Clawson Presser

Coach Clawson had his weekly presser yesterday as the team preps for the EMU game.

Nobody talks up the opposition better than Coach Clawson.  Honestly, you would have thought Murray State was a potential DI national champion to hear him tell it.  I know, he's got to do it to keep his guys focused.  More on that later.

He notes, with accuracy, that EMU has undergone a huge amount of adversity this year.  They had a player murdered and then their Coach was fired--and Coach didn't say this, but we all know it was after a profanity-laden insulting tirade where he urged everyone except himself to accept responsibility for the state of the program.

He notes that they have moved the ball against everyone they have played.  (A claim we will examine in 25 questions on Friday).  He says they have good RBs and a big offensive line.

Still, they didn't get to be 2-8 by accident, with wins over Howard and WMU.  You'd have to point your finger at the defense.  Coach says that they simplified their defense against WMU, which was Parrish's first game and a game held when he had been interim coach for one day.

He also pointed out that EMU had played a tough schedule.  There is no doubt, the MAC West presents a more difficult schedule than the East.  And then, their crossover games are OU, Buffalo and BG, which is a tough road.  They also played Rutgers (2-7) and Penn State as non-conference games.

Coach was asked how you got a team up for a game like this.  The fact is that except for possible bowl implications, the game means nothing in terms of making the MAC Championship.  He noted that it isn't like the NFL where you just rest your veteran players, and then he tried to talk about winning an OUTRIGHT East title.

He mostly said that the team has to watch film and see the EMU RBs and the O-line and remember the tight game BG played with them last year, and from their senior leadership should get everyone awake.

Clawson was asked about Brogan Roback, who has emerged as EMU's QB.  He went to St. John's (it is a little known fact that all Ohio young men named Brogan must be Johnnies).  Coach says BG recruited him.

Coach was planning to watch the UT-NIU game, but he refused to say who he was rooting for, for fear of ending up on a bulletin board.  We just want to be in the game, he said.

The OU punt was a real fake, not a mistake.

He talked about BG's improvement on both sides of the ball in the red zone.  You try to fix the things that you need to do better...last spring it was red zone.  He said usually they practice things in proportion to how often they happen in a game, but he threw that out and the team focused on what to do in the red zone.  He said the defense was simplified a little (if simplifying the defense is so effective...oh, never mind), etc, and the results are evident.

Also, there's William Houston.  Coach relayed the story of how Houston came to BG.  You can listen to the presser to hear the whole story, but he is a guy BG really needed for short yardage situations.