Chizik talks about preparations for Ole Miss

AUBURN - Auburn coach Gene Chizik met with the media following Wednesday's practice to discuss peparation for Saturday's game with Ole Miss.


Chizik

“I thought we had a good practice. Again, I think our guys have responded really well this week. And like any of the other weeks we’ve come back off tough losses, they’ve really just focused and very willing to get better. Again, I think we’ve had a good week of practice, obviously we’ve got a little bit more time to prepare, which we’ll need every minute of it. But overall, I think it has been a really good week. It’s going to be a great challenge for us and I think our team is going to be ready to play and again I think it’s going to be a challenge for us.”

Talk about the trend toward offense?

“I think all circumstances are different. But I think the day and age of these different offensive philosophies have changed the game some. You can even see a little bit of it trickle up to the NFL. You can look at the NFL and see a lot of high-scoring games there with different things that people do. Certainly, you see more points scored now and you see in this day and age that offenses are so explosive that you can see in a matter of minutes 14, 21, 28 points scored. Certainly that’s the case if you turn the ball over and don’t protect the ball yourself but there’s just a lot of new ideas out there and a lot of explosive offenses with great players. I think it’s pretty simple when you look at stats these days how many teams average 450, 500 yards a game. There are a lot of them out there.”

Will it cycle back to defense at some point?

“I think this game always goes in cycles. I really do. I think defenses eventually catch up with the new wave of things out there. But it really, anyway you slice it, it’s always going to come down to blocking and tackling and having the right guys in right positions and things of that nature, but particularly in college, when you have quarterbacks who are running quarterbacks, who have the ability athletically to give an offense another dimension, other than just running the football, I think you open up a whole new realm of how to play defense. You know, so many college teams have those type of guys. So many college teams have those type of guys. Again, it becomes very challenging for college defenses.”

Will Emory play this week?

“I’m going to say I feel a little better, comparatively speaking, if we compare to where we were last week. Again, it’s going to be day to day. It really is. It’s going to be a game-time decision. He has tried to do more. He is not where we would like him to be, so only time will tell over the next 72 hours or whatnot. But right now for him to say he can play in the game full tilt, I can’t say that.”

Does it help to get Trovon Reed back?

“Yes, and Trovon should be full speed, based on what I’ve seen so far, unless something else happens. He should be in a better place than he was this time last week, so we expect him to play. We expect him to be further along than he was last Saturday.”

Emory warmed up and then didn't play. What happened?

“You know, you take them and of course we do treatments on Friday night and we continue that all the way through, do it on Saturday mornings, try to get as many treatment opportunities as we can to see where they may end up on game day. Again, you don’t know where they’re going to end up, but if we feel like there’s any chance at all, we’re going to take them and work them down to the 11th hour and see if there’s an opportunity for them to play.”

Has the running ability of the new Ole Miss quarterback opened things up for them?

“No question about it. He’s very similar to Masoli from last year in terms of the offense you can run with him in there. Him bringing another threat to the defense on the ground. Make no mistake about it, he can throw the ball too. You can see there has been an evolution with him in terms of comfort with the offense and how far he has come from the beginning of the year and what he looks like he feels like comfort-level wise from our eyes is that he has really settled in on some things that he feels good about – both throwing and running and the dimension he brings to the run game. So no question about it, he definitely adds another dimension, particularly when things break down, particularly in the pass game, his ability to scramble and make things happen.”