little bit with the lack of penalties. To have a true freshman playing right guard in that environment and not have a penalty, that was very impressive. To see Tim Tebow in that kind of environment operate with the efficiency that he did, there were a lot of positives going on. The bottom line is at some point make a play to win the game. We had two turnovers on offense, and if we don't make those, we win the game."
Kentucky gets the ball off quickly, and you've had trouble getting pressure anyway. How do you handle a guy like that and what can you do defensively against a guy like that?
"You've got to change up, drop it into coverage, maybe drop eight and bring five or maybe bring six. That's what we've been working on for the last week, and we're going to continue to work on that. If we sit and play vanilla defense, they are good enough to carve you up pretty good."
Florida's beaten Kentucky 20 times in a row. Is that a surprising number?
"I don't know the real history of the Kentucky-Florida rivalry. I can just see the last several years, the development of Kentucky. I think Hal Mumme had some excellent teams, but that has no bearing on what's going to happen this week as far as preparing a young team to go up there and play a very experienced team."
What are the intangibles that Major Wright has that make him a playmaker, and when did you realize he was a special player?
"He's a guy you could see right away in high school football. He has a little bit of a Tebow effect on defense. He's an extremely high-character player. Football means the world to him. He's always where he's supposed to be academically. You get a whole bunch of Major Wrights, and you're playing excellent defense."