Loeffler Presser: Cheez-its and Brian Griese

Loeffler presser....

First, Terion Stewart won MAC East Offensive POW (or, OPOW or MEOPOW) and Deshaun Jones won MAC East Defensive Player of the Week.  Congrats to them both!

He said we won "some team award," which had to be the Cheez-it National Team of the Week, voted on by the Football Writer's of America.  (SOME TEAM AWARD?????  Are you serious???)

Also

Also, they sent us every box in the Cheez-it family of products and we sent back this...

Some team award, indeed!

OK, seriously.

Coach said we finally played to our ability.  Much of the press conference was pretty amazing for how almost fatalistic coach sounded.  We finally played to our ability.  We did nothing different in practice.  Any win is a great win in today's college football.  It's almost like, if we decide to play we're good.  I'm just waiting to see what happens.

Look, I get what he is trying to do.  If the Georgia Tech win was the result of some super-human effort, a unicorn if you will, then that's all it will ever be.  Who could do something like that twice?  But, if it wasn't...if the same preparation and the same focus could get you a win any week, that's a much different situation. And it can be controllable.

The biggest headline is he says that he knew we were going to win big on Wednesday.  He says he knows his team's psychology and he could tell we were going to win easily.  Claimed to have the same vision before the Minnesota win.  If this is true, we could save a lot of injuries and just have him let everyone know what's going to happen.  Also, given our record there would have been many more disturbing premonitions, if true.

There was some interesting content.  He says he has learned a lot.  He no longer calls the plays.  He is part of game planning.  But he has learned the most important part of his job is working directly with the players and is more than "Xs and Os."  And he's right.  It always seems to me at any level that a coach calling the plays is going to be of limited success.  Saw a photo of Bum Phillips today and he didn't even have a headset on (that's me, not Coach.  I don't know if Loeffler saw a photo of Bum Phillips at all).

He said the GT game is our model of how we want to win.  We don't want to throw for 350 yards.  We want to run for 150-200 and throw for 200-250. We want to eat the clock up and keep the other team off the field.  GT ran 58 offensive plays.  It was a great team win because of that.  Can't argue at all. I would love to win that way.

He also noted that BG won the battle up front on both sides of the ball.  The Dline, to a man, played like "savages." The Oline had their best game as well.  I think that was true.  You win a game like that, it is because you won up front.

And Finn Hogan came up, of course.  Coach made some weight predictions for Hogan, as he did after the game, said he would be our Hybrid TE and play in the NFL.  Beyond that, he said Hogan, a CMU transfer is grateful to be here and a true team guy.  He did not complain about playing time. Eventually, he got his shot and he didn't throw it away.  (Here is what I had when he transferred here).

The 2-Qb situation will continue.  He says Orth and Bazelak get along, which he, Scot Loeffler, could not do in a similar situation.  He says he and Brian Griese "hated each other's guts" though they now are "best buds."  Kum-ba-yah.

Up comes Miami.  A big test for us.  Coach will know the result in 48 hours!